When Is Ambition Dangerous? 5 Signs Your Ambition Is Out Of Control

Our culture in America tends to put a hyper-focus on ambition and individual success. But is that a healthy thing? Should we be focused on success as much as we are? When is ambition dangerous?

Ambition is at its best when it’s like driving a car. Yield when it’s time to yield, go when it’s time to go, don’t try to go faster or slower than appropriate, let other people out when they’re stuck, and stay in your lane.

With that in mind, here’s how to tell if your ambition is dangerous.

5 Signs Your Ambition Is Dangerous

You’re willing to sacrifice relationships to get ahead
You stubbornly block progress because it’s not what you envisioned
You rush and go faster than appropriate, outpacing your opportunities
You bypass opportunities to be kind because your mind is elsewhere
You worry about other people’s achievements instead of your own

Imagine if traffic worked the same way ambition usually works. Think about how traffic works…

When you’re driving down the road and you approach a red light, you stop. You do that so people coming from other directions can get ahead of you on the road you’re on. Even though you’re allowing those people to go in front of you – and therefore “beat” you in the direction you’re going – you’ve decided that it’s best for society for us to work together in that way.

Is it frustrating? Absolutely. Especially when you have to be somewhere and you’re losing time by allowing other people to get in front of you.

But consider the alternative. Imagine if every driver decided they wanted to prioritize their progress over other drivers’. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if every driver started doing what seemed best to them in order for them to get to their destination the quickest.

There would be people driving in the grass, driving off the road, and zooming through red lights. It would be nearly impossible to change directions at an intersection. There would be more crashes and injuries and deaths than we can imagine. It would be chaos.

Now compare that to the current state of society. It doesn’t take long to see that we’re in a bit of a chaotic and unhealthy environment driven by individuals trying to either keep up or get ahead.

Does it seem like maybe we’ve started adopting an ambitious mindset a bit too much in our culture? I think so.

But that then begs the question: Is ambition good or bad?

Is ambition good or bad?

Ambition in and of itself can be a very good thing. Striving for personal growth and achievement in your life can certainly be a good thing. But it’s also entirely possible that, as a society, we’ve taken ambition entirely too far.

Ambition has always been, and is still today, best utilized with a healthy amount of submission to others.

What I mean is, we were created to serve, and we’re most fulfilled when we’re serving. An 80-year Harvard study found that the number one key to happiness is found in giving your time and energy to others through relationships. That’s at the heart of service, and it’s why we’re drawn to help one another even when it seems we have nothing to gain.

If service is where you’ll be most fulfilled, then submitting your will and ambition to the higher goal of serving others is what will keep your ambition in a healthy place.

This service-first mindset is what keeps relationships healthy and families whole. When you put aside what you want in order to do what’s best for the whole (which is service), you actually end up getting what you want.

It’s one of those weird Jesus paradox things. When you give up putting your desires first, you become fulfilled in putting your desires in helping other people get their desires. Then, in a weird turnabout mind-bender, you end up getting what you desire. It’s pretty cool how God made us.

But for some reason, we’ve lost that line of thinking in our culture. And it should come as no surprise that at the same time that self-centeredness is becoming more prevalent, we’re also seeing more mental health issues than ever before in our society.

We’ve lost our sense of community and service for one another, and we’ve found that the lack of connection leaves us empty – no matter how much we achieve or attain personally.