Your Career

How to Become Ambitious

You know somehow ambition has gotten a bad rap. It’s almost like it’s not cool to be
ambitious, but it’s cool to be really lackadaisical and chill. I actually think it is cool to be
ambitious. I want to talk about that for a few minutes, because it is dramatically shaped the
way that I—and I want to talk about that for a few minutes, because it’s dramatically shaped
who I surround myself with and the kind of things I choose to do.

I remember when I was in high school, I was in some of these honors classes, and then
once in a while we had to take an elective class. And one of my classes was photo, so I
really loved photo. I loved taking pictures, etc. And I went to this photo class and nobody did
any work whatsoever, okay? People were reading magazines; it was crazy. And I thought to
myself, “Well, whatever, like I’m going to do a good job. I like taking pictures, let’s just see
how it goes.”

I think in the back of my head I was like, “I know, I’ll be the pied piper and I’ll bring
everybody up, so we’ll all take better photos together.” That did not happen. Instead what
I ended up doing was I sat four days a week and read magazines with my feet up on the
table, and then on the fifth day I went into the dark room and developed my photos. In other
words, I got dragged down instead of bringing everybody else up and I have found that to be
very, very, true, if you are around other people who think it’s weird or who stigmatize being
ambitious, chances are it’s going to rub off on you.

Now I remember my parents always saying these little phrases that I really didn’t know
where they came from or what they meant, but they ended up having a huge impact on me,
all right? So one thing my parents would say is, “Why don’t you just write it up?” When I had
an idea or I’d be telling them something I did online or a joke. And they’d say, “Why don’t you
just write it up? Send it to the newspaper.” My parents aren’t writers, I don’t know where
they came up with that, but it ended up changing the way I thought about myself.

I started thinking, “Hey, I have something that people might want to hear. Why don’t I just
write it up? And I did and I got published a couple of times in a teeny little section for teens
in the Sacramento Beat and it felt great. Another thing they said to me was, “A year from
now you’re going to be a year older. What are you going to do?” That has stuck with me until
now. In other words time is going to go on no matter what so a year from now, where do
you want to be? Looking back, if you had started something a year ago or two years ago,
where would you be today?

Right, it’s not too late to start. So I want to talk about how to be ambitious. There are a few
things that have worked out really well for me that I want to share with you, the first is to

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 surround yourself with ambitious people. Now it can be weird if you’re the only one in your
city reading self-development books or going to a self-development seminar. They’re like,
“Why are you such a weirdo?”

And I recently interviewed my friend Michael Ellsberg and one of the things he said is, “Yeah,
I am a weirdo. I like doing this stuff. It’s weird,” so if you like that, it’s totally cool and if not, no
problem. What I used to do was to get really defensive. “Oh, you don’t understand,” da, da, da,
da, da. “It’s so interesting. If you only signed up, if you only understood, then you would come
along.”

Well, the fact is that most people don’t want to do that. That’s fine. In fact, they actually get
inspired by someone who is ambitious. It’s almost like this backward bending curve. At first
it’s really uncool to be ambitious, and then when you cross a certain threshold, people look at
you aspirationally. “Wow! How’d he do that? He must be lucky. I didn’t go to that college, so I
can’t do that.” When the fact of the matter is you started off way long ago being ambitious on
the most micro of tasks.

So step number one in becoming ambitious is to surround yourself with people who are
ambitious or who accept that you’re ambitious. Now you can do this online. I have my own
programs that surround you with ambitious people. You can find other people in online
forums. You can do this offline by going to community groups, or meet ups. There are tons of
other people who actually think it is cool to be ambitious. And the first time you ever go and
you encounter these people it’s like, “Ah, I’ve found someone who understands me.” So that’s
number one.

Number two is to actually read interesting material that challenges you to become more
ambitious. So you read my material, I don’t need to belabor that point. A lot of my readers
also read Tim Ferriss’ stuff. You also have things like Cal Newport’s material. These are all
great, great materials that will challenge you to be better than you ever thought you could be
yourself.

The next one is to set big goals each year. You know it’s funny, I hear people they’ll set goals.
They’ll say something like, “I have this web app and it has 1000 users and by the end of the
year I want to have 1300 users.” And I’m like, “That’s it? Your entire goal is to go from 1000
free users, to 1300,” where a top performer would say, “You know what? I want to make that
5000.” Now they wouldn’t just arbitrarily set that.

They would say, “Here’s what it’s going to take in order to quintuple my user base,” but they
would set ambitious goals. The fact of the matter is so many of us set these very tepid goals,
because we’re afraid of committing to something bigger because what if we fail? We’ve dealt
with failure in this program.

So knowing that and knowing how to set effective goals means you can actually afford to
be ambitious. So instead of saying, “I’m going to run on the treadmill for 18 minutes.” You
can say, “You know what? I’m going to do it for 45” or “I’m going to lift this much, based on

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research of how long it takes to lift that much,” or to earn that much, or to find a dream job.

And the fourth thing about how to be ambitious is actually a very tactical maneuver. A lot of
times when you start doing these things you’re going to encounter some resistance. It could
be from your friends. It could be from your family, okay? One technique you can use is to
simply work on these things in secret at first. Your first week or a couple of months is a very
tumultuous time. It’s a very trying time, because you’re already not confident about yourself.
“I don’t know, should I be reading this stuff? Am I getting scammed?”

And then if your friends hear about it and they think it’s really weird, what are they going
to say? “Hey man, you’re paying $1000 for an online course? That seems like a scam,” and
already in your weakened, unconfident state, it’s going to be very difficult for you to defend
yourself. So one thing I did, especially starting off, was to simply work on these things in
secret. I wouldn’t tell anyone, because I wasn’t confident enough to marshal responses to
anyone arguing with me. So I would just kind of do it on my own. I’d read these books quietly.
I would not make a big deal about it. I wouldn’t even bring it up.

If someone said, “What are you up to?” I’d say, “I don’t know. I’m just reading a few books
right now.” But I wouldn’t get into the nitty-gritty, because I wasn’t ready to defend myself
about it. Over time I’ve gotten way more confident in self-development knowing that, you
know what? It’s cool if you don’t think that relationship seminars or career seminars or
personal development seminars are cool, that’s totally cool. I know it’s worked for me. I know
it’s worked for a few of my friends. I have a good time.

And I also use this technique where I say, “You know what? I don’t know if this is going to
work. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. I figure why not give it a shot, right? It can’t hurt. What
would you do if you were me?” That totally co-opts their anger or their criticism and brings
them into the process, because you have to remember why people argue with you, when you
start to become more ambitious. For most people it reflects on them that they are not being
as ambitious as you are.

Now I have a few action steps for you in this section. I want you to first think about three
ambitious people you know. They could be authors, they could be chefs. They could be
people who work out really well. It could be whoever you want. What are your impressions
of them? What words would you use to describe them? Notice those words, write them down.
Are they positive or are they negative? If they’re negative I want you to acknowledge those
invisible scripts right away. For example, think about someone who is really successful at
their career. If your first invisible script words are, “Works too hard, has no time for family,
no balance.” If that’s what you think an ambitious person is, then there’s no reason you would
ever become ambitious, right? So, I had to go through this myself and I see this a lot as I read
online comments.

There’ll be a profile of someone who is really successful and the first 100 comments will
say, “Well obviously he has no work/life balance. Obviously he does nothing else.” Why?
Their invisible script is ambitious or successful is bad, and for those people, they will never
become ambitious and chance are they may not become as successful as other people,
because they believe that to become ambitious or successful is bad and evil. I want you to
acknowledge and I want you to exterminate those invisible scripts.

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The next thing I want you to do is ask yourself, am I surrounding myself with positive people,
all right? Who are three people that not only support what you do, but actually are interested
in self-development, themselves? For a lot of us, we don’t have anyone like this at all. I know
when I was growing up I actually had no one that was interested in self-development. It didn’t
even really exist, as far as I was concerned in my social network. And yet as I got older I
started to meet people who would read self-help books, who didn’t think it was weird to be
improving themselves on a financial perspective or a health perspective or a relationship or
career perspective. They actually embraced it.

Do you have those people? If not, take the “what if I were perfect technique” and ask yourself
“Where could I find these people? Could it be online? Could it be in a program? Could it be
offline at a meet up? Where can you find these people in the next 14 days?” That’s what
I want you to ask yourself. Third I want you to ask yourself, “What material am I reading
that is going to improve my own self-development in becoming more ambitious?” It could
be inspirational books. It could be tactical books. It could be profiles and biographies of
successful people. It’s okay to read these and I want to encourage you to do so, again, in the
next 14 days.

What’s one amazing book or article that you could read to become more ambitious? I
challenge you to do that.

And I want to wrap with one final point. Remember when I talked about that backwards
bending curve? How when you first start off doing these ambitious seeming things, it can
actually be a little weird and disconcerting to people around you? But the end of that curve
means people actually are more and more attracted to you. In other words, people want to
see ambitious people. They want to hang around them. It’s okay, not only is it okay, it’s cool
to be ambitious. The only time you’re in this trough of failure, in this very dangerous point is
when you first start off.

So acknowledge that. Know that it might affect friends and family around you, in a little bit of
an odd way, because they’re not used to seeing this. But when you do it, when you become
successful at becoming more ambitious, when you truly internalize that being ambitious is
cool and that it can help you achieve your goals much faster than waiting around for the
world to deliver them to you, that’s when you know that you’ve become successful.

So these principles and these action steps for becoming more ambitious, have dramatically
affected the way that I thought about myself and the way that I pursued big, big goals.

Give it a shot. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. I challenge you to do that.

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