Ambition is one of the powerful tools a person can have. It is the thing that drives you to accomplish your and achieve your dreams.

It is a factor in almost every career or hobby from athletics to art and sales to medicine. It can even be applied to activities you don’t particularly care for as ambition will help you use it as a steppingstone to something better.

However, with every flame that is lit, there is always a chance that it burns out of control. Ironically, overambition can become the very thing that kills your dreams, so it is important to keep yourself in check and keep your goals and dreams at a realistic and achievable level.

Here are some ways you can stop yourself from getting a little too carried away:

Do Your Research

To start building confidence as you strive towards a goal, it is advisable to know as much as you can about the field you are pursuing. When starting out, there is always a chance that your
early enthusiasm and excitement will fill your head with lofty ideas that are not actually reasonable or achievable.

While George Bernard Shaw’s assertion that all progress depends on the unreasonable man is a good one, it ignores the amount of work those pioneers put into research to come up with reasonable goals and solid plans.

Read articles, watch videos, listen to podcasts. Find out everything you can and don’t ignore the information you find that you don’t like. Creating a rose-tinted version of your climb to the top will only result in disappointment. You must consider everything – warts and all – to draw an accurate distinction between ambition and overambition.

Know Yourself

Next, and most importantly, you must know what you are capable of. Often, people are more capable than they believe they are as we typically minimize our accomplishments even when we are exceptional at something.

On the other hand, we are also so capable of being delusional about our true ability level that psychologists have a name for it: the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon by which those least competent in a certain subject area overestimate their skills the most. It also causes those most competent in a subject area to think less of their own talents.

To keep your ambition in check, you must be able to sit in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eyes and tell yourself the truth. Then, having done your research correctly, you’ll know whether you’re being realistic or not.

Budget Your Resources

A practical way to rein in overambition is to calculate the resources you’re pouring into your goal including both money and time. Be sure to factor in the amount of income and opportunity you will lose by dedicating more time to your goal.

Obviously, if you’re already working at a company where your goal is to become the CEO, this doesn’t apply. But, if your ambition is going to take time away from where you make your income, it needs to be factored in.

The point here is not to dissuade you from taking calculated risks. It’s just critical that you have a full understanding of all the costs – personal and professional – before you allow yourself to get carried away.

Be Flexible

Now, with all of this taken into consideration, does that mean you should give up on your dreams? Not necessarily. Ambition, tempered with a healthy dose of practicality, is how those unreasonable men Shaw spoke of achieve true progress.

The fire of possible fame and fortune is an essential element of success; it should not be smothered. The point of this article is to help you to avoid falling prey to impulsive decisions and delusions of grandeur.

In case you missed it, the warning is in the word “overambition.” Almost anything that is “over” is bad. Over-eating is bad. Over-working is bad. Over-training is bad. The exception to this rule is over-achiever. And to be one of those, you need to have a handle on your ambition.