Ambition and Success

by Orison Swett Marden

One of the most difficult things one is called upon to do as the years pass is to keep his ambition from dying, his ideals clear and clean-cut, his interest in his work from getting stale.

The secret of keeping the ambition fresh and bright is in keeping up the interest. The artist who is in love with his work, no matter how old, never loses his zest, his enthusiasm. He goes to his canvas in old age with all the interest and eagerness of his youth.

Many men and women age through sheer laziness, mental inertia, indifference. They are only half alive. They are not willing to take the trouble to pay the price for perpetual youth, to keep their ambition from lagging.

Some people seem to think that the ambition to do a certain thing in life is a permanent quality which will remain with them. It is not. One of the first symptoms of age and deterioration in one’s work is the gradual, unconscious oozing out, shrinkage, of one’s ambition. There is no one quality in our lives that requires more careful watching and constant bracing up, jacking up, so to speak, than our ambition, especially when we are advancing in years, and do not keep in an atmosphere which tends to arouse one to life’s possibilities. Without realizing it, or meaning to, we then easily become victims of the human inclination to take things easy, not to exert oneself very much.

No matter how high our youthful ambition, it is very easy to let it wane with the years, to allow our standards to drop. The moment we cease to brace ourselves up, to watch ourselves, we begin to deteriorate, just as a child does when his mother ceases to pay strict attention to him and lets him have his own way. The tendency of the majority at every age of existence is to go along the line of least resistance, to take the easiest way. The race instinct to climb is continually at war with the lower nature which would drag it down. Even the noblest beings are not free from the struggle of the higher with the lower which goes on ceaselessly throughout nature. It is the triumph over the lower that keeps the race on the ascent.

There is no more pitiable sight in the world than that of a person in whom ambition is dead,—a man who has repeatedly denied that inward voice which bids him up and on, a man in whom ambition’s fires have gone out from the lack of fuel. There is always hope for a person, no matter how bad he may be, as long as his ambition is alive; but when that has disappeared, the great life-spur, the impelling motive is gone.

It requires a great deal and a great variety of food to keep the ambition vigorous. Unless it is well fortified it does not amount to anything. It must be backed by a robust will power, stern resolve, physical energy, and great powers of endurance, to be effective.

The habit of watching the ambition constantly and keeping it alive, is absolutely imperative to those who would keep from deteriorating. Everything depends on the ambition.

If we lived and thought more scientifically there would not be such a dropping of standards, such a dulling of ideals, and letting down in our efforts with advancing years.

Whatever our ambition may be, nothing else can be quite so precious to most of us as life, and we want that life at its best. Every normal person dreads to see the mark of old age, the symptoms of decrepitude, and wants to remain fresh, buoyant, robust, as long as possible. Yet most people do not take sensible precautions to preserve their youth and vigor. They violate the health laws, longevity laws; sap their vitality in foolish, unnatural living, in deteriorating habits.