My Sweet Spot
I had found my sweet spot in the oil industry cesspool. -- 'An Einganeer's Tale', page 65
I received this recent, New York Times Bestselling 'self-help' book as a Christmas gift. It's far too late for a retired great-grand father to get anything useful out of a book like this. But it was interesting to discover that I had actually already practiced some of what the book teaches.
After battling for nearly twenty years in the dog-eat-dog people mill that is Big Oil's career plan for its engineers, I landed in a small, unstructured, entity -- whose mission was to serve rather than take -- and my career took off. It still took me a little time to get use to my superiors no longer telling me what to do; to not getting ahead by pushing others back; to not resetting my actions each year based on my latest annual performance review. But once I did, I discovered a freedom that allowed me to perform better than I ever had.
This book describes something called 'The Backwards Law' (defined by the twentieth century philosopher, Alan Watts). It goes on to say it means "the more you pursue feeling better, the less satisfied you become. The more you want to be rich, the poorer you feel, regardless of how much money you actually make. The more you want to be sexy and desired, the uglier you come to see yourself, regardless of your actual physical appearance. The more you want to be happy and loved, the lonelier and more afraid you become, regardless of those who surround you." To these I add: the more ambitious you are, the less you actually achieve.
So does this mean that ambition is a bad thing? Definitely not. The bad thing is misplaced ambition. If ambition means you transfer to (or not transfer to) some place against your better judgement, do something you feel is not right just to gain favor from the higher-ups, or find flaws in others to make yourself look better -- then it is misplaced.
Actually, I was not any less ambitious after I found my sweet spot in the oil industry cesspool.