I recently came across this old Time magazine article about the psychology of ambition. (It’s a long read for an online piece if you’re like me you spend enough hours staring at a screen each day but worth a read if you can make it through.

I’ve often pondered what drives some people to work like Trojans and others to just shrug their shoulders and plod on, and secretly envied the blissful apathy of the latter. For me, there are two sides to ambition.

The Two Sides of Ambition

1. The first is about reconciling your earnings with your lifestyle expectations. In a sense, this ought to be a sort of definition of achieving happiness – being able to afford to live the life you want to live. I think this is why twin studies, according to the Time article I mentioned above, found a relatively weak familial component to ambition. Being a high-performing professional or executive is mostly about applying good judgment and solving problems. A smart person will work hard continuously, demonstrate good judgment and stand out from the crowd enough to achieve great things. But a really smart person will realise that it’s much easier to lower your expectations than to increase your earnings. The former will live to work, the latter will work to live. Both can be happy and successful, they just have different definitions of the terms.
   
   
2. The second side is competitiveness. To some, business is a game with a score kept in money. If there’s one quality I look for in CML candidates to join the team, it’s competitiveness, but it can’t be a win-at-all-costs mentality: It has to be combined with respect for the rules of the game and an ability to succeed in a team. To have the best company, you have to find people who want to be the best player in the best team in the best company and consider every customer the judge.

“It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it”. William Somerset Maugham

If you’re ambitious and looking for a new adventure in your career, reach out to our team today at info@cml.ky and let’s chat about how we can help you achieve your goals.