Does Being Grateful Kill Your Ambition?

Matthew Hussey here from Love Life. One of the things that I think becomes very difficult in the world we live in where we get all this different advice about going after what we want. You know, be ambitious, keep striving for more. And at the same time we're told, be grateful, be happy with what you have. Appreciate what you have. Gratitude is so important. These are two, or what seem like two very opposing forces. The idea of. Think about it for a moment. The idea of wanting more and the idea of being happy with what you have. How do you reconcile the two? I actually, for a long time struggled with the idea of reconciling the two, because personally, I always thought my hunger came from the fact that I was never quite satisfied, never quite satisfied with where I am. I'm always driving for more. What's the next level? How do I get there? Never being satisfied. Although that worked for me, it wasn't a fun state of play because never being satisfied, it meant I would achieve and achieve and achieve. On the outside, it would all look great, but on the inside, everything sucked all the time because I was never happy. It was never enough. Nothing I ever did was good enough. I never got happy with anything I did. I was always saying, someone would say, that's great, and I'd say, yeah, but I still haven't done this. So I would be in a constant state of dissatisfaction. Now, that's fine, you could do that for a while. But who wants to do it for their whole life? No one. So it gets to a point where you say, well, I need to be happy where I am now. How do I get happy with what I have? The danger, I always thought was, if I get happy with what I have, why do I want more? Isn't that going to kill my ambition? If I'm just happy, if I'm content, You know, you think of Buddha under the tree, sitting there happy in the state of nirvana, and you imagine a fat guy under a tree who doesn't do anything with his whole life. In no other context is that valued. By the way, ironically, I don't think Jameson Buddha wasn't fat, was he? He was quite thin. That's irrelevant. Let's get back to the point. Two opposing forces, ambition and gratitude. Now, when I was attempting to reconcile these, I got to a place where I think I found this harmony between the two. And I'm going to give you what I came to. You can strive for more and be excited about what's out there at the same time as being extraordinarily Happy with what you have. Being happy with what you have is about appreciating where you are now. Do I appreciate what I have materially? Do I appreciate my. My state of health or the fact that I'm even still alive? Do I appreciate the weather outside? Do I appreciate the people that are in my life? Do I appreciate the skills that I have? The. The. And this is where it gets important, because this, I believe, is where the two become joined. Do you appreciate the opportunities that are around you? Are you grateful for the opportunities and the privileges that you have? Because to me, truly appreciating and being grateful for the opportunities you have is also to take some responsibility in making the most of the opportunities you have. If you say, I'm grateful for this day, I'm grateful for this day that I have where I'm healthy, I get to build my body or my business, I get to go and influence the world, I get to make an impact. I. If I'm grateful for that, grateful for the opportunity, grateful for the privileges and the resources that allow me to take advantage of that opportunity, then I also feel the weight, the responsibility of actually doing something with that opportunity. In fact, I think genuine gratitude leads you to ambition. Makes sense. Lack of gratefulness, actually, I think does the opposite. Now, if you're not grateful, if you don't appreciate your current situation, very often it will turn you away from being ambitious. You get resentful, you get bitter, you get disillusioned, you get lazy. People who truly appreciate the advantage of their situation are usually the ones who make the most of it because they feel a responsibility to do the most that they can with their lives to make the biggest impact possible. So I don't think. I think we should be very careful when people talk about gratitude. To me, gratitude isn't about just being happy with wherever you are and not feeling the need to change anything. True gratitude is appreciating everything that you have now in your life and everything that you are now in your life, and also appreciating what that allows you to do next and the responsibility that comes with that. Because I think when we have privilege, when we have opportunity, when we have resources, we also have a responsibility to do something great with it. So that's it for today. Go be both. Be happy with your lot and be excited about what's coming. And I'll see you in the next episode of Love Life.