When we want to achieve our dreams, we rely on ambition. However, sometimes when we reach our dreams, we still feel a sense of discontent; sometimes, what we wanted was not what it was cracked up to be. It is essential to be able to seek your dreams while still checking in with your mental health.
Ambition Influences Happiness
Following your dreams is hard when you feel compelled to compare yourself to others who have achieved their dream. Self-comparison can lead to decreased self-esteem, leaving you feeling like you did not live up to expectations. While it may seem like career success leads to happiness, it is happiness that leads to career success. We need to have a better relationship with our happiness to seek out what we want. However, while ambition can fuel us to do everything we can for our dreams, we may experience depression when things do not work out.
Finding Your Purpose
Ambition has a way of being harmful to your mental health if it makes you competitive with a strong desire to gain power. Extrinsic ambition is when you desire to be superior to other people, whether by social status or wealth. This type of ambition can lead to anxiety, depression and worsen the symptoms of other mental health disorders. Intrinsic ambition is the opposite; we have a strong need for community, moral purpose, and social connection. Having a strong sense of purpose can increase your overall happiness.
Human Connection Improves Mental Health
While it is common to believe that we will be happier once we achieve our goals, it can make us feel depressed if we depend on something that may or may not happen. You should ask yourself if you need more than your goals to complete you. The truth is the most powerful thing we can do for our happiness is to form genuine, caring, mutual relationships with others. Seeing our loved ones around us and knowing they want to be in our lives is an accomplishment of its own. Creating healthy relationships is something we all can work on to ensure true happiness. A happier mental state is more than just accomplishing your life’s goals, but surrounding yourself with people who love you and make you feel happy.
We may think that we will achieve happiness once we achieve our goals and be in a better mental state than we are now. In reality, a belief system like that will make you feel depressed about not accomplishing your goals. True happiness is when you are surrounded by loved ones. At Alta Loma, we understand how ambition can affect your mental health, and we are here to help you. Our transformative treatment center in Georgetown, Texas, can offer you individualized therapy, coping skills education, a long-term continuum of care, and more. Call us today at (866) 457-3843 for more information.
