Firstly, let me preface this – there is nothing wrong with ambition. It is very important to always seek to better yourself and to make sure that you aren’t staying in a cushy comfort zone. I just thought id write this article as a bit of a warning to myself when future me starts getting notions and wants to sacrifice my precious time for some coin. Also, I’d like to help one or two people who are about to enter into the beginning of a Falling down Michael Douglas story-arch. For those of you who haven’t seen that film, please do yourself a favour and watch that masterpiece so you get the reference.
It is very easy to fall into the trap of ambition, though. Having done it myself and having come out the other side with a bit of my soul forever lost but, on the bright side, having gained some experience I think I’m entitled to give my two cents on the matter. Taking on responsibility is a great thing and I would encourage each and every one of you reading this to seek out some kind of responsibility in your life. Be it something as small as bringing Post from one floor to another in your job every day, all the way to being responsible for many different people in a team environment. It’s just important to realise that for every bit of responsibility you take on you have to sacrifice something.
Not everyone thinks about this before making decisions about their careers. In fairness it’s quite tempting to see the extra money and use that as reason enough to make a decision on your future career and as a consequence, your happiness. Being responsible for something means that you are ultimately going to have to sacrifice something, it could be small like an hour out of your morning completing a task. Or it could be something big like making sure that the money you may be responsible for is accounted for and all balanced. No matter how big or small your responsibilities are in the working world or beyond you’re going to be taking on a certain amount of stress in your life. Stress is one of the biggest silent killers in the world.
In a world where things aren’t getting easier and certainly not less complicated choosing to add more stress into your life in the form of a job promotion or extra work in general should be as big a decision as looking at how the extra money the said promotion will have an affect your bank account. For me, having gone through a stressful period of time in the past I have a tendency to make decisions about my career choices not only based on the monetary impact, but also how it will affect my overall stress levels and health in general.
Again, I’m trying to not be as preachy as humanly possible in this article and if you are going for a job promotion or some other thing in life where you are taking on more responsibilities, I would highly recommend you go all for it! I’m just saying, be cognizant of the fact that your stress levels will increase it’s just about how much you can tolerate, some people are designed to deal with more stress than others and I certainly wouldn’t suggest that there’s a ‘’one size fits all’’ approach to dealing with stress, I just think this hyper ambitious world we are in is not healthy for us and it really has a negative impact on everyone in my opinion.
It's important to note too that with stress comes aspects of your personality changing. You notice yourself reacting to situations differently. Where once you were cool, calm and collected you now find yourself panicking when dealing with situations you may not have been directly involved in but are now responsible for. You may also notice yourself becoming more cynical or volatile where before you probably would’ve made fun of people for behaving in such ways, now you are that person. these are the little gifts you get treated too when you take on more responsibilities, however, it’s important in a way that you do experience this in life because dealing with people gives you a broader perspective of how different people behave and you are not stuck in your bubble with the 10-20 people you deal with every day.
Life is going to come at you hard in so many different ways and choosing your struggles when you can is vital because when life throws a curveball at you and you are forced to deal with a struggle you didn’t choose you’re going to be even more miserable because you are now dealing with two piles of life’s delightful serving of shit that you will have to deal with at the same time. Hence the terrible aspects of your personality come to the fore even more because of the misery you are facing, welcome to the cycle of shite. so choose your battles where you can because there are battles coming around the corner that you can’t even see yet.
It's very important to not use stress as a crutch or excuse for laziness though, and it’s a fine balance between prioritising your mental health and not being a lazy useless p###k in your daily life. I’m by no means preaching the ‘hippy’ mentality of ‘its all good mahn just relaxxxxx’ mentality it is crucially important to work your ass off and help out everyone when you can in work and beyond. But the overall point I’m making is just make sure when you are making your next move that you take stress into account when you are deciding on what to do. Yes, money is great but just remember with more money comes more problems (and more taxes.)
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