I’ve grown up believing that ambition is a key value that one must have in order to achieve a life full of success. And boy did I buy into that! Always striving, working hard, agreeing with sayings such as “work hard, play hard”, “HUSTLE”. In fact, it was one of the reasons I loved New York so much! It's the epitome of Ambition.

After experiencing poor health for almost 3 years, I realised how bogus ambition really is! I looked at where ambition got me. I was working so hard, but I wasn't fulfilled. All that striving felt so good as long as people recognised it. But it left me drained and empty.

The dictionary definition of ambition is:
An ardent desire for rank, fame, or power

Ambition encourages us to word hard, hustle hard, drink multiple coffees a day, wake up early, live for the weekends and run our life on auto pilot. It’s our egos attachment to success, rank, and power, so we can rise to a management position, and call the shots.

Our ego loves attention and likes to believe it’s special. So that little voice in our head guides us, telling us to strive strive strive. Keep striving! You’re almost there!

Not to mention that when we strive and allow ambition to guide us, we’re subconsciously giving ourselves the message that WE (as in our ego) knows better than the rest of us (our soul and our body), and that couldn’t be further from the truth!

How can we possibly say that our mind knows best?

There are literally millions of processes taking place in our bodies at any given moment. Our soul, the eternal aspect within us has been guiding us since the day we were born.

So how can we possibly THINK that we know best?

Another reason our ambition is a dangerous thing is because it relies on power, fame and recognition to get its fix. And we all know that as soon as we reach that senior position, get a pay rise, or receive some recognition, we want more! It never ends. Is that really sustainable?

What if we simply let go of being ambitious?

Doing our best in every situation, and working hard/striving are two completely different things!

For those of us who have been ambitious all our lives, and thought that’s the only way to be, (classic case of the blind leading the blind), I ask you to consider the possibility of another way of existing.

The way of Surrender. Surrendering requires no doing or striving for the sake of receiving gratification from our jobs and our lives. It only requires us to take inspired action.

To take inspired action, is to take action that is inspired by a positive emotion.

So how do we put this into practice?

1. Start by noticing how much you're striving in your day to day life. And take note of WHAT you're striving for. Is it power? Recognition? Fame?

2. Each time you find yourself striving and listening to the voice of ambition, consciously make a decision to take inspired action instead. In this way, you are allowing the higher intelligence that runs through you to take over and complete the task at hand. Instead of trying to make something happen, you're now allowing everything to happen through you.

4. Try it for a week and notice how your life changes. What you'll find is, while your life externally may not have changed drastically, your internal reality is changing. And if your internal reality shifts from a place of ambition and striving to a place of allowing and surrendering, what's meant for you (and sometimes this is beyond anything you ever dreamt was possible for you) comes into fruition.

In other words, you get out of your own way!

Leave a comment below if you're deciding to let go of ambition this week. I'd love to hear about how your life changes as a result of this :)

"To be ambitious is actually to doubt the Universe and it's intelligence. To be ambitious is saying, "I need to walk ahead of Universe and God here, I need to make something happen."

Love & Light,

Sanya