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.
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Hi Steven – I love this post. It’s nice to hear stories about where people started, instead of just how they achieved success.
I’ve always been ambitious. My first full-time job was mind numbing. I worked at a fruit and vegetable wholesalers, inputting figures into a computer all day long.
On my first day, I asked a couple of colleagues what there ambitions were and they replied that nobody with any ambition had worked there before.
I realised I couldn’t stay there long – I was afraid the place would suck the life out of me.
I’m still a long way from where I want to be – but I’m also a long way from that sucky first job. I think it’s important to give ourselves new goals to aim for.
Now I’m going to check out your book – the one that Andrea mentioned.
Reminds me of the Marianne Williamson quote that somehow became credited to Nelson Mandela:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Thanks for shining your light, Steven Pressfield!
Ditto Andrea. The War of Art was my “Making It.” And luckily, I don’t think I’ll have to question Steven’s politics when I re-read it in 30 years.
“When I get up in the morning, that pissed-off feeling is ambition—ambition rubbing up against Resistance and throwing off sparks.”
Thank you for those words. That sentence succinctly describes and, more importantly, defines one of my aspects that always mystified and frustrated me. I’m struggling to express how empowered this makes me feel, so I’m going to stop here and
go make something.Yeah, I’m ambitious. I hate injustice, specially the robbing of people’s hope.
I believe it is suicide not to do our best. It is like keeping a treasure hidden from ourselves and others. This is why I want to go down fully spent. Like Paul, I seek to “fight the good fight, to finish the race and kept the faith” (2Tim4:6-8 edited). Why would people want to “coast” to a coffin is beyond me. If that means I am ambitious, I am not apologizing for it.
I should not let resistance get in my way, but it does. This is where your posts help me. They remind me to get “pissed-off” again – and it feels good.
Thanks!
I love this post! It is now saved in my stack & flow of media I must return to again and again.
I needed this reminder, after a day spent tilting at windmills in the NHS.
Reminds me of Langston Hughes’ raisin in the sun. Without the scope to even try to realize our ambitions, we shrivel and become something, someone less. I don’t want to do that any more.
I used to run into so many people who would act like my having ambition for myself was the mark of a deluded egomaniac, and that I should be ashamed. I let these people get into my head for years.
What I now know is that what they’re really lashing out at is the potential they once saw in themselves and turned away from. Their criticism is a sign that you’re on the right track. I’m always happy to remind them that they can make a start, if they so choose.
Hey Steve – you certainly nailed ‘ambition.’ If I want to succeed (my book in Barnes & Noble? a movie deal? make the NYTimes book review?) then I need to get off my ass and write – and ignore those who tell me I can’t-won’t-shouldn’t. It’s really that simple, isn’t it?
I am forwarding this to my Son asap. Thank you Mr. Pressfield for continuing to be write this blog. Of all the literary soup of blog out there I can always count on you to come up with something insightful and stirring. Even if it was 30 years ago. I am hanging around Starbucks and waiting for my “writing” chair. Do you think I could throw the nice older lady sitting in it and explain to her that I want to be a “mighty oak” sometime this morning. LOL!