People Who Dare to Change Are More Ambitious Than Those Who Don’t
Even if they end up poor, working in their basement or moving to a van (at first)
Obviously, if you really like what you are doing and feel meaningful and energised by life every day, no change is needed.
I have written about changes before, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea that the only cool to do in life, even during an existential crisis, is to quit your job and jump the ship.
But for people who are stuck and waiting for the weekend to come every day, my question is why aren't they making changes.
Is it that fun to be complaining all the time? Is it enough to make you happy just by complaining?
I attribute this inertia to two reasons, and then I tell you why a bit of ambition in life is needed to kick start a lifestyle redesign, and how we can do it.
The two reasons for inertia
I quit my job, left London, moved down to Brighton and into a van recently. People I know went ballistic, especially my parents. It just seemed a ridiculous thing to do because, they asked, how am I going to fund my retirement, and secondly, where am I going to pee in the van.
Practical questions, they seem like.
In fact, these questions aren’t practical at all, they are biased and limiting. They create an atmosphere of fear and inertia. But if you consider these practical questions (which I did), you will see that they are either too ‘what-if’, or too easy to solve.
Most people ask me these questions because they honestly think these are obstacles to making changes in life. They can’t see the solutions to most things and they are limited by not seeing the solutions.
This explains the two key reasons we have inertia — fear and lack of imagination.
Fear — easier to solve than you think
Many years ago, I got baptised. We were put in these classes to learn about Jesus, and the teacher told me why she became a Christian.
Apparently, it was because she had a massive fear of death and by becoming a Christian, she was happy to know that after she died, she would be heading to heaven rather than a vortex of nothing.
I was very confused. Her fear was so real for her, and she was putting a plaster called God and a theory of post-death life to this fear. I didn’t attend any more classes with her because she wasn’t ready to have more clarity about her fear.
Our fear can only be solved when we face it, and diminish its power with our own hands, not with Jesus’ hands. Whether there’s heaven after death or not is not the point, the point is our fear needs to go away even if we don’t know if there’s heaven after death.
It’s the same with quitting your job, starting a new business, or whatever changes you are inching to execute. Our fear is most likely a fear of failure, a fear of being in a horrible position, worse than not changing.
So don’t cover your fear with a job that’s better paid, or trying to get pregnant with a partner that you don’t love. Those plasters won’t give you a better life, only by dissolving your fear can you live authentically and bravely.
Lack of imagination — that’s harder to solve
Just to complicate the matter further, our lack of imagination is also the reason why we don’t dissolve our fears properly. Because we can’t imagine how.
To ask people with a limited mind to become imaginative is hard. It’s like asking them to create magic without magic. They can’t see the fact that magicians have no powers, they just have imagination and skills.
That’s why people love Harry Potter, someone else is creating fantasies for them.
One of the good ways to expand one's imagination is to see the outside world more.
As a social anthropologist, I have learned that other cultures do not necessarily perceive and assume things our ways. For examples, there are tribes who don’t have words for time, there are tribes who don’t consider miscarriage a big deal (not because they are cruel, but because they see souls and spirits differently).
Get yourself challenged by weird things, and ask yourself, are they really that unacceptable or crazy. Stop judging, think.
People who change are really ambitious
After 3 months, we finally have running tap water in the van. At that point, I questioned whether I had lowered my living standard given having running water should be expected in any developed countries.
But do you know how the water system works in your apartment and your county? You don’t, but I do. My boyfriend and I built this entire water system from scratch, including the faucet (they are made with copper). That’s ambitious.
As I left my super intense play-hard-work-harder job in the sitting and embrace work-life balance and the beautiful sea, I felt uneasy. I felt that given I managed a life of badass in the past, maybe I am undermining myself at this moment. So at the beginning of my transition, I worked till late every day. I felt that, as I have chosen a path of changes, I should work harder to make it worth it.
I was lost in the concept of hard work, simple life and ambition.
It’s perfectly fine to be very ambitious when you are leaving the standard path and live a life that’s fearless, limitless and by imagination. In fact, it’s essential to be ambitious.
We are practically going against a certain current in society, we are the early adopters, which is not always an easy place to be.
Bill Gates believes that there will be more people getting richer and embracing the rich country’s lifestyle (which practically means wastefulness). I guess for the next 50 years or so, that will be the case. However, I also believe that many people from the developed world will start to remove themselves from the ridiculous level of living and working for others, and chasing the endless goals of luxury.
I am an early adoptor in this regard, and more people are expected to follow in my footsteps. It’s not an arrogant statement, but a realisation that I’m totally stretching people’s imagination about what life is supposed to look like, along with many others.
Realising that, I began to find a balance between working normal hours, living a simple yet creative life, and be ambitious in spreading the words of intentional living as a content creator.
An ambitious person doesn’t need to work non-stop all the time (saying that I’m writing this at 9 pm), but it has to have the realisation that you are there to remove the fear within yourself and in others, as well as expanding your imagination to unexpected places.
Does this article mean something to you? Maybe that means you are ready to join the laid-back ambitious force that’s pushing the world in a better and more sustainable direction. I hope you can embrace this, and here are more articles from me about intentional living:
