Ambition is one of the most needed qualities as without ambition, the drive to find and establish anything better can’t survive. It is due to ambition that human race has developed a lot and we have invented/discovered many good things and resources to make our lives better.
It was the ambition of Wright brothers that we should fly; and see we are flying now. It was the ambition of Alexander Graham Bell that we should be able to speak to our dear ones from distances and we are doing so now. It was the ambition of Willis Carrier that we should be able to feel cold even during the hot temperatures and we are enjoying the gift of air conditioning today.
Hence ambition is a must have quality and without it, you may not even contribute much to the society or the world, since the desire/ambition to do something for others is the first thing you need to do so. However like other qualities, ambition too can create problems when it goes beyond a point and it becomes irrational or impractical. A person having excessive ambition is called overambitious.
Being overambitious is not a good quality and it is a negative quality which can make you suffer a lot on various fronts of your life. It may do so by virtue of making you take wrong and hasty decisions, take irrational risks and run after more and more, instead of enjoying what you have already achieved.
Overambitious people, like people suffering from negative attitude, are one of the most difficult to handle and please people, as they keep looking for more and more. They are seldom satisfied with what they have already achieved. They may fix irrational images of perfection for most things and people in their minds. It is almost impossible for anything or anyone to compete with that perfection as that level of perfection is too good to be true or practical. On the other hand, such people are not willing to settle for anything less than their fixed and irrational perception of perfection. Hence it becomes very difficult for them to feel satisfied in most situations.
As a result, they start seeing flaws in most things, people and situations; and they start making complaints about them. Even if they are not able to find visible flaws and make complaints about something, they may complain how such thing should have been better than it is. Though the thing or person has no visible flaws, they are still not satisfied and this is what makes them difficult to handle, because you may never come up to their expectations, no matter how hard you may try.
Such people may do poorly in relationships as it may be almost impossible for anyone to make them happy. Instead, they may trouble the people near them, with more and more complaints regarding how they are not good enough and how they should try to improve themselves. No matter how hard the other person may try to improve, he may almost never improve himself so much as to meet the expectations of one such person. A time may come when the other person starts understanding that their relationship is suffering not because he has flaws which he can’t improve on, but because it is impossible to please the other person, no matter how good he may be or he may become.
Hence the other person may decide to move away from such overambitious person as almost no one wants to be in the company of a person who can never be pleased and who will keep making complaints. This keeps happening with more and more people and as a result, more and more people may start moving away from such overambitious person. With time, such person may project an image of being too difficult to handle or be with. This is when he may find it difficult to convince new people to be with him or work with him.
Apart from the sphere of relationships, overambitious people may suffer a lot in many other spheres of their lives. For example, the career graph of an overambitious person may have many lows which come from time to time due to this negative habit. One such person tends to take irrational and blind risks from time to time, in order to achieve the level of success he wants. Since these risks may be too irrational to bring good results in many cases, such person may end up losing what he already has, instead of gaining what he expects. Even if an odd risk pays out and he gains good ground, it may be short lasted as he may again start taking such irrational risks which can pay once in a while, but which may not pay every time.
Another problem that this habit may cause is that people suffering from it may develop a habit of complaining too much, in most situations. Due to this habit, their images may become negative. At the same time, they may find it difficult to enjoy beautiful things and people. Hence this negative habit should be treated in due time.
Let’s try to find out how this habit is formed. Two main reasons for being overambitious are; irrational and too much aspiration; and unhealthy levels of greed. Looking at the first reason, though aspiration is a good thing, too much of it can cause a number of problems. Hence even the good qualities should be in balance as too much of them can cause problems.
Let’s find out what gives birth to irrational aspiration. People suffering from too much aspiration lack conscience. Conscience is the virtue which tells us what is moral and what is immoral, what is right and what is wrong, what is rational and what is irrational, what is realistic and what is unrealistic, what is practical and what is impractical, in a given situation. Likewise, conscience helps in differentiating between a number of other opposite sets of traits as well as in achieving balance in approach. Hence conscience can be understood as our overall guide which helps us in making right decisions in day to day life.
Looking at an incident from holy Ramayana, Lord Rama says that he has to forsake the kingdom and go to the forests for 14 years as otherwise, his father will lose his word. He assigns more value to his father’s word than the kingdom. This is an act of conscience. Lord Rama has the support of the entire kingdom and even his father, king Dashratha wants him to reject his wish and seize the kingdom. However, Lord Rama’s level of conscience is too high to fall for such immoral proposals. Hence he denies them all and he does what his conscience tells him to do; and he goes to the forests for 14 years.
Taking another incidence, Lord Rama is in decisive winning position in war with demon king Ravana and he still proposes that he will stop the war if Ravana comes to him; asks forgiveness for his wrong deeds and returns his wife goddess Seeta with respect, whom he has kidnapped in a deceitful manner. This is an act of conscience. An average person in a decisive winning position may want to kill the man who kidnapped his wife and held her captive for many months. However, Lord Rama doesn’t want to do that as his conscience levels are extremely high.
Lord Rama says that if the war goes on, not only Ravana will be killed but so many other people will also be killed, who have done no wrong to him or to his wife. He further says that he does not wish to kill so many people for the wrong done by one person. It means he’s not looking for revenge and he is willing to forgive Ravana for the sake of people whose life can be saved by doing so, though the wrong done by Ravana doesn’t seem worthy of being forgiven.
Taking an example from Mahabharata, all four brothers of Yudhishthara die because of ignoring the warning from a god and drinking water from his lake. Yudhishthara doesn’t ignore his warning and he answers all his questions before trying to drink water from his lake. The god is pleased and he offers Yudhishthara to ask him for revival of any one of his brothers. Yudhishthara asks the god to revive either one of Nakul and Sehdev, his youngest brothers.
The god is surprised at his decision and he asks him to reconsider it, as he knows that they are going to face a war with powerful enemies and Yudhishthara has still not asked him to revive any one of his two strongest brothers Arjuna and Bheema. Hence the god asks Yudhishthara why doesn’t he want him to revive Arjuna or Bheema who can certainly help him much more in winning the war?
Yudhishthara replies that though Arjuna and Bheema are indeed the most powerful among all five brothers and they are worth more than any other brother when it comes to war, they are his brothers from the same mother whereas Nakul and Sehdev are the sons of his step-mother. Hence if there is a choice that two of the five brothers should live, one from each mother should live. That is why he wants him to revive either one of Nakul and Sehdev so that both his mothers have at least one son alive.
A strong conscience drives Yudhishthara to do such thing, even though it may cost him a very important war and his entire kingdom. The god was pleased with his answer and he revived all his brothers. While making this decision, Yudhishthara was not focused on his profit or loss and he was focused on what was the right thing to do in such situation. Hence his act was selfless and selfless acts can originate from strong conscience alone.
Considering another example from Mahabharata, all five brothers set out on their journey for liberation after they have won all the battles and ruled the kingdom for many years. As they begin this journey, a dog starts following them and he keeps following them anywhere they go, though the journey is a difficult one through hills, forests and many other difficult places. Years pass in the course of the journey and all brothers of Yudhishthara die one by one during this final journey. Only Yudhishthara is continuing his journey, followed by the dog.
One day, a god appears before him and tells him that this is the end of his journey for this life and he has come to take him to heaven. Hearing this, Yudhishthara requests the god to take the dog also to heaven as the dog accompanied him through his entire journey. The god rejects his request and says that heaven can’t be granted to a dog and Yudhishthara will have to go there without the dog. Hearing this, Yudhishthara replies humbly that if such is the case, he also doesn’t wish to go to heaven.
The god is surprised and he asks Yudhishthara why does he want to leave heaven for a vain creature like dog? Yudhishthara replies that the dog has followed him throughout his journey no matter what came, with such undivided faith in him, as he had for his lord. He further adds that just as a god can’t forsake a devotee who has undivided faith in him, he too can’t forsake this dog who has followed him throughout this journey with an undivided faith.
Himanshu Shangari