Ambition becomes wisdom when achievement stops being confused with worth.

For a long stretch, most people quietly treat their results as a measure of their value, so every setback becomes a demotion in personhood. Ambition matures at the moment those two come apart. You can then want the outcome badly, work for it fully, and still not be diminished when it does not arrive, which oddly makes you better at pursuing it.

After your next failure, watch the language your mind reaches for. If it moves from what happened to what you are, that is the confusion showing itself. Naming it as it occurs does more than any amount of reassurance afterwards.