© 2025 Marc Bubel

Welcome back to Meta Zen. The mental martial art. The philosophy of life.

This episode introduces the Orange Belt.

I am your host and mentor, Marc Bubel.

Orange - Flow-State Ambition

Welcome back to Meta Zen. The podcast for cleaning and unlocking the mind. 

I am your host and mentor, Marc Bubel.

To get the best experience from this podcast, listen to the episodes in sequence for your first time. 

I imagine we all have opinions about what should be done in the world. Yet, few of us can do anything about it. Most of us are going along for the ride, which starts to preoccupy our mind with noise that leads us to religion or paths of meditation like this podcast.

This is when we reflect on our ambition. It's also why you are listening right now. You have the ambition to achieve a pure unadulterated consciousness.

Ambition is an expectation to achieve something conceivable though after great effort that isn't immediately clear. 

Like saying we are pursuing to make Earth the best planet in the universe.

There are two ways to achieve our ambition. Hinder those that threaten our ambition or live up to the highest standard of ambition.

Notice, we can't honestly do a little of both as that is the former. 

Imagine being a fighter jet pilot who finds the threshold of the jet’s engineering where it begins to vibrate. This is where we ease it back a little to put our attention on the source of the vibration so that when we go back to the engineers, we give them something useful to work on.

That's the ambition I'm talking about.

Welcome to the Orange Belt. In this episode, we're talking about the two styles of ambition. With this knowledge, we’ll enable ourselves to confidently take the style of ambition that makes the difference in our lives and our world.

Two styles of Ambition 

Yes, we know ambition. We also know finding something worthy of our ambition is the first hurdle. The next hurdle is maintaining our integrity with our ambition so that we don't start taking shortcuts that lead us to playing negative-sum games.

In summary, negative-sum games prioritize personal goals over other goals. In contrast, positive-sum games prioritize every intermediate goal as the foundation to achieving end goals.

This discussion introduces us to the two styles of ambition. 
The first style prioritizes personal goals. It’s called Conventional Ambition. 
The second style prioritizes intermediate milestones and the ultimate end goal. It’s called Flow-State Ambition. 

I’ll explain both in this episode and I’ll begin with Conventional Ambition.

Conventional ambition

Conventional Ambition exists because an idle mind is the devil's workshop. When people don't know what to do, they skip the second layer of curiosity and bulldoze their way forward. As a result, it materialises into five types.

Write these five in your journal.

The first is wishful ambition. 
This is when people argue their points of view. They cross their fingers and say, you’re wrong and I’m right. 

The second is imagined ambition
This is when people stop arguing and start doing. But, as they haven’t put enough forethought into their ambition, they get other people to do their dirty work. Everyone crosses their fingers because they hope or trust they’ll enjoy it later.

The third is diehard ambition.
This is characterized by a person who produces reams of research, most of which disregard alternative points of view. This person uses a charismatic disposition to say trust me.

The fourth is prideful ambition.
This is characterized by a person who has seen the fallout of Conventional Ambition again and again and they think it's because people don't know what’s good for them. They use a dictator persona and indirectly say, you're an anti-intellectual, do what you're told.

The Fifth is hubris ambition.
This is a person who has seen the fallout of Conventional Ambition again and again. They blame others for the fallout and they decide to play god.

What do you think? Are we guilty of some of the Conventional Ambition tactics?

Do we argue?

Do we get others to do our dirty work?

Do we metaphorically cross our fingers and hope we’ll enjoy it later?

Do we know some of the dark arts for getting our way?

We use the Conventional Ambition tactics because the pressure of the status quo compels us to act instead of to think. 

It's the downward spiral. 

Please remember, we’ve inherited the status quo from the generation before us who inherited it from the generation before them. If we forget this, we’ll use Conventional Ambition and propagate the problem.

We’re all good people. Even the self-righteous few who give people with power a bad name. That's how the status quo plays the negative-sum game. It pits one person of power against another and everyone pays for it.

Fortunately, the people in power that are listening have an edge because they are listening. They are being enabled to use their power wisely.

Flow-State Ambition

Let’s now review Flow-State Ambition. It has seven levels. 

I’ll summarize them at the end so make your notes then.

The first level of ambition is being able to demonstrate something. Like running for 10 meters demonstrates we know how to run. Like having a CTW Shower 10 times in a row. Action speaks louder than words.

The second level is doing something because we enjoy it. We get our hands dirty because, even though it’s hard work, our involvement means we’re bringing it to fruition as swiftly as possible. We're loving every minute of it. We’re becoming an adaptable subject matter expert. 

Adaptable is an operative word.

Traditional subject matter experts have stopped listening to alternative points of view. When they feel like they are losing the argument, they initiate the witch hunt of the negative-sum game, like shaming others.

An adaptable subject matter expert listens and adapts like an intellectual.

Adaptation means a person is overcoming the mental barriers that lead to narratives and arguments.

Adaptable subject matter experts enjoy what they do and they continue to push past mental barriers. We enter a flow state every so often, which encourages us to love what we do. We begin to understand how our interest is not a silo but woven into the ecosystems of life. We become scientists brimming with objectivity.

When we realize this, we have found the 3rd level of ambition.

As we are now overcoming mental barriers that held us back, we start to realize resources are encouraging us to have mental barriers. Like the kickoff rule in association football discussed in the previous episode.

When we start seeing how the shortcomings of our resources are encouraging us to have mental barriers, we enter the 4th level of ambition. This is when we soon realize we sometimes encourage mental barriers in others. Like telling people to do what they’re told. Like telling someone, trust me. 

This realization enables us to start enabling others to overcome their mental barriers through objectivity. When this becomes an effortless routine for us, we achieve the 5th level of ambition. 

As our skill to enable objectivity in others grows, we start developing new skills to launch others beyond ourselves.

For example, our ancestors could have kept martial arts and meditation to themselves, yet they shared what they knew so that their legacy would continue. 

When we start seriously enabling others, we enable them to launch beyond ourselves and they do what we think is inconceivable. This is the only way progress ever happens. When those we enable launch beyond ourselves and do the unthinkable, this is when we have achieved the 6th level of ambition.

Oh, yes. 

Level 7 is venturing where no one has gone before and coming back to tell the tale. 

While our successors are launching beyond us, we are simply doing the unthinkable like they are. We’re like Alex Honnold who climbed a 3,000 foot cliff without a rope. We can still remain curious and come back to tell the tale.

Search for the image of the Flammarion Engraving. Go to moxiefrontier.com, download The Flourishing Method, and you will find it on page 139. That image is a visual metaphor for level 7.

This is the moxie frontier.

Through the Seven Levels Of Flow-State Ambition, we make the objective world bigger.

In your journal, write the following 7 levels of ambition:

1. Action speaks louder than words
2. Enjoy what you do. Get your hands dirty. This is known as sweat equity.
3. Overcome mental barriers - remain curious 
4. Use resources without being misled 
5. Enable others to exercise objectivity
6. Launch people beyond yourself
7. Live to tell the tale 

Becoming official

You complete the Orange Belt when you…routinely concentrate on where you are within Flow-State Ambition, which varies from activity to activity.

As you are enjoying Meta Zen, enable people to stumble upon it. Buy some Meta Zen stickers from moxiefrontier.com and put them where you and others will see them. 

The Meta Zen sticker is our invitation to come back home where Flow-State Ambition is right where we've left it. 

It's a great time to be alive.