The Yoga Sutras identify five root causes of human suffering. The second is Asmita — ego-identification, the construction of a self-concept that requires continuous maintenance and defence.
Most ambition that presents as vision is, at its root, Asmita in motion — not the desire to create something but the desire to become someone, to build an identity substantial enough that the background sense of inadequacy quiets.
Ambition rooted in genuine vision has a quality of direction — oriented toward something outside the self. When it succeeds, the success is experienced as completion. When it fails, the failure is information. Neither threatens the ground.
Ambition rooted in insecurity has a quality of defence — oriented toward silencing a voice, proving a point. When it succeeds, the success is temporary relief — because the voice does not stop, it simply relocates. When it fails, the failure is not information. It is confirmation of what was feared.
The Bhagavad Gita's description of the Sthitaprajna — the one of steady wisdom — is implicitly a description of ambition rooted in something other than insecurity. Yasya sarve samarambhah kama-sankalpa-varjitah — whose every undertaking is free from the anxious desire for outcomes. Not that the Sthitaprajna does not act — Arjuna is told to fight, not to sit down. But the action arises from clarity rather than from the desperate motion of a self that cannot afford to stop moving.
The diagnostic: if you achieved everything you are working toward, and nobody knew — if there were no recognition, no change in how others perceive you — would the achievement still matter?
If the honest answer is no — a significant portion of the energy is going toward the management of a self-concept. And self-concepts, unlike genuine goals, cannot be finally achieved. They can only be continuously maintained.