Amina AlTai on The Ambition Trap: From Burnout to Wholeness |EP 689

22:57And I think that the work starts with us. And when we show up differently, other people will notice and we're in a dance with everybody. So they'll move to accommodate us as well. But we're usually experiencing some kind of hit for it, whether we're conscious of it or not, right? So the hit for me was my health, right? I was definitely coming from painful ambition, trying to control every last I dot every or control everything in my life. And it's just not possible. And that's when my body broke, right? So maybe you're experiencing physical challenges. Maybe you're experiencing a lot of conflict because of that voracious desire to succeed and how you're showing up with your community and your collaborators.

23:34Perhaps you're noticing a lot of mental stress, right? And it's impacting your mental health, right? So there's going to be signals along the way for sure. And we want to look and see where the rub is, where's the discomfort and where's it coming from? And can we choose another way? I want to go into kind of the background on systems that keep us trapped. And one of the quotes that I really like from the book is that ambition is complicated, especially for historically excluded people. So it begs the question, how do race, gender, identity intersect with ambition in ways that our listeners might not even realize?

24:11Yes. So again, this is why I wanted to write the book because I wasn't seeing anybody talk about identity and ambition. And those things are so intrinsically linked. There's something known as the ambition penalty. And what that is, if you're a woman, if you're a person of color, if you're a queer person, a person with a disability, anybody with a marginalized identity, we experience backlash for our ambition. So I'll share a bit more data. Men and women, and the research was done in a gender binary. Men and women enter the workforce in more or less the same levels of ambition. Men are rewarded for theirs.

24:41Women, it's seen as a detractor. And ambitious women who negotiate their salaries are seen as aggressive and difficult to work with. women of color are actually the most ambitious cohort in corporate America, but they experienced the most pushback for that ambition. So there's this double bind that we experience, right? We're told to be and not to be in the very same sentence. And we want to take up space. We want to grow, but oftentimes it's seen as really taboo. And so I think we have to talk about that complexity. Yeah. Marshall Goldsmith wrote the famous book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There.

25:14Amen. So for those people who are painfully ambitious, how would you relate what he's trying to convey in that book to what they're missing? That's interesting because some people have said to me, I'm going to, if you're an immigrant, if you're a person of color, you have to work harder to be seen and to take up space, right? But again, it's what got us here is not going to get us where we want to go next, right? Sometimes we have to use these tools to get where we want to go. and sometimes it's deeply painful and we take a really big hit for it. And I'm speaking from experience here, but I think that if we want a life of joy, of meaning, of ease, of comfort, those tools that we use to grapple our way to the top, it's very different than the tools that are going to get us to that next place that we want to go to.

26:03And so I think we have to be really compassionate with ourselves because sometimes people take a framework like this and weaponize it against themselves. And that's not the point at all. It's awareness. And sometimes we had to use these tools to survive in this system, to get here, but now it's something else. I want to talk a little bit about some of the Gen Z listeners who might be tuning in today. So I have two kids who are in this quadrant, and I think both of them are really struggling right now because I think they both have ambition, but they're worried about all the complexities that are being thrown at them, especially how fast technology is chasing the workplace.

26:44And I know for my son, he was really worried about what college degree to pursue because his AI is going to make so many of these different jobs so redundant. So what would your advice be to people in that quadrant, that generation on how they can approach ambition differently, knowing that the playing field is changing? So I think that your son is asking all of the right questions. I think these are important questions to ask. And so what I would be thinking about is, yes, where is AI going to replace some of our work? I think in lots of ways, AI is going to be complementary, already is complementary versus completely replacing, but of course it's going to replace some things.

27:25So thinking about where AI is going to make some roles redundant, but also bumping that up against where our genius is. And we want to be thinking about our zone of genius. Each and every one of us has a zone of genius, and that's our highest yield contribution. That's where our gifts are innate. So thinking about, okay, well, if we are making quadrants, right, what is AI potentially going to replace? Okay, let's cross that out. Where am I in my zone of genius? And how can that potentially be something that either AI can't replace or AI will work complementarily with? And how can I double down in that space?

27:57So that way we're not, because I never want people to work in a space so outside of their gifts that it's going to feel like friction every single day. And we also have to be really conscious of how technology is going to change our lives and is going to change our jobs. A great example is a lot of people are using AI for coaching and for therapy, right? But one thing that people are noticing about AI is that it has a lot of confirmation bias and it can be a big echo chamber, right? There was a study that a therapist had done or an analysis that a therapist had done basically like affirming a lot of this there was basically a kid that was like, it was a scenario where this therapist was pretending to be a kid saying to AI, hey, like my parents are really hard on me.

28:38And then eventually says, oh, I think I should kill my parents. And then AI is like, yeah, you should kill your parents, right? Just like really affirming the bias. And so this is where an excellent coach and excellent therapist is really going to differentiate, right? It's like, they don't have that same echo chamber bias. So thinking about where we can really bring in our human factors that a machine won't be able to replace, especially not right now, right? They're getting smarter and smarter all the time, but really thinking about where does my humanness really add the most value? I think that is really important.

29:11It always makes me come back to Marshall's book because in my own life, man, I was burning up the ladder. I was climbing faster than anyone. Youngest vice president at Lowe's, youngest partner select at Arthur Anderson. And I met with this clinical psychologist who was evaluating a bunch of the top leaders at Lowe's. And she said that very phrase to me and which my weakest point was my emotional intelligence of getting out of drive mode and getting into more connection and collaboration mode. And when I think about what AI will do and what it won't do, one thing it's never going to replace is human interaction.

29:56And I think if we're in work, we're always going to have to work with other people. So the more you can learn how to influence people in the right way, I think that's one of the greatest skills that anyone can learn because I don't think it's going to go away no matter what else happens. Exactly. So beautifully said. So you have worked with leaders at the highest levels. And for those who don't know your background, you were the front face in front of millions of people for a top brand. As you look across the space and companies today, where do you see hustle culture is the most deeply ingrained?

30:38That's such a great question. And I think it's in so many places, right? Even places that we think that it's not. Even places that are saying, hey, our values are this. It's in the smallest ways. Even moving with a sense of urgency, that's hustle culture. Valuing the written word over people's intuition, that's hustle culture. Instrumentalizing our bodies, that's hustle culture. It's so pervasive and it's so insidious. It's everywhere. It's so countercultural to choose another way. I'm going to give you an example. Last year as I was finishing up the book, I was working seven days a week. And now that I had a big burst of energy on the book tour, that finished mostly in June, July, and I have a bit of a slowdown period.

31:22So I've been working like three days a week for this. And that to me feels right. Like I'm recouping my energy. I talk about how ambition goes in cycles. You have these peaks in the sun, and then you have these moments where you go back underground to recuperate. And I'm in an underground moment. And last year when I was working seven days a week, nobody asked, are you okay? This year when I'm working three days a week, people are like, are you okay? Yeah, I'm great. But we're so indoctrinated to believe that going 90 miles an hour all the time is the way that when somebody slows down to take care of themselves, we think that's the problem.

31:52And so it's just so insidious and it's so pervasive that I feel like we have to question everything. I hope I have this statistic correct from your book. I'm doing it off of memory, but I think it said in 2016, 745 ,000 people lost their lives to hustle culture, which is a hard number to even fathom. If you think about that and how devastating it is, what do you think the biggest lie that hustle culture tries to sell us is? I think the biggest lie is that the more you work, the more valuable you are. That's the thing that keeps us in motion. And I think this is why your work is so important, right?

32:33Like we all matter. We are all born worthy, but we believe that we're not because of our initial injuries of the psyche, because of everything that we experience out in the world. And so then we are relentlessly seeking our worthiness outside of ourselves. And that is the carrot that we're chasing inside of hustle culture. And it's never going to fill the wound that's on the inside until we get the message and we feel it in our whole bodies that we are worthy. We are always going to stay in that constant motion until we hurt ourselves like I did. so there's another quote you have in the book when we are living and leading from a place of pain and chasing ambition no matter the cost we hurt everyone around us including ourselves what advice would you give to leaders who are quietly thinking to themselves maybe i'm operating from that place first of all if you are i think it's so important that we have compassion for ourselves and we forgive ourselves, right?

33:31I said before, I don't want anybody to weaponize this framework against themselves. We're in a system that rewards this way of being and it's counter-cultural. It's like swimming upstream to choose a different way. And we likely were raised inside of organizations and structures that said, hey, this is the way to be. This is the way you are successful. This is the way you thrive. So if you're noticing that you're operating that way, first of all, compassion and forgiveness for yourself, where then is it getting in the way of you having the life that you want? Where is it really interrupting true success, true alignment, true fulfillment, true contentment, and then starting to mine those pieces for yourself.

34:04And then seeing if you can show up differently for other people too. A lot of the times people, I feel like all into two camps and I don't want to make this about a binary, but I feel like either we will, it's like the impact on ourselves will make us change or the impact on other people will make us change. There are so many people that don't want to hurt other people, but they're willing to hurt themselves. Right. And then there's people that are like, Oh, the minute I hurt, I need to change it for everybody else too. So if you can't change it for yourself, think about the people that you're impacting negatively and like what their experience is going to be.

34:32Most people don't want to hurt other people. And so if you're noticing where your patterns are potentially hurting those people around you for that reason, can you make a change? I think that's really important. However, in my career, I've met quite a few of the people who are in the camp where I call them in my own book, Passion Struck. I call these people bloodsuckers. They're typically painfully ambitious. This whole chapter is about this thing I call the mosquito audit, whereas you're trying to revamp your life. One of the things you have to look for is the hidden influences that are around you.

35:08And oftentimes we don't even realize these influences are there until they bite us. And one of these mosquitoes I call the bloodsucker. And they're, I think, one of the most painful types because these are the people who will do whatever it takes to move up. And so they're trying to steal or take away from you all your blood, anything they can get with you for personal gain. If someone is working with a person like that and they're working with someone who's painfully ambitious, what is the best way for them to interact where they're developing a relationship with them, but they're also protecting themselves and setting the right type of boundary?

35:47Exactly. You use the perfect word, right? Boundaries are so important. I love the Prentice Hemphill definition of boundaries where they say boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. And I think in the work context, it's the distance at which I can honor you and me simultaneously. And I think in a conversation where somebody has such a rapacious desire to succeed and it's coming from that really painful place, it's so important to stick to the facts or what are the facts? The facts are we need this project plan done. The facts are this is the deadline. Because a lot of the time people like that will want to pull you into the drama too, right?

36:18Because they get some sort of adrenaline dump from bringing you into the drama as well. And that's where boundaries become even more important. So thinking about what's the distance at which I can honor this person, the work, and myself at the same time. And just resisting the urge to fall into the trap, right? Because when we're around people that operate like that, it often initiates an impulse for us to operate the same way. I noticed this about myself. I wrote a book on a more harmonious relationship with ambition. But when I'm around people that are really in the painful ambition, I notice there's an impulse for me to move at the same speed or to choose the same behavior.

36:52So I just have to watch myself more, just be a bit more judicious, a bit more conscious. And sometimes that means I'm moving a bit slower, like still fast enough, right? I'm still getting everything done. I've never missed a deadline. And so just being conscious of how we're operating when we're around that because that behavior is contagious. One of the things I really loved in the book was your idea of something that you call the resentment line. And you're right. We all have a threshold. When it's crossed, resentment sets in. How can any of the listeners out there recognize when they've possibly slipped below that line?

37:26Yeah. So the resentment line is exactly what it sounds like. It's the space that if we live below it, we feel resentful. And it's really about having our needs met and being in right relationship with those needs being met. So let's say we're showing up at a job, we're giving a lot, we don't feel like the salary is commensurate. As a result that we live below the resentment line. To live above the resentment line, we have to know what our needs are and we have to articulate what they are and then we have to ask for what we need. And that's really hard for a lot of people because so many people don't know what their needs are and don't know how to ask for them to be met.

37:56I want people to just guess our needs and intuit them and miraculously show up with them. I used to live that way for sure. I was like, oh, people can't read my mind around my needs. And so we have to be really clear on what they are for ourselves. And there's some exercises in the book asking you for different areas of your life? What do you need in order to show up whole, nourished, and fully? And then stating those things. And listen, in a work environment, sometimes that's a little tricky. There's a certain budget that's allocated. And so sometimes we're working around that, but there's always ways to get creative, right?

38:25When people are negotiating comp and things like that, I'm always talking to people about, well, how can we get creative around how they can make you whole, whether that's a personal development stipend, some more PTO, right? What are the ways that we can build in more so that you can feel more nourished and like your needs are being met and you're not living in that resentful place. Because the thing about the resentment line too, is we think that nobody knows that we're there, that we're kicking rocks down there. Everybody feels it. And so it doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve the people around you.

38:54I want to go back to something you brought up earlier, and that was you were talking about inner genius. And to me, inner genius is something like purpose or meaning that a lot of people have a hard time discovering. You have three E's, E's, excellence, enjoyment, that I'm hoping that you could go into in more depth and talk about how they relate to possibly finding your inner genius. Yes. So in the book, I have a framework called the three E's and the E's stand for the E, like which is the space that we're average at, the excellent, which is the space that we're practiced, polished, and really proficient, and the exceptional, which is the place that we're off the charts genius.

39:34And each and every one of us has a zone of genius, but we live in a world where we think that genius is for the select few or that it has to look a certain way. It does not. It's different for all of us. And we each have this magic special sauce. And so I invite people to take themselves through that framework. It's really freeing to find the places that we're average at. So many people are afraid of that exercise. I'm like, it's the best thing ever, because then we can figure out how we can give that to other people whose zone of genius that is, right? Like why do we need to hoard everything when actually somebody could do that in a genius way?

40:05And then that frees us up to double down in our zone of genius. So you can take yourself through that three E's exercise and you can categorize your work into things that you like and don't like for each of those three areas. And then the invitation is to spend more time in that exceptional or zone of genius every single day, just starting with 10 more minutes a day. Because inevitably when I teach this framework, someone's hand shoots up and they're like, listen, like it's a form of privilege to live in your genius. I can't do that. I'm inside of this corporate framework. But each of us could probably find 10 minutes a day and start to build from there and there.

40:37And then over the course of a year, our lives will be remarkably different. Thank you for sharing that. And I had a philosophical question for you. Great. Contentment or achievement? What comes first? Oh my gosh, that's such a good question. Okay. I think that achievement without contentment coming first is probably going to be painful ambition. And I literally, this is the first time I'm hearing this question. So that's my first thought. And I could probably piece this apart a little bit more, but it feels like if we don't know what makes us feel whole and we're looking for achievement, then we're going to do that thing where we're chasing all the things outside of ourselves.

41:14But if we do know what creates that unconditional wholeness, we can build. And that to me feels like very different energy. Yeah. And as a follow-up, just hit my curiosity meter. What brings you the most contentment in this series, in this season of your life? I love this question. I think I'm really relearning that right now. I just wrote a sub stack about this, about how my North Star in my constellation of purpose for the last couple of years was the book. I've been working on this book since September of 2022. It's a long time. And now that I'm not writing it, the promotion for it has slowed down a little bit.

41:53I have a lot of spaciousness. and in that spaciousness initially felt really dysregulating because I'd been used to moving at this really quick speed for a while. Even though I've had spaciousness before in the past and I write about it, I teach all the things, it's been really disorienting because of this North Star piece and because of the slowdown. And so what I've been letting myself do is get bored. And I think that that's actually such an important piece to find resonance in the boredom, right? And to let that be okay. And I think that's also where magic happens. I'm actually redefining this answer for myself in real time right now.

42:28And I don't have a neat and tidy bow to put on it for you. Well, isn't it so interesting that so much of us are constantly on the go-go that we never have that time for boredom. And I was recently reading an article about Jeff Bezos and how he starts his mourning, where for the first hour of his day, he specifically puts himself into a state of boredom just to think about what's going on in his life, what's going well, what's not going well, what's he grateful for, what could be improved upon. But I think most of us don't give ourselves space for that. And let's face it, we've got to get to the gym to get to work on time.

43:08We've got kids. We've got to get to school. So how have you found, even during those times where you were working seven days a week, to build some boredom into those periods? Or do you think sometimes you can't and other times you have to recoup? I think that you can. And I think you can micro dose it, let's say, because even last year where I was working seven days a week, I was still so judicious about taking really good care of myself. I was going to therapy using my nervous system tools. I'm always in coaching myself. I was, if I couldn't take off a weekend, which I couldn't, and couldn't is interesting, right?

43:47It's, I don't know, maybe I could have if I organized my schedule differently, I couldn't figure it out, right? So I couldn't take off extended periods of time, but I was finding pockets of rest, right? So I would lay on the floor between client sessions with my weighted blanket on top of myself. I might do squats between sessions, or I might take a walk outside and notice like 10 things that I could see in the park, right? So there's ways that I could bring rest and regulate my, or resonance from my nervous system that could be really helpful for me. And then I think also in those moments of rest, resisting the impulse to stimulate ourselves, because a lot of us will reach for the phone or will reach for Netflix or because we feel so uncomfortable with that feeling of boredom or spaciousness or the emotions that are underneath it.

44:30So resisting the impulse to busy ourselves mindlessly and actually sit with the feeling. I think it's important for us to discuss collective change. And I picked this quote from you to do. You write, true success won't come from doing more, but from being more ourselves and doing this work as a collective. What does collective ambition look like to you? Collective ambition, I hope, is purposeful ambition, right? Where we realize that the more we each show up in our zone of genius, the more that we're each coming from that place of wholeness and we've looked at our core wounds, that we can come together and drive true change around things that we need to drive change around.

45:14I think we've lived in such a scarcity mindset and a lot of manufactured scarcity of only one person can win and only one person can do this thing. And it creates so much fighting that then we don't address the real challenges. But I think if we remember that there's space for each of us has a beautiful contribution to make, whether it's to our family, our community, or the greater good. And when we come together in our genius, we're so much stronger and we can tackle a lot of these big issues that we're experiencing. so less infighting more realization of our genius and more addressing the things that fundamentally are broken well that leads me to a fun question for you you are suddenly selected since we were talking about jeff bezos to be on the mission to mars you're going to be one of the first people who gets to go to mars and for each one of the first settlers they get to retire a cultural myth about success forever?

46:09What would yours be? That our value is in our productivity. And how would you counteract that from spreading over time? Oof, maybe that's going to be my next body of work.

46:26I'm going to sit with that one. I don't have the fully baked curriculum for that answer yet. I mean, it's an important question because there are a lot of these myths that people talk about, But things end up spreading like wildfire in ways that are hard to contain at times. And absolutely, the way to contain these things is when they first start coming off of people's tongues. But it's difficult to do that, especially on Earth, where you've got so much connection now through social media. And that's where these things take fire. But I think on Mars, there could be a way to somehow maybe build a world without social media.

47:05Maybe build a world where we get back to growing up with connections being the most fundamental things and learning from our elders and learning through example and not being in a world where safety is so rampant and everything else. Yes. You know what came to mind as you were saying that was I'm watching the new Jason Momoa series on Apple TV. I've forgotten the name of it, but it's about indigenous Hawaiians. and one of the things that Jason Momoa was talking about was as they were being colonized, people's obsession with money and ownership and things like that, and going back to Mars and teaching about our worthiness and productivity and dismantling that myth is the knowledge of enough, right?

47:48And this is what I talk about in the book around contentment. Contentment from Eastern traditions translates to unconditional wholeness or the knowledge of enough. And I think if we're taught from an early age what unconditional wholeness looks like and the knowledge of enough looks like. We're not perpetually seeking that more for more sake. And that I think is, is the thing that we need to be teaching from day one. I don't know what that curriculum fully looks like for kids and everybody, but I do feel like that's the essence from my perspective anyway. One of the things I am really curious about is I think a lot of times one of the things success results in is personal sacrifice.

48:24So how do you start teaching people to achieve the goal of success without self-sacrifice? Sacrifice is a really interesting language, right? And self-sacrifice is really interesting language. And I think that we have to make trade-offs sometimes, right? I think that's really important to level set of like, there are times where we have to choose one thing over another thing and there's a trade-off to be made, right? Maybe we can't do it all or achieve it all at the same time, right? So we have to be really clear of the trade-offs. But sacrifice in the line is like, where are you hurting yourself?

48:58Where is it going to take you below the resentment line? So I think we each have to understand where that line is for us as individuals and how we can live in integrity. Integrity isn't a judgment that's about right or wrong. It's about wholeness, right? So how can you be whole? How can you not cross over the line or live below the resentment line as you navigate the trade-offs? Because there's going to be trade-offs, but to be honest about that. I think that is such an important thing to bring up. There are always trade-offs. Do you accept this job that for six weeks is going to put you on a show as you were talking about on another podcast with a celebrity chef, but it's going to keep you from your kids?

49:38Or do you lean into that? We're tested all the time. And I think it's such a dangerous thing to do when we live our lives in the rear view mirror instead of, and I'm the worst at this because it's easy to second guess yourself. But I think we need to look through the front window and not try to justify all the decisions we made, but learn from them and move forward. What are your thoughts on that? 100%, right? I might be the opposite to you where like I go to, I'm like, oh, it was a learning moment. I don't need to look back, but we need to be where our feet are, right? If we're constantly looking back, and even if we're constantly looking forward, we're not where our feet are.

50:16And the more we look back and the more we look forward, actually, the more often we are dysregulated because we take ourselves out of the moment. Our brain can't update the map of the moment. And so I think it's important to mine the past, absolutely, to get our lessons, absolutely, because we want to move forward differently, but be where your feet are and make the best choices you can in this moment to moment. I want to show the audience the book again, The Ambition Trap, How to Stop Chasing and Start Living. You end the book with an invitation. What's the invitation you hope each reader and each listener here will accept for themselves?

50:50I really hope that people, first of all, I want to eradicate the idea that ambition is not for all of us, right? It is for each and every one of us. And we've seen this really dysfunctional version of it. And that's the story that I wanted to rewrite, that it doesn't have to be harmful, it doesn't have to be dysfunctional, but we each need to find our harmonious relationship with it. And we each need to be more and more of ourselves, right? That's the work, really coming home to ourselves, asking ourselves what's alignment versus achievement and living from that place. And so I really hope that people can embrace this and this way of being, because I do think that purposeful ambition could shift a lot of things for a lot of people and a lot of workplaces.

51:29I wanted to thank you so much for joining us today. It was such an honor to discuss the book and congratulations again on its release and for joining us here on Passion Struck. Thank you so much for having me. It was such a joy and congratulations on your books coming out. Thank you. Almost surreal as they always are. That's a wrap on today's conversation with Amina Altai and I hope it left you rethinking your own relationship with ambition, whether it's lifting you up, quietly pulling you under. Here are a few powerful reminders from today's episode. First, ambition is neutral. It's our wounds or our purpose that determine how it shows up.

52:06Second, painful ambition depletes. Purposeful ambition regenerates. True success isn't about doing more, but about being more ourselves. If today's episode resonated, I'd love for you to take 30 seconds to talk about it by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more people discover this movement. And as a reminder, if you want to go deeper, join me at the ignitedlife.net for weekly insights, curated playlists, and exclusive tools that help you live intentionally. Next week, we continue The Irreplaceables with Scott Anthony, clinical professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and author of the new book, 11 Epic Disruptions.

52:51We have a powerful discussion on the human side of innovation, why imagination, not iteration, drives the future. We'll explore what it means to lead as pattern breakers in an algorithmic world, drawing from Scott's 20 plus years at InnoPsych, where he helped triple revenues expand globally and advise CEOs on six continents. You need this duality, almost a paradox in your mind, where you are simultaneously thinking about long-term future and present reality, recognizing if you don't care and deliver for today, you don't earn the right to do tomorrow. But if you don't have a vision, a direction to which you're trying to go to for tomorrow, the efforts that you have in today are going to be misguided or even counterproductive.

53:41And the thing that I generally council leaders to do is make sure that you just stop and you apply different timeframes and mental models as you're looking at different things that you are trying to decide around. Until then, live boldly, lead with heart, and as always, live life passion struck.