Anyone else totally without ambition?
10-12-2013, 11:31 AM
I just read through this thread, and I found several very interesting perspectives regarding whether guys are ambitious – and some guys are early in their careers and other guys are later in their careers. Certainly, stage of career causes a difference.
I came from a large working class family in rural America, and no real expectation of inherited wealth. Most of my family members were not wealthy and most had no college education, either. Accordingly, I always assumed that I had to strive for some sort of income related to work that would provide my income security.
After high school I enlisted in the military, and I figured that I would just continue within my working-class expectations or work to attain job security.
As I was in the military, I came to the belief that guys in my surroundings did not really have many aspirations in life – maybe I was over generalizing in my perspective; however, accordingly, I began to look into possible professions. On my days off work, I would go to the library and peruse career books and consider compatible careers.
I came to the belief that almost everything interesting to me, required higher education. Accordingly, I began taking college courses, and the acquisition of knowledge became contagious through my undergrad and into graduate school. Maybe some guys will consider an education to be a big waste of time.. who knows, but I found college as fulfilling – and I really enjoyed being around lots of young women...
My ambitions were not specifically focused on the attainment of money, but money did flow into my life based on my college work, based on volunteer work and having career-related ambitions.
Now, I am in my 40s, and I have an opportunity to move away from career-related ambitions, and it seems that my nest egg is sufficiently large to generate an adequate passive income in which I do NOT have to work in order to adequately provide for myself. Accordingly, this shades my views and my ambitions will have to evolve accordingly to have reasons to get out of bed.
There are some difficulties for me to find ambition to carry out the work of the various transitional issues; however, currently, the anticipation of the reward of travel and possible access to young chicks that are NOT really accessible to me in living in the 1st world is currently providing me with ambition….
We will see how travel plays out in the years ahead in order to continue to create ambitions, whether I will feel that I will have to add work to my schedule in order to feel meaning in life and to get out of bed. In the past, my ambition had come from feeling that I had to build enough of a nest egg for income security, and now that I seem to have a sufficient quantity, and accordingly, I may not have to make additional efforts towards working, I am not sure about how that is going to play out for me in regard to continuing to cause ambitions.
In sum, my understanding of how ambition played out for me is that I felt that I have always had to have it because there was no golden parachute that was provided for me in the event that I did not push towards some career / financial security goals. Guys on this forum could make some mistakes if they chose not to have ambitions before they have in place some kind of a plan for their future – at least financially – because they may look back and regret that they did not make a plan – and certain paths are more easily attempted at earlier ages in life rather than when older. In other words, some paths close off with age – yes, even in America ☺ ☺ - the land of supposed opportunities. For example, if someone wanted to be a doctor, he has to compete with people who have made extensive preparations by the time they are in their early 20s… not impossible to do at a later age, but more obstacles, the later a guy starts.
In that regard, if guys on this forum do not have plans and goals for future finance, you may end up in a place that you did not want to be and could have prevented or at least made better.
Below are four quotes that advocate for goal setting:
“If you don't know where you are going,
you'll end up someplace else.”
― Yogi Berra
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti
“If you're trying to be miserable, it's important you don't have any goals. No school goals, personal goals, family goals. Your only objective each day should be to inhale and exhale for sixteen hours before you go to bed again. Don't read anything informative, don't listen to anything useful, don't do anything productive. If you start achieving goals, you might start to feel a sense of excitement, then you might want to set another goal, and then your miserable mornings are through. To maintain your misery, the idea of crossing off your goals should never cross your mind.”
― John Bytheway, How to Be Totally Miserable
“If you're bored with life, if you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things, you don't have enough goals.”
― Lou Holtz
![[Image: smile.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/smile.gif)
