One of the first things I learned in Psych 101 was that temperament and personality are established by the age of three.  And it’s true, traits like ambition are clearly visible in little kids.  There’s the four year-old boy who won’t come to dinner until he figures out the puzzle he’s been working on for hours. And then there’s the little girl who feels compelled to be the first one in her kindergarten class to learn to tie her shoe.

Parents everywhere seem to think that they can overcome the role of nature, and that ambition can be taught to any child.  They nurture their kids’ natural talents so that they’ll be motivated to express them in team sports and artistic activities.  They offer emotional and monetary incentives for every A on the report card.  But what’s interesting is what happens when these kids grow up. 

Let’s say that, up to age eighteen, Child A and Child B were equally gifted and equally pushed by their parents to excel academically, socially, and in extracurriculars.  Child A, who was born ambitious, will continue the trend – graduating college at the head of her class, getting the perfect job, and basically trying to be the best of everything she undertakes for the rest of her life.  Child B, on the other hand, will stop.  Instead, she’ll be content to take each day as it comes, settling for an average career and average life and choosing to focus on simple pleasures like enjoying family and a night out with friends.

Who is better off?  I’m willing to bet that the majority of you would pick Child A, but I don’t know.  My grandmother used to say that “the world wasn’t conquered by happy people,” and if you think about it, it’s true.  Some of the most famous leaders in world history, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon to Abraham Lincoln, were said to be depressed.  I think this has something to do with ambition.  Ambitious people are always striving for something better, which means that they’re never satisfied with what they have.  No matter how much they achieve, how much success, recognition, and wealth they accumulate, they’re hard-wired to believe that it’s not enough. And that’s depressing.

So I’ll submit to you – at the end of the day, who would you rather be?