Ambition, personal ambition and lazy intelligence

Are you ambitious? If you are not, no shame in that! Ambition is not for everyone: some of us just want to lead a pleasant life; feel free to move to the next blog post if you don’t care for ambition at all! If you are ambitious AND lazy intelligent, however, then this blog post is for you!

I thought lazy intelligence was about working less, you might say, not about being ambitious and working more. Common wisdom states that ambition and hard work goes hand in hand – that the ambitious work more than the non-ambitious. This is wrong! The ambitious maximizes output, not work. If you believe in the theory of lazy intelligence, you see that based on where you are on the work output paradox graph, the output might actually be maximized by working less.

There is indeed no contradiction between lazy intelligence and ambition. In fact, there is another more potent side to the coin: for those of you who do have or want ambition, it may go hand in hand with lazy intelligence.

The lazy intelligent can supercharge their output with personal ambition

If you want to achieve something in your life, lazy Intelligence is all fine on its own. But the real magic happens when you pair it with ambition. True achievement is usually not unlocked by lazy intelligence or ambition alone; lazy intelligence makes space for expansion, and ambition alone only creates direction and drive. It is the combination that lets the direction take the created space, and the constraint of not overworking forces creativity and ingenuity to emerge! When lazy intelligence is multiplied by ambition, the result can be extraordinary.

In the lazy intelligent, extraordinary results can be achieved by those who have ambition: an ambition to do good, create a home for your family, be free or making a cancer test. No matter, the ambition can be anything, as long as it is true and personal.

Personal ambition is the 80/20 of ambition

Why do I believe in personal ambition as opposed to ambition. And what is the difference anyway? Ambition needs to be personal for it to be a real ambition. If it isn’t personal, it is not an ambition all. It is likely a mere imitation of someone else’s ambition, or something you have fabricated in your mind. Personal ambition can sustain you when nothing else can, but only if it is truly yours. If it is someone else’s or imaginary, it will only drive you for as long as the other person is able to act through you or as long as the illusion remains intact. The personal ambition is rooted deep within you, developing and growing in your subconscious since the day you were born. If you are able to conjure it forth, grasp it and cling on for your life!

But what if I don’t have ambition? Or if the ambition is wrong? Will I then not be able to achieve as a lazy intelligent? Worry not, for ambition is not a goal in itself, and you should only be ambitious if you want to! Achievement and creativity may indeed be unlocked by lazy intelligence alone. Remember though that if you want it, an even higher form of ingenuity can be unleashed in the lazy intelligent with the help of personal ambition. If you don’t have ambition, it is likely not for lack of wants, and if you have that nagging feeling that your ambition is wrong, it might just be! In either case, you may not have taken time to develop, discover or clarify your ambition, or it may be hidden in what Carl Gustaf Jung calls the Shadow. Search for your personal ambition! Find it! Something magical might happen.