Schools can educate but parents need to help create ambition in their children. But what is ambition and how to you promote this quality in a child? The dictionary calls ambition a desire to achieve a particular end. It may also be a wish for rank, fame, or power. It embraces the hope for personal advancement and often implies striving after something higher than oneself.
Being successful doesn’t just happen by accident. Some parents mistakenly believe that by giving a child everything that is asked for, the child will be happy, ambitious, and prosperous. It doesn’t usually work out the way the parent hoped for because what they didn’t provide is the opportunity for the child to struggle and enjoy the success that comes from self achievement.
The question of how to help a child get a “fire in the belly” in order to light the flame of ambition is one psychologists are struggling with. A family may find that one child has a great deal of energy and ambition, directing his own life, while another is willing to sit back and let life and chance be the moving force. In every culture there are some people who are more aggressive than others.
According to a Time Magazine Article by Jeffery Kluger in the November 6th, 2005 issue about ambition, Dean Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis Campus considers the question to be a complex one that includes goals and energy. Many people who have goals but no energy are dreamers not likely to succeed. There are also those with plenty of drive, goals, and energy who work 18 hours a day leading to heart attacks, and other social illnesses. Stress can certainly be a part of ambition.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, once the lower needs of food, shelter and safety are met, it is human to want more. With a sense of belonging and love a person moves to a higher plane; wanting achievement, status, responsibility, and reputation.
At Washington University researchers have been doing research in another trait that is vital to ambition, persistence. Persistance is the ability to stay on task and focused until it is completed. In my own life when asked what has led to my success the first quality that jumps to mind is persistence. Once an idea is in my head I find it difficult to let go, even when I fail. I often change approaches, trying time and time again until I succeed.
Researchers are saying that it is possible for even the unambitious to find ambition when the right opportunity comes along. Economists Lise Vesterlund of the University of Pittsburgh and Muriel Niederle of Stanford University have conducted tests with results showing that a main difference in ambition between men and women is how they like to proceed to the target. Men often thrive on individual competition while women dislike it and prefer to use a team approach.
The largest influences on ambition have to do with your family and culture. Parents who set challenges for their children, are willing to let them fail, and are there to applaud their successes help their youth develop self-confidence. Self confidence leads to a willingness to set new goals and take the associated risks. Persistence added to self confidence creates ambitions individuals.
In our country individual success has become our national ethos. In other societies group success is the main motivation and an individual who stands out is ostracized. If you are in a farm community that depends on help from neighbors it is important to develop a “help thy neighbor” attitude. In that circumstance if you stand out and are aggressive you may not receive the assistance you need in an emergency. Group ambition may assist our country in solving problems related to subjects like health care, energy, and global warming.
As parents, help a child develop a first small then larger challenge that at time involves him/her as an individual and at other times involves a group effort. Mix boys and girls in the group challenges to take advantage of different ways of problem solving.
Remind your children that failure is important and can lead to learning something about the subject and self. Encourage persistence in problem solving, and don’t make life too easy for your child. It is overcoming problems that is the challenge and fun part of life.
