Author Rainesford Stauffer examines why for some of us we are so driven that nothing we do seems to be good enough. Do you know someone like that? Are you someone like that? What is the main message Stauffer has for those who are trying so hard and never quite satisfied?

Ambition is a funny thing. It can choke you if you let it define your reason for existing. But without some sense of mission, how is THAT supposed to work…? Maybe this comes back to whether you were born into the “achievement” culture or if you are more on the “let’s just make it through today” side of things. 

Watching the video, I can see how Stauffer is cautioning against pouring everything into ambition, but I sense a gap between the culture and situations she may have been raised in and the culture that I and my students may have been raised in. Achievement culture can be an endless suck. But if one comes from a low socioeconomic environment, having a dream and a goal at an early age might be the thing that gets one through all of traps, challenges and compromises that may prevent some from having the life that one aspires to. 

When I was working on my Masters at Pepperdine one of our sayings was, “It’s all about the process,” meaning that the learning was really about the struggle to work through the challenges and set-backs and not the actual “achievement” at all. In the same way, having ambition or a goal isn’t a problem or even the point as long as one gains from the experiences of moving forward and gaining a sense of progress. In other words, it’s about the journey and not the destination.

I told my students this morning that others might be able to goof around and figure out what they want out of life in the 20s or 30s, but we aren’t generally given that kind of chance and need to have a goal early on to help us stay focused and out of trouble. And at the same time, I cautioned, it is almost never a straight path from what we dream about as kids and becoming that thing later in life. I have never seen it be anything other than a meandering path across all kinds of challenges and set-backs. And often the dream pivots to something entirely unimagined in the beginning. That is life. 

So, yeah, don’t let ones ambition suck the life out of everything, but fight for what one wants out of this brief moment that we have to work with. 

Please share in the comments what you’ve learned in your from your journey?

Source: PBS Newshour: Rainesford Stauffer’s Brief But Spectacular take on rethinking ambition, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/rainesford-stauffers-brief-but-spectacular-take-on-rethinking-ambition