A lack of ambition is associated with failure. However, having tempered expectations is a great way to keep yourself on the straight and narrow, as will be discussed here.

Psychologists recommend setting realistic goals, as excessive ambition can cause an individual to feel that they have failed. Useful tools for the ambitious include daily journals, couples’ journals, and digital trackers. Communication of goals is a critical part of any relationship.

Tips for managing ambition are included below. Psychologists share their findings on how damaging ambition can be and make recommendations for how the power of ambition can be harnessed. By the end, you will know how excess ambition can be reeled in and turned into a positive for both you and your friends and family.

Is Ambition Always A Good Thing?

Ambition is not always a good thing. Having too much ambition can be detrimental to the same degree that being lazy and unmotivated can be. There are many ways that this can be the case, as will be discussed in further detail here.

Here are the negative things ambition can do:

• Cause you to focus too much on things that don’t matter
• Result in you beating yourself up
• Get in the way of personal relationships
• Lead to unnecessary stress
• Result in personal injury (poorly-planned exercise regime)
• Cause you to miss the things in life that matter more
• Negatively affect your job performance 

The key is to be able to harness the power of your ambitions. In this article, the point will be made that slow and steady wins the race. People who are successful are often consistent in their behaviors. Gamblers will sometimes cash in on a prize, but more often than not, they will lose catastrophically. If you are going to take a risk on account of ambitions, you need to ensure that it is a calculated risk. Tips for managing ambitions are included below.

What Do Hiring Managers Look For In an Interview?

If you don’t have very much drive or ambition, you will stick out like a sore thumb to a hiring manager. You may think that you have ambition, but your resume and attitude will speak for themselves.

It is never a bad idea to learn a new skill or to develop a healthy hobby, provided that they do not interfere with your daytime job. These are the types of things that show initiative, an attractive characteristic of any potential employee.

Good extracurriculars can include volunteer opportunities, sports teams or clubs, or personal projects. An example of a good personal project would be if you do a little painting on the side.

Harvard Business Review encourages candidates to consider the 70-20-10 ratio when they fill out their resumes. This mantra says that 70% of your professional growth will come from work experiences, 20% from interactions with others, and only 10% from formal education. 

Build yourself a personal experience map and include some of these in your resume:

• Show which experiences you want to acquire in the next 2-5 years
• Include functional experiences (i.e., marketing)
  • 4-7 specific experiences
• Include management experiences
  • 3-4 specific experiences 

Taking the time to fill out a full resume shows ambition in and of itself. You want your resume to be relatively brief but full of enough detail to captivate the hiring manager. There will be plenty of opportunities to expand on details during the in-person interview.

Too Much Ambition Can Cause You To Lose Focus

One of the unintended consequences of ambition can be a loss of focus and organization in one’s life. Some people are really great at starting new projects, but not necessarily able to see these tasks to their end.

Those who are over-ambitious are constantly thinking of ideas for new projects. You may have heard someone described as an “ideas person”, implying that they think of new ideas all the time but fail to carry them out. This is not necessarily a beneficial character trait. What is the point of ambition if the execution is always flawed?

You can keep tabs on your ideas with some kind of planner. A physical planner is great, or it may be an app on an electronic device. The point is to be able to limit the number of projects you are working on at once. 

Misplaced Ambition Can Stifle Creativity 

Ambition may cause you to miss opportunities if you are too focused on one specific objective. Things often don’t go as planned, and you need to be open to the possibility that your life may take an unexpected turn at any moment.

Morela Hernandez, a professor of Business Administration, notes that the brain is not naturally hardwired to handle specific day-to-day activities and collective, long-term activities at the same time. 

Hernandez has also performed research that shows that employees who are too focused on specific aspects of their jobs tend to lack creativity. These types of employees box themselves in mentally and are unable to see the value of an unconventional idea.

Spending too much time and effort just simply going through the motions can stifle creativity. People have a tendency to play events through their heads so vividly that they may not even be able to see events carried out in a way drastically different from what they had imagined.

How To Forget Your Past And Move Forward

There are few things that kill ambition more than obsession about the past. This is not exclusive to regret. It also applies to memories of past glory. It is natural to think that past experiences will dictate all future outcomes.

Past events can also cause you to have misplaced ambitions. If you are going to be motivated to do something, you want there to be a good reason why you are motivated to do such things. Acting on unhealthy urges has never helped anybody.

There is a natural fear that develops from bad experiences. This is akin to what happens to a ballplayer who has been struck by a baseball while at bat. Their performance may dip as a result of being suddenly scared of getting hit again.

There are healthy ways to cope with past events. Keeping a regular journal has been proven as an effective aid for helping people to move past experiences. I’ve kept a journal for the past decade primarily to help me deal with my traumatic experiences and it has helped me immensely.

The reason why journals are effective lies in the fact that they offer you an opportunity to take an inventory of your thoughts and feelings without having to go through the burden of having to express them physically.

This theory can be supported by the work of Dr. James W. Pennebaker of Harvard University. He has found that students visit the campus health center less often if they can spend 15 minutes over four consecutive days writing about personally traumatic events or even just trivial topics.

There is no need to be too advanced with journaling, a simple pen and pad of paper will do.  The Five Minute Journal comes with a series of prompts that will keep you on topic. These prompts have been specially chosen as the type of questions you should be asking yourself on a daily basis if you are going to keep your level of ambition in a healthy state.

Ambition Can Cause Rifts In Relationships 

Having ambition is usually not a bad thing, but having too much of it may cause a rift to develop between you and your loved ones. 

One such circumstance where this kind of rift can develop is a job opportunity across the country. To you, a dream job opportunity may be a no-brainer, but your family may have been rooted in one location. A big move may also result in consequences to your relationship with friends and your other half.

Psychologists say that communication is key in relationships. You need to be open and honest about your dream and goals. This way, it will not come as a shock when you try to take advantage of career opportunities.

You are encouraged to keep a goals journal with your significant other. This way, you can effectively adopt their ambitions as if they were also your ambitions. You will also be able to come up with a mutually-beneficial plan forward, should such opportunities arise later on.

How Important Is It To Have Realistic Expectations?

Individuals with a lot of ambition also have a tendency to be their own harshest critics. This is not necessarily a good thing as they may have unrealistic expectations for themselves. This ends up being counterproductive when these individuals end up getting stressed out when they are unable to reach their goals.

This is another way that keeping a regular journal can help. At the very least, you should be writing down realistic long-term goals for 6 months, 1 year, and a few years down the road. Include at least a summary of the current state of affairs.

The benefit of this is that it will tell you how far you’ve come. You certainly want to be making progress, but a lot of times, it can be hard to actually get a feel for how much progress has been made. It’s especially hard to tell how much you have changed when said change occurs slowly over a long period of time.

Lack of Ambition Can Lead To Lost Time

Procrastination and the lack of ambition go hand in hand. Someone who doesn’t have much ambition will have a tendency to put off tasks. Missing deadlines will have a direct impact on your career as managers and coworkers alike may no longer see you as a reliable employee.

Here are some tips for keeping tabs on deadlines: 

• Do not schedule deadlines too far in advance; otherwise, there will be less of a sense of urgency
• Don’t just record the date of the deadline, also include a big picture summary of the project goals in your planner
• Break deadlines into smaller chunks
  • Instead of setting a deadline for 1 month, think about what you can do every few days or so
• Make sure that there is accountability, there need to be consequences for missing deadlines

Accountability is of particular importance when it comes to DIY projects around the home. It may be hard to hold to a routine where you are getting all the necessary house projects. For many people, the only time they can work on such projects is during the weekend. There is a myriad of possible weekend activities that don’t involve doing work around the home.

In light of all the possibilities of weekend fun, it may be hard to find ambition for completing housekeeping tasks. It is important that you keep to such deadlines, though, as house projects can pile up quite rapidly. Before you know it, you will be spending an entire weekend trying to play catch-up.

How To Set Realistic Goals

Setting realistic goals is critical for personal progress. Otherwise, you can fall into the trap of feeling like you are constantly failing. Below is a device for making your goals more meaningful and also more realistic.

You may have heard of the acronym SMART for setting goals, as is described in further detail here:

• S- specific 
  • Set a goal that is more specific rather than general in nature. An example of a goal that is too general would be “cook for myself more.”
• M- measurable
  • Use measurable quantities like “cook at home four days a week”
• A- action-oriented
  • Break goals into actionable objectives such as “at least one meal a day”
• R- realistic 
  • Set a goal that is realistic. Having unattainable goals does not help anyone.
• T- timely 
  • Goals should specify when they will be achieved. For example, “be cooking at least 5 dinners a week by November 1.”

Cure Lack Of Ambition Through Exercise

Physical exercise can help you overcome a lack of ambition. You do not necessarily have to sign up for a membership at a local gym. There are many ways to exercise at home, at a minimal initial cost to you.

Focus on exercises that will be easy to learn at first. You can dedicate as little as 10 minutes daily to these. The purpose of these is to get your heart pumping, which, in turn, will also put you in an active mental state. You will notice yourself becoming a lot more motivated to complete daily tasks.

Ambition is often a problem when it comes to carrying out an exercise routine. Some people train too hard, too fast, and quickly become injured. Others will simply not find the motivation to stay on the grind. The hectic daily routine gets in the way of routine exercise.

You need to set realistic goals and keep to those goals when it comes to training. The University Of Washington Rehabilitation Research & Training Center recommends a daily exercise journal for any adult looking to get into a healthy routine. The journal should include realistic daily goals as well as notes about how the experience went.

You may also be interested in purchasing a digital tool that can track daily progress. This tool should also be able to measure heart rate so that you can set your target heart rate and see how your daily activities are affecting your heart rate. An affordable tool for doing this is the Mgaolo Fitness Tracker.

 The fitness tracker measures:

• Daily steps
• Calorie consumption
• Heart rate
• Blood pressure

This way, you should be able to find it easier to stay consistent. Fitness tools will help prevent your ambitions from getting the best of you and causing you to overtrain. It will also keep you motivated as you will not want to miss a day and set yourself back. If you are interested, you may also consider registering for online fitness logs where you can track your progress virtually against people who are in a similar situation, rather than comparing yourself to people at the local gym.

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

This mantra is especially true in the business world, but it can be applied to your own life as well. If you have too much ambition, you may grow too fast for your own good. Then you will feel that you are failing when you finally fall back to earth.

There are many ways that this can negatively impact your business:

• If an ambitious start-up company grows too fast, it will enter a period of unsustainable growth
  • Future growth projections may be off-kilter as growth will certainly slow at some point
  • A company may hire more people than they will actually need
  • A slow in growth may lead to distress, even though it is simply a change to a more realistic rate of growth

How can this be applied to one’s personal life? You might be that person that has a hard time saying no. If this is the case, you will soon find yourself weighed down by the pressure of having to complete numerous tasks. You certainly do not want to disappoint those who come to you for help.

You can solve this issue by learning to be realistic about which projects you can complete within a given amount of time. Learn to say no when you simply do not have the resources to complete the tasks that customers, coworkers, or managers have put on you. Rather than always rushing to beat a deadline by several days, make sure that you set aside a bare minimum amount of time to complete a task. This slow and steady approach will lead to a lot less stress and fatigue.

Not Spending Enough Time Relaxing

Spending too much time working is not good for your health. People who have too much ambition have trouble justifying leisure time. Someone who has a lot of ambition looks at free time as time that is wasted if it is not being spent doing something productive.

Researchers with the University College London recently explored data on the relationship between working hours and health risks in more than 600,000 workers. They found that people who work more than 55 hours per week were 13% more likely to suffer a heart attack and at a 33% greater risk of suffering a stroke. 

Research has also shown that people who set aside time in the day for relaxation are actually more productive than their counterparts who dedicate more time to work. 

Individuals who overwork themselves are prone to suffering from burnout – a very real thing, according to psychology professor Sabine Sonnentag. Even weekend getaways provide much-needed recovery from work stress.

There is something to be said for the power of being able to dedicate more time to rest and relaxation. You come back fully refreshed and ready to attack the task at hand. Those with too much ambition may spend a lot of time thinking about the time value of money. They become so obsessed with getting everything done that they essentially forget to take care of themselves.

How Can I Stop Making The Same Mistakes?

One of the potential pitfalls of not having a healthy supply of ambition is the inability to learn from mistakes. If you are too ambitious, you may be too hard on yourself. The opposite is true if you do not have any ambition at all. 

Learning from mistakes is critical to an individual’s progress in life. Here you will learn some of the tactics recommended for those who notice themselves repeating the same mistakes all the time. 

Here is what you can do to stop making the same mistake, according to Ohio State University:

• Face your negative feelings head-on rather than trying to ignore them.
• Do not focus equally on each negative event; focus as much as you can on things you have control over.
• Do not use negative events to justify poor behavior

You are bound to run into negative experiences now and then. It is key to see every occurrence, good or bad, as an opportunity to improve oneself. If you have too much ambition, you may be too hard on yourself to see negative experiences as a chance to learn. The same can happen if you do not care about your mistakes.

How To Tell Your Boss That You Are Ready For A Promotion

There’s a phrase that “actions speak louder than words”. This rings true in the workplace, where the way you carry yourself will say a lot about your plans moving forward. Showing continued ambition in developing skills, can help show your manager that you are ready for a promotion.

A study performed by psychologists at the University of Notre Dame and the University Of Florida found that ambition often manifests itself as a display of confidence. In the workplace setting, this would show that employees are aware of their specific talents. For this reason, they seek out roles that will continue to emphasize them using their specific skill set.

Here’s how you can show your boss that you are ready for the next step, even if you feel that they are boxing you out:

• Look to follow their direction in a way that allows you to benefit from their expertise 
• Concentrate on what you can contribute to your organization rather than always focusing on having a good relationship with your boss
• Don’t be afraid to speak up in meetings when you feel that you have something valuable to add
• Get along well with your colleagues, further emphasizing that you are a team player

The keeping of a work portfolio is an activity normally associated with professional content creators like writers and artists. Portfolios can be beneficial to your career progression, regardless of your field of expertise.

A portfolio is a multi-faceted way to organize accomplishments, goals, aspirations, and personal thoughts on the events in your work life. It can come in use during job interviews, where it shows that you have focused ambitions. 

Professional portfolios should include:

• Resume
• Transcripts
• References
• Copies of professional certifications
• Memos/Reports
• Examples of specific skills

Your work portfolio should be made using materials that make it look professional. You should look for 3-ring binders like this Samsill Leather 3-Ring Binder.

A work portfolio will show your manager that you have focused ambitions. This goes to show that ambition can certainly be a good thing when it is harnessed to show that you are confident in your ability to improve yourself in specific ways. The study referenced above would support the claim that ambition can be beneficial, as long as you are able to stay focused.