Do Ambitions Change?
Time to read: 4-5 mins
Fatherhood brings huge question marks to what ambitions I have moving forward. The majority of my ambitions were personal, creating maximum wealth and progression through work or physical fitness targets to hit at different ages. Whilst being a great partner was a goal, it was almost a bi-product of my personal ambitions being completed which brought me happiness and contentment.
Age and maturity brought different perspectives and along with getting married, living abroad and most recently, parenthood, the ambitions I set had become more about what we could achieve together as a family vs alone. This shone a big mirror on my previous ambitions and how they served the family vs me personally. Sure, financial security is a critical foundation, but my career was far more than that (especially as we lived well within our means).
It was a personal drive to succeed and compete in a global organisation which meant huge amounts of time away from the family and a lot of mental head space that took me away from family life. Similarly, physical fitness ambitions had become more extreme too, venturing into ultra marathon training which took heaps of time and also recovery (it’s difficult staying awake at dinner with 6 hours of exercise in your body).
So Fatherhood posed a simple question, what the hell did I want from my life? What were my ambitions? Just recognising this question was a success as I was starting to come off ‘autopilot’ and enter into a conscious questioning of whether my current ambitions served my future desires. I started by researching any framework or tips for being able to answer this question. I started to pivot the books and podcasts to similar topics and eventually mustered the courage to see a therapist once a week who was a big enabler to helping me pose and answer more questions. In short, what I learned was condensed into this life advice clip
‘Try everything in your twenties, find out what you are good at in your thirties, make money from what you are good at in your forties, rest in your fifties’.
I think in many ways, that becoming a parent just accelerates the pace in which you ask these questions, and like many others, becoming a parent in my thirties meant that working out what I’m great at was the most important step to seeing if my ambitions were changing. I found order & chaos in my defined ambitions. I’ve framed them below:
| When my ambition was formed |
Ambition | My Action |
Parenthood Changed it how… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early 20s |
Keep a close connection to family & friends |
Be there for the big moments, stay in contact regularly |
Be ruthless with time, the amount of time I had reduced and therefore who is in my circle gets narrower |
| Mid 20s |
I want a successful career |
Worked tirelessly to gain a senior career at a FTSE100 company |
As the amount of time and energy needed to continue this will have to be taken from another area |
| Late 20s |
I want to be physically fitter than most people |
Train to compete in ultramarathons |
Time training and competing was now too extreme and being physically fit enough to run a marathon with my son when he is 18 is my new goal |
| Early 30s |
Be a great husband |
Do what my wife tells me to do! |
Jokes aside, our relationship becomes even more of a partnership where we need to have excellent communication & trust to achieve our personal & collective ambitions |
| Mid 30s |
Be a great father |
Bond, be present and don’t miss the small things |
The prioritisation of my previous ambitions changed in a way I didn’t expect |
Most notably the prioritisation of my ambitions had shifted away from personal goals to more family centric ones. This was scary as it made me actively reflect on 20 years of progress and what the purpose of it was, especially work where it's particularly difficult to stop and reflect on what I do for a living. It was also difficult to accept that I wasn’t alone anymore and by letting others, even my closest tribe, join my ambitions I was ceding control in the input and output. Above all, I knew it was right to start to evolve and question my own thinking. I wanted to avoid looking back and using lines like ‘I worked so hard for the family’ when really I did it for me. It's fine to do things for yourself, just critical you know why you are doing it so you don’t create disconnects in your family dynamic.
So did ambitions change? In my experience, absolutely. Is that scary to accept? Yes! But once I reached this point, the other actions felt downhill and gave me an instilled confidence that I was working towards a future that could be even better than the present. Below you will find related articles on work and movement which provide further detail on how to maintain quality in both, even when parenthood leaps ahead as the priority.
Zoe’s response
This is a complex subject and one I believe we will be producing more and more content on. I really like the way Greg has marked it out so clearly and also his tips on how you can differentiate what you are doing for you vs the family (both are fine!). For me my ambitions haven’t shrunk (and I don’t think Greg’s have either) but instead have become more focused on doing meaningful work and creating a lasting impact. I question norms of company politics and systems much more than I did before children.
For that reason I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sit tight in a corporate job again and do things how they’ve always been done because that’s how I’ll slowly climb the ladder. So for me, ambition has changed, morphed kind of, and the way I want to reach my goals at work has become much more creative.
TAKEAWAYS:
My ambitions shifted from personal to collective. This realisation made me question the validity of my ambitions in life and work. Getting to this is a great starting point.
Understanding what you are great at helps. At the centre of parenthood is YOU, understanding how you can positively impact your family and friends is the cornerstone of being a great parent.
Prioritisation of ambitions was the biggest shift; being honest with yourself is the biggest enabler. Parenthood changed the role each ambition played vs totally changing my mind. It gave me renewed confidence on what role I needed different areas to play.
