And what is the nature of ambition?
People are writing in the comments that ambition stems from trauma—that you want to prove something to someone, and that a “healthy” person shouldn’t suffer from “achievementism.” This theory is especially popular with those very unambitious people—it’s nice for them to think they’re “healthy.”
But that’s not true. Trauma won’t get you far for long—it soon becomes clear that it doesn’t work, it doesn’t help, and you won’t prove anything to anyone, so all your drive to achieve fades away.
In fact, the main source of ambition is curiosity. I’ve written about this before. Some people are simply very curious about what comes next, about the next level, like in a computer game. They’re just curious, and they genuinely don’t understand how these so-called “healthy people” can stay on the first level and not want to move on to the second.
And I’d argue about who’s truly healthy here. After all, every child without exception is curious, which means it’s our default setting. But as we grow up, for some reason only a few of us retain that passion for reaching new heights and levels—that very thing called ambition.
People are writing in the comments that ambition stems from trauma—that you want to prove something to someone, and that a “healthy” person shouldn’t suffer from “achievementism.” This theory is especially popular with those very unambitious people—it’s nice for them to think they’re “healthy.”
But that’s not true. Trauma won’t get you far for long—it soon becomes clear that it doesn’t work, it doesn’t help, and you won’t prove anything to anyone, so all your drive to achieve fades away.
In fact, the main source of ambition is curiosity. I’ve written about this before. Some people are simply very curious about what comes next, about the next level, like in a computer game. They’re just curious, and they genuinely don’t understand how these so-called “healthy people” can stay on the first level and not want to move on to the second.
And I’d argue about who’s truly healthy here. After all, every child without exception is curious, which means it’s our default setting. But as we grow up, for some reason only a few of us retain that passion for reaching new heights and levels—that very thing called ambition.