The death of ambition

In her regular column today, Lucy Kellaway talks about the death of ambition as seen from anedotal evidence in her 50-year-old husband, and extrapolates her thoughts to the rest of corporate society at large. It is a very interesting concept.

To summarise, she thinks that women are more well adjusted than men, and more willing to face the truth. The truth in this case, being that not everyone can be CEO, that out of 100 MDs, perhaps only one will become CEO, and often times, its more luck than skill that leads to it. Her closing sentence, echoing the thoughts of her husband, states that "Ambition is nothing but a displacement activity for unhappy people."

Her advice is to therefore have lots of ambition while we are young, to work hard and aim for our goals. But as we get older and become fairly successful, to realise that fulfillment and happiness can come from other sources, and to gradually allow our ambition to die off. Only then will we be happier.

I only have one point to make. It's a lot easier to say something like that when you've already achieved some semblance of success. It's another thing altogether when you're starting out at the bottom of the food chain. However, I take heart that even if I do not achieve my goals in life, I'll still be able to claim that it is because I decided to let my ambition die away.

:P