WRITING WEDNESDAYS
Ambition
By Steven Pressfield | Published: July 28, 2010
Thirty-something years ago, I read a book that changed my life. The book was by Norman Podhoretz and it was called Making It. I can’t really recommend it as a read for today (I tried a month ago and couldn’t get through it) and I certainly find little to admire about Mr. Podhoretz’s current politics. But his book hit me like a box of dynamite. It overthrew everything I thought I knew about myself and turned my life around 180 degrees.
No, not Gordon Gekko (though I love the guy)
Making It is about ambition. Mr. Podhoretz’s thesis is that the “dirty little secret” of American life is not sex, but ambition. Lust for success, he said, is the love (the book was published in 1967) that dare not speak its name.
When I read Making It, I was living in a rented room in a halfway house in Durham, North Carolina, making $1.75 an hour delivering reconstituted orange juice, Salisbury steaks and frozen Crinkle-Cut French fries to restaurants and school cafeterias. But when I read Mr. P’s confessions (in a 35-cent used paperback picked up at the Goodwill Store), I thought, “That’s me.”
I didn’t dare breathe a word. And certainly nothing altered in my external life. But everything had changed inside me. Norman P. had obliterated denial. He had forced me to own up. I may be a bum, I told myself; I may be a loser, I may still have a long way to fall before I hit bottom. But the truth is I ain’t happy being a bum and a loser and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life at the bottom.
I hate what I’ve done to myself. I hate what my life has become. I want to do something great, and I want people to know about it. At the time I was years away from finding a job that anyone might call half-respectable and a generation away from making my first dollar as a writer. But that was only surface stuff. Inside, I had changed. Inside, I had taken the first step.
Accepting the fact that I was ambitious took a great weight off my shoulders. I felt terrible about it (it seemed so aggressive and competitive and non-regular-guy-ish), but at least I wasn’t lying to myself any more. To admit that I wanted something better for myself didn’t mean that I intended to morph into a raging egomaniac who clawed his way to the top over the bleeding bodies of his dearest friends. It just meant that I was ready to kick my own butt and to, at last, reject every sorry-ass excuse I had been dishing out to myself for so long.
Today, thirty-plus years later, I feel exactly the same. I’m still ambitious. I still hate mediocrity. I still want to do something great. When I get up in the morning, that pissed-off feeling is ambition—ambition rubbing up against Resistance and throwing off sparks.
This doesn’t mean I believe in “success.” I don’t. I don’t believe greed is good and I don’t think wealth or fame bring happiness. Those are externals. Those are fruits. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about labor. I’m talking about doing the work. To pretend to NOT want to excel when in fact you do—and thus crap out on the work–is a prescription for misery. To NOT try is fatal, for me anyway.
Are you ambitious? If you’re reading this blog, you must be. Do you want to do something great? Do you feel a secret power inside you? Do you hate being ordinary and normal? Do you refuse to accept that?
I do. I hate that shit. I don’t believe anyone’s ordinary or normal anyway. An oak litters the earth with ten thousand acorns, and inside every one is the drive to grow to be as mighty as its daddy. Every lion cub, every fledging eagle carries in its DNA the will to be king of beasts and lord of the air. That’s nature’s law. Why should we humans expect to be different?
I thank Norman Podhoretz for making the scales fall from my eyes. What he said about himself was true for me too. The realization that I do value myself, that I do respect myself, that I do expect great things from myself has fueled my work and me for three decades–and I haven’t run out of gas yet.
Thanks for that one, Steven, because it’s something I recognize not only in myself but in others around me. Some are content with getting by, with coasting. Gosh, I know I have done my fair share of coasting in my time too. But these days, now that I can be honest about how precious life really is… Well, nowadays I want to be the best at what I do. Like you do.
Thanks for the honest blog.
One problem I often see is that if I express my ambitions to others they take me as an egomaniac. It mostly comes from those being beaten by resistence.
Now i keep it to myself determined to do it.
“Do not reveal what you have thought upon doing, but by wise council keep it secret being determined to carry it into execution.”
Canakya Pandit. Niti Sastra.
Another great post.
Thanks Steven.
To Jason M – I couldn’t agree more. Its best to keep your plans to yourself. I am in a phase where I don’t quite know how much to say (to get interested e.g. if you want to collaborate) and how much not to say (to make sure you don’t scare them off). Any advice, please reply.
I think it all depends on the person you’re talking to.
If the person is clearly losing the battle with their resistance, then they’ll be more likely to resent you for wanting more from your life. Those types will drag you down, so your ambitions aren’t worth discussing with them anyway. Good people will love to hear about your goals and help you get there. I’m assuming most of us reading this blog fall under that category.
How many people these days, stuck in dead end jobs, burn inside like Rooster in “Gates of Fire”?
I do
Salvador Dali once said: “intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings”.
As long as your ambition is healthy, without the will to destroy people around you rather than accept competition.
No ambition = no enthusiasm.
No enthusiasm = no work.
No work = no start.
No start = no end.
I cannot tell you how much I needed to read this today. Enough said.
“This doesn’t mean I believe in “success.” I don’t. I don’t believe greed is good and I don’t think wealth or fame bring happiness.”
I don’t have a problem with success, and yet agree that greed isn’t the answer. What is best? For me, to come to the end of the day and look back and say, yes, I got something done, that is success.
Working every day to, as Van Morrison’s song says, ‘keep mediocrity at bay.’
THAT is success.
Mike
Mike, can you expand on those lyrics? I love Van Morrison but I’m not familiar with that song. Which one is it? Thanks!
Hello Steven,
The song is called: Keep mediocrity at bay and the lyrics are here:
(Van Morrison)
You gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay
Gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay
Got to fight with all your might not to get in the bleeding heart’s way
You gotta fight for your rights you can’t bury your head in the sand
You gotta fight for your rights you can’t just bury your head in the sand
Politics and religion superstition go hand in hand
Well you’re going through the motions and they can’t hear a word you say
Well you’re going through the motions they don’t want to hear a word you say
Got to keep boredom at bay and keep mediocrity away
Gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay
Gotta fight every day to keep mediocrity at bay
Got to fight with all your might not to get in the bleeding heart’s way
Enjoy!
I love your post. Thanks!
Thanks for the kick in the ass, Mr. Pressfield. I remember reading an interview with William Kennedy in which he said when he was a newspaperman he had a stack of nine drafts of a novel by his desk and that every time he wrote fiction he said to himself, “I’ll show those bastards.” There weren’t any bastards, he said, but it still helped him write to say it.
I like this website of your’s. Well designed.
“Are you ambitious? If you’re reading this blog, you must be. Do you want to do something great? Do you feel a secret power inside you? Do you hate being ordinary and normal? Do you refuse to accept that?”
Yep.
I used to describe this feeling as wanting something BIG and it was my (secret) reason for flitting from one job to the next. I didn’t exactly know what BIG was but I knew it was important. BIG means something. BIG isn’t about money but it is probably about limelight (for me, anyway). It took a long time to admit that I like the spotlight. I resisted (should probably be capitalized) it and tried to pretend that I was more of a behind the scenes person – someone who sits back and let’s others get the attention. Meanwhile, I found other not so healthy ways of getting the attention I craved.
I need the crowd. I need applause or laughter or dare I say…(gulp)…adoration. I didn’t like this about myself and spent years trying to deny it. You can pretend you’re something you’re not or not something you are but, in the end, you’ll be a lot happier if you just accept the basics of who you are and then work within that.
Thanks for this post and thanks even more for The War of Art. It’s the book that changed MY life.
The War of Art, is to me as Making It is to you.
It was the book that woke me up and literally made me take responsibility.
Thank you.