Ambition

I'm not sure what to think of ambition. On the one hand it seems to enable people to overcome incredible obstacles to achieve great things. On the other hand, someone who is overly ambitious seems to come off as annoyingly tedious and boring to me.

I read somewhere that Billy Graham was extremely ambitious, especially in his younger days. If true, I think it served him well. Every time he was on TV my mom used to ask me if I watched. "No, mom. He says the same thing every time." It takes a lot of ambition to preach the same thing for all these years and still be able to achieve incredible results. I don't mean to knock Dr. Graham at all. He sees his mission very clearly and he has stuck to it. I remember hearing him at a conference once. He started by saying he had stayed in a very nice hotel, was brought to the conference in a limo, and received a standing ovation upon walking out on stage. He said his fleshly nature loved it but his spiritual nature was embarrassed by it. I'm not sure what he meant but I liked it.

I have also admired John Maxwell's ambition. I saw him at a conference once where he arrived by air earlier that morning. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week but still got up and gave an outstanding performance. Here is a guy who has taken concepts that should be painfully obvious to even the dullest dullard and made them seem like something eye-opening. The fact that he is able to repackage those concepts over and over again is incredible. His content usually drives me nuts but I have to admire his ambition.

I think we sometimes mistake slowness as a lack of ambition but I think we've got it wrong. After all, my kid's apparently have the ambition to sleep in late and sit on the couch all summer. They are over-achieving.

So I don't know what to make of it. I think ambition is good for us but too much can be just as dangerous as not enough. I also think "what" you're ambitious about is far more important than just how much ambition you have.