This is the Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner. Episode 114: Is Ambition Bad? 

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And I just want to say it upfront, I am an ambitious person and I always have been. And today we’re going to look at what it means to be ambitious and what it means for us, especially as writers to be ambitious, and why ambition has such a bad reputation, and finally, whether or not you might be ambitious too. If you’re not sure, if you’ve never thought about yourself as an ambitious person, we’re going to take a look at that as well. And we might not talk about them in that particular order because I’m going off of a page of notes that are definitely nonlinear, but we’re going to talk about them.

I want to start off by asking what is ambition exactly, and what does it mean to be ambitious? I looked it up so that I wouldn’t be just making up a definition and ambition is this strong desire to do or achieve something. And it’s also interesting that the dictionary, I looked it up in notes that usually ambition requires determination and hard work to obtain the thing that you want. So ambition is a strong desire to do or achieve something, usually requiring determination and hard work. Okay, that doesn’t sound like a bad thing. Like why on earth is the title of this podcast episode Is Ambition Bad? A strong desire to do or achieve something usually requires determination and hard work, that just sounds like understanding what your dreams are and accomplishing them. That’s how books get published. You have a strong desire to write and publish a book, and then you put in the determination and the hard work to get it done.

But have you noticed that the word and the idea of ambition has a really bad rap? Have you noticed that ambition is something that is usually villainized, something that is usually seen as a negative trait? This is, for me, where things get really, really interesting. Here’s what I’m talking about. One of the most notable modern examples of ambition being villainized or made into a bad or negative trait that your bad guy in your story will often possess is in Harry Potter. I want to talk about this with the full realization that JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series has said some very transphobic and not great things recently. And so I want to have that awareness as we talk a little bit more about this as well.

But within the Harry Potter universe, if you’re not familiar with it, it’s essentially about this boarding school for wizards, for kids who have magical abilities. And in this magical boarding school, when you first arrive, you get sorted into your house or your class. And the four houses that you can get sorted into are Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Slytherin. Each of these four houses sort of corresponds with a personality trait. And so if you have a lot of courage, you are sorted into Gryffindor. If you are very loyal, you get sorted into Hufflepuff. If you are very wise or intelligent, you get sorted into Ravenclaw. And if you have a lot of ambition, you are sorted into Slytherin.

Basically, within the books and movies in the Harry Potter universe, all of the evil wizards come out of Slytherin. And you can even kind of tell from the name, like Slytherin, oh, that’s how a snake moves. And their mascot is this big evil snake. And there’s just this association of darkness and evil and manipulation and all of these really terrible things that are associated with being sorted into the Slytherin House. And I’m not even going to talk about the really uncomfortable, whatever you want to call it, elitist, racist, whatever undertones that so many people that are sorted into this house have. We’re not even going to touch that right now because what we’re talking about is ambition and how it is seen by other people.

Years and years ago when this was a thing, so I want to say when I was in maybe high school, early college, there were all these little quizzes you could take and you could get sorted into your Hogwarts house. And I remember taking the quiz at the official website for all things, Harry Potter related, and I got sorted into Slytherin. and I was like, oh, surely must be a mistake because I’m not evil. And I took it again and I was still Slytherin. And then I took it on another website, just not the official one. And perhaps unsurprisingly, I was still Slytherin. And then I took another one of these quizzes where it tells you what your familiar is, what your Patronus is, and I got a black mamba snake, which is like one of the deadliest snakes in the world.

I was like, at this point, this isn’t looking great for me. What kind of evil lurks in the depths of my heart? Who am I really? Am I power-hungry, selfish, unethical, morally bankrupt, manipulative? Am I evil? Am I secretly evil? And interestingly, there is, again, on the official Harry Potter Pottermore website, there is actually an article entitled Six Reasons It’s Okay if You Get Sorted into Slytherin. And, of course, I read it and it was weirdly defensive. It was like, hey, so, okay, you got sorted into the most evil house. Well, who doesn’t look good in green? That was actually one of the headers. And there’s another header that says “Not every Slytherin is a huge jerk.” What I’m saying is it’s not super encouraging.

But it’s not just Harry Potter in which ambition is sort of aligned with this immoral negative, manipulative sort of sense. It’s been about 9,000 years since I last read Macbeth, which is a play by Shakespeare. But Macbeth’s downfall and Lady Macbeth’s downfall is their unchecked ambition. They both have this huge desire for power and advancement and to get it, they resort to violence. And then the consequences of their actions aren’t great. Now, I know that their downfall isn’t just ambition, it’s unchecked ambition, so ambition that’s allowed to run rampant. But I’d still argue that they’re using ambition as a negative thing. Because if you think about something else that’s unchecked, so let’s talk about unchecked kindness. If I show you kindness that is unchecked, is that as bad as unchecked ambition? Would that possibly lead to murder? I mean, in some really convoluted way, it might, but you’d have to make a really big stretch to get there.

The same thing is true with, let’s say unchecked generosity. Like, yeah, okay, you could lose a lot of your money or a lot of your possessions, but there’s not this sort of inherent evil that I feel there is in something that is like unchecked ambition. I think that there’s sort of an underlying notion that ambition is somehow, even if we’re not talking about it being unchecked, ambition is still seen as not a super good or positive thing. Ambition leading to a downfall is a very popular theme in literature. And in fact, while I was looking into ambition for this podcast episode, I ran across an article over at entrepreneur.com and I can link to that in the show notes for today’s episode. But basically, the title of the article is Can Excessive Ambition Really Ruin Your Chances of Success? And I was like, Macbeth much?

The article talks about the side effects of ambition. And in fact, it even uses the phrase, the dangerous side effects of ambition. And these include fixation, obsession, inflexibility, an inability to adapt, recklessness, selfishness, a sacrifice of your ethics and values and beliefs to get what you want, violence, and even an inability to deal with failure, which if you are an entrepreneur or a writer or an artist of any kind, failure kind of comes with the territory. The article specifically talks about this prioritization of work over everything else, so of your own advancement, your own success, over spending quality time with your family, or getting together with friends, or being a good person.

Going back to our original definition of ambition, it is a strong desire to do or achieve something usually requiring determination and hard work. How on earth did that get so twisted? Why are we looking at this as necessarily or even just potentially leading to violence and selfishness and just throwing all of your ethics and your soul out the window? Why do we keep creating examples in media, and literature, and movies, and TV, where we are sort of fixated on proving that ambition is not good.

Look at Daenerys Targaryen in the Game of Thrones books and TV show. I know that the books are not as of the recording of this podcast yet wrapped up, and so who knows what path this character might go down in the books. But again, this is a young woman who decides that she wants something. And this is in line with our definition of ambition. Daenerys has a strong desire to do or achieve something, usually requiring determination and hard work, all of which she does. She wants what all of the other characters that she’s up against want. But potential spoiler alert, Daenerys’ ambition does not lead to very good places, especially in the TV show. She descends pretty quickly into that sort of Slytherin power-hungry, obsessed, fixated, all of those quote-unquote dangerous side effects of ambition. That’s what she succumbs to.

And as a gentler example, the character of Paris from Gilmore Girls, so I don’t necessarily love the Game of Thrones TV show. It’s kind of violent and kind of gross. If you haven’t seen that, that’s totally fine. If you’ve seen Gilmore Girls and the character of Paris, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Paris wants things. Paris has ambition. Paris has a strong desire to do or achieve something, usually requiring determination and hard work, both of which she puts in. And yet Paris is, at first, shown to be a villain. And again, spoilers, later on, even when Paris is seen as sort of one of the good guys, she is still portrayed as rude, and arrogant, and impatient, and angry. And it’s shown that all of these things stem from her ambition. And there’s sort of this question that comes out of these pieces of media and that is, how dare these characters want something, how dare they want something more than what they were given.

Let’s talk about real life. I remember back when I was in the workforce, well, I mean, I’m still in the workforce, I’m just, self-employed. Back when I was employed by someone else and I needed approval and sign off in order to do things, there was a phrase that I heard a lot from management, from coworkers, from basically anyone who was in a position to see what I wanted to do. And that phrase was, oh, well, that’s ambitious. And it was used in a way that was both judgemental and disparaging. For example, I would say, hey, in this quarter, I want to apply to speak here and get accepted, or I want to redo how we are currently presenting this particular service or offering, or I want to do this or do this or do this. And I would hear back, “Oh, well, that’s ambitious.” As though A, it was somehow out of my league, that B, I was preposterous for even suggesting this, and even sort of saw a little bit of, “Well, we’ll see.”

Have you ever had that? Have you ever had your ambition sort of thrown in your face? Has someone ever looked at your hopes and dreams and plans for the future, your goals, your ideas of success and said, “Well, that’s ambitious”? And maybe I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder because I’ve been told some form of this throughout my entire life. Like I said in the very opening of this episode, I have always been ambitious and I still am an ambitious person. I have a lot of drive to do things in this life and I will put in the determination and the hard work to see it through. In school, I had a lot of drive. I wanted to do extra things. I wanted to have enormous challenging projects. And I was often frustrated with my peers that they did not seem to want the same things that I did.

If the assignment in art class was to make a paper-mâché animal, I wanted to make a life-size anatomically correct anteater. When it came time for auditions in the band, I wanted to be first chair. When it came time to join the marching band in high school, I wanted to be the drum major. But somewhere along the way, I went from being told, “Yes, you can do whatever you want. If you can just dream it, you can do it,” to, “Oh, well, that’s ambitious,” and, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” and, “Don’t be a showoff,” and, “Don’t be bossy or pushy,” and, “Maybe tone it down just a little bit.”

And I know that a lot of this negativity about ambition has to do with the fact that our education and employment systems, they’re in place to ensure that we become good, compliant, factory workers, workers, like that’s what this whole system is in place to do. It’s there to create workers for our economy who don’t make a fuss and who don’t want more than they are given. But is it bad to want more? I’ve talked a little bit before about this gratitude movement. And I really like gratitude. I think gratitude is wonderful. It makes you feel good. But there’s also this implication that you should be grateful for what you have … and the unsaid part of that is, and not want more. Because if you’re grateful for what you have, how could you possibly want more than you have? You’re grateful for that. How dare you want more? How dare your ambitions exceed what you are given. I think we need to talk for a little bit about what it means to want more and specifically, what are our reasons and motives for wanting more.

One very unflattering definition of someone who is ambitious, that I came across, was that someone who is ambitious craves accomplishment. And I think it’s very easy to judge someone who craves accomplishment by thinking, oh, they want power. They want fame. They want to be recognized. And my question then is, is that bad? We see it as bad socially, societally, whatever. Someone who’s power-hungry, that’s not exactly a compliment. I don’t think it becomes a bad thing until you want to use that power for something really evil or until you sacrifice your ethics and your beliefs to get what you want. But ambition in and of itself is not a bad thing. It’s okay to want things. I want to say that because it was something that I think that a lot of us didn’t grow up believing. It’s okay to want things. If you’re the kind of person who wants to change the world, it’s okay to want the power to change the world.

So what is it that a person with ambition wants and why? If you crave accomplishment, why is that? Well, as the person who craves accomplishment, I feel like I can talk about this. Accomplishing things makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I am living out my purpose, checking things off my list, recording podcast episodes, finishing episodes of Girl in Space, getting my Monday morning newsletter finished, knowing that that is going out to people to lift their spirits, to inspire them, to encourage them, to create and live their own best lives. That for me, oh, that’s everything. I crave accomplishment. And I’m a very accomplishment-driven person.

I have a very good friend who is a creator and often my friends will post things on Twitter like, “Hey, I’m thinking of starting a new project.” And immediately will get all of these responses like, “Oh my gosh, no, don’t do it. You have too much on your plate already.” And this is really crushing to my friend who sees this as people tearing down her ambitions and encouraging her to be less herself, to dim her light, to not show off. If you’re ambitious, you’re not a good factory worker. If you want more than you’re given, you’re going to make waves. If you want to publish your book, you’re going to get recognition. You’re going to stand out. You’re going to have a certain amount of power. And that’s not a bad thing.

Now, not to be judgemental, but maybe where it goes bad is if you start murdering people, like if you crave accomplishments and you want power and you become power-hungry, and you want that power so that you can kill a whole bunch of people, that’s where we have a problem. Wanting isn’t bad in and of itself. But if you want to kill a whole bunch of people, that is maybe a bad thing. Let’s be very, very clear about that. But if you want to publish your book and if you want people to read it, that’s not a bad thing. And yet it’s really uncomfortable to talk about these ambitions with other people.

And I know we talked a lot about writer’s guilt in episode 112, so if you want to hear more about guilty, you can go back to episode 112 of the Write Now Podcast and listen to it. But there’s guilt too, associated with being an ambitious person because we’re told that we shouldn’t want more than what we’re handed. I think this ties in with, and this is a huge topic in and of itself, but our social discomfort, our fear of other people’s success, a lot of us are not comfortable when we see other people who are more successful than we are. We don’t like seeing other people succeed.

And you get to success by having ambition and by moving forward and following through on your dreams. But there’s a lot of really resentful people who will judge you, and guilt you, and shame you for being ambitious, because they don’t feel like it’s attainable for them, or they don’t have the same that you do, or the same work ethic, or maybe they’re just jealous. We end up with all of these examples in media, and books, and movies, and TV, and everywhere else that shows us that ambition is an ugly trait. Ambition should be put into check. But ambition is the thing that gets us where we want to go. Ambition is what drives us to grow, and learn, and create. Ambition is what pushes me to do a lot of self-development work. Ambition is what drives me to accomplish things. Ambition is what drives me to realize my dreams.

Now, this is the first time that I have ever openly talked about my ambition because it is something that I usually hide because I am ashamed of it. I am ashamed to tell you that I want more, that I crave accomplishment. There’s something embarrassing and shameful in saying to you, “I am a very ambitious person,” because I’m afraid that you’re going to judge me for it and think of me as power-hungry or somehow better than everyone else. And yeah, as an ambitious person, I can tell you, there are downsides. They are not necessarily the same downsides that Macbeth experienced or that Daenerys Targaryen experienced, or that Draco Malfoy or whoever else in the House of Slytherin and experienced. The downsides to ambition that I’ve experienced have been burnout, overdoing it, not realizing my own limits, which yes, I have limits and I’ve had to make peace with that. Yeah, sometimes my drive to accomplish things, to get my work done, to produce things that I love, sometimes I push myself a little too hard and then I crash and then I head into burnouts, and then it’s not great for my health.

But have I murdered anyone? No. I mean, at least not that I’m aware of. That was a joke. I actually have not ever murdered anyone ever. And I don’t plan to. I don’t want to murder anyone. I don’t want to go on a crime spree. I don’t want to resort to violence. I don’t want to manipulate anyone. I don’t want to place my work above the people that I have been called to love and care for in this life. That all strikes me as really, really gross. Does this mean that I’m checking my own ambition? Maybe. Maybe it just means I’m not evil.

But what I can tell you is I’m tired of other people feeling the need to check my ambition for me. And I think that’s what a lot of this comes down to is if you’re ambitious and other people tell you to tone it down, to get in line, to not dream above your station, that you’re ridiculous and foolish for wanting to write and publish a book, and how dare you want more, those people are checking your ambition and that ambition does not need to be checked. Again, unless you are in a Macbeth-type situation, in which case your unchecked ambition is leading to murder, and that is bad. But if your ambition is to write and publish a book, if your ambition is to write poetry and feed your soul and create beautiful art, that ambition does not need to be checked by anyone except you.

The people who tell you to tone it down, to check your ambition, to dim your light, they’re afraid. And I don’t want their fears to stop you from doing what you were created to do. The next time someone tells me, “Oh, well, that’s ambitious,” I’m going to say, “Yeah, it is and I’m going to do it and you’re not going to stop me.” I’m going to write that book. I’m going to publish my podcast. I’m going to pitch this TV pilot. And yeah, I may fail, but that’s what I’m going for. All the way back from 2015, episode 18 of the Write Now Podcast is called Fail a Lot, in which I encourage people to follow their dreams and ambitions even though there is a lot of failure wrapped up in that. I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode as well because being ambitious does not equal being successful with every single thing you do. And so if you’re an ambitious person, you’re going to need to learn how to fail gracefully and learn from your failures.

I failed a lot and I continue to fail a lot, but it doesn’t stop me from moving forward. So my question for you is, are you ambitious? Do you think of yourself as an ambitious person? And if you do, do you feel guilty, or ashamed, or embarrassed because of it? Do you feel that way or are you made to feel that way by other people around you? What does ambition mean for you? All right. I could talk about ambition all day, but I won’t do that to you.

I hope that this has been a helpful exploration of how we see ambition in the world around us, how we write about it, how we view it, how we react to it, and how we live it out. If you would like to share your story, if you would like to share your thoughts and your comments on ambition, or anything else that I’ve talked about in this episode, I invite you to do that. If you go out to the show notes for today’s episode, episode 114, and you scroll down to the very bottom, you will find a comment section. I would love for you to fill out your comments. I would love to hear your thoughts. I respond personally to every single comment that I received through my website, and I would really like to hear what you have to say about ambition.

You can find the show notes for today’s episode out @sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com, and by navigating to episode number 114. It’s called Is Ambition Bad? I would also love to invite you to our group create-alongs. I’ve been doing these create-along live streams every Wednesday and Friday evening at 7:00 PM Central out on Twitch and they have been so much fun. Right now, our group is just about 50 people and we get together, we bring a project that we’re working on, and for the first 30 minutes, we’ll talk about what we’re working on, what we’re struggling with, some sort of creative question that we might have, and then we create together for an hour, and then we come back at the very end to talk about how the creative session went, what we learned, what we struggled with, and what we can use for encouragement moving forward. It’s been such a blast.

If you’re interested in joining us for these create-alongs, they are live, once again, every Wednesday and Friday evening at 7:00 PM Central, and they are out on Twitch. So if you want to come follow me, it’s completely free. It’s Twitch, twitch.tv/sararheawerner. Once again, that’s twitch.tv/sarahrheawerenr. And that’s spelled S-A-R-A-H-R-H-E-A-W-E-R-N-E-R. So come follow us on Twitch. Come join us for these create-alongs. It’s just been such a beautiful and warm and encouraging community of creators. People have been developing real friendships with other writers and creators. It’s just been a complete delight. So I hope you can join us. If you can’t, that’s no problem, but please know that you are welcome and invited if you would like to attend those.

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And with that, this has been episode 114 of the Write Now Podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner and I am an ambitious person.