not.
Healthy ambition and a successful life are based on feeling fulfilled: it's about what makes you want to get-up-and-go every day, what makes you feel the best you. It's about knowing what really nourishes your life. And that might very well be different to what nourishes (and inspires) all your friends, your colleagues, your family and everyone else around you.
The foundation of healthy ambition is the belief that you deserve the best life for you, and then creating a plan to make it happen. It's about knowing how to be equipped so that you can follow the plan or, if necessary, change the plan to a better one. The plan won't be in your head. Think in terms of planning an adventure that you fully intend to enjoy.
How To Use This Book
We've divided this book into three parts:
1. What Does Ambition Mean to You?
2. What's Stopping You from Achieving Your Ambitions?
3. How Can You Achieve Your Ambitions?
In Part 1 you'll gain an overview of ambition and success in our culture, how this is changing, and what this means to you. You may discover that you're more successful than you think. You'll be inspired to create your own model of success rather than accepting what's given to you by the media, celebrity culture or people around you.
In Part 2 we'll help you understand why you feel you're not achieving your dreams and how to turn things around. In Part 3 we show you how to engage your mind to go from goals to action and give you advice that you can apply in every area of your life. We don't want to keep you waiting until the final part to start making things happen though, so throughout the book you'll find tips designed to act as ambition boosters that you can try out immediately to help fuel your dreams.
At the end of Chapters 1–3 and 5 there are tests so that you can assess yourself. We've also included key ‘Ask Yourself' questions for you to reflect on, so that you can relate each chapter to your personal experience. You will also find case studies from real people (with names and identifying circumstances changed). We chose these case studies so that you can see how ambition and success differ from person to person.
We carefully selected a panel of five leading experts to interview, each one with a different specialization, perspective and background. Two of our experts started their professional lives as actors, two have business backgrounds and one is an academic. Choosing a mix of experts is always exciting because although we know the individual experts well, we have no idea how what they say individually on the subject will gel collectively. We set out to give you a mix that will maximize the advice available to you. What turned out to be fascinating for us is that all our experts were on the same page as us: our culture is changing to one based on being individuals, rather than toeing a line fed to us.
We hope you will be inspired to believe that you can create your vision of success, that you will take the actions to make this happen, and that the process will be rewarding.
The Experts Interviewed For Real Ambition
Kele Baker, mind-body-movement coach
Kele Baker helps people take control of their health and wellbeing by teaching body awareness, coordination, relaxation, self-discovery and self-healthcare through tai chi, qigong, the Alexander Technique and mindfulness.
She is a former co-director of Kensington Dance Studio with over 20 years' experience teaching and choreographing for stage and television. Baker is the author of Strictly Come Dancing: Step By Step Dance Class (BBC Books) and director of the Life Force Chi Centre.
Chris Baréz-Brown, creative and business beatnik
Chris Baréz-Brown and his consultancy Upping Your Elvis show corporate teams how to unleash their creativity for more successful branding and a happy workplace. His background includes helping turn Carling Black Label into a billion-pound brand.
Baréz-Brown is the author of three bestselling books: How to Have Kick Ass Ideas (Harper Collins), Shine. How to Survive and Thrive at Work (Penguin), Free! Love Your Work, Love Your Life (Penguin) and the latest Wake Up! (Penguin Life, 2016).
Dannie-Lu Carr, creativity specialist, communications consultant and creative practitioner
Dannie-Lu Carr works with individuals and organizations on creativity and communications. She has worked with a wide range of corporate, media, PR, education and public sector companies, from Bloomberg through to the NHS.
Carr is the author of Brilliant Assertiveness (Pearson). She writes and directs for her production company Flaming Poppy, and runs acting workshops. Following a TEDx talk in 2015 she formed Reorientations to campaign for cultural change in the arts.
John Purkiss, headhunter and coach
John Purkiss runs workshops and coaches individuals on personal branding and personal development. He is the co-founder of Purkiss&Company where he recruits chief executives, finance directors and other board members.
Purkiss is the co-author of three books including Brand You – Turn Your Unique Talents into a Winning Formula (Pearson) which has been translated into five languages. He is working on a new book which will be called The Art of Letting Go.
Lisa Fortlouis Wood, Professor of Psychology and licensed clinical psychologist
Professor Fortlouis Wood teaches clinical psychology (including psychotherapy) at the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington and also practises as a clinical psychologist. Her specializations include family communication, relationship therapy, community, psychology and social/personal identity.
Professor Fortlouis Wood is regularly invited to present her research findings at educational conferences all over the world. Her most recent research (with Galena K. Rhoades, University of Denver) was on the effect of emotional distress in the family on college students.
1
WHAT DOES AMBITION MEAN TO YOU?
CHAPTER 1
REDEFINING AMBITION AND SUCCESS
The meaning of ambition and success is something that varies from person to person. What success means to you or what you want to see for yourself in the future might be completely different to someone else’s interpretation. Perhaps you dream of making it in a highly competitive arts and entertainment field like Hollywood, the music charts, the New York Times bestseller list. You might want to escape a dreary no-status job for an exciting high-level career. You might be determined to make so much money you don’t have to ever worry about it. Or you might have decided to totally change your life by moving to a different city or even another country.
Before we help you learn how to achieve your ambitions and create success in your life, you need to be clear about what ambition and success mean. If your definitions are simply the opposite of terms like unsuccessful, failure, mediocre or boring, you won’t be clear about what exactly you are aiming to create. So what do ambition and success mean generally – and what do they mean to you?