The most powerful expression of you emerges in the absence of your idea of you—in the non-judgemental loving acceptance of who you are, just as you are. This is difficult to attain for most of us. We resist who we are in many different ways, both conscious and subconscious.
We think we should be better, fitter, richer, slimmer. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The desire to grow, explore oneself and what’s possible in life is, for me, the essence of living. Ambition is beautiful. But ambition originates from two very distinct places—non-acceptance or curiosity—and they each create very different experience of life.
Avoidant vs. creative ambition
Ambition which stems from non-acceptance is avoidant ambition. If this is the reason someone wants to change, they are driven by not wanting to be who they are. In other words, by resistance and judgement of themselves. This is the default state for most people.
If, however, the desire to grow comes out of curiosity, then you’re in the energy of acceptance. You’re playing with life. This is creative ambition. Creative ambition is borne out of allowing ourselves to be who we are, as we are, while remaining curious to what other expressions of ourselves there may be. There’s no attachment, no investment, no onerous stakes behind the impulse to explore other iterations of yourself—just the open-minded curiosity to find out what life is capable of.
Avoidant ambition comes out of rejection. Creative ambition comes out of love.
Avoidant ambition escapes, contracts, confines. Creative ambition opens, expands and liberates.
Avoidant ambition is low energy, while creative ambition is high energy.
Creative ambition is effortless—things happen easily. Avoidant ambition turns life into a struggle and makes it difficult to achieve what you want to achieve.
Avoidant ambition pushes away. It wants something not because it wants it, but because it doesn’t want something else. You want to be fitter because you don’t want to be fat. You want to succeed, because you don’t want to feel like a failure.
Essentially, you want to change because you don’t want to be you.
But the you that’s trying to achieve the change is the you that you don’t want to be. It’s the limiting version of yourself trying to get rid of the limiting version of yourself. In other words, the problem is in charge of providing the solution to itself. Real change is very difficult to happen when the problem is what’s trying to get rid of the problem.
The reason you want to change, which is the reason you don’t want to be you, is not because there’s something wrong with you—but because you have a story that there’s something wrong with you. You think you should be more of this, or less of that, more like such and such, and less like so and so. Less of your mother, more of your father, or neither of either.
And this, too, is part of your narrative. What is underneath that is who you really are, which is everything and nothing. All the qualities and none of them. It’s You. Not who your conditioning leads you to want to be, but who you are. Not who you think you should be, but who you are.
Who you are is unique. And that uniqueness is your essence, your superpower and the most expansive expression of you. You align with it when love yourself as you are. Ironically, this is when change comes—when you stop wanting to change.