Posts Tagged ‘ambition’

What’s Wrong with Ambition?

In talking about my new movie The Shift, I’ve had a lot of questions about the nature of ambition. If the shift to a purposeful life is moving from ambition to meaning, why is it that we have to get away from ambition? What’s wrong with ambition? Isn’t that what we need to reach our goals and realize our dreams? I know it sounds contradictory—isn’t life full of seeming contradictions that we have to balance?—but in fact, we don’t have to give up ambition, only shift it toward the things we are here to achieve, the music we are here to play. You can be ambitious about having meaning in your life. I don’t think I’m not ambitious right now. I get more done now than I’ve ever gotten done in my life: creating books, writing all the time, living a very fulfilled life, making money, giving lectures, and doing all the kinds of things I do, but there’s a part of me that is so content and peaceful with who I am and what I’m doing that I know this is the music I came here to play. I’m ambitious, but I’m ambitious not so much about accumulation. It’s not the having but the being—the peace and the joy—that lets you know when your ambitions have meaning.

 

Namaste,

Wayne