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There are no doubts that ambition is one of the most needed qualities in a person as without ambition, the drive to find and establish anything better can’t survive. It is only due to the factor of ambition that human race has developed a lot and we have invented and discovered so 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 a distance and see 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 see we are enjoying the gift of air conditioning today.

Hence ambition is a must have quality in a human being and without it, no one can contribute much to the society or the world, as the ambition to do something for others is the first things you need to do so. However, like many other qualities, ambition too can create problems when it goes beyond a point and it becomes irrational and impractical. A person having too much ambition is called overambitious and being overambitious is not a good quality in most cases, but it is a negative quality which can make you suffer a lot on various fronts of your life, by virtue of making you make wrong and hasty decisions, take irrational risks and keep running 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 as they keep looking for more and more, and they are seldom satisfied with what they have already achieved. They have fixed an irrational image of perfection for most things and people in their mind and 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, these people are not willing to settle for anything less than their fixed and irrational perception of perfection, and so it becomes very difficult for them to feel satisfied by most things and people.

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 and state visible flaws and make complaints about something, they start complaining how this thing should have been better than it is now. In such situations, though they are not able to tell any visible flaws in a thing or a person, they are still not satisfied with it as they think it is not matching the perfect image of this person or thing in their perception. So even though the thing or person has no visible flaws, they are still not satisfied and this is what makes them difficult to handle and please because you can never come up to their expectations, no matter how hard you may try.

It is easy to guess from the above discussion that overambitious people generally do very badly when it comes to relationships as it is almost impossible for anyone to make them happy and get a few words of praise from them. Instead, they keep troubling the people near them, with more and more complaints regarding how they are not good enough and how they should try to improve themselves more and more. No matter how hard the other person may try to improve, he can almost never improve himself so much as to meet the expectations of such a person and a time comes when this 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 this person no matter how good he may be or he may become.

This is the time when the other person decides to move away from this overambitious person as almost no one wants to be and live in the company of a person who can never be pleased and who will always keep making more and more complaints. This keeps happening with more and more people and as a result, more and more people start moving away from this overambitious person and finally a time comes when this person projects an image of being too difficult to handle or be with, and this is when he starts finding it difficult to convince new people to be with him or work with him.

Apart from the sphere of relationships, overambitious people suffer a lot in many other spheres of their life also. For example, the career graph of an overambitious person is usually full of many lows which come from time to time due to this negative habit of theirs. Such a person tends to take irrational and blind risks from time to time, in order to achieve the level of success which lies there in his mind. Since these risks are too irrational to bring any good results in most cases, this person ends up losing what he already has, instead of gaining what he expects. Even if an odd risk pays out for him and he gains good ground, it is only short lasted as he will once again start taking those irrational risks which can pay one out of hundred times at the most, but which never pay every time. Hence this person sees many more lows than highs in his professional sphere, merely due to the habit of being overambitious.

Another problem that this habit of being overambitious causes on a general level, is that the people suffering from this problem develop a general habit of complaining too much, in most situations. Due to this habit of complaining too much, their image becomes even more negative and that makes it even more difficult for them to enjoy the most beautiful things and people, this world has to offer. This is why this negative habit should be treated in due time so that you may become able to enjoy your relationships, your profession and your life on the whole, in a much better way than you are doing now.

In the next step, let’s try to understand the reasons which lie at the root of this problem of being overambitious, so that we may find suitable remedies to treat this problem. The two main reasons for being overambitious are; irrational and too much aspiration; and unhealthy levels of greed. Looking at the first reason, through aspiration is a good thing just like ambition and it is a must have quality in order to do and achieve better things is life, but too much irrational aspiration is the cause of many problems just like too much ambition can cause many problems. Hence even the good qualities should be in a balance as too much of them too can cause problems for a person.

Let’s now try to find the reasons which give birth to too much irrational aspiration. The first thing that the people suffering from too much aspiration lack, is the lack of conscience. Conscience is one virtue in our personality 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 any given situation. So conscience can be understood as our overall guide which helps us in making right decisions in our day to day life, if we have a good amount of conscience in us.

Quoting some incidents from holy Ramayana, when lord Rama says that he has to forsake the kingdom and go to the forests for fourteen years otherwise his father will lose his word which is a shame for a good son, that is conscience. Though lord Rama has the support of whole kingdom and even the king Dashratha himself wants him to deny his wish and capture the kingdom, but lord Rama’s level of conscience is too high to fall for such immoral proposals, and hence he denies them all and does what his conscience tells him to do and he goes to the forests for fourteen years.

Taking another incidence, when 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 and asks forgiveness for his wrong deeds and returns his wife goddess Sita with respect, whom he has kidnapped in a deceitful manner, that is an act full of conscience. An ordinary man in a decisive winning position will want to kill the man who kidnapped his wife and then held her captive for many months, but lord Rama doesn’t want to do that as his conscience levels are extremely high.

And if you are wondering what could be the possible reason for such proposal of forgiveness to Ravana, 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, just in order to satisfy his ego by taking revenge on Ravana as that will be immoral conduct. So he is willing to forgive Ravana for the sake of those people whose life can be saved by doing so, even though the wrong done by Ravana is not worthy of being forgiven.

Now taking an example from Mahabharata, when 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 satisfied and when 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 strong enemies and Yudhishthara has still not asked him to revive any one of his two strongest brothers named Arjuna and Bheema. So the god asks Yudhishthara why doesn’t he want him to revive one of 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 certainly worth more than any other brother, they are his brother from the same mother whereas Nakul and Sehdev are the sons of his step-mother. So if there is a choice that two of the five brothers should live, one from each mother should live, and 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. This is certainly a very high level of conscience which drives Yudhishthara to do the moral thing even though it may cost him a very important war and his entire kingdom. Just for your information, the god was pleased with his moral answer and he revived all four of his brothers.

Taking a look at another example from Mahabharata, all five brothers set out for their journey for liberation after they have won all the battles and ruled the kingdom for many years. As they start 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 such difficult places. Years pass in the course of this journey and all brothers of Yudhishthara die one by one during this final journey for liberation, and only Yudhishthara is continuing his journey, followed by the dog of course. One day, a god appears in front of him and tells him that this is the end of his journey and he has come to take him to heavens and that he should prepare himself for going to the ultimate worlds he deserves.

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To be Continued

Lord Shiva Bless You

Himanshu Shangari