Risk of Over-ambitionss

We live in a strange time, as technology has made many things possible. Although we never thought it to be possible, we are all eager to innovate, change, and improve, which is why ideas, creativity, and knowledge represent the world's most important resources.

New apps and services appear every day, all appear to be successful apps. I often hear people with big ideas say, “How hard is it to create a new app? You just need some ambition and creative thinking, and you'll have a great idea.”

Then they continue, “Hire an independent developer, launch the app, sell it, and then relax on the beach.” However, it's hard to succeed, yet people think that if they have a great idea, they can achieve anything they want.

This is not just talk, as we believe that we can get to what we want and achieve anything we seek, taking some famous people as a clear example, such as the founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, who, as you know, “started Facebook from his dorm room, and is now a billionaire,” or the founder of the chat app Snapchat, “Evan Spiegel,”  who became a billionaire at the age of 24, so it must be simple.

Great ideas don't guarantee success:

I won't tell you in this article that you can't achieve anything, as we have enough people who do. But on the other side, we have “over-ambition,” which can also backfire on you. It is an illusion to think that you can change the world before you provide the right conditions for you to make that change.

We often plan to achieve big things that are unique, things like, “I want to be the first person to do this,” or “I want to be the youngest person to achieve this.” 

Are we "geniuses" now because we have these great ideas?

Ryan Holiday wrote in his new book "Ego Is The Enemy" about the dangers of being overly ambitious: “It's dangerous for people to believe that they're geniuses, and even more dangerous when we let our ego suggest that we are so. The same goes for any label associated with a profession: Will you suddenly become a filmmaker, writer, investor, entrepreneur, or executive director because you made one achievement? These labels contradict not only reality, but the real strategy that made you successful in the first place. In this sense, we may believe that future success is just the next natural part of the story, when in fact it is rooted in work, creativity, perseverance, and luck.”

• Do you become an entrepreneur just because you have one good idea?
• Do you become a writer just because you published two articles?
• Do you become a filmmaker when you create a YouTube video?

When you start thinking that way, you may feel like you've actually succeeded. The biggest reward for most people is that they can call themselves a "founder", "owner", "writer", or any other nickname that seems beautiful.

But you're not what you write in your resume on Twitter or LinkedIn. No one cares, but we often follow appearances because it's the ego that speaks for us.

For me, I am thinking ambitiously, but I am also thinking about being practical. There is still a difference between work and dreaming, and no matter how big your dreams are, if you do not strive to achieve them, you will never achieve them. 

Start with small steps:

We live in a world where winning someone does not lead to losing someone else, so it is in everyone's interest to have people who have started to change the world, but why can't you change the world? It  does not require any special talent to change the world, but it requires hard work and determination. The American inventor Thomas Edison put it well: “There is no substitute for hard work.” However, success isn't about having a great vision, but it's about you, and about working towards your goal, even when no one is watching you, with focusing on work because dreaming alone won't benefit you.

Ryan Holiday, in "Ego Is The Enemy", writes about the reasons why we are often the worst enemies of ourselves when we exaggerate our ambitions, drawing lessons from different successful people who were incredibly successful but didn't exaggerate their ambitions before their achievements: "A few years ago, a co-founder of Google gave a lecture saying that the way companies and potential entrepreneurs are judged is by asking them 'if they will change the world', which is a good thing, but that 's not how Google started.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were two PhDs from Stanford University working on their theses, and that's not how YouTube started, - its founders weren't trying to reinvent television, but they were trying to share funny videos - it's not how most real wealth was actually created.”.

“The road to great achievements seems to begin with small ones,” says investor Paul Graham.

So, if big ambitions are not a good strategy, what is a good strategy?

When I study people called "successful", I do not see pride, but I see hard work. It is always about doing work and not having big dreams, people who say that the big dream, imagining, and hoping for great achievements is a good strategy, they always have something to promote, but if these things worked, everyone would be great, but you can't achieve anything based on your good intentions.

In conclusion:

As the American industrialist Henry Ford once said, “You can't earn a good reputation based on what you do next,” and you can't get any results through big ambitions without working hard every day. Ultimately, the results are the most important, not the words.