Your Ambition Is Not Enough

Why the most ambitious people I know are the quickest to ask for help.

The single biggest lie we're told about our careers is that if you just work hard and find your passion, you will be successful.

This is a comforting idea. It's also completely wrong.

When I was five years old, I had a globe in my room that I would spin for hours. I always thought about the ancient humans who first explored it. I wondered about the fundamental choice that split our ancestors into two groups: the people who decided to stay in the familiar village, and the people who decided to see what was over the next hill or across the water, even at great risk. I wondered who the first person was to actually go all the way around the Earth.

In middle school, I got my answer: Ferdinand Magellan. But it was only years later that I learned the full story. Magellan himself never made it. He died halfway through the journey in the Philippines. It was his crew, led by other navigators, who actually completed the first circumnavigation.

This is exactly how we idealize success. We tell a simp…