Let Becoming Fuel Your Ambition
Building a flywheel of success for life and career
But godliness with contentment is great gain. — 1 Timothy 6:6
For two decades, I wrestled with the tension between contentment and ambition.
Was I meant to be content, calmly accepting my circumstances? Or ambitious, striving to build, grow, and achieve?
Contentment often seemed like passivity. Ambition often ended in pride, disappointment, and envy. I would swing from one extreme to another—restless when I was ambitious, guilty when I was content.
Paul’s words in 1 Timothy urge us toward contentment: "godliness with contentment is great gain." Yet Paul was also deeply ambitious. He aspired to become like Christ, to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. He endured shipwrecks, imprisonments, and hardships—all fueled by a holy ambition.
How could the same man hold both truths?
Meditating on Scripture over the years gave me a key insight:
Our contentment belongs primarily to our have goals—what we own, what we accumulate. Paul was content to reuse old cloaks, to live with little. Yet when it came to do goals (actions) and be goals (identity), he was fiercely ambitious. He strove daily to become more Christlike and to fulfill his calling.
This framework reshaped my life:
- Have Goals: I hold these loosely, thanking God for what I already possess.
- Do Goals: I pursue these intentionally—writing, building, investing—without drifting into sloth or aimlessness.
- Be Goals: I commit deeply to becoming more focused, more faithful, more like Christ.
True ambition isn't about grasping for possessions. It is about growing into the person God calls us to become.
Contentment belongs to what we have. Holy ambition belongs to who we are becoming.
Action Items:
- Write down your Have Goals—what you want to achieve or possess in the next three years.
- For each Have Goal, list the Do Goals—the daily or weekly actions needed to move toward it. Block time for your Do Goals directly into your calendar. What is not scheduled rarely gets done.
- Review whether your Have and Do Goals align with who you are becoming. If not, either adjust your goals or focus on transforming your character.