Ambition Over Everything
It feels so good to speak your mind.
“You should be wearing a mask.”
“Everyone has the right to own a gun.”
“Donald Trump is evil.”
Ahh, what a relief. You got that heavy opinion off your chest and out of your head. It’s out in public for the world to see. It’s a boost to your ego. Sharing your opinion reassures you that you’re in the “right group.”
But yelling your feelings from the rooftops is a move of weakness, not power.
As Robert Greene wrote in The 48 Laws of Power,
“It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself…Do not let people drag you into their petty fights and squabbles. Seem interested and supportive, but find a way to remain neutral; let others do the fighting while you stand back, watch and wait.”
People with ambition—aspirations of power and greatness—practice great restraint when it comes to sharing their opinions. Lyndon Johnson was a master of this art.
Johnson was known, his entire life, for keeping his opinions to himself. On the floor of the House, he never argued for or against legislation. In fact, the Congressional Record indicates he didn’t even participate in House discussion in six of the years he was a Congressman.
Off the floor, his behavior was the same. While some Congressmen sought out reporters, Johnson avoided them like poisonous snakes. If he turned into a hallway and saw a reporter, he would turn around and head in the other direction.
Johnson wasn’t antisocial. He was known for commanding a crowd at a parties and holding court in cloakrooms. He loved attention, and he loved to talk. He perfected the art of saying many words but few of substance. He could speak at length on an issue without ever taking a position. From college to Congress and beyond, this was one of Johnson’s tactics.
Congresswoman Helen Douglas said of Johnson, “He had great inner control. He could talk so much—and no one ever knew exactly where he stood.”
This is what made Johnson brilliant—not his lack of saying something substantive but his immense inner control.
From the time Johnson was a boy, he knew he wanted to be President. And from the time he entered his professional career, every action he took served his long term goal. Ambition—ambition to occupy the oval office—superseded everything in his life. Every action he took, and every action he refrained from taking, moved him inches closer to his desired destination. His self control and dedication to a long term vision was tremendous.
Most of us aren’t planning past next week. Johnson was planning decades into the future.
As Robert Caro wrote in The Path to Power,
“His silence was not for the sake of power in the House; if he was keeping deliberately silent, it was for a different reason. Who could foresee the turnings of such a long road? No matter how safe a particular stand might seem now, no matter how politically wise, that stand might come back to haunt him someday. No matter what he said now, no matter how intelligent a remark might now seem, he might one day be sorry he had made it. And so he said nothing.”
But silence isn’t the point. What matters is restraint, taming your ego, and putting ambition above everything else. It just so happens that biting your tongue is a perfect example.
Johnson decided as a young man to elevate one trait above all else—ambition. Ambition was his true north. It was the only direction he would follow, and at every fork in the road, he would ask himself, “does this help or hurt my ambition?”
This simple question helped him squash pride, embarrassment, and ego, time and again, for decades. These nasty emotions were, in the words of Caro, “luxuries in which he would not indulge himself.”
Gloating after a victory? That didn’t serve his ambition, so he didn’t do it.
Johnson won a bitter battle in his first Congressional race. One particular opponent, Emmett Shelton, had antagonized Johnson relentlessly. Shelton followed Johnson’s campaign with a loudspeaker on his car. He’d wait outside campaign stops and challenge Johnson to debates over the loudspeaker. When Johnson finally accepted, Shelton started slinging mud.
He said Johnson was too young, too new in the district, and guilty of taking money from big business. Shelton was shooting kill shots.
Despite the debate, Johnson won the election. If you or I were in Johnson’s shoes, we’d surely despise Shelton. But what Johnson did was shocking.
Shortly after the election, Johnson saw Shelton in downtown Austin. He offered Shelton a ride. On the short ride, Shelton realized he had forgotten something in his office. Johnson drove Shelton back to the office, waited while he grabbed his papers, and then drove him on to the destination.
Reflecting on the interaction, Shelton said Johnson was, “gracious, nice, and humble. He made you feel he was dirt under your feet.”
Unbeknownst to Shelton, this meeting with Johnson wasn’t by chance. Johnson had been waiting for Shelton for over an hour so he could give him a ride and win the friendship of a man who, only days before, had been a bitter enemy.
Rather than gloating about his win, Johnson went to great lengths to help a former enemy and turn him into a friend. Johnson cast his ego aside to make room for his ambition.
And because Johnson placed his ambition at the forefront of his emotions, he was able to climb the political ladder to its peak. Never once did Johnson allow ego, pride, or embarrassment to creep ahead of ambition. He exercised immense restraint at every fork in the road.
I’m not suggesting we all elevate ambition to the top of our moral compass. Many of Johnson’s actions—resulting from his single minded pursuit of ambition—were strange. But his ability to exercise restraint in service of a larger goal was immensely effective.
That restraint—the ability to rein in emotions when they don’t serve your larger goals—is a quality worth practicing. Our true north doesn’t need to be ambition, but we should have a true north. And in pursuit of that destination, we should practice harnessing our emotions. We should avoid acting on impulse. We should ask ourselves, “does the thing I’m about to do help or hurt my long term plan?”
Even if we don’t succeed every time, the practice helps us build restraint. And that restraint will carry us further in life than almost anything else.
So don’t share every opinion. Don’t gloat over every victory. Instead, search deep for the action that aids your ascent. And suppress the emotions that don’t.
For Johnson, it was ambition over everything. Our aspirations don’t need to be that high, but we should move in the same direction.
Photo by Silas Baisch on Unsplash
