Can You Teach Ambition?

There is no question that there are people that are naturally born with ambition and hustle. But the incredibly talented @KingBach posed a question for me the other day and asked if ambition can be a taught behavior:

This is the classic “Nature vs. Nurture” debate and my simple answer to this is “both.” I think both factors play a huge part in whether or not you or someone else becomes ambitious.

Even if you weren’t naturally gifted with having the go-getter DNA, you can create this behavior through adjusting your environment and the people you hang out with.

I’ve often talked about auditing your circle of friends and cutting out 2 or 3 negative friends to add in 2 or 3 positive friends. It’s the same concept here: when you want to become ambitious and a go-getter, surrounding yourself with those types of people will eventually cause that behavior to trickle down.

One of the biggest impacts on my career was when I first got into the Silicon Valley world and started meeting people like Mark Zuckerberg and Travis Kalanick. All these people were so committed to creating an app that changed the world, and all of them eventually did live up to that ambition. These all became the Twitters, Ubers, and Facebooks of the world. And surrounding myself with these people pushed me to the next level. I was motivated and inspired by them.

It is so so important to make sure to surround yourself with people that are ambitious to succeed in life because those characteristics will eventually trickle down to you. I’ve seen people on my own team become more motivated just by being surrounded by motivated people.

It’s an incredible strategy that I think could help take many of you a few steps forward 🙂