APX-IV-0029
“I've been hiding my ambition because I don't want to seem like too much.”
Ambition is not a character flaw. The desire to build, grow, and achieve is part of your nature, not something to apologize for or hide. What you do with ambition matters. But hiding it doesn't make it virtuous. It just makes it frustrated.
Your Practice
Write your ambition down plainly, what you actually want, at full scale, with no hedging. Don't perform modesty on paper. Then share it with one person this week who will take it seriously. Speaking ambition aloud removes its shame and gives it traction.
The Architects
“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”
Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic," address at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910