We Have Ambition All Wrong, and It's Making Us Sick. Amina AlTai Shows Us How to Break the Cycle
It was almost 15 years ago now, but I remember it like it was yesterday.
I was several years into my career as a marketing professional, and life looked great on paper. I was doing meaningful work, had a fancy title, and was achieving my goals, but I felt terrible.
After seven different trips to seven different doctors, I finally found one who took me seriously.
Then on a scorching summer morning in the middle of July in New York City, I got a devastating call from my physician. Bloodwork in hand, she phoned to tell me that if I didn’t go to the hospital now instead of going to work, I would be days away from multiple organ failure.
Whoa. How did that happen?
I didn’t realize it then, and I didn’t even have the language for it at the time, but I had inadvertently fallen into the ambition trap.
As the boundaryless child of immigrants who came of age in the workplace post 9/11 with a very Arab-sounding name, I was convinced that I needed to be the hardest working person in the room to matter—and this literally made me sick.
Maybe you have a similar story of overworking to feel valuable. Ambition, for me, was a rapacious desire to succeed, no matter the cost, so I could feel worthy. It took a very loud shout from the universe for me to realize that this way of working and being was very broken.
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Many of us equate ambition with pushing ourselves to the limit to achieve our goals. At first, it pays off—we get the job, earn the promotion, and secure the raise. But over time, we become exhausted, overextended, resentful even and detached from what truly matters. For those of us from historically excluded backgrounds (women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, and those with disabilities), the obstacles are even steeper, compounding the toll on our well-being.
Do we have to choose between burning out or abandoning ambition altogether? I say a resounding no.
Now, here’s where I want to ask you: What’s your relationship to ambition?
Would you say you’re an ambitious person, or do you have an allergic reaction to that word?
I find that the word “ambition” is culturally and politically complex, often serving as a lens through which people’s qualities are judged differently. Ambitious women are frequently labeled as “too much” or “aggressive,” while ambitious men are seen as driven and powerful, as founder Liz Elting notes.
As I spent the last two and a half years (well, my whole life, really) studying and analyzing ambition, I had conversations with people around the country, and they inevitably fell into two camps:
Those who identified with the word ambition but whose relationship with it was fraught because it has caused pain.
And those that rejected the word altogether, decrying that they aren’t ambitious at all because of how it’s culturally defined.
But I believe we’re all ambitious. Because ambition in its purest form is simply a desire to unfold; it’s neutral and natural. Every living thing on the planet is encoded with that desire, from a blade of grass stretching towards the sun to the birds that land on our windowsills in the morning. We’re all growing and unfolding. As humans, we are the only species that has a choice in how we direct that desire for more life.
However, ambition feels troubling for most of us because we’ve been taught that it is a never-ending upward trajectory—that it’s always more for more’s sake (Hello, old me!). But when we relate to ambition this way, it costs us our health, our relationships, our joy and ultimately upholds oppressive systems.
Let’s be clear, though. I’m in no way, shape, or form asking you to abandon your ambition or to want less success. I’m a very ambitious person, and I would hazard a guess that you are, too. I am inviting us all to be in the right relationship with ambition—to source it from a place of purpose, not pain. We need that now more than ever.
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After my spectacular fall from grace, I spent several years learning and soul searching, eventually changing careers and becoming an executive coach. From my decade-plus working with executives and senior women around the globe, what I’ve learned is that there are two types of ambition. There is painful ambition that is driven by our core wounds —rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. And then there is purposeful ambition, ambition sourced from our truth.
We live in a world that forces many of us to derive our ambition from a place of pain. Whether we experience a childhood wound that causes us to constantly seek validation outside of ourselves, we’ve been impacted by societal biases about who’s allowed to be ambitious, or we’ve internalized structural scripts that incentivize us to equate our identities with our jobs, most of us (especially historically excluded people) have had a wobbly relationship with ambition.
So, what are we meant to do about it? Here’s where we can start to break the cycle:
Acknowledge the core wounds.
My desire for growth ultimately came from my rejection wound. Like my clients and I, you may have one, two, or all five of the wounds in play. We want to understand the pain and stories of not-enoughness (whether our own or culturally reinforced) that drive our desires for more.
Notice when we are in painful ambition.
Painful ambition has a few hallmarks, but it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. It can look like instrumentalizing our minds and bodies to reach our goals, black-and-white thinking, perfectionism, a desire to get ahead no matter the cost, and self-imposed urgency, such as the need to achieve at a lightning-fast speed.
Unearth our purpose.
Our purpose is how we bring forth the greatest and most true parts of ourselves. Many of us spend so little time getting to know ourselves that we have no idea of this force living inside of us. But life unfolds much differently when we meet it and let our ambition flow and be nurtured from this place.
Prioritize meeting our needs.
Contrary to what most historically excluded people are taught, we don’t have to earn the right to meet our needs or prioritize ourselves. Real success is balancing our well-being, having our economic needs met, and being supported by our communities. A big part of meeting our needs is having enough money to do so, which requires a system-wide shift towards pay parity and closing the gender and racial wealth gaps—true economic justice.
Cultivate contentment.
In the West, we’re obsessed with the notion of happiness. It’s something we seek in effort to conquer and obtain forever. But happiness is an emotion and is, therefore, transient. This means that happiness is meant to be fleeting. And the harder we try to grasp something that is meant to be fleeting, the more miserable we will be. In many Eastern traditions, contentment is the prized state. Contentment loosely translates to “unconditional wholeness” and is a state of being that doesn’t rely on external circumstances, such as getting the new job or title bump. The idea of operating with unconditional wholeness allows us to meet our ambitions in a more meaningful way. We know that our wholeness comes from within and we’re not chasing the next milestone to feel complete.
It turns out ambition isn’t the illicit word we think it is. When we better understand its types and our relationship to them, we see how ambition can be an invitation to design our lives with greater purpose, integrity, and joy.
I'm so excited to tell you that my first book, The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living, is coming out May 13, 2025—and its cover is here! I wrote this book to inspire you to change your relationship to striving. It’s an invitation to lean into your most natural gifts, nourish yourself in the long-term pursuit of your goals, and allow contentment to guide the way. You can preorder a copy now!
Amina AITai is a holistic business and career coach, author and host of the Amina Change your Life podcast. Over the past nine years as a leading holistic business and career coach, Amina has garnered a singular reputation for recognizing and supporting a whole new generation of leaders, creators, and public-facing innovators. Learn more at aminaaltai.com.
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