Ambition as a Personal Value: Meaning, Examples, and Related Values
What Is Ambition as a Core Value?
Ambition is the drive to achieve meaningful goals and elevate your impact. People who value Ambition set a clear vision and work persistently toward it.
Why Ambition Matters
When Ambition is strong, you tend to:
- clarify priorities and milestones,
- push beyond comfort to grow,
- inspire others with big goals,
- convert ideas into results.
How Ambition Shows Up (High vs. Low Expression)
High Expression
- sets bold goals and pursues them consistently,
- welcomes stretch assignments,
- learns rapidly from feedback,
- invests in skills and networks.
Low Expression
- avoids competition or high expectations,
- prefers steady pace over stretch goals,
- values contentment over advancement,
- places other values above achievement.
Common Challenges of High Ambition
- overwork and burnout risk,
- tying self-worth to outcomes,
- neglecting relationships or health,
- impatience with slower collaborators.
Ambition in Conflict With Other Values
Ambition vs. Inner-Harmony
Inner-Harmony seeks balance, emotional steadiness, and peace; Ambition tolerates tension and stretch to reach goals.
Tension: serene equilibrium vs. productive strain.
Ambition vs. Family
Family centers presence, availability, and shared time; Ambition may reallocate time toward achievement and advancement.
Tension: relational presence vs. goal-focused allocation.
Examples of Ambition in Daily Life
- Defining quarterly targets and tracking results.
- Seeking mentors and honest feedback.
- Choosing growth over comfort.
- Protecting deep work time from distractions.
Strengths and Risks of Ambition as a Value
Strengths
Ambitious people boldly choose their goals. When necessary, they are ready to make sacrifices.
Risks
Being too ambitious and not properly assessing your own abilities may end in failure.
From the Global Values Research
How often people rank Ambition
Across the 2,099,004 assessments completed on personalvalu.es since 2020.
- Appearance rateof assessments rank it in their ten. 46th of 62 values.
- 9.9%
- First placeof assessments put it first. 39th of 62 on this measure.
- 0.6%
- Top threeof assessments put it in the top three. 21% of those who rank it.
- 2.1%
- Average positionis its mean position, out of ten, where it is ranked at all.
- 6.3
Ambition is ranked less often with age, from 11.9% among participants under 18 to 5.6% among those 65 and over. Men rank it more often than women, at 12.8% against 10.0%.
Age and gender from the assessments of December 2025 to September 2026 whose participants gave them.
