Kind Ambition

Living the yoga principles of detachment and nongrasping doesn't mean you can't be ambitious. In fact, applying them to your goals can make you more successful and happier, too.

By Alison Stein Wellner

Not only is this more realistic, but it also helps you maintain balance. You stay focused on the present instead of on some future that may never become reality. It's tempting to say, "I'll be happy when I get to my goal." But if fate intervenes and you don't reach it, you'll be more than disappointed—you'll be bitter about the time you spent getting there.

Ironically, the reward for achieving this state of nongrasping is not only balance: It's also often success. When we release our iron grip on the results, we make it more likely that we'll be able to accomplish what we want to do, says Rita Costick, an executive leadership coach and a registered yoga teacher who is the co-owner of Not Simply Yoga, a company in Phoenix, Arizona, that provides coaching. "The irony is that if you are genuinely able to take a break from pursuing goals and take yourself to a place of calm, new ideas and new ways of looking at difficulties will come to you," Costick says. "It's a risk to just sit and be and breathe, but it's a risk worth taking."

Gaze Inward

To get to that relaxed state, though, you have to find a way to get in touch with what is happening inside you. Often, ambition severs the connection between the conscious mind, the body, and the whole life—you keep pushing until you're way past your limit. (See "Playing on the Edge".) The remedy is pratayahara, or drawing your awareness inward, Forbes says. This means tuning in to your own thoughts and physical sensations, instead of brushing them aside in order to focus on your goals.

John Dulmage, 57, spent 17 years in sales at the Xerox Corporation. The competition was intense. "The mindset was, you've got to make the goal, you've got to get that next order in," says Dulmage, who lives in Londonderry, New Hampshire. To make sure he wasn't tipping out of balance, he maintained a regular yoga and meditation practice before and after work. "I could start the day clear and focused, and be extremely aggressive in the use of my energies, knowing I would have another period of meditation at the end of the day," he says. In fact, his sales managers told him he was one of the most intense people on the team. His practice of turning inward, though, allowed the hard work to take less of a toll on his mind and body.

Of course, a good long inner gaze may reveal what you might not like to see. "There is the risk you'll find that what you're doing is not feeding you," Forbes says. One of her clients, a successful lawyer, "was conquering case after case after case. But when she stopped to reflect, she realized she wasn't doing what she wanted." The lawyer ultimately became an artist.

Yet even if a major shift doesn't happen, simply contemplating a more balanced approach to ambition can be frightening, Forbes says, as ambition is so tied in with our concept of self-worth. You may worry that taking a more measured approach will make you a slacker or that you will no longer be you. Such fears are generally unfounded, Costick says, because "you cannot change people. You cannot take ambition out of a person."

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