How Ambition and Self Awareness Can Work Together (Joe Hudson)
I wish I knew this 5 years ago
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Will I lose all ambition if I really go all in on my self awareness and spiritual journey?
Is having ambition incompatible with my spiritual growth?
If I really go all in on this inner work thing and I am going to be POOR AND UNSUCCESSFUL!?
This is one of many monologues that replayed in my head in the early days of my consciousness journey.
Are these ruminations actually true? nNo.
Transformation can often be accompanied by the pattern of polarized thinking. Polarized thinking is when we view things in absolute terms finding little ground for co-existence and harmony. It shows up as perceiving things as black and white, good or bad, right and wrong etc. This is a fractional perspective created by a patterned view.
Maybe at one point in our lives we were incredibly ambitious thinking getting things outside ourselves was going to solve all our problems. We get some of those things, feel a transient sense of well-being, and continue on the hamster wheel chasing the next thing. Eventually, we realize the inherent conditionality and hollowness to this approach.
At this point, we may swing in the other direction becoming obsessed with inner work to solve the sense of void in our lives while believing that anything that resembles your previous paradigm like ambition is bad or incompatible.
This is a limited perspective created by polarized thinking.
How to find harmony between aligned ambition and your self awareness is the core idea in today’s conversation with Joe Hudson. If you don’t know Joe, he is the founder of The Art of Accomplishment and executive coach to many well known entrepreneurs.
This is the second time I’ve had Joe on the show and you can check out our first conversation on How To Use Business For Spiritual Growth here.
As far as connecting inner work and our desire to accomplish things in the external world, I consider Joe to be at the forefront of sharing useful perspectives, tools, and ideas.
In this conversation, we discuss how we can use self awareness to discover a more aligned, authentic ambition. This is a bit different than the flavor of ambition used to counteract a lack of innate wholeness. Finding aligned ambition supports our growth, fulfillment, and contribution vs. undermines it.
Other ideas we discuss in our conversation include:
How our consciousness is reflected in the products we create
How embracing ambition in our work leads to better results
Everything we do is an act of surrender, and the idea of control is hubris.
How Joe thinks about aligning to the flow of life
The balance between having goals and a plan, and the willingness to surrender to the flow as it emerges
If you couldn’t tell, I’m a big fan of Joe and the team at The Art of Accomplishment.
I am planning on taking his 8 Week Masterclass that he runs once a year in a few weeks.
You can learn more about it here and sign up to be notified when it launches in a few weeks. If you’re interested in signing up and being in a cohort with me, let me know by responding to this email or in the comments. (note although I’m sharing the course, I don’t make a cut or anything if you sign up.)
There was a point in my lifetime where I wrestled with the perceived juxtaposition of worldly ambition and spiritual evolution immensely. I know see that eventually these come together and they absolutely can exist in harmony under the right context.
I hope you enjoy this discussion and it provides some help to anyone who finds themselves in a similar position!
-Scott
If you liked reading or listening to this, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
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Episode Transcript
Show notes:
00:00 - Choosing a Place to Live Based on Well-Adjusted Teenagers
02:08 - Aligning Ambition with Self-Awareness
08:19 - Embracing Ambition and Finding Joy in Work
13:57 - The Reflection of Consciousness in Our Products
30:49 - Exploring Spiritual Beliefs and Surrender
31:45 - The Power of Surrender and Faith
35:06 - Finding Self-Awareness and Growth in Work and Relationships
43:53 - Following the River of Life
50:06 - The Joy of Creating Teaching Videos
Interesting discussion about self-awareness - coming at it from a completely different angle to me.
Great convo. A lot of nuggets in this one!