Feel free to pick a context:
- Interview
- Describing yourself
- Describing what you want in a partner
- When you see the word on a dating profile
- When you see the word in an obituary
- When describing a business plan in your DnD game
I’ve always read that as striving for something that isn’t easily achieved
In the context of describing oneself, I’d like to think it’s something along the lines of not being afraid to follow your dreams.
Kept in check and rooted in your goals, it’s a map in life and it’s a motor that build momentum and thrustes you to achieving the things you want in your life… Uncontrolled and without an specific end/goal, it’s the thing that’s gonna turn your life upside down, get it totally unbalanced and will cost you all your quality relationships. So, a double-edged sword.
I think of an ambitious person as being one who is strongly committed to achieving a very difficult goal with a high risk of failure, usually something that will require near-daily effort for at least a few years, possibly decades.
To me it’s the level of challenge that the goal presents to the person attempting it that matters, it doesn’t have to be something with global or historical significance.
Whenever possible I define things not based on what goes inside one’s head, but behaviour and words. So for me, “ambition” means a stated goal with success/failure conditions and a time frame.
Just as a silly example: if my TRPG character has the ambition to become the biggest mage of the world, then I’ll have him studying magic when possible, and working his way towards it. The time frame is his whole life, the success condition is to become the top mage, the failure condition is to kick the bucket before that happens.
Never satisfied. Wants power for its own sake. Likely sociopath.
If you say you’re ambitious, I imagine you have a plan in your head of what you want to be in the future, or what you want to do, and it’s something that takes effort to do and you’ve thought of how you would get there.
If a plan is ambitious, I’d say it’s not easily done and pretty unrealistic, but could be achieved if you’re good enough.
An ambition is what you would want to work as or do in the future, like become a doctor.
I’d say I’m ambitious, because my ambition is to become a programmer and I learned how to program with online sites so I could reach that goal. However, my plan to work at a huge Silicon Valley company is quite ambitious considering I don’t live in the US and I have only ever made chat bots.
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To me it’s having a goal and a deep burning desire to fulfill that goal.
If you’re trying to ascertain what my ambitions are: I have none. You know in Office Space when asked what Peter would do if money was no object and he said he would do nothing? That’s me. I don’t want to do anything. In that way, my ambition is to do nothing while also not being stressed about doing nothing.
I left the question fairly open just to kick off conversation. I was mostly thinking about dating profiles after being on apps too long.
I can identify with a lack of a big neon sign goal or a bucket list. I don’t really want to do nothing though. I have hobbies and the internet bill doesn’t pay itself. It’s just that my career goals are mostly avoid going into management and retire with enough savings. No need to be CEO or famous or get awards.
Like a lot of people struggle just to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. I haven’t needed to chase promotions or hussle all the time to achieve well beyond that. Decent pay and some stability sounds pretty good to me. Maybe that’s just boring to some or they’d just want next thing once that got the current thing.
Ambitions don’t have to be professional though. That’s something that I see a lot, where someone is deeply motivated to do something, but it doesn’t involve money, so people blow it off. It’s a little crazy. I don’t actually see wanting to make a ton of money as being ambitious, I find it to just be greed. To me ambitious means doing something for a reason OTHER than money and power.
Desire for positive improvement and growth via moonshots, through determination and perseverance while spreading that desire onto others. I regard it as a very positive virtue. - Dreaming for the sake of dreaming and achievement of one’s dreams. Regarding giving up as the only case of failure, and competitingly but uncomparingly achieving big things by putting in extreme amount of effort, time and other means without being an obstacle for anyone and without hurting yourself. Shoutouts to Mitty.
