Growing up, I could never understand the adults around me. They worked jobs they only complained about, lived for weekends, and counted down their days until retirement. They'd complain about their circumstances, but never took action to change them.

If I were to ask why they stayed, their answers would have always been predictable: the bills, the mortgage, the kids' college fund. These were practical reasons, certainly, and practicality I did and do admire. What bothered—and confused—me was the seeming resignation.

Now, as an adult, if I had to name in one word what I believe these people all lacked, I would say: mission. These weren't people who had aimed high and fallen short. They were people who had stopped aiming.

They'd traded aspiration for security, possibility for a comfortable, too well-worn routine. And they seemed to think this was normal, even virtuous. Ambition, if they thought about it at all, was something vaguely unseemly, something badly selfish.

I couldn't accept that. I still can't. Because these people got ambition1 exactly backward.

Unfortunately, they’re far from the only ones. Most people regard ambition as a vice when it should be understood as a virtue, provided one is ambitious toward the right things.

The crisis of ambition

Ambition has been wrongly maligned. Though it ought to be celebrated as the engine of progress and self-improvement, it's more likely to be associated with ruthlessness, workaholism, or hollow status-seeking. Too many people are suspicious of those who want more, who insist on ever higher standards, who refuse to be satisfied with what they have.

It must be said, the suspicion of ambition isn't entirely unwarranted. Psychological research confirms what most of us intuitively know: ambition directed toward external markers of success—wealth, fame, status—may predict career achievement but has little relationship to life satisfaction or well-being. Timothy Judge's longitudinal study2 tracking hundreds of people over seven decades found that ambitious individuals weren't significantly happier than their less driven counterparts. When ambition fixates on money, recognition, or power, it becomes a treadmill that never delivers lasting fulfillment.

But the solution isn't to abandon ambition. It's to redirect it toward what actually matters, toward what Abraham Maslow3 called B-values, or Being-values.

Maslow's B-values: the eternal verities

In his later years4, Maslow turned his attention to what motivated people who had already achieved self-actualization. What drives someone who has satisfied all their basic needs—physiological, safety, belonging, esteem? His answer was profound: they're motivated by values that transcend self-interest.

Maslow identified fourteen Being-values that self-actualizing people pursue: truth, goodness, beauty, wholeness, aliveness, uniqueness, perfection, completion, justice, simplicity, richness, effortlessness, playfulness, and self-sufficiency. He called these the "eternal verities": universal values that exist both within and beyond the self.

Unlike deficiency needs, which drive us when something is missing, B-values represent what Maslow termed "metaneeds"—the ultimate level of human motivation. When someone pursues beauty, they're not trying to fill a deficit. They're expressing their highest nature. When they pursue truth or justice, the satisfaction doesn't lie "within their own skin," as Maslow put it. These values transcend the geographical limitations of the self.

This is the key distinction: ambition toward B-values is fundamentally different from ambition toward status or wealth. One expands your sense of self. The other constrains you.

Two kinds of ambition

Research in Self-Determination Theory5, pioneered by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, provides a framework for understanding this difference. They distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, or what we might call ambition from within versus ambition from without.

Extrinsic ambition is driven by external rewards: the salary, the title, the recognition, and the social media followers. These goals are what psychologist Tim Kasser6 would consider "extrinsic aspirations": pursuing wealth, fame, and attractiveness. Studies consistently show that people motivated primarily by extrinsic goals report lower psychological well-being, even when they achieve those goals. The satisfaction is brief, never quite enough, always demanding more.

Intrinsic ambition, by contrast, is driven by values like personal growth, deep relationships, and the pursuit of knowledge, what Kasser would call "intrinsic aspirations." These align remarkably with Maslow's B-values. When ambition is directed toward these ends, it becomes a source of sustained well-being rather than chronic dissatisfaction.

This difference isn't merely semantic or philosophical; it's psychological. When we're intrinsically motivated, we experience enhanced creativity, deeper learning, and greater persistence. We enter flow states more readily. We're more resilient in the face of setbacks because the motivation comes from within rather than depending on external validation.

The psychology of healthy ambition

What makes ambition healthy or unhealthy isn't its intensity but its direction. The determining factor is what psychologists call the "superordinate goal7": the ultimate aim that organizes all other pursuits. When that goal is extrinsic—gaining recognition, accumulating wealth, achieving status—ambition can become pathological. People sacrifice relationships, health, and integrity in pursuit of goals that, even when achieved, leave them empty.

But when the superordinate goal aligns with B-values, something different happens. Ambition toward truth doesn't diminish with achievement; it deepens. Pursuing beauty doesn't end when you create something beautiful; it opens new vistas. Working toward justice doesn't conclude when you right one wrong; it reveals the next frontier.

This is what Maslow meant by "metamotivation"—motivation that transcends ordinary needs. Self-actualizing people don't work less hard than others; they often work harder. But they don't experience it as drudgery because their effort serves values they genuinely care about.

The courage to be dissatisfied

Here's what I've come to understand about those adults who puzzled me as a child: they weren't wrong to seek security. They weren't wrong to provide for their families or to honor their responsibilities. What they'd lost—or perhaps never found—was the courage to remain dissatisfied with mere survival.

There's a particular kind of courage required to maintain ambition in a world that constantly counsels contentment. Not the contentment that comes from gratitude and presence, but the resigned contentment of lowered expectations. The voice that says: “Be realistic. Don't reach too high. This is good enough.”

But good enough for what? If we're ambitious only for comfort and security, then, yes, perhaps there's a point at which we should be satisfied. But if we're ambitious for growth, for contribution, for the realization of our potential—if we're ambitious, in other words, toward B-values—then "good enough" becomes a betrayal of what we could become.

Maslow observed that self-actualizing people maintained what he called "healthy dissatisfaction." They appreciated what they had while simultaneously reaching for more, not more possessions or status, but more understanding, more beauty, more justice, more aliveness. This isn't some restless dissatisfaction born of inadequacy. It's a generative dissatisfaction born of possibility.

Ambition as a moral need

If this sounds demanding, that's because it is. Ambition toward B-values isn't easier than ambition toward wealth or status—it's harder. External markers provide clear feedback: your salary increased, your follower count grew, and you got the promotion. B-values offer no such certainty. How do you know when you've achieved enough truth, enough beauty, enough justice?

You don't. That's the point. B-values are infinite in their depth. You can always understand more, create more, and contribute more. This infinite quality is precisely what makes them worthy of sustained ambition. And here's where ambition becomes not just psychologically healthy but morally necessary. If we're ambitious only for what’s “within our skins”, for our comfort, our security, our status, we remain small. Our growth stops where this limited self-interest ends. But when we're ambitious for values that transcend the self, we become capable of genuine contribution, and expand what our concept of “the self” contains.

Maslow recognized this. He saw that self-actualization involved meaningful service to self AND to society. People operating at their full potential, pursuing B-values with genuine ambition, are the ones who solve complex problems, create enduring beauty, advance human understanding, and work toward justice.

The world doesn't need more people content to coast through life and/or die out in quiet desperation. It needs more people willing to aim high, not for wealth or fame, but for excellence, understanding, and contribution.

The mission you choose

Looking back, I realize what disturbed me about those resigned adults wasn't their choices but their lack of choice. They'd drifted into their situations rather than steering toward them. They'd accepted a default path rather than charting their own.

Mission isn't something that happens to you. It's something you create through the values you choose to pursue. And ambition, properly understood, properly directed, is how you sustain that mission over a lifetime.

The virtue of ambition lies not in wanting more, but in wanting more of what matters. Not in reaching higher for its own sake, but in reaching toward truth, beauty, justice, wholeness, and aliveness. Not in refusing contentment, but in refusing to settle for less than what we could give and who we could become.

Notes

1 The ambition spectrum: from survival to transcendence at Meer.
2 On the value of aiming high: The causes and consequences of ambition at APA PsycNet.
3 A quest to become fully human at Meer.
4 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – the sixth level at The British Psychological Society.
5 Self-determination theory at Center for Self-Determination Theory.
6 Materialistic Values and Goals by Tim Kasser.
7 How Focusing on Superordinate Goals Motivates Broad, Long-Term Goal Pursuit: A Theoretical Perspective at Frontiers.