Editor’s Note: This article is one of the top 10 habits to adopt to be better at your job in 2016. See the full list here.

Ambition gets a bad rap. The trait that pushes someone toward success can sometimes turn into a game where winning isn’t about achieving; it’s about beating the other person. Channel it correctly, however, and ambition can bring great results.

“On average, ambitious people attain higher levels of education and income, build more prestigious careers, and report higher overall levels of life satisfaction,” says Neel Burton, psychiatrist and author of Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions. “Many of man’s greatest achievements are the products, or accidents, of their ambition.”

The key is to pursue healthy ambition: “People with a high degree of healthy ambition are those with the insight and strength to control the blind forces of ambition, shaping [it] so that it matches their interests and ideals,” says Burton. “They harness it so that it fires them without also burning them or those around them.”

They harness it so that it fires them without also burning them or those around them.

Nearly anyone can be ambitious given the right internal and external stimuli, says Jason Ma, author of Young Leaders 3.0: Stories, Insights, and Tips for Next-Generation Achievers. Here are six things you can do to harness your ambition and focus on success over competition:

Ambitious people are goal-oriented and are always striving towards the next accomplishment, but healthy ambition involves keeping your goals private, said entrepreneur Derek Sivers in a 2010 TED Talk “Keep Your Goals To Yourself.”

Psychologists have found that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen, Siver explained: “Any time you have a goal, there are some steps that need to be done, some work that needs to be done in order to achieve it. Ideally you would not be satisfied until you’d actually done the work. But when you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it, psychologists have found that it’s called a ‘social reality.’ The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it’s already done. And then because you’ve felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary,” Siver said.