Hope & Ambition
Ambition pushed me to go farther in life. When I think about my friends I grew up with and even watched from a distance, I felt that many of them were much smarter than me and far more capable, but what's allowed me to keep up or surpass them is my ambition. Not to say that ambition is purely for a egotistical self-satisfaction and comparison, but it is important to understand the context of your own story. Willingness to do the unconventional, take big swings, or finding opportunities where others can't is what allows one to grow. Ambition is a flame that must be maintained, every action either fuels that ambition or kills it. Personal sense of ambition represents hope for yourself.
It's easy for ambition to die. Life catches up with you, you want to travel, you want to get married, have kids, take care of your parents, pay off your loans, have a social life, etc. Ambition doesn't have to compromise all of those things, but it can certainly feel that way. Though a well paying job can seem like the answer to all your desires. Just one more promotion, or one more degree, can feel like the last step away from your big pay day with the nice title.
It was critical for me to maintain a high pain tolerance, and to optimize for the highest risk activity I can tolerate. It's about knowing yourself and what you can handle, but at the same time pushing yourself. The sweet spot is when there's some uncertainty in the outcome of what you're doing, but not to the point of self-ruin. Far too often, the mentality is that the opportunity cost of some illustrious name brand job that pays well is too big to give up. "I'll just be there for a few years and get that stamp on my resume, THEN I'll work on that ambitious thing…" though, they don't consider that the job, or 'golden handcuffs', smother that flame of ambition. Especially in tech, where it's not uncommon for my peers who only left university a few years ago to achieve $1m+ annual total compensation due to value growth of their equity package.
Exercising Ambition
I used to think that the way people lose their ambition is by being in a super cushy job, being worried about what other people think, or even just wanting to 'have a life' (get married, buy a house, have kids, etc). However recently I've come to find another axis which I underestimate and need to protect against which is simply losing hope.
The world is an ever evolving place, and especially when entering adulthood, it seems like the boundaries of life are more fixed, where the primary focus is the job or pursuit you have, and also maintaining some relationship or family life is the next most important thing. You try to have some fun along the way by being with friends, traveling, and buying nice things.
It actually takes very little to be comfortable in life, especially if you're not the type of person who likes to flex, or is obsessed with the finer things in life. A modest salary can get you most of the way there to stay in decent place, have some good food, and buy a few nice things.
I've long been a proponent of what can be described as 'progressive pleasures'. It's this idea that, to keep the ambition and hunger alive, it's beneficial to delay some of the sought after parts of life, like staying in a super nice place, driving a nice car, going on a crazy vacation, or going to Michelin star restaurants frequently. Dalton & Michael from YC put this well in their video "How to make the most of your 20s" saying, don't speed run life. Much of the chase in life is delaying gratification and reserving certain pleasures when you 'earn' them, however you want to set those goal posts for yourself.
Preserving Hope
Recently, I've been reading A Promised Land by Barack Obama, the literal poster boy of 'hope' and 'yes we can'. Naturally a central theme of his story is his hopefulness despite the odds stacked against him, and how he's embodied that value in his constituencies. I've come to learn that the core value of ambition is hope and optimism. It's hard to be someone ambitious, if you have a hopeless and pessimistic outlook in life.
Obama expresses this sentiment many times as he climbs the ranks of state senator and even during his time in Congress. Much of his young, and short career as a representative was spent as a 'rookie', only able to pass minor legislation and encountering many more failures along the way. He even became jaded about legislative politics, as much the work his colleagues were doing wasn't about progress or impact, but just for winning points in the next election. Obama's naiveté and optimism allowed him to see this reality very clearly, and was conscious of becoming a 'comfortable party democrat' who continues to play this game of politics. This, alongside some opportune 'prepared luck' launched him into seeking work as an executor, and finding promise in a presidential campaign. In a way, his accelerated rise to prominence in the political mind space at the time is what led to his rise to presidency, where a more 'traditional' career in politics may have never led to that point.
Preserving hope means starting small, defining incremental, achievable progress, and maintaining momentum. In the startup world, there's the common trope 'the overnight 10-year success' where exponential growth really happens by just working steadily, even linear progress, but results are achieved exponentially. Years 1-5 might look like a whole lot of nothing, but the team learns a lot, and steadily builds their ship. Once the ship really gets into the high seas after 5 or 6 years, they catch a huge tailwind that their ship can handle and take advantage of.
Getting repetitions in is what really matters. As a young programmer, this means lots of projects, building games, apps, scripts, or whatever scratches your itch, which is why the best programmers and founders are ones who can ship consistently. For a content creator it's producing something each day and putting it out. Hope and optimism is really only as good as your ability to execute on it, the longer it's delayed, the more the flame of ambition burns out.