How to Become Ambitious with Ramit Sethi

You know, somehow ambition has gotten a bad rap. It's almost like it's not cool to be ambitious, but it's cool to be really lackadaisical and chill. I actually think it is cool to be ambitious. I want to talk about that for a few minutes. Because it's dramatically shaped who I surround myself with and the kind of things I choose to do. I remember when I was in high school, I was in some of these honors classes, and then once in a while we had to take an elective class. And one of my classes was photo. So I really loved photo. I loved taking pictures, et cetera. And I went to this photo class, and nobody did any work whatsoever. Okay? People were reading magazines. It was crazy. And I thought to myself, well, whatever, like, I'm going to do a good job. I like taking pictures. Let's just see how it goes. I think in the back of my head, I was like, I know. I'll be the Pied Piper and I'll bring everybody up so we'll all take better photos together. That did not happen. Instead, what I ended up doing was I sat four days a week and read magazines with my feet on the table. And then on the fifth day, I went into the darkroom and developed my photos. In other words, I got dragged down instead of bringing everybody else up. And I have found that to be very, very true. If you are around other people who think it's weird or who stigmatize being ambitious, chances are it's going to rub off on you. Now, I remember my parents always saying these little phrases that I really didn't know where they came from or what they meant, but they ended up having a huge impact on me. So one thing my parents would say is, why don't you just write it up? I have an idea. Or I'd be telling them something I did online or a joke, and they'd say, why don't you just write it up? Send it to the newspaper. My parents aren't writers. I don't know where they came up with that, but it ended up changing the way I thought about myself. I started thinking, hey, I have something that people might want to hear. Why don't I just write it up? And I did. And I got published a couple times in a teeny little section for teens in the Sacramento beat. And it felt great. Another thing they said to me was, a year from now, you're going to be a year older. What are you going to do? That has stuck with me until now. In other words, time is going to go on no matter what. So a year from now, where do you want to be? Looking back, if you had started something a year ago or two years ago, where would you be today? Right. It's not too late to start. So I want to talk about how to be ambitious. There are a few things that have worked out really well for me that I want to share with you. The first is to surround yourself with ambitious people. Now it can be weird if you're the only one in your city reading self development books or, or going to a self development seminar. They're like why are you such a weirdo? And I recently interviewed my friend Michael Ellsberg and one of the things he said is yeah, I am a weirdo. I like doing this stuff. It's weird. So if you like that it's totally cool. And if not, no problem. What I used to do was to get really defensive. Oh, you don't understand. Da da da da. It's so interesting. If you only signed up, if you only understood, then you would come along. Well, the fact is most people don't want to do that. That's fine. In fact they actually get inspired by someone who is ambitious. It's almost like this backwards bending curve. At first it's really uncool to be ambitious and then when you cross a certain threshold, people look at you aspirationally. Wow, how did he do that? He must be lucky. I didn't go to that college so I can't do that. When the fact of the matter is you started off way long ago being ambitious on the most micro of tasks. Step number one in becoming ambitious is to surround yourself with people who are ambitious or who accept that you're ambitious. Now you can do this online. I have my own programs that surround you with ambitious people. You can find other people in online forums. You can do this offline by going to community groups or meetups. There are tons of other people who actually think it is cool to be ambitious. And, and the first time you ever go and you encounter these people, it's like I found someone who understands me. So that's number one. Number two is to actually read interesting material that challenges you to become more ambitious. So you read my material. I don't need to belabor that point. A lot of my readers also read Tim Ferriss stuff. You also have things like Cal Newport's material. These are all great, great materials that will challenge you to be better than you ever thought you could be yourself. The next one is to set big goals each year. You know, it's funny. I hear people. They'll set goals. They'll say something like, I have this web app, and it has 1,000 users, and by the end of the year, I want to have 1,300 users. And I'm like, that's it. Your entire goal is to go from 1,000 free users to 1,300, where a top performer would say, you know what? I want to make that free. Now, they wouldn't just arbitrarily set that. They would say, here's what it's going to take in order to quintuple my user base. But they would set ambitious goals. The fact of the matter is, so many of us set these very tepid goals because we're afraid of committing to something bigger, because what if we fail? We've dealt with failure in this program. So knowing that and knowing how to set effective goals means you can actually afford to be ambitious. So instead of saying, I'm going to run on the treadmill for 18 minutes, you can say, you know what? I'm going to do it for 45, or, I'm going to lift this much, based on research of how long it takes to lift that much or to earn that much or to find a dream job. And the fourth thing about how to be ambitious is actually a very tactical maneuver. A lot of times when you start doing these things, you're going to encounter some resistance. Could be from your friends, could be from your family. Okay? One technique you can use is to simply work on these things in secret at first. Your first week or couple of months is a very tumultuous time. It's a very trying time because you're already not confident about yourself. I don't know, should I be reading this stuff? Am I getting scammed? And then if your friends hear about it and they think it's really weird, what are they going to say? Hey, man, you're paying $1,000 for an online course. That seems like a scam. And already in your weekend unconfident state, it's going to be very difficult for you to defend yourself. So one thing I did, especially starting off, was to simply work on these things in secret. I wouldn't tell anyone because I wasn't confident enough to marshal responses to anyone arguing with me. So I would just kind of do it on my own. I'd read these books quietly. I would not make a big deal about it. I wouldn't even bring it up. If someone said, what are you up to? I said, I don't know. I'm Just reading a few books right now. But I wouldn't get into the nitty gritty because I wasn't ready to defend myself about it. Over time, I've gotten way more confident in self development knowing that. You know what? It's cool. If you don't think that relationship seminars or career seminars or personal development seminars are cool, that's totally cool. I know it's worked for me. I know it's worked for a few of my friends. I have a good time. And I also use this technique where I say, you know what? I don't know if this is going to work. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I figure, why not give it a shot, right? Can't hurt. What would you do if you were me? That totally co opts their anger or their criticism and brings them into the process. Because you have to remember why people argue with you. When you start to become more ambitious, for most people, it reflects on them that they are not being as ambitious as you are. Now, I have a few action steps for you. In this section. I want you to first think about three ambitious people. You know, they could be authors, they could be chefs. It could be people who work out really well, could be whoever you want. What are your impressions of them? What words would you use to describe them? Notice those words, Write them down. Are they positive or are they negative? If they're negative, I want you to acknowledge those invisible scripts right away. For example, think about someone who is really successful at their career. If your first invisible script words are, works too hard, has no time for family, no balance. If that's what you think an ambitious person is, then there's no reason you would ever become ambitious, right? So I had to go through this myself and I see this a lot as I read online comments. There'll be a profile of someone who's really successful and the first hundred comments will say, well, obviously he has no work life balance. Obviously he does nothing else. Why their invisible script is ambitious or successful is bad. And for those people, they will never become ambitious. And chances are they may not become as successful as other people because they believe that to become ambitious or successful is bad and evil. I want you to acknowledge and I want you to exterminate those invisible scripts. The next thing I want you to do is ask yourself, am I surrounding myself with positive people who are three people that not only support what you do, but actually are interested in self development themselves? For a lot of us, we don't have anyone like this at all. I know when I was Growing up, I actually had no one that was interested in self development. It didn't really even exist as far as I was concerned in my social network. And yet as I got older, I started to meet people who would read self help books who didn't think it was weird to be improving themselves on a financial perspective or a health perspective or relationship or career perspective. They actually embraced it. Do you have those people? If not, take the what if I were perfect technique and ask yourself, where can I find these people? Could it be online? Could it be in a program? Could it be offline? At a meetup? Where can you find these people in the next 14 days? That's what I want you to ask yourself. Third, I want you to ask yourself, what material am I reading that is going to improve my own self development in becoming more ambitious could be inspirational books, could be tactical books, could be profiles and biographies of successful people. It's okay to read these and I want to encourage you to do so again in the next 14 days. What's one amazing book or article that you could read to become more ambitious? I challenge you to do that. And I want to wrap with one final point. Remember when I talked about that backwards bending curve, how when you first start off doing these ambitious seeming things, it can actually be a little weird and disconcerting to people around you, but the end of that curve means people actually are more and more attracted to you. In other words, people want to see ambitious people, they want to hang around them. It's okay. Not only is it okay, it's cool to be ambitious. The only time you're in this trough of failure, in this very dangerous point, is when you first start off. So acknowledge that. Know that it might affect friends and family around you in a little bit of an odd way because they're not used to seeing this. But when you do it, when you become successful at becoming more ambitious, when you truly internalize that being ambitious is cool and that it can help you achieve your goals much faster than waiting around for the world to deliver them to you. That's when you know that you've become successful. So these principles and these action steps for becoming more ambitious have dramatically affected the way that I thought about myself and the way that I pursued big, big goals. I challenge you to do.