Why Ambitious People Are Giving Up (The Ambition Killer)

Being a highly ambitious person is tough.

You are burdened with massive goals and grand visions for the future…

But if you don’t achieve these things, or worse, don’t take action to move towards them, the effect on your mental health is unbearable.

Then we are left looking for ways to cope.

Most of us find refuge in short-term pleasures to numb the pain of not being the person we want to be.

Throughout my life, I have found a lot of comfort in pleasures such as going out drinking every weekend, scrolling social media, watching p*rn and binge-eating junk food.

If you are reading this, I’m sure you have experienced where these habits lead to…

Low self-esteem. Anxiety. Stress. Weight gain. Anger. Frustration. Hopelessness.

Giving into short-term pleasure instead of doing the things you know you are supposed to be doing, has a knock-on effect that destroys your health, your relationships and every other aspect of your life.

Tell me this cycle isn’t familiar:

• You aren’t doing the hard things that move you closer to your goal, so you feel rubbish about yourself and treat yourself to short-term pleasures.

• Having over-indulged in short-term pleasures you now feel worse about yourself and your mood is even worse.

• To cope with this unpleasant feeling caused by over-indulgence, you indulge even more in short-term pleasure until you completely spiral out of control.

Your life feels completely off the rails and you feel lost.

You feel like a complete slob. A shell of the person you actually want to be.

Short-term pleasures create the pain that leads us to use them in the first place.

To escape this cycle you need to become someone who does hard things instead of going straight to sources of short-term pleasure.

Why is it important to become someone who does hard things?

To name a few benefits:

• You will be happier

• You will stop needing to cope

• You will feel so much more confident

• You feel good about yourself and respect yourself

• You will reap the rewards and move towards your goals

Doing hard things is the path to health, wealth and happiness!

A voice in your head might be piping up right about now saying:

“But I just hate doing hard things. I think I would rather just live a life of pleasure and comfort. It’s not worth it”.

But are you happy?

Will you get to the end of your limited time on this planet and look back with a smile on your face?

Or will you be dying in sheer panic that your time is nearly over and you have spent your entire life avoiding your ambitions?

As a wise man once said:

But it doesn’t take a genius to see the harder and more painful thing in the end is actually to not take action.

There are so many benefits to doing hard things.

In my personal experience, the highest points in my life have come as the result of pushing through pain.

Difficult tasks are the gateway to your higher self. Your happiest self.

You gain increased happiness and confidence because you are aligning with the person you aspire to be.

But you drastically lower your happiness and confidence by acting in conflict with your dreams e.g. indulging in pleasure, avoiding difficult tasks.

SO…

You want to start doing hard things and become aligned with the vision in your mind of who you wish to be…

Here is a step-by-step plan of how to ACTUALLY do this:

The Ambition Into Action Method

1. Write down your goals and ambitions.

2. Write down your worst nightmare for how your life could turn out (your anti-goals).

3. List the harmful activities you do daily that lead to intense pleasure.

4. Cut out as many of these activities as you can!

   • Bonus tip* - This can be difficult to begin with, so you can start by reducing the frequency or amount of activities or swap them out for less intensely pleasurable ones, e.g. eating a square or two of dark chocolate instead of a doughnut; watching a movie instead of scrolling TikTok.

5. Build a habit of meditation.

   • Meditation is one of the most powerful ways to build impulse control and reduce the need to engage in pleasure.

   • The key with meditation is that you are practising bringing your attention back to something after being distracted. It is not about having no thoughts.

   • People most commonly use their breath as a focus or anchor point to return to.

   • Begin with 5 minutes 2x per day and increase as you get better at this. It is a skill that you get better at with time.

   • Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inpok4MKVLM (this is not an affiliate link, just a good meditation to try).

6. Practice doing some hard things. 

• Start going on runs. Start taking cold showers. Start reading 10 pages every day.

• You will feel good after doing these sorts of activities and this will reinforce the belief that doing hard things makes you feel good.

• Keep going… once you build momentum doing hard things. It becomes effortless.

To recap…

Doing hard things that we fear or resist doing but know we should be doing, leads to more happiness and fulfilment despite the perceived pain and effort of doing the hard thing.

If it leads to more happiness this implies that there is some sort of order and correctness to doing hard things versus giving in to easy short-term pleasure, which makes you feel worse in the long run.

Thank you for reading. I hope this newsletter motivates you and helps you pursue your dreams.

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Thank you for reading.