You Do Not Have to Be Extraordinary

Years ago, I attended a friend’s birthday lunch. The conversation eventually turned to our post-college plans. I was an arts student. Because of this, everyone assumed I would prepare for the civil services exams. It is a classic stereotype. I mentioned I had not decided yet. But I knew I was definitely not taking that route. A friend laughed at this. He joked that "settling down" was always an option if I lacked real ambition. He equated ambition strictly with competitive exams or climbing a career ladder. I kept quiet. But his comment triggered a lot of overthinking. What exactly bothered me? Was it the assumption that my ambition was small? Was it the casual downplaying of a simple life? Or was it just the realization that I was an oddball? Now we are in our late twenties. The landscape has changed. Most of my friends are married. Some have kids. Others are climbing the corporate ladder. They seem to have achieved the goal of being "settled in life." I am nowhere near that. Yet genuine fulfilment seems rare when we talk.  Surprisingly, I am in a much better and more peaceful place in life than them. Maybe not financially but emotionally, spiritually, and physically, too. This makes me wonder. What exactly is ambition? How much of it is enough? And who gets to decide the rules of a successful life?

Society has a very rigid and exhausting definition of ambition. We are sold an illusion. We believe that finally reaching a goal will automatically make us happy and successful. This could be getting a promotion, buying a house, or securing a title at a particular age. We are taught to normalize bad habits to get there. We romanticize sleep deprivation. We glorify skipped meals. We wear burnout like a badge of honor. We are conditioned to willingly endure this struggle. But it costs us our peace, our relationships, and our personality. We slowly hollow ourselves out. We just believe the destination will be worth the damage. But the science of this hustle culture tells a darker story. A 2021 study by the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization found that working 55 or more hours a week is linked to a 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of heart disease. 

We are trading our actual lives for a made-up idea of ambitious success.

The main flaw in this hustle culture is treating human beings as a single mold. We might be similar. But we are not the same. Chasing a high-stakes corporate ambition is natural and thrilling for some people. But it is suffocating for others. Not everybody needs a six/seven figure salary and a 4 bhk house in a tier 1 city to feel secure. Not everyone needs to be extraordinary at academics or sports. You do not have to be fiercely competitive to justify your existence. We are heavily conditioned by this narrow version of success. We often do not even know why we do what we do. I see this firsthand in academic circle. I asked a few peers why they were doing a PhD. Eight out of ten had no real answers. They did not mention liking the subject, exploring research, wanting to teach, or not even personal growth. This makes me wonder. How can people spend four to five years of their twenties doing something they do not care about and surrounded by uncertainty?! They do not engage in meaningful discussions. They do not share ideas or help each other grow. Instead, they spend time in doomscrolling and complaining. No hobbies. No time for family or friends because they say they are too busy. But they are often doing nothing in the name of a degree. Their ultimate goal is just to wrap it up. Then they want to marry a well-settled partner and get a job they will probably hate. The loop just continues. It is a sad bubble to witness. We have a desperate need to stand out or just keep up. So we treat curating a perfect life or collecting titles as a new kind of ambition. We follow someone else's track just to avoid FOMO. This perfectly matches Rancho’s dialogue from the movie 3 Idiots: Sab race mein lage hain, aise first aa bhi gaye toh kya fayda? Exactly... What is the point?

We confuse what we actually want with what looks good to others. Psychologists separate goals into two types. These are extrinsic and intrinsic goals. Chasing extrinsic ambitions means wanting money, status, or approval. This often leads to lower well-being and higher distress (Kasser & Ryan, 1996). Sometimes highly ambitious people do achieve career success. But they are only slightly happier. They also do not live any longer than their less ambitious peers (Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller, 2012). True fulfilment actually comes from intrinsic ambitions like personal growth, meaningful relationships, and a quiet sense of community. 

This brings us back to the questions from that birthday lunch years ago. Does wanting a slow life mean a lack of drive? Does that make your ambition less important? The noise of society makes us believe that it does. We are conditioned to think ambition only counts if it is loud, corporate, or rich. A quiet and slow life is a equally valid ambition. Good and bad ambitions are highly subjective. Who gets to decide the rules of a successful life? Your vision of a good life might look different from the norm. That does not make it any less worthy of pursuit.

The writer Nadia Meli recently captured this perfectly in her substack. We need to step back. We need to heal from the pressure to constantly prove our worth. When we do this, the obsessive need to climb the ladder disappears. We realize something important. Much of what we call the hustle is just fear. It is a response to the fear of being ordinary or left behind. You can choose to step away from the crowd. You can build a slow and intentional life. This is not a lack of ambition. It is simply a different kind of ambition. You need to stand still in those choices and stay grounded in what actually brings peace. This requires much more bravery than blindly being part of the race you never cared about. Ambition can just be a quiet and steady pursuit. It can be a life that feels good on the inside. It does not have to be a life that just looks impressive, picture perfect on the outside. Most importantly, 

you do not have to be extraordinary to live a fulfilled life. 

You can have a quiet and ordinary life. It can be filled with peace and the people you love. You can actually have the time to enjoy them. This is a beautiful ambition all on its own.

References

Judge, T. A., & Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D. (2012). On the value of aiming high: The causes and consequences of ambition. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(4), 758–775.

Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (1996). Further examining the American dream: Differential correlates of intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(3), 280–287.

World Health Organization & International Labour Organization. (2021). Global, regional, and national burdens of ischemic heart disease and stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours for 194 countries, 2000–2016: A systematic analysis from the WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury. Environment International, 154, 106595.