This post in one sentence: Reflect on the past to be grateful for what you have today, orient your ambition towards the future
I’ve been experiencing this persistent tension for a while now. Something doesn’t feel quite right, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I find myself oscillating between feeling like I should be more grateful, but also thinking I need to be more ambitious.
Gratitude
Sometimes I catch myself acting ungrateful. There’s been times where I’ll go out to surf and feel frustrated that I didn’t catch as many waves as I wanted. I temporarily forget how awesome it is to be in Honolulu, living close to the beach, where all I have to do is attach my surfboard to my moped’s surf rack and drive five minutes to begin paddling out. The convenient commute to surf spots and the comfort of not having to wear a wetsuit makes it as smooth as possible to enjoy surfing. It’s easy to take things for granted when they become a part of our everyday lifestyle. When I realize my sense of gratitude slipping, I’m able to pause and take a scan of my current situation and appreciate it. I’m healthy, debt-free, have a job, and spend my days doing things that I enjoy. The concluding thought that marks the end of these quick be-grateful sessions is something like “I wish I could just do this everyday”, which is possible to achieve. However, it’s the more or less the same thing as saying “My life is great right now, I’m okay with it not changing because it’s good enough.” And that doesn’t sit well with me.
Ambition
On the flip side, there are times when I feel I’m not being ambitious enough. Growing up, I always strived for straight As (without direct pressure from my parents). I was motivated to perform well and was also competitive with my peers. I got into a good college and found myself surrounded by tons of smart people. I distinctly remember I was standing in line outside of Cafe 3 (a dining hall at Berkeley) when I overheard two fellow freshmen talking about the apps that they had created and listed on the app store. At this point, I had already decided to try and switch my major to computer science and I felt the pressure since I needed to meet the minimum GPA requirement to actually be able to switch. Upon hearing these two guys talk about their apps, I thought 1) I’m so behind and 2) I need to build an app ASAP.
After college, I was fortunate to join a new grad product manager program at Uber. Once again, I found myself surrounded by ambitious folks. Today, these coworkers-turned-friends are off joining hot startups, starting their own companies, and killing it in content creation. I feel like maintaining my current way of life is not ambitious enough so I wonder what my next move is. Over the last year and a half, I have intentionally chosen to prioritize fun, adventure, and exploration over work and there are tradeoffs that come with that. Sometimes when I find myself playing outside in the form of surfing or skiing, I can’t help but think “Damn, shouldn’t I be working harder?” I’m grateful to know some of the most intelligent, ambitious people out there, but a byproduct of being around extremely driven people is the feeling that not taking big steps forward (professionally) is the same as taking a step back.
Up until COVID and being laid off, I felt like it was always go go go and it wasn’t until we were in a full blown pandemic that I thought to lift my head up and ask questions. I felt like a racehorse, bred to perform and with those blinders on to remain focused on the singular track ahead of me, but to also never consider any other paths. Now it feels like I somehow became a sentient horse and am questioning if I should even be a racehorse or if should become a horse who paints or cooks or sings (a terrible metaphor, but hopefully you get the point).
Gratitude vs. Ambition
The problem I ran into recently is that when I try to be more grateful, my ambition wanes. My initial theory was that this happens because gratitude is associated with satisfaction and the feeling of enough, whereas ambition can only originate from a foundation of dissatisfaction. In the process of being more grateful, I end up burning some ambition fuel - the energy source that motivates me to not be satisfied with my current situation and strive for improvement.
However, what I’ve realized is that pitting gratitude vs. ambition is a false dichotomy. You don’t have to sacrifice gratitude for ambition and vice versa.
A grateful person is a person who, at least in a sense, is satisfied with their situation in life. An ambitious person is a person who, at least in a sense, is dissatisfied with their situation in life. So ambition and gratitude are—in some sense—in tension with each other. Yet ironically, feeling either of these emotions without the other leads to unhappiness, whereas feeling them together leads to happiness. Ambition without gratitude manifests as an unquenchable thirst that can never be satisfied, whereas gratitude without ambition produces stagnation, which is inherently depressing for a creative entity such as a human being. But if a man manages to feel both gratitude and ambition—being appreciative of the good things in life while also aware of how life could be better—then he will be well poised for happiness. Like everyone else, he will encounter problems in life, but he will determinedly seek solutions to his problems. If he solves one of them, he will rejoice in having discovered a solution. But he will not allow this feeling of joy to cloud his vision and prevent him from seeing new problems. His ambitious mind will seek further problems, which he will be prepared to try and solve, meaning he might actually solve some of them. And with each new solution will come yet another reason to be grateful.
Rather than a game of tug-of-war where there are two opposing forces, it’s more like a 2x2 matrix:
Let’s start with low gratitude, low ambition - The Bum. This is the guy who isn’t grateful for what they have, but also doesn’t want to improve. It’s a rough situation when you think your life sucks AND you also don’t feel motivated enough to want to change.
Then there are those who are high in gratitude, low in ambition - the Monk. Buddhism preaches that life is suffering and desire is the root of all suffering. But in order to achieve enlightenment, we must cleanse ourselves of all desires which in turn removes ambition. These are the people who have reached the point of enough, but also feel no need to make any more improvements in their life. It’s the hippies that have renounced all possessions and fled to the wilderness to be free, but also ignorant to the problems that still exist and are worth trying to solve.
We’re probably more familiar with the low gratitude, but high ambition person - the Overworker. On paper, by conventional standards, they’ve achieved success, but aren’t happy. They view happiness as a finality that can only be achieved through accomplishment. So they continue to grind.
High Gratitude, High Ambition
This quadrant is the rarest of them all because it’s so hard to reach. I don’t even have a random person off of Google images to represent this because I’m not even sure if I know someone who has reached this point. It’s tricky to balance being simultaneously grateful and ambitious. I make sense of it all by viewing gratitude as something that’s tied to the past and present, whereas ambition is for the future.
By taking a step back to look at how far we’ve come, we’re able to be more appreciative of what we have today. During my freshman year at Cal, I took my first internship in San Francisco and it paid $14 per hour. Since all my previous jobs paid $7.25 (minimum wage in Virginia), I was stoked to be doubling my pay. I didn’t realize that the minimum wage in San Francisco was $12 at that time. In that same year, I looked at the average salaries of graduates segmented by major and thought that if I could make six figures out of school that would be insane.
During spring break of my junior year, I spent a week camping on the ocean cliffs of Carlsbad, a sleepy surf town nestled in between LA and San Diego. We surfed three times per day: in the early morning, after breakfast, and at sunset. I never stood up a single time (and got stung by a stingray 👍). Now I’m still a beginner when it comes to surfing, but I’m a lot more comfortable in the water and can pop up and go down the line.
I learned how to ride a bike when I was 14. This past April, I biked 73 miles around Lake Tahoe in just over five hours without any training. I think it might’ve been my second or third time on a road bike. I think 13 year old me would’ve doubted whether I would ever be able to bike without training wheels let alone around Lake Tahoe.
In going through the process of reflection and practicing gratitude, I’m able to see the progress I’ve made. It frees up my mind to orient towards the future and think about what my goals are. If gratitude is the measurement of progress between the past and present, then ambition is the measurement of potential growth between the present and the future. Being grateful or ambitious takes time and thoughtfulness and it’s even harder when you try to be both at the same time. Try carving out some time to be grateful for what you have, who knows, maybe it’ll lead you to some new found ambition 🤙
As always, leave a comment or message me on Twitter if you have any questions/feedback/ideas!