Feel free to pick a context:
- Interview
- Describing yourself
- Describing what you want in a partner
- When you see the word on a dating profile
- When you see the word in an obituary
- When describing a business plan in your DnD game
I’ve always read that as striving for something that isn’t easily achieved
Whenever possible I define things not based on what goes inside one’s head, but behaviour and words. So for me, “ambition” means a stated goal with success/failure conditions and a time frame.
Just as a silly example: if my TRPG character has the ambition to become the biggest mage of the world, then I’ll have him studying magic when possible, and working his way towards it. The time frame is his whole life, the success condition is to become the top mage, the failure condition is to kick the bucket before that happens.
Never satisfied. Wants power for its own sake. Likely sociopath.
In the context of describing oneself, I’d like to think it’s something along the lines of not being afraid to follow your dreams.
I think of an ambitious person as being one who is strongly committed to achieving a very difficult goal with a high risk of failure, usually something that will require near-daily effort for at least a few years, possibly decades.
To me it’s the level of challenge that the goal presents to the person attempting it that matters, it doesn’t have to be something with global or historical significance.
