Though it possessed many flawed premises and opinions masquerading as facts, the recent Time magazine front-cover story on ambition prompted me to reflect on the subject. The essence of the article was to explore the factors that are most responsible for some people being ambitious and others not.The Time authors asked, "Why are some people born with a fire in the belly, while others ... need something to get their pilot light lit? And why do others never get the flame of ambition going?"Every family — particularly every large family — has its extremes when it comes to ambitious children and those who seem mentally lethargic. Sometimes, children can be so different that it's hard to believe they came from the same parents. I've had six children, so I can vouch for this phenomenon.Unfortunately, the Time article also stated, "Of all the impulses in humanity's behavioral portfolio, ambition — that need to grab an ever bigger piece of the resource pie before someone else gets it — ought to be one of the most democratically distributed. Nature is a zero-sum game, after all. Every buffalo you kill for your family is one less for somebody else's; every acre of land you occupy elbows out somebody else."I feel morally obliged to temporarily sidetrack myself here, because this kind of Marxist rhetoric is precisely what deters the underprivileged from doing the very things they need to do to lift themselves up. Ignorant, left-wing college profs have been teaching such gibberish to malleable-minded college kids since the days of the Greek Empire, while at the same time shameless and/or ignorant politicians have been brainwashing the parents of those same children.Tinseltown celebs, of course, are also quite vocal when it comes to this class-warfare con. But since they have such large slices of the pie themselves, most people don't take the showbiz crowd seriously.In truth, any honest, half-intelligent person in this day and age of highly visible entrepreneurial wealth creation certainly realizes that neither nature nor business nor life itself is a zero-sum game. In every country where the zero-sum game has been played out, the results have been catastrophic.The list is a long one and includes, among others, the former Soviet Union, Albania, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, China, North Korea, Cuba, and Mozambique. And everyone on the list has three things in common: torture and suffering for the masses, special treatment for the anointed privileged class, and failed economies. Unfortunately, Western societies seem intent on following the loud voices of the zero-sum-game crowd down an egalitarian path that leads only to real communism (as opposed to theoretical communism, which is but a fairy tale).What these pinheads cannot seem to grasp is that those who create wealth almost always do so by creating value for others. Or, to continue the metaphor, they increase the size of the pie. That's why the poorest families in the U.S. have the means to buy state-of-the-art television sets, DVD players, video-game consoles, computers, cellphones, and an endless collection of other electronic products that are strictly discretionary in nature — i.e., they are not necessities by any stretch of the imagination.Back to the subject of ambition ...Dean Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California/Davis, was quoted in the Time article as saying, "People with goals but no energy are the ones who wind up sitting on the couch saying 'One day I'm going to build a better mousetrap.' People with energy but no clear goals just dissipate themselves in one desultory project after the next.When Simonton uses the term "energy," I assume he's referring to mental energy. After all, if someone lacks physical energy, then it's a health problem, which is an entirely different matter than lacking mental energy.One dictionary definition of ambition is "a strong desire to achieve something." If so, then a goal without sufficient mental energy is an oxymoron of sorts, because if one's desire to achieve something is strong enough, it automatically follows that he will conjure up the mental energy to do something about it.In other words, if you're really serious about a goal but have trouble motivating yourself to click off "Sports Center" and get up off the couch, the solution is to call on your free will. That means forcing yourself to take action — however small that action may be — to start moving in the direction of your goals. Once you take that first step, you'll be amazed at the things, people, and circumstances that seem to appear out of nowhere and come to your aid.There is no denying the fact that some people are genetically programmed to be more ambitious than others. But that doesn't mean a person who is genetically less ambitious can't succeed. Such an individual just has to recognize that he has a handicap (i.e., something that makes achievement more difficult), and, as I said in the November 26 issue of Voice of Sanity , the solution is to tap into his reservoir of human resourcefulness and find ways to succeed in spite of it.Simonton makes another point that I agree with when he says that even though a person's energy level has its roots in genetics, people with a lower energy level can become ambitious if something comes their way that excites them enough. He cites Franklin D. Roosevelt as an example of someone who was probably highly motivated to prove that he could succeed in spite of being crippled by poliomyelitis.My friend, the late Jim Blanchard, once expressed the same sentiment to me about his enormous financial and personal success. He said he believed that he would not have been as successful had he not been in a near-fatal automobile accident as a teenager.As a result of that accident, he spent the remainder of his life in a wheelchair as a paraplegic. He believed that his physical handicap gave him the motivation to become fiercely independent and ambitious to succeed.As to whether being born into great wealth or poverty makes a person more ambitious or less, the jury is still out. Growing up rich can give you the confidence and advantages to succeed, but it can also result in a life that has no purpose. Which, sadly, often fosters a true-believer mentality that can bury the privileged child in a wide array of "good causes" that are perceived to be noble.Growing up poor is the other side of the coin, yet much the same. It can either motivate a person to achieve (Time magazineused the example of Bill Clinton) or make him or her feel that life is hopeless. According to Time, studies (which they did not cite) "suggest" that the upper-middle class produces the most ambitious people (Bill Gates?), because children from these homes have the best balance between life being too easy or too hard.Finally, is there a connection between greed and ambition? Back to the dictionary: Greed is "an excessive desire to acquire more than what one needs or deserves." Asinine. Who, other than Michael Moore, has the wisdom, let alone the moral authority, to decide what anyone else needs or deserves?So, what's the connection between greed and ambition? Since the words "excessive" and "more than what he needs or deserves" are totally subjective, what greed really means is possessing a desire to acquire. And, though it may ruffle the feathers of many to hear it, the reality is that all human beings have an unlimited desire to acquire.One person might desire to acquire power over others by leading or joining a humanitarian crusade. Another person might desire to acquire material wealth by providing products or services that people are willing to purchase from him. And still another individual might desire to acquire the respect of others through artistic achievements.In any event, all of these people are "greedy" in the sense that they "desire to acquire." Thus, there is not much difference between greed and ambition, because ambition is "a strong desire to achieve something," and "acquire" is commonly used as a synonym for "achieve."Though the audience was set up to hiss and boo when Gordon Gekko (in the 1987 movie Wall Street ) spewed out those now-famous words "Greed is good," the fact is that he was right. Or at least he was conditionally right. Greed is good if it leads to honest wealth creation.By this I mean that, as Brian Tracy points out in his excellent book Something for Nothing, greed is actually neutral. Greed is neither good nor bad. It is the methods that a person employs to fulfill his desires that are good or bad.Just as guns don't kill people, neither do greed or ambition, of and by themselves, harm anyone. However, some people do choose to use greed and ambition to do harm, just as some people use guns to kill.So long as you do not use force or fraud to acquire what you desire, you never need to apologize for being greedy. And so it is with ambition: So long as you do not use force or fraud to achieve something, there is no need to apologize for your success.Just be sure to start with a goal that you believe in strongly, and ambition is sure to follow.Sign up for Robert Ringer's FREE wisdom-filled e-letter, A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World. Visit http://www.robertringer.com.
Ringer is the author of three #1 bestsellers, including two books listed by The New York Times among the 15 bestselling motivational books of all time.Copyright © 2006 by Robert J. Ringer. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Keyword : ambition,drive,success,earning,robert ringer,motivating yourself,free will,achievement
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น