Truly, you have infinite possibilities

 We live in a world that encourages young people to be fiercely ambitious. Ambition is eulogized as the foremost prerequisite for achievement and success.What is ambition anyway? It is simply a thought to which you decide to give a certain significance. This turns gradually into your life goal. You invest so much life energy in this thought that it begins to rule your existence. Somewhere along the way, you forget that you made it up. The thought becomes larger than its creator.Right from kindergarten, parents and teachers start urging children to become ‘Number One’ at whatever they do. This Number One fixation is not easy to outgrow. It is not enough to be rich or beautiful; people want to be the richest and the most beautiful. They even tell me, “I am your greatest devotee!” There is no escaping the number game!Is ambition right or wrong? It is neither. It is just limited, because it is merely an expansion of what you already know. Nothing new can happen to you if you have already fixed your goal. Fixing your ambition means you will rest content with small victories. You may think you are swift, but you are simply walking faster than everybody else. This is happening to most people: they are doing a little better than somebody and they think they’re doing great. The tragedy is that the moment you fix a goal, you limit yourself. You have hampered the possible flowering of human genius. 

 “No, no,” you may argue, “my goal is lofty!” But you have still limited yourself because when you set your goal, you are operating on the basis of your imagination, which is just an extension of your memory. But life holds possibilities that are way beyond your imagination, beyond your wildest dreams!Most opt for ambition because they don’t know how else to live. How to propel myself to success without fixing a goal? This is the fundamental question. The entire yogic system addresses precisely this. It is aimed to bring a profound sense of involvement without intention. But involvement takes energy. How does one generate energy without a goal? Hence the emphasis on ‘devotion’ in every spiritual tradition. The fire of devotion burns up all calculation. What is left is an unwavering, dispassionate focus on the process, without expectation or calculation.If new possibilities need to happen in your life, and above all, if human genius has to unfold, it is important that we create not an ambitious world, but a joyful and involved one. If you are joyfully and absolutely involved in whatever you do, depending upon your capacities, you will go further than you can possibly imagine.Alexander the Great, considered the world’s most ambitious human being, represents limited ambition. He just wants to conquer one planet – one tiny speck in this great cosmos. That desire, he thinks, is big; for that he kills; for that, he dies. What a profound tragedy!If only what you imagined happened, what an impoverished life it would be. On the other hand, if you keep yourself on, at full throttle, all the time, without any fixed goal, who knows, maybe you will go to places you never dreams possible! So, do not limit yourself with a fixed ambition, because being human is a limitless possibility, an inexhaustible discovery. Your life is about exploring that limitlessness. 

@sadhguru