Climb with Intention
What if the ladder you're climbing is leaned up against the wrong wall?
At some point in our careers, ambitious people encounter this very situation.
I had mine recently.
Folks had been maneuvering against the team I was a part of. Talking behind our backs. Taking credit for visible wins. Undermining our standing at the company.
I'm a loyal person, so naturally, this hit different. I took it personally, and I started playing the game back.
After a little while, I got pulled into the same trap — the gossip, the subtle digs, the politics. It has a way of making you feel dirty.
More than a few times, I caught myself. And each time, the same thought surfaced: if I keep going, I'm no better than them.
Power dynamics are real. Learn them. Use them.
But keep one eye on yourself, because the current that pulls others under will pull you under too if you stop paying attention.
That's the warning label.
Don't lose the very thing that makes you you: your soul.
Make sure your ladder's on the right wall.
The Game That Plays You Back
Understanding power is a tool. Playing the game is a skill. But losing yourself in the pursuit?
That's the real danger no one warns you about loudly enough. And the ones who've been burned by it are usually too embarrassed to say so.
Human nature being what it is, we are drawn to mastery like a moth to a lantern. And just like that moth, we rarely stop to ask whether the light is worth the wings.
Like someone who discovers a new diet and goes all in, we overcorrect.
We get seduced by the climb. The maneuvering starts to feel like strategy. The sharp elbow starts to feel like leadership.
And somewhere along the way, without quite noticing the moment it happened, the game starts playing us.
It's a peculiar kind of trap, because it flatters you on the way in.
You tell yourself you're just being shrewd. Practical. A student of how the world “actually works”, not how the schoolbooks say it does.
And that's true, until it isn't.
If you're burying someone just to bury them, out of habit more than purpose … If talking smack about colleagues has become your default … If you're regularly trading your values for short-term wins … something has shifted.
That shift has a cost. It won't show up on a performance review or get flagged in a meeting. But it accumulates, quiet and patient, the way debt does.
Mark Twain once said a man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way.
The game will teach you things too.
Just make sure you're still the one doing the carrying.
The Finest Move on Any Field
Better the ball.
Be the one who makes it better for everyone around you.
Yes, compete. Yes, advocate for yourself. Yes, understand the power map.
But also be the one who brings junior people up to speed, who opens doors, who stops what they're doing to lend an ear, who shares intel generously.
Once upon a time ... someone brought you up and opened the door for you. Remember that, and pay it forward.
The person who lifts others doesn't lose ground. They gain. More friends than enemies. More intel flowing back their way.
Quietly, steadily stacking the kind of human currency that matters most in this game.
The Golden Rule is older than any playbook ever written. It works.
That's why you've heard it a thousand times and will hear it a thousand more.
That reputation follows you. So does the other kind. Choose carefully which one you'd like arriving in the room before you do.
The Inventory That Actually Matters
Ecclesiastes. Seneca. Tolstoy.
They all wrote about it.
The empty pursuit of money, power, and status. The chasing of them as ends in themselves.
Yet every generation has to learn it anew. A hollow pursuit. An empty life dressed up beautifully, like a light drawing moths in at night.
A man can accumulate much and still die poor. Soul poor.
There's an old story, the kind that's probably true even if the details have wandered over time, about a wealthy businessman who ran into a fisherman napping in his boat on a Tuesday afternoon.
Puzzled, the businessman asked why he wasn't out fishing.
The fisherman said he'd already caught enough for the day.
The businessman, baffled, laid out a grand plan: fish more, sell more, buy a bigger boat, build a fleet, go public, retire rich.
"And then what?" asked the fisherman.
"Then," said the businessman, "you could spend your afternoons napping in a boat."
The fisherman smiled and closed his eyes.
We laugh at that story, then we go on our merry way hustling for hustling's sake.
What for? What's it all about? What actually fills a life?
A slow, shared meal with family, the kind where no one checks their phone and the food goes cold because the conversation got good. Sunday morning coffee after church, lingering in no particular hurry. A hard training session with people who push you and razz you about it after. A small team working on something genuinely difficult, where every voice counts and everyone knows it. Rearranging your whole day for a little extra time with your baby daughter, and the weight of her in your arms that makes the rearranging feel small.
That's the inventory that actually matters.
Most of it can't be deposited anywhere. None of it shows up in a valuation.
All of it, if you're paying attention, is already there.
You have everything you need.
…
Time moves on down the road whether you're accumulating power or not.
The question isn't whether you'll look back. The question is what you'll see when you do.
The person who got it right isn't necessarily the one who climbed highest. It's the one who climbed with intention. Who knew what they were building toward and didn't lose the thread. Who brought people up with them. Who was present enough, often enough, that the people who mattered most actually felt it.
That's the move and the whole game within the game.
Ascend. Grow. Get better at what you do. Compete like it matters, because it does.
And keep your anchors close. The people. The moments. The version of yourself you actually want to be.
You don't have to choose between ambition and a life well lived. The best ones rarely do. They just stay honest about what they're really after, and they don't let the noise talk them out of it.
Life is short. Don't settle, drift or let the urgency of the unimportant crowd out what actually matters to you.
Stay true to that, and the rest has a way of taking care of itself.