I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve set out on some sort of business venture. It always starts out the same: I get tired of “working for the man” and always struggling to get by. Then I see one of my friends promoting one of their network marketing companies and I decide to give it a try. In the beginning, I’m excited, full of energy, and dead set on making my new business soar! But, as fate would have it, I can’t sell anything nor can I get anyone to join my team and I begin to feel like I’m back in school trying to get close family members to purchase candy bars for a fundraiser. The business fails, I move on, and it becomes nothing but an empty pipe dream that was never meant to get off the ground. What I don’t realize, is that it was an empty ambition from the start.
I know I’m not the only one who suffers from this lack of success. I have seen it from many of my Facebook friends as they jump from selling one product to the next, making each new business they open harder and harder to promote. They change products as frequently as they change their underwear and it makes it difficult for potential customers to trust what they are promoting. This causes the feeling of failure and the vicious cycle starts over. They blame everyone and everything for the fall of their would-be empire. Either the product didn’t work as it did in the beginning, the parent company didn’t provide enough sales training, or they chose the wrong person as their direct up-line. Not once, do they look at themselves and the possibility that they had empty ambitions to begin with.
This is just an example of how empty ambitions can cause failure. Could you imagine what life would be like today if Thomas Edison and his team had only discussed the idea of the light bulb instead of making it a reality? What if Martin Luther King Junior and every other human rights activist had quit after the first failed attempt at equality? So many things that we are used to in today’s society would have turned out different if one, ambitious person had been consumed by empty ambitions.
Is Your Ambition Something You’re Passionate About
Your first clue should be how passionate (or lack thereof) you are about your dream. If your dream is to start a vet clinic but you hate animals, odds are your business isn’t going to last very long, if you’re even able to get it up and running at all.
Live in the Grey has a great layout of six different steps to finding your passion, if you don’t know what that passion is yet, and can get you on the right path to turning an empty ambition into a fulfilling adventure of self-discovery.
Is Your Ambition Worth the Risk
Every dream comes with a risk. The type of risk varies, but usually it falls in one of the following three categories: Physical risk, emotional risk, and financial risk. Freestyle motocross is actually a perfect example of all three risks. There’s the cost of the bike, plus the cost of repairs needed if the bike breaks during a competition. There’s also that possibility that the bike isn’t the only thing that will break during a competition. Motocross riders take physical risks every time they get on their bikes. They don’t know if they’re going to come out with just a broken bone or if they’re even going to make it out alive at all. Jeremy Lusk was the first professional motocross rider to ever die from injuries obtained during an FMX competition. It was an eye opener to the rest of the motocross world and the physical risk of their passion became that much more apparent. This knowledge of knowing there’s a chance they may never see their family again puts emotional strain on the rider and I can only imagine that it makes it hard to keep going. However, at the end of the day, they put the risks in the back of their head and push forward.
How Much Time Are You Willing to Put Towards Your Ambition
If the answer to this question is something along the lines of ‘I really don’t have time to do anything that I’m not already doing’ then you are barking up the wrong ambition tree my friend.
When my fiancé first brought up the idea of working from home I knew I would have to find something that I loved to do. If I didn’t then I would have found every excuse in the book as to why I didn’t have time to devote to whatever it was I was going to try and do. Writing was the first thing that came to mind and it was the most obvious choice. It hasn’t been easy, but I love writing and I have become bound and determined to make this work, no matter how much time it takes me.
Don’t Let Past Failures Keep You Down
Seriously. I don’t care if you’re scared to take dance classes because you didn’t make the cheer-leading squad in high school. If you want to dance, for crying out loud, go dance. If you want to learn how to play the piano but you’ve already tried once before and it didn’t work, try it again. If it’s something you love to do and you’re passionate about go after it with the force of a hurricane. If you’re afraid of failing, let yourself fail and keep going. Congratulations. You just discovered one way that won’t help you on your path to success.
Keep the failures of previous pipe-dreams fresh in your mind and use those memories to push yourself farther than ever. You have the ability to do whatever you put your mind to. You just have to decide for yourself if it’s truly your calling or just an empty ambition.