It’s strenuous, constant and filled with obstacles.
But it’s expected. Sharing Bungii with others is without a doubt our largest ambition.
All people are wired to problem solve. We look for activities that will give us a sense of accomplishment. It might be a small accomplishment like watching a movie or reading a book. It might be a giant task like renovating a home or reading a book. But the best version of ourselves long for goals and the ambition to see them through.
That doesn’t mean it will be easy — there is always difficult times and complex tasks scattered along the way; we are learning not to turn speed bumps into mountains.
When we started, we thought having ambition was purely a positive emotion. It is advertised as some great, driving force the most successful people and top minds use to perform. In reality, ambition comes with headaches and failures. We weren’t prepared for that side of it at first. We had to learn that being ambitious means learning how to absorb failures and keep pushing towards our goals.
It’s easy to complain and talk about how difficult and uncertain startups are. Each day we face new challenges and find fires that need extinguishing. But what can be lost in the challenges is the sense of accomplishment intertwined with the hard times.
Focusing on the negatives is too simple — the tough part is admitting it. But there is just as much joy in the failures as there is in the solutions. Once we acknowledged that simple truth, it changed everything.
No one told us we were allowed to enjoy struggling through our early days of launching Bungii. We had only heard to get to the finish line fast as possible. We were so focused on surviving and trying to make something out of nothing that we took for granted what was actually happening. We wouldn’t trade those days for anything. It taught us resolve in failure and confidence in ambition.
We would love to go back and tell ourselves to just breathe and take it all in for a moment. To appreciate how much those early days mean to us now.
Embracing the joy of ambition, in all its facets, has changed how we approach the roadblocks we come across. We try not to be too preach-y or teach-y, but we couldn’t help but pass along the lesson we wish we had known during the first phase of Bungii:
Enjoy working on the problem as much as you enjoy celebrating the solution.
