Imposter syndrome. The feeling of not being good enough for what one wants to do. The fear of being a failure (to each their own). Nothing keeps me up at night than these. It’s really hard to explain this, it’s really hard to put it into words. Sometimes, I just think, am I being silly ? Am I being naive and stupid ? Still eats me from the inside. But if I’m ‘ambitious’, if I’m truly ‘ambitious’ (I would like to think I am), then what other choice do I have ? Am I simply going to give up because I think I’m not good enough ? No, that’s not a choice. I am still going to do it anyways. Stupid me worrying about not being good enough, worrying about being a failure when the answer was there all along, sitting in-front of me. Just be more ambitious.
It’s not only about just being more ambitious, because ambition when viewed as something one measures oneself towards, something to live up for, something to shoulder on, it can crush the person very easily. I’ve been crushed enough times, so instead of making myself feel small underneath it, why can’t I just simply become my ambition. From it being a burden to an identity. This changes my relationship to failure. Failure becomes just another expression of my ambition rather than a proof that I’m not “good enough”.
But then does the quality of work not matter ? It absolutely does. Ambition derives it out of oneself, it gets rid of mediocrity, because mediocrity won’t be in service to the ambition. One have no choice but to keep hammering away until excellence emerges. But this can take time. Committing to great work and actually achieving it can be a long winded process. I call this as the “bashing one’s head against the wall” phase. Progress is not linear, some days might feel impossible, but the embodied ambition should get one through those days (At-least, that’s my working theory, let’s see if it changes in the future).
And then there’s the magnitude of ambition. There’s a difference in levels of ambition. There’s a difference in building the 10,000th project management Saas platform, than finding a way to develop drugs faster. The weight of these ambitions shapes one differently. Small ambitions might let the person keep one foot out of the door, but truly audacious ambitions… they consume the person entirely. I’m not saying one thing is better than another and everyone should aspire to be audaciously ambitious, some people have no ambition at all, and that’s fine as well. It’s just that this is the solution that I have come up for myself. This is my truth. Still, a certain level of suffering, challenges are warranted but it comes together with satisfaction and delight on the other end of it. It’s just that the only way out of is through it.