# ambition.md

Ambitious ideas repel before they attract.

The bigger the idea, the more it threatens your identity. You wonder if you're the kind of person who could pull it off. So you flinch. Pick something smaller. Call it prudent.

This is how most lives get optimized for comfort by accident.

But there's a different path.

Some people find problems they can't stop thinking about — problems that would be worth a decade even if they failed. They're not braver than everyone else. They just found something that made courage beside the point.

Life is meant to be an adventure after all.

That's the trick: not forcing yourself to be ambitious, but finding the thing that makes ambition feel like the only option.

Where does that come from?

Not analysis. You can't spreadsheet your way to conviction.

It comes from taste — from time spent around people who've made the leap. From absorbing how they think until it shapes how you think.

The mission you choose determines the ceiling. Execution can't fix a small vision.

So choose carefully. Explore actively. Try problems, discard them, try more.

And when you find the one that won't leave you alone — the one you'd work on even if it might fail — commit. Not halfway. All the way.

This matters beyond any single company or career.

We live in a society that has grown complacent. Obsessed with preserving the old instead of building the new. Cultures need ambitious projects — or they decay.

Ambitious visions show us who we could become. The moon landing wasn't just about the moon. The Eiffel Tower wasn't just about the building. They were proof that there were still secrets in this world to be discovered. Proof that we could still reach for something beyond ourselves.

Without that, we merely exist. We manage. We preserve. And slowly, we forget that the future is something you create — not something that happens to you.

The world needs more ambition.

So build. Build frighteningly ambitious things.

– Michael

PS: If you're reading this, and your name is Martin – know that growing a frighteningly ambitious beard is now also on my list.