But sometimes it begins with pain. It begins with a tale they do not like to recall without a glass of whiskey. 

It’s not always confidence. It can be the fear of what would happen if they don’t go on. Don’t move forward for even one second. There is a difference between wanting a better life for yourself and feeling as if there is no choice but to build one.

Alas; from the outside, those things can look the same.

Late nights working can make you look disciplined. Constant planning can look like motivation. Refusing to settle can look like confidence in your future. But there's always that underlying fear of returning to the life you walked away from, or disappointing the people who believed in you, or realizing how tired you've become. That's a part people tend to overlook.

People don’t always chase success because they feel they can, or deserve it. They may do it because they remember what it was like to be stagnant in life, to have nothing in your hands. Maybe because they were always compared to someone else. A quote I would like to draw attention to from the animated series of Arcane, created by  Christian Linke and Alex Yee, portraying a character with an ambitious personality;

“I grew up knowing I’m less than them.” 

For some people, it’s as simple as that. Something so wrong they’ve accepted and went to go against. So they began to prove themselves. First to the people, then eventually to themselves. And the second that proving yourself became a part of your existence, it got hard to tell when you were allowed to stop. You get the promotion but immediately started questioning the next. You reached the desired weight, and decided to lose a little more.

Regardless, maybe... the problem isn’t that you're not grateful, it’s that you're simply tired. Not the kind of tiredness that comes from not sleeping for two days, or from constant stress. The kind of tiredness that comes from carrying on your shoulders what would have drowned someone who hadn't grown with the burden.

Because there is this strange kind of exhaustion that comes from building a life that you can be proud of when it's tied to the idea that you're worth it. Because when ambition is a part of your self worth, you don't celebrate anything you accomplish because your mind automatically moves on to the next thing that's already not enough.

And people might even praise you for it. Something that unfortunately only makes you consider this to be the right path. Because they will look at someone and say "Oh but you're so ambitious!" or "Focused". That you are determined, hardworking, all things of the sort. A healthy mindset (highly debatable, really). They look at your constant work and dedication to a path and wonder how you do it because they couldn't. They don't see what it looks like for you to be completely alone. The nights where you wonder if any of it is giving you what you wanted.

The difficulty in giving yourself a rest and taking it easy when your mind trained you to always do more. They don't see the way you begin to turn happy moments into chances to think of the future, or the next thing to do. They don't see that people who seem the most driven are sometimes the most afraid of slowing down. Afraid of just living in the moment.

And perhaps that is why ambitious people can struggle to enjoy the lives that they create for themselves. Because survival taught them to keep moving. If you grew up learning that stability can be stolen at any time, then it can feel odd to find yourself in it. It is impossible to not consider the potential danger. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be ambitious. Wanting isn’t the problem, it’s when you can't see the difference between ambition and running away from yourself.

Especially when ambition has been a big part of who you are. You need to ask yourself who you are at your core, what controls you. Because what happens when you get the life that you worked so hard for becomes nothing more than an obsolete dream. Do you realize maybe, that all the pain that fueled you for so long never left you?

That doesn't mean it wasn't a good dream. It just means you were never meant to be a shoulder for all of it. You were allowed to want a better life. You were allowed to be successful. To grow beyond the life that made you feel powerless. And maybe you were also allowed to heal yourself without another accomplishment to remind you of your worth.  

Perhaps ambition can eventually grow into something else. Something that doesn't come from burning yourself up trying to convince the world that you're worth something. Something that doesn't exist to outrun the past. Something that isn't a punishment for not being enough yet. Maybe it can simply become wanting to see what you're capable of when you're not trying to survive every second of your life and enjoying the moments in between. Because some of the most ambitious people carry pain nobody can see. And they do such a good job, you don’t realize just how heavy the burden is. 

So rest your shoulders, and for your own sake, be sure to live your life the way you want to. Do not chase the false idea of a dream that is nothing more than an accomplishment meant for you to view your worth of.