Skip to main content

Gratitude vs Ambition : What's the right balance ?

Mountain climber

 Gratitude and ambition are concepts which every life coach, psychologist, or leadership guru talks about at some point. But all things considered equal, they would probably have a strong natural inclination towards one of these concepts. Is there a conflict between gratitude and ambition, and can this be resolved ? Let's explore :

 Gratitude 
Gratitude can best be explained as "enjoying the view, every step of the way whilst climbing the mountain". It is a simple and often undervalued component of a happy and fulfilling life. The influencers who lean towards gratitude, tend to focus on the benefits of just appreciating each moment of peace, and counting your blessings. 
Key idea : 'Live in the moment' 

 Ambition
If gratitude is about enjoying the view, then ambition is about "focusing on what reaching the peak would feel like". Ambitious people, create a strong drive within themselves through their strong desires and visions. They are often the type of people, who don't mind putting in every ounce of their energy and time towards the achievement of a worthy goal. 
Key idea : 'Keep hustling, till you reach the top' 

 The conflict
Looking at the key ideas, it is easy to see that their is potential for conflict between these ideas. If you are working towards a particular goal with all your time and energy, how do you then find the time to be grateful about the process, and other achievements ? 

 The conflict further deepens due to the fact, that ambition and goal-chasing, often involves a detail oriented perspective, while gratitude is often about seeing the bigger picture, and onserving your own place in this picture.
The solution
There is a solution to the above conflict, and it is to strike a balance between the degrees of ambition and gratitude that you have in your life. Both concepts are very strong and potentially life changing, when applied carefully and consistently.

 It is important to define and strive to achieve, clear, concise and measurable goals, but whilst working towards these goals, one should always remember to look back, every once in a while, to get a sense of progress. This is what gratitude is all about, the appreciation of the intermediate, successes and failures, which we face while working towards our goals. Focusing on any one of the above ideas blindly, without the other, is a sure shot way of sabotaging your own long term success.

 How to strike the balance ?
 This part comes down to managing your long-term, medium-term and short-term goals. When you have clear, trackable progress pointers, it becomes easy to see where you are, and where you need to go. Think of these goals as milestones on a road, which allows you think about :
a) How much of the goal has been completed ? 
This allows you the time to appreciate your progress and the journey overall. This is where you practice gratitude.

 b) How much of the goal is left to be completed ?
This allows you to re-organise, re-vitalise yourself towards the goal. This also helps in making any changes required for keeping yourself on the road, towards the goal. This is where you practice ambition.

 Make sure that you have regularly scheduled, review slots in your day, week and month. In these review sessions make sure you focus on gratitude, as well as the ambition part of it. This should definitely make it easier to strike a balance, but it ultimately depends on the execution and quality of these sessions

 The best benefit of striking a balance, is that it makes you very agile, i.e. it helps you act proactively and reactively towards the constant change that your life will keep throwing at you.

 How are you, personally planning to strike this balance ? Please add your responses below, would love get some feedback from my audience.

 Credits : Photo by ibon san martin from FreeImages 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts and Insights For Impactful Living

Over the course of 23 years 6 months 8 days 8 hours 19 minutes now, on this rocky mass revolving around a gaseous nuclear reaction, I have gone through a lot of experiences in my life. I have been fortunate enough to have been living a 'privileged' life, where food, water, air, security and a place to rest my head were never 'real' concerns in my life. In the beginning of every life, you begin your life by observing the people and activities around you, with the inquisitive nature that we as a human beings have developed. This allows us to gain knowledge and learn from the mistakes of others, without actually having to make those mistakes yourself. This by itself is the single most important factor in the exponential growth that the human society has seen. However, what we don't realize in those moments of learning is that the system is beneficial but not absolute. Yes, it is very valuable that you observe and learn, but it does not have to be the only strategy...
2 comments
Read more

The learn Vim project - Part 1

Over the course of my programming years, I have come to absolutely love Vim. Vim IMHO, is one of the most efficient, fast, and reliable ways to edit any kind of text whatsoever. Many people won't agree with me, but let's not start the IDE/tool wars right away.  In my mind, if notepad is an old Nokia phone, and Sublime text is the iPhone, Vim would be the PDA that Spy-Kids had on their wrists. The point I am trying to make is, that Vim takes text editing to a whole new level, by making a "text editing language". So just as you have programming languages for programs, markup languages for markup, you can basically start using a text editing language, while using Vim. This is going to be a multi-part series, going from the absolute basics to an intermediate level. Let us get started with the very basics. 1. Modes of operation :    To edit or create a file with Vim, you need to just give the filename as an argument with Vim. ( vim mytext.txt ). Once you do that, you will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The skill of Storytelling

Stories have acted as a mechanism of transferring learned experiences with other human beings within small tribes,since our hunter-gatherer years.  Even before we had written communication mechanisms, such as books, ( or even paper for that matter ), all human tribes were communicating their ideas, through story-telling. It would be a fair assumption to make, that all these stories were generally used by the senior members of a tribe, to educate the young and bright minds, who were just starting their journey as a tribe member. Since, oral communication was the norm, oratory skills must have been the key differentiator, between charming leader, and the other senior members of the tribe. Good storytelling has been the key tool in a leaders toolkit, for as long as human tribes have existed. If you, as a leader, can convey your ideas effectively, and convince the other members to agree on your version of a story, you were a very successful tribe leader. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more