We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.
TYLER DURDEN, Fight Club
A friend of mine asked me once what was the best decision I had ever made in my life. It threw me for a bit because I had never considered the question before. I could give numerous contenders for the worst decision I had ever made in my life but not the best. I turned it over in my mind for a bit, and then it hit me. I answered, "The best decision I have ever made in my life was to stop being ambitious."
This flies in the face of everything we are told in those self-help motivational tapes. The reason we lack accomplishment is because we lack sufficient ambition. Our goals are too small. We should aim for the stars. Blah blah blah. You know the spiel because you have heard it your whole life. As Napoleon Hill put it, "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve." I have to laugh at this because I made a mock motivational poster of this and put it on a guy's desk at work.
Jacq comments on my definition of ambition by using the Webster's dictionary definition of ambition. According to Webster's, ambition is "an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment." She takes me to task over my definition of ambition as being "laziness." But my definition and hers are different.
There are two parts to ambition. The first is the desire for the achievement. For me, this is all ambition is--desire. I do not include the "willingness to strive for its attainment." In fact, I think that second part is ludicrous. Within that second part of the definition, we can see the New Thought error. New Thought is a school of thinking that permeates the American culture from Norman Vincent Peale to Napoleon Hill to Tony Robbins to The Secret. Basically, we are the products of what we think about. This idea takes on an almost mystical tone as devotees talk about the universe as if it responds to these thoughts to deliver what you desire. Naturally, hindsight bias gives us examples of where this works, but a guy lake Nassim Taleb would rapidly show these people are fooled by randomness. This is because of the unfalsifiable nature of New Thought. If you succeed, it is because you thought correctly. If you fail, it is because you thought incorrectly. The possibility of thinking correctly and still failing is never considered.
If we go back to Jacq's definition of ambition, it says the willingness to strive for its attainment. Well, this is stupid. How do you will to strive? You either strive, or you do not. Striving is just work. Yet, striving is not included in the definition. It is the will to strive that is included. To show the stupidity of this, I have the will to strive to train for and complete the Ironman Triathlon. Now, I am sitting on my fat ass here typing this instead of putting my ass on a bike seat and doing some training. I have the ambition. I have the will. But people will take me to task on this. If I really had the will, my ass would be on that bike. But it isn't. Therefore, I am not ambitious. Well, what am I? What do you call someone who wants something but doesn't strive to get it? I call them ambitious.
Ambition is simply a desire. Whether it culminates in striving or not is irrelevant. We all know people like this. The world is full of ambitious people. Most of them are idlers sitting in an office with one of those obnoxious motivational posters on the wall.
My brother told me the story of some guys who started a business but wasted all their time crafting mission statements and brainstorming ideas. They were mystified why nothing got accomplished. They were exceedingly ambitious. They wanted to succeed. Yet, they were failures and a joke. Why did they waste their time in this fashion? Because it is entirely consistent with New Thought thinking which permeates self-help and business books. If you get your thinking right, everything else will follow. I'm sorry, but this is all bullshit--every goddamn bit of it.
We accomplish things not through our thoughts but our actions. We do things by DOING. I know this is tautological, but it is to differentiate from doing things by THINKING. Thinking is only the first step in the process. Those thoughts can be ambitious or mundane. But they are worthless if they are not turned into reality. Ambition is purely thought, and I think it is wasteful. All it has done has spawn a breed of bullshitting idlers who spend all day talking, having meetings, shooting emails, and listening to motivational speakers. We all know it is bullshit. Yet, companies pay these people to do this. Meanwhile, people that do real work are maligned, urged to be more productive, and chastised for their "negative attitudes." A negative attitude is simply being honest with a deluded shithead.
I am mocked for my blue collar viewpoint on this. Yet, who is the idiot? Is it the guy who works? Or is it the guy who dreams? It is obvious to me but not so obvious to a world that considers work to be for suckers and gives status to idlers who are full of shit. The New Thought people believe that we just need to dream bigger and have more motivation. I think people should stop dreaming and just work. This is because extraordinary success is mostly accidental. I am willing to take those accidents.
The reason I credit losing ambition as the best decision of my life is because it made me feel better about myself. This is because judging myself against my ideal self was not motivating but demotivating. I think this is why people get happier as they get older. They lighten up on themselves. This is what I did. I stopped seeing myself as what I should be and started seeing myself for what I am. The surprising thing is that this Real Thought was way more motivating for me. Instead of being crushed daily by my failure to live up to the ideal, I am rewarded by the marginal but lasting improvements that I have been able to make. I realize that dreaming does not provide the motivation to get things done. Things get done through focus and habit. And because I see success as mostly luck instead of will, I focus on the work and take whatever happens. Tyler Durden says it best,
Fuck off with your sofa units and string green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let... lets evolve, let the chips fall where they may.
The reason Fight Club resonates with so many people especially those in the minimalist movement is because it releases you from the treadmill of fantasy. It is better to achieve modest goals than to not achieve fantastic goals. This is because an unrealized goal is worthless. To realize something is to literally "make real."
People in New Thought tend to be idealistic, full of shit, lazy, and dishonest. This is why I am so stoked by people who exhibit authenticity. This is why I praise virtues like hard work, honesty, humility, and thrift. This is because these are traits consistent with people who live in the real world. New Thought people do shit like lie on their resumes, embellish their accomplishments, have extensive To Do lists of undone shit, and are always looking for short cuts and hacks to everything in life. For them, life is simply a puzzle waiting to reveal its secret to the most clever person. Well, I am that person. The secret is work. This is why all those other clever people are still looking for the answer. The answer is where they are not looking.
Naturally, some critic will point out that I am just a slacker who has settled on easier goals. But when goals are easy, it actually motivates you to achieve them. When goals are extremely hard, that is when the excuses begin. This is why Leo Babauta managed to quit smoking, but you are struggling to learn seven languages at once. This is because you aren't even trying to learn those languages. It is nice to dream how impressed people will be when they see you conversing with foreigners or reading obscure literature. But to learn seven languages would require serious neglect somewhere else in your life or living abroad for some number of years.
When I consider a goal, I ask myself two important questions. The first is whether or not the goal is achievable. The second is whether or not it is worth achieving. This twofold method brings me to stunning conclusions like realizing that my life will be just fine if I never learn how to play the searing solo portion of Stairway to Heaven or ever see the Great Wall of China. For most of us, the goals are to lose 10 pounds and put more away in savings. Those are worthy goals to me. I'd rather be in better shape than better traveled or even better paid.
We live in a world of complete New Thought bullshit. We are supposed to positive think our way to riches and use the Law of Attraction to achieve our dreams of self-actualization. This is not the answer. This is you putting your hard earned money into the pockets of a liar. The answer is to put on your hard hat and work for the things you want. They can be great or small, but as you turn dreams into sweat, you will automatically whittle them down to the essential. That's because you won't have time, money, or energy for anything else. As for me, I just dropped this knowledge on you for free. It only cost you the time to read this. I am not scamming you. If this is what you want, you are reading the wrong blog.
Take it easy on yourself. With all this talk of work, you think I'm telling you to do hard stuff. But it isn't hard. Hard is a state of mind. The irony of hard work is that it gets easier the more you do it. It is more satisfying because it results in things that are real. The reality is self-motivating. Modest goals achieved turn into a goals that are a little harder. Before you know it, you are in a virtuous cycle. Leo Babauta knows this which is why he counsels people to start with the smallest most achievable goals. Being less ambitious produces greater results as they turn into habits. Those repeated behavior patterns are where excellence comes from. Don't start with training for an Ironman. Start with the decision to walk for 20 minutes each day. That baby step will lead to another baby step. Before you know it, you are training for a marathon. As for doing the Ironman, I think there are better things to waste your life on. But that's just my opinion.
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NOTES
1. New Thought
2. The Power of Less
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