How to be ambitious
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We hear about the negative effects ambition can have, and the tools you need to relieve them, with Neel Burton of Oxford University. Author Rachel Bridge defends the thesis of her book 'Ambition: Why it's good to want more and how to get it'. And what happens when you decide to re-direct your ambition? Joe Udo tells his story of becoming a stay at home dad.
Also in the programme, writers Elizabeth Schenk and Hana Wallace discuss the results of a project they launched looking at the careers of their old university sorority members. Plus, top tips on achieving your goals from Peter Gollwitzer, experimental psychologist at New York University.
This programme was first broadcast on 1 Aug 2017
PHOTO: Little boy in a superhero costume. Credit: Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think to live with ambition can be to live in fear and anxiety, unless, that is, the weight of our ambition can be relieved. |
| 0:20.6 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Marie Keyworth and the program today is all about |
| 0:25.6 | how to be ambitious. I like many people, was brought up to be ambitious. I tried hard at school, |
| 0:34.5 | went to university, got a job at the BBC and I'm privileged enough to be |
| 0:38.5 | talking to you on the radio right now. But I still want more. And this continuing need to |
| 0:44.9 | achieve has made me wonder if I'll ever be happy. So what is this ambition I'm feeling? And how |
| 0:51.8 | should I manage it? That's what today's program is all about. |
| 1:02.1 | Ambitiousness has a mixed reputation. |
| 1:05.0 | Back in 15th century Italy, Leonardo da Vinci warned of its dangers. |
| 1:10.2 | It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the prophet nor the beauty of the world. |
| 1:24.4 | Yet in her novel Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery had a much more upbeat message. |
| 1:30.8 | Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. |
| 1:33.3 | I'm so glad I have such a lot. |
| 1:35.5 | And there never seems to be any end to them. |
| 1:38.0 | That's the best of it. |
| 1:39.3 | Just as soon as you attain to one ambition, |
| 1:41.5 | you see another one glittering higher up still. |
| 1:45.6 | It does make life so interesting. Researching the wise words people have said about ambition through the ages is a lesson |
| 1:55.5 | in mixed messages. Is it good? Is it bad? And what are you supposed to do with it if you have it? So let's start |
| 2:03.8 | with a simple question. What is ambition? Neil Burton is a psychologist at Oxford University. |
| 2:10.6 | Let's look at the word itself. So ambition derives from the Latin ambizio, which is a going around |
| 2:16.9 | to solicit votes. |
... |
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