Interlude: Putting Ambition and Motivation in their Proper Place

My intention with this piece is to challenge some of the commonly held conceptions about ambition and motivation. In the fields of leadership, psychology and personal development, these notions are held up as virtues to embody if one is to enjoy ultimate success, but in the description of how they may affect this outcome I believe a great substance is lacking. While some, who are more egocentrically inclined, think that they represent the ideal, I believe there are more potent and rewarding ways to orient ourselves in the world. With this, I offer some thoughts below about what distinguishes ambition from aspiration and motivation from inspiration. On the face of it, these terms appear to be interchangeable with each other but in their character they have differences that go beyond the semantic.

Ambition: This is what you want to achieve in the world, but who is the ‘you’ that is animating this drive for accomplishment? If we are honest in looking at the part of us from which ambition emanates, we will find ego at the centre of it. The proof of this is that much of our ambition revolves around the gratification of our personal and subjectively defined desires. We might want status, influence, the corner office, money and other material accruements, so we expend energy to bring these things to ourselves which enriches or strengthens our sense of self. The ‘goals’ we set ourselves are a means to these ends, even though we may rationalise that they are an end in their own right. It should be no surprise then that as we attain them, they feel unfulfilling because as we undertook the journey our doing was divorced from authentic being. The outlet for this ambition is most often a career. Of itself, it is not bad, especially if we achieve some positive things for others and the world along the way. It also beats having no drive to action or contribution beyond ourselves. We just need to realise its limitations and deficiencies relative to what aspirations involve.    

Aspiration: This is the basis of what animates a calling or vocation. It is what yearns to be affected through you. This makes it different than a goal in that it is not ego directed. An aspiration is something that you can’t not do if you are to breathe into life, and life is to breathe into you. This is literally the definition of what it means to aspire: the action or process of drawing breath. No coincidence! On this path, the journey to becoming is itself the reward, for who we truly are (our spirit) is given permission to animate our being and guide our action as we traverse the territory that is uniquely ours to take. Through affecting this integrity between being and doing, we find fulfilment within ourselves, beyond the lukewarm satisfaction that is the best of what ambition can hope to deliver. Aspiration bridges who we are now in this moment, with who we could be in the future, so this actualising pull is a key feature of what animates us as we move forward in our lives. Whatever material rewards we may accrue along this path are given their proper place and paradoxically, we often become better at bringing them to ourselves when we are inspired by a deeper purpose and its attendant feelings of love and passion for what we do. 

Motivation: The animating force behind motivation is in the word: motive. This motive is the reason why we affect a particular form of action. The implication of even having a motive is that there is an end in mind that we are seeking to realise. For what purposes though, and what part of us is being driven towards those ends? When we hear of people being extrinsically motivated, it is typically the same things that rouse our ambition which are sought to be captured from the world, money and power etc. Clearly, it is ego that is consuming us when we are so motivated, moving us outside of ourselves to bring back the objects that we perceive ourselves as lacking: counterfeit treasures. Intrinsic motivation is a different beast altogether and despite its reputation as a benevolent driver, I believe that often it is the same force of ego that animates this form of striving. We might be intrinsically motivated to find happiness because we want to feel good in the moment, and this can lead us to justify hedonic pleasure seeking as the means of accomplishing this. Others might rationalise the desire for financial independence, or doing good to appear virtuous, in similar ways. But what internal deficits or fears born of not having or being enough, do the meeting of these ends really work to assuage?

Inspiration: Is the best of what motivation hopes to be. When we are inspired, we are being animated and oriented by spirit. It is in the word: in-spir(it)ed. In contrast to motivation, which sees us force ourselves on the working of the world, when we are inspired, we ease into the flow of life to enact the virtues that are our essential nature and the purposes that constitute our calling or vocation. The highest vision of what humanity is capable of achieving is realised in this state. The best forms of art testify to this reality. What was animating the artist in the process of bringing those masterpieces to life? Were they motivated to make them happen, for fame, acclaim or wealth? No. Were they to even force the issue would guarantee a sub-standard outcome. Inspiration is allowing something much greater than you to work through you. This is what makes the fruits of inspiration beautiful, awe-inspiring and engenders them with the ultimate value. It also explains the attractive force (or charisma) which those who allow themselves to be animated by it have. The idols of the world are inspired agents and yet in our unconsciousness we are clueless as to why we place them on a pedestal. Could their embodiment of this ideal be why they are worthy of our attention and worship? When we become conscious of the true source of their standing, it becomes clear that we should answer that question in the affirmative.      

Vocational Lessons from the Slap Heard Around the World

Much has been said and written about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock upside the head at the Oscars ceremony last week, but after listening to a lot of this commentary, none of what I had come across focused on the vocational element which Smith raised in his acceptance speech for Best Actor. It is this aspect of his stage of life journey that I want to tease apart here as I think that it carries some important lessons that can help us avoid regressing on our own vocational path.

One of the first things that Smith said in his acceptance speech was “in this time in my life, in this moment, I am overwhelmed by what God is calling on me to do and be in this world…I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people. I want to be a vessel for love, care and concern.” Naturally, the sentiment of this message stood in stark contrast to the act of violence that Smith committed against Rock, so many were quick to discount the comment and point out the obvious hypocrisy. But in their haste to do this, they missed a valuable opportunity to take a deeper look at how a calling is manifested in our lives, and how it can so easily be subverted by the impulses of the ego.

When Smith said that he strongly felt this calling to serve this role, which was obviously informed by his fatherly portrayal of Richard Williams in King Richard, I didn’t doubt that he sincerely felt this way. About two months before the Oscars took place, I had finished reading Smith’s book Will (written with Mark Manson), which explained well in its later parts the personal transformation that Smith had experienced after (among other things) playing Muhammed Ali, developing a friendship with Nelson Mandela and the initial breakdown of his marriage to Jada Pinkett. What was clear towards the end of the book was that Smith had gained a greater spiritual clarity around his purpose as he moved into middle-age, and the role that earned him the Oscar was quite clearly an extension of that.

Evidently though, this gaining of spiritual clarity wasn’t enough to prevent Smith from losing control of himself and assaulting Rock on live television. So what happened then to lead him to do this? Naturally, none of us were in his head at the time so it is somewhat speculation, but in his book he does articulate some aspects of his psychology that would have explained his reaction to Rock’s joke. While it would be best to read the book to get a first-hand sense of these processes, I feel that I can extrapolate out from them some of the broader lessons for us here that we would do well to heed.

Firstly, we need to understand that while a calling is a path to the unfolding of our latent giftedness and virtuous potentiality, it is and can only be lived from moment to moment. None of us is, or will ever be, fully evolved. This means that we wherever we walk, the shadow of our ego walks with us, waiting for the time for us to indulge it so that it can take us over to give expression to its stored pain and base desires. By not staying present and centred in response to the joke that Rock told about his wife, Smith got triggered and reacted disproportionately to what Rock’s words and role as a comedian warranted. Even if the joke was insensitive given his wife’s alopecia (which I understand that Rock had no knowledge of), that still didn’t justify the act of violence that was committed. While I was initially very shocked and disappointed by Smith’s conduct, particularly given what I knew about his personal growth story, those negative feelings were mitigated by the recognition that we are all Will Smith in our most vulnerable moments. While we may not have acted out exactly as he did in the context that he did it, we can very easily engage in sabotaging behaviour that causes great harm when we lose ourselves in relation to our ego.

The second vocational lesson that I took from what happened is not to let the approval of others be the impetus for losing your way. If you look at the footage of the incident, you will see that Smith initially laughs at the joke told about his wife and appears to have no problem with it. It was only once he presumably (the camera pans away at this point) looks at his wife and sees her displeasure that he decides to get up and approach the stage. At that point, Smith effectively becomes the proxy for his wife’s agitation to unleash upon Rock. While not in any way being an excuse for his behaviour, I understand in part why he got triggered at that point. In his book, Smith wrote about how in his upbringing (i) he learned to associate both acceptance and approval with love, and (ii) his principal regret was not standing up to his father when he witnessed him physically abusing his mother. Upon seeing (i) the disapproval on his wife’s face and feeling in some way that he could earn her love by standing up for her, along with (ii) having the opportunity to right the wrong of the past by protecting the woman he loves, that was his moment to assuage those still-present wounds with calamitous results. I could of course be misguided with this, but what occurred did present a coherent picture after reading the book, and it does help us to place ourselves in a position where we can at least in some respect empathise with his fragility (which we all share).

As he concluded his acceptance speech, Smith referred to advice that he had been given by Denzel Washington in the aftermath of the incident. To Smith Washington had said “at your highest moment, be careful, that’s when the devil comes for you.” While being correct in saying that it is when we are swelled with arrogance and pride, we are most susceptible to violating our conscience, I don’t believe it is an external enemy (or devil) that is the true threat here. The true enemy is and will always be the shadow dimension of being that emerges when we allow ourselves to function unconsciously. As author Ryan Holiday so aptly titled one of his bestselling books, the ego is the enemy. Best we learn that lesson in the absence of the public ridicule that Smith will have to live down before he comes to the same conclusion.