In life, there is an uneasy balance between ambition and happiness. If you are too ambitious you may never be happy. When you reach one rung on the ladder, then you’re desperately scrambling for the next. On the other hand, if you’re just happy with the status quo, you may never do something truly extraordinary.

Recently someone told me “I’m happy with a good library and a thrift shop”. Now, here’s a person that’s going to be happier than most—her expectations are pretty easy to meet. BUT she may never reach her full potential. And would a company want to hire someone like this, or would it be better to hire someone who says they won’t be happy until they’ve earned a million dollars?

The sad truth is that most highly successful people err on the side of ambition. They’re never satisfied with the status quo and so they’re usually not happy people…

Steve Jobs is known to relentlessly push his people to build the next killer device. He’s often been called an egomaniac and we know he’s a screamer.  But Jobs isn’t alone here. The same is true for Gates, Disney and Edison. Does being great mean being unhappy with how things are? After all, no one less than the Governor of California (“the Governator”) said the secret to success is to “Stay Hungry”.

Doesn’t personal growth require some ambition? And isn’t there something about personal growth that leads to happiness. It seems that the answer must be in the following:

• Finding a Balance: There is a balance between enjoying what you have and pushing yourself to achieve the next level. It can be difficult to strike, but it’s there. And the best growth is supposed to come by pushing yourself just barely out of your comfort zone.
• Enjoying the Journey: Because you never know when you’ll reach the next rung of the ladder, you have to enjoy the process. As long as you’re moving forward, you have something to be happy about. It’s not just the destination.

Where ambition ends happiness begins.
- Hungarian Proverb 

Take a minute to watch the above video. I think it captures something profound and inspiring.

For some reason in our culture failure is seen as this taboo that must be avoided at all costs, yet some of the the best in the world have failed many times over. There’s a classic Thomas Edison quote about inventing the light bulb:

I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps

-Edison

So it’s not really about failing, it’s more about when you give up. Maybe success is just around the corner?

The Dip

One of Seth Godin’s books is dedicated to this concept. He calls it The Dip, and it’s all about pushing through failure. As we all know, new projects are fun in the beginning, but the rewards lie for those that can push through the long hard slog at the end. Godin explains:

It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.

-The Dip, Seth Godin

Suck Less Everyday

I think the key is to suck less everyday. Start out knowing that you will suck and strive for 1% daily improvement. Pretty soon you’ll be amazingly good.

I remember when I first started running seriously — I really sucked. After running a couple of miles, I was winded. But I told myself that I would stick to a plan and run an increasing number of miles every week. Somehow, by the end of four months of solid training, I ran a marathon with a pretty good time.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure

One of my all-time favorite speeches is by JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series). She gave it at a Harvard Commencement and her subject was the “Fringe Benefits of Failure”. She talked about how she royally failed in the early part of her life:

So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

She was a huge failure, but she goes on to describe what she learned from that failure. It stripped away the inessential and let her focus on the only that ever mattered to her – writing. She says, that if she had been an astounding success at something else, she may never have sat down to write the novels we all know and love today.

In fact, I hear this all the time. Whenever I’m talking to people about taking time out to build a great software product they always talk about the fact that they’re making good money doing this or that and they don’t want to risk taking time out. They settle for the good rather than the great. By failing dramatically, Rowling didn’t have that option.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
-Confucius