Neanderthink: The Ups and Downs of Ambition

One of my most talented and educated clients was also among the least self-confident. He began college with a vibrant self-assurance, only to make a series of bad choices and see his ambition sputter within a few years. His mind-set became "I can't hack it," so he went through a series of unfulfilling marriages and jobs. He felt globally defeated any time life got difficult for him.

By the time I saw him, in his forties, he was aware of his defeatist mind-set but could do little about it. Eventually, through our work together, he came to understand how he nurtured a sense of helplessness, and that understanding served as a lever for him to get out from under the emotional drubbing.

Appropriately, we feel sad about setbacks. Frustration may be unpleasant, but it is valuable corrective feedback: Getting turned down for dates means you better check your game; if you keep getting fired for insubordination, maybe it's not the boss who's the problem. The march of generations of human existence has allowed natural selection to fine-tune our feelings into appropriate responses to frustrations.

But frustration is one thing; the decision to give up in the face of adversity is quite another. Why do many people simply surrender when faced with big goals and big problems? How did we acquire this tendency to feel hopeless in the face of a career setback or despair over ever recovering from a breakup (and so do nothing to move on from the relationship)?

The fact is that high-stakes situations demand a different calculus than do run-of-the-mill frustrations. When much is at stake—when, for example, we seek access to power, status, and mates—we often frame the problem as a binary choice, because for most of human history, time and options were severely limited in important matters. Do I go all out and fight for the corner office? Do I risk the relationship by declaring my need for commitment? Or do I do nothing at all and passively wait to see what happens?

On important and challenging matters, we hew to a simple heuristic: Fight, or don't. Either we take on quandaries wholeheartedly or we feel defeated and immobilized. That heuristic also states, "If I choose to fight, I must win." Helplessness comes from the idea that one must win at all costs, coupled with the fact that there is never a guarantee of a positive outcome.

A person with a must-win outlook creates an untenable demand that is immobilizing. We propel ourselves toward a goal with the all-or-nothing imperative only to feel a pervasive sense of defeat when we realize we're not getting all that we think we must. This paradox explains why people often stop working toward the things they most desire.

Why the quick default to a helpless state? For most of our past, fighting a losing battle was extremely costly, perhaps at the price of life itself. Our ancestors who suffered feelings of helplessness, ceding even when they didn't want to, still turned into survivors who lived another day or found another mate.

From a gene's point of view, it doesn't matter if I'm fulfilled as long as the emotions and behaviors I exhibit tend to promote survival and procreation. You can say it's in the gene's interests to promote a state of helplessness sometimes: A person who is alive but miserable is still in the game, however defeated they feel at the moment. Leon Sloman and Paul Gilbert, co-editors of Subordination and Defeat, a book on the evolutionary underpinnings of depression, see helplessness as "an involuntary defeat strategy" that enables individuals to avoid injury or death and also keeps the social order intact. Feelings of defeat may be triggered automatically whether we want the emotion or not. Sometimes the feelings are adaptive, such as when fear or hesitation forces us to clearly assess our options and make the right move. But passivity and fear can prevent us from taking any action at all.

Today, an overwhelming sense of helplessness is a blunt instrument, less necessary for survival than it once was because our options are vastly more numerous: You're likely just a drive or subway ride away from more romantic opportunities and career choices than your ancestors had in their entire lives.

Nonetheless, we still carry within us the tendency to feel easily trumped when we believe we're in a high-stakes gambit. In such a case, the slightest frustration can trigger our urge to submit: In the short run, it's easier to walk away from a goal than to deal with the hassles along the way. Once we feel vanquished, we might persuade ourselves that deep down we don't deserve or even want success, or that we couldn't handle it.

The trick is to selectively give up specific battles, rather than to globally capitulate. Helplessness tends to be global. But maintaining determination while accepting temporary setbacks positions us well for future success.

Helplessness allows us to shun responsibility for the choices we make and the frustrations we encounter. We blame circumstances, fate, or other people, giving ourselves excuses for copping out. But nowhere is it written that everything must be easy or that others are the cause of our difficulties. Refusing to capitulate to helplessness allows us to accomplish the enduring goals we have for ourselves—and we mobilize the positive energy known as ambition.

Jump-starting Your Ambition

How to handle setbacks with aplomb—and some elbow grease.

• Make A List: If a goal seems unreachable, first describe it as objectively as possible to yourself. Write down a list of its advantages and disadvantages (a hedonic calculus).
• Don't globalize: See that getting down about getting down is a second-order trap. Helplessness results from taking any defeat too seriously—and generalizing it to your entire existence.
• Know Your Tendencies: Accept the existence of an involuntary all-or-nothing defeat strategy as a legacy from evolution—without giving in to it.
• Seize the Challenge: See frustration as the way to keep getting stronger, rather than as something that has to bring you down.
• Take the Long View: Defeats are usually temporary and their effects short-lived. The battle is not the war.