Do you believe that ambition or talent are more important? We’ve all heard that those without passion are not likely to succeed, but how does ambition show itself? We all know someone we’d never believe could succeed and yet day after day, there they are starting new companies, pitching new ideas, and generally succeeding.
Ambition is more important than talent
Why? Because sometimes talented people sit and wait for someone to come and discover them. Ambitious people don’t sit and wait. Ambitious people go after what they want. They don’t let failures stop them, and are full of creative ways to succeed.
I really like this article Ambition: The Key Ingredient of Success. In it, Darius Foroux says “Yes, belief by itself is useless. But here’s the thing: The people who believe they can achieve their goals are the ones that actually do.”
Ambitious people are motivated
What I’ve found is that if your dreams are big, you often find ways to “get ‘er done.” For example, think about Christo’s ambitious project, Running Fence. Did you know about the marketing Christo did before the fence was ever installed? The fence was paid for before it was installed and that is a mark of ambition and creativity, too. Here’s a remembrance of Christo written by famous local artist Lynn Hershman Leeson.
Another very ambitious person is Elon Musk. We don’t hear about Musk’s failures so much as his successes, but think about Paypal. In 1999, Paypal was voted as the worst business product of the year. And Tesla very narrowly bounced back after Musk nearly went bankrupt. Without personal loans, Musk would not be where he is today. Now, of course, Tesla is widely known as a resounding success!
Ambitious people know how to take risks
You may have heard that Japanese proverb Fall down seven times, get up eight. This proverb illustrates the idea of resilience, of failure, and of success. No matter how many times you are knocked down, you get back up again. No one can compete with someone who won’t quit, right? If you’re interested in failure, you might like this article: Is failure mandatory on the road to success?
The idea of a calculated risk may seem counterintuitive. After all, risk seems to be an idea that defies logic. But does it really? Maybe we can take small risks and build up to bigger and wilder risks. For instance, public speaking might seem like a huge risk, although hardly anyone ever dies from public speaking. Just joking, but haven’t you heard that public speaking is the #1 fear that people have? People are absolutely terrified to get in front of their peers and just say something. If you could speak in front of two people then four people, and so on, maybe eventually speaking in front of a large crowd wouldn’t be so terrifying!
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