#48: Ambition is Out, Determination is In

The opposite of ambition isn’t apathy, it’s resilience.

If you’ve been feeling frustrated that 2025 hasn’t been progressing the way you want it to yet (whether with work, romance, health, pick your poison) you’re not alone. Mars stationed retrograde back on December 6th, 2024, and won’t station direct again for two more weeks, on February 23rd. My intention with this missive is to help us move forward in spite of setbacks.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, words were our original spells. They are powerful and should be used intentionally. As a magician (yes, you) it’s important to know that every word you use matters. They all carry energy. Because our current times are wrought with disturbing happenings— many of which feel out of our control, it’s important to understand language as an accessible tool for our empowerment and ability to FIGHT AGAINST THE MACHINE.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a bit of a cHanNeLeD message that came through me recently.

Picture this:

I’m clad in a full sweatsuit, noodling around my house with nowhere to be. It was precisely two minutes after the exact conjunction of Venus and Neptune, alongside the North Node, no less, and I watched myself Googling:

“Is ambition rooted in capitalism?”

It was a question that seemingly floated into my mind from the ethers— without my conscious desire to look for it. But as I pride myself on doing, I followed along anyway.

I’m not sure if I was expecting a golden “yes” to whoosh across the screen, but where I ended up (Reddit, obviously) took me tumbling down much deeper.

I landed in Buddhism land, reading about ambition being a cause of suffering, and I felt so seen! So then I thought, why have I always felt like listing “ambitious” as a quality on a resume would be encouraged by a guidance counselor, but listing how I actually felt, something like “floating along my path hoping for the best *shrug emoji*” would elicit, at best, a confused grimace and gentle shaking of the head from the same counselor?

I remembered, then, that as I was reading an eight-year-old diary of mine a couple days prior (the same upcoming Venus Retrograde cycle, mind you), I had written about a colleague telling me she was weary of another coworker (I use the “weary” terminology liberally here, as I think what she really said was “that girl’s a snake, watch out”) because she was “highly ambitious.”

I ruminated that I thought it was funny that she was complaining about someone she deemed deeply suspect, while she plainly displayed the same qualities of ambition herself (or what I intuitively considered it at that point to be): wearing expensive clothes, driving an expensive car, logging long hours at the office.

I remember being bored with the conversation because I never identified with being ambitious personally, but I knew that fact would be problematic to mention. I hadn’t landed on why, yet…but it had always felt like an icky word to me.

Back to present Google land. I searched: “is determination the same as ambition?” sensing that I was getting closer to whatever I was supposed to find.

I read that ambition is inextricably linked to SUCCESS. There’s a pre-determined, intended outcome somewhere in the future, and that’s the reason for doing what you’re doing. While determination is simply continuing to try, for any number of reasons, unattached to the result.

I could almost see the little wheels clicking into place in that moment in my brain. AHA! My suspicions were correct! Then, as my partner came in the front door at the same time (poor, unsuspecting thing), I unloaded my brilliant vision and new understanding with this metaphor (imagine me with wet hair, aforementioned sweatsuit, with a crazed expression speaking way too quickly…unsurprisingly my reality 70% of the time):

“OK!” I blurted. “Imagine you’re supposed to pick 100 apples today. If you’re determined to pick them all, if you only end up getting 85– you’ll be alright. You’ll vow to get the rest tomorrow and know that you still worked hard and did your best. But if you were ambitious about picking 100 apples and only acquired 85…it’s likely you would be unsatisfied with that result and go about other means of securing the rest, likely in roundabout/problematic/exploitative, etc. ways, until you hit that 100 goal– stressing out anyone in your path because you’re unable to rest until you cross that pre-ordained finish line!!!”

My partner, unflinching and ever so patient (I love you), nodded calmly in agreement. I took a deep breath, happy that the thought had been externalized, and grabbed my computer to start typing this message to you.

Moving through time at a slightly less frenetic pace now, I’m able to relate my recent epiphany back to the Venus conjunct Neptune conjunct the North Node of it all.

The values that we’re moving towards as a society, as a collective of humans on this floating rock, must be tied to a desire of process, rather than a process of desire (read: success as we define it). We must learn that the opposite of ambition isn’t apathy, it’s resilience.

Ambition is futile, you see, because what if midday, you’re told you’re supposed to pick 60 apples instead of those 100 mentioned before. The goal post has now moved, but you’re already locked into your predetermined trajectory. So you just pick 100 apples anyway, probably with a smug look on your face, wondering what gold star will await your above and beyond performance.

But what if there wasn’t a gold star? What if that’s just something we’ve been told to believe? What if you’re actually just left feeling dejected, because for some reason— it seems like your ambition didn’t pay off?

Ambition is rooted in capitalism. It’s something we’ve been sold to keep feeding a voracious machine that has already had more than enough.

The greediness of this machine is earth shattering— it happily receives meals from all sorts of people, and the ones who claim ambition but can’t clearly define what their ultimate success even looks like, is the machines favorite (and most frightening) snack.

And, let me remind you, as I’m uncomfortably reminding myself: even if using the word “ambition” aloud has felt icky to you, too…you might still find this all feeling too familiar.

Only in the process of this contemplation did I realize that I had internalized the idea of ambition even without claiming it publicly…and it’s placed me in the group of those naming it aloud, but not knowing to what end. Constantly consuming, never satiated. Constantly ambitious, never grasping the feeling of success. A lack mentality that is, wouldn’t you know, pervasive in the most abundant and ambitious country in the world.

Down this deep rabbit hole I came across a sentence that really tied the whole thing up with a little bow for me. “Were we the last person on earth, it would make little or no sense to be ambitious.” And that’s why we have to change our language. If you were the last person on Earth, you might be determined to pick apples…but why bother being ambitious about it? There’s no one else to beat. There’s no hope of a special gold star.

The article goes on to discuss “healthy ambition” versus “unhealthy ambition” which I disagree with wholeheartedly. How confusing for people, to bifurcate a word as either the “good” or “bad” version…why not just use a different word? Like DETERMINATION! Ahem, because capitalism is fueled by us continuing to believe that ambition is a magic word (and it is, but not in the way we’ve been convinced).

There’s a lot of extra energy available to us if we choose to be determined to meet our goals without a fixed result.

Instead of feeding a machine that has proven inept at feeding us back (and, in fact, was never designed to), it’s more than possible that the process of our work can be symbiotic. It’s already happening all around us in nature. Nothing is given without a return. Plants and animals aren’t ambitious, because they can’t afford to be. They honor the energy that humans dare to waste (knowingly or otherwise) as part of a feedback loop. And they get their jobs done without resentment, confusion, or burn out.

I know Mars retrograde sucks. As much as astrologers might wish it were different…the planets impact us, too! I’ve been navigating a couple specific forms of fuckery since December that I will be very happy to move on from later this month. Sharing this newsletter is one step of that process. I encourage you, with me, to look at language as one of our most readily available and powerful tools to fight oppression.

Whatever you’re revving up to tackle once Mars is finally direct again in a couple weeks— I’m wishing you a hefty dash of determination along your path. Change begins with us, and how we talk about it.

Through time and space,

Erin River Sunday