How to become ambitious?
I am Aarihant Aaryan! Welcome to the Iron Sharpen Iron newsletter,
Every week I share my homework from my startup journey, learn about human behavior, and sometimes decode industries and business models for fun,
I can’t control my curiosity :) )
After shutting down my startup, I started looking for opportunities to work
I mentioned the same in my newsletter, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and close to 30 to 40 companies reached out. I gave interviews almost everywhere, I used to get feedback from the interviews and all these companies had a column called “Think Big or Ambition” - I always got 5/5 for it
When I saw that column called Think Big/ambition - I started thinking about it, I have been thinking about ambition for close to 5 months
Every time I talk to a person, I try to see if they are ambitious or not, out of all the conversations I have had in the last 5 months I rarely found ambitious people
One of the ambitious people I have met is Prateek who is our co-founder at Physicswallah, he told me aarihant let’s build Tata or reliance in education :)
I don’t really know why we don’t have many ambitious people around us
Probably it’s because in childhood you were shamed in your classroom or family functions when you shared your ambition
Or it’s because everyone is busy in the maze of solving their short-term problems
Or probably it’s because we have been raised to be risk averse and seek security
When I was thinking deeply about people shaming ambitious people, I think it’s because ambitions don’t make sense, they don’t match your current situation in life - you can just see what others can’t see
“ People tend to call you a fool when you see what they can’t see”
How to become ambitious?
Sadly you can’t teach people to become ambitious, you can’t coach them to become ambitious. In India, people love coaching for everything.
that’s how we are raised and many think these 3 points, these 3 videos, these 3 tricks, these 3 frameworks, these 3 stories will make me ambitious - that’s not at all true.
But what you can really do is help them get their positioning better (help them be at the right place at the right time) which makes their circle of influence better.
I’ll double down on it for you, we all have “High & lows” in our lives but what we do with them in their current state defines the life we live 30 years later
When you don’t have the right positioning in life, positioning = influence with the right people, people who are ambitious
You treat things the way they are, you can’t look beyond them → when you see some highs, some level of success, you will get busy playing the same game when you see a failure or low in life - you will take it as granted
How you look at it is largely influenced by the circle you are in
For example, when you look at the most unicorn founders, people who have built large institutions, scientists, or anyone who has created much value in society are from IIM / IITs
When you look at their background, most of them hail from lower-middle-class or middle-class backgrounds but what makes them ambitious and outliers? Is it their college tag?
Absolutely Not, It’s their alumni network that starts the effect and hunger among everyone (ambition is like a virus, but you only catch this virus if you are deeply connected) - slowly everyone turns out to become super ambitious, and the second-order effect is they manufacture something with high value.
You and I can be more ambitious, thanks to the Internet. We can indefinitely leverage it. We don’t need to know ambitious people directly - we can just keep listening, and reading whatever they share, you can just follow them and probably try to have conversations sometimes
How do you know someone is an ambitious person?
They are fundamentally long-term thinkers, they think in decades/generations
They commit and sacrifice a disproportionate of time for their ambition ( mostly in decades)
They have the most counterintuitive insights into their ambition
The way they communicate their ambition will make you want to be part of the journey
Clarity & boldness is also a trait
Finally, it’s rare to find someone ambitious, but if you find them support them.
If they fail back them, don’t mock them :)
If you have any thoughts share them in the comments :)
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