Episode 426: The Ambition Trap — How to Stop Chasing & Start Living with Amina AlTai

Amina AlTai 0:02

I was seeing over and over again with myself, with my clients, is that especially when you're a historically excluded person, you occupy this in between space of being told that you are both too much and not enough in the same sentence, and believing that is the trap, right? How could we be both things and so we have to basically retrain our brains, while we also work to shift a system that makes space for us. T minus 10

Jamila Souffrant 1:34

Hey. Hey, journeyers, welcome to the journey to launch podcast. I have a special guest for you today. Her name is Amina Altai, she is a holistic business and career coach, proud immigrant and chronic illness advocate. She's a leading coach to notable leaders, executives and founders. Amina mastery is connecting us to our brilliance, teaching us to live and lead from it every day. Her debut book The ambition trap, how to stop chasing and start living, is coming out May 13, so it should be out by the time this episode drops. So excited to welcome Amina back on the podcast. She was on Episode 390

where she talked about breaking the burnout cycle and finding a balance with work and life. Welcome back to the podcast, Amina, thank you so much for having me. It's always such a joy to be with you. Yes, okay, so I know I remember this time of launching and releasing a book and how much work that took. And I want you to kind of go back right, because I feel like part of what you talk about in this book and with your work is obviously ambition, title of your book, and getting to these points of our lives where we are almost realizing the fruits of our labor, like all the ambition and work we've we've done, and then it's funny, because it also feels like it's never it never ends. So like you have a goal, and you set that goal, but then, all right, I wrote the book. Now I have to market the book. Now I have to release the book, and now hopefully it becomes successful or sells and people like it and read it, and then all these other things. So I would love for you to talk about, as you have evolved in your career and maybe elevated or evolved with your goals, how you came to this goal of writing the book. And let's just talk about that a little bit. Yes, the book came to be in a really interesting, sort of fortuitous way. I always wanted to write a book. I'm a coach, and it kind of feels like a natural part of the package, right? You have your own curriculum and your ideas, and you want to put them out there. And in 2019 I had worked on a book proposal with someone for a year, and then when the pandemic hit, I got a call from that agent, and they said, Hey, listen, the world is changing. We can't take a risk on a new author right now. So that just kind of fell apart. But it was so interesting and perfectly timed, because in 2020 at the height of the social justice uprisings, I had a really interesting experience where I was doing some transformative justice work, and I ended up coaching a handful of celebrity girl bosses who were canceled and my book is not about cancel culture, but basically, what it highlighted for me was something is amiss with our ambition, and I've seen it with myself, which led to my burnout and almost dying. And I'm also seeing a version of this in these women that I'm working with. And so I created this framework on ambition, and then I was just going on my merry way, teaching it in client sessions. And one of my clients two years later was like, This is awesome. Like, where's your book? And I was like, oh, it's funny. You should ask. I don't have one. And she was like, my dear friend just became an agent. You need to talk to her. And then we had this conversation. I felt so fully seen she got it, she got the work. And then we worked on a proposal. We took it to market. A couple months later, we sold it in the first week. And I think that's a really interesting story, because when timing isn't right, and you try to push and force, it doesn't work, and when the timing is aligned, things just unfold. Yeah, that's what I love. And I'm, you know, I know not everyone wants to write a book. I try to really, when I'm like talking and interviewing people like, say, what's in it for the listener, right? And so.

seconds, welcome to the journey to launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk she helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch, to financial freedom, 54321,

Jamila Souffrant 0:53

if you want the episode show notes for this episode, go to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode in the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned, and so much more. Also, whether you are an OG journeyer or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jump start guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to, stages to go through, to reach financial freedom, resources and so much more you can go to journey to launch.com/jump start to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode.

There are people who, yes, that's a goal of theirs, that's listening, like writing a book, and some that are not. What I love about that story you just told is you mentioned it in a summary just now. Is like the disappointment, like thinking it was going to happen one time, it not happening then. I mean, you did slip in, you coaching, like canceled women, which I kind of wanted to know more about that, but I love just the evolution of, you know, I don't know if you had, did you create the idea before 2019, like this, uh, framework that you talk about, that you probably talk about in the book. Did you have that together before? Or you had to do that work first and live life and have the experience to create the work. Exactly

Amina AlTai 5:41

the latter. I had to live life and have the experience. And there were parts of it that had already shaped but it was like that moment in 2020 just cemented everything and, like, put a bow on it.

Jamila Souffrant 5:50

Yeah, so All right, so that means you're listening right now, and there's something not happening or not working out the way you want. Potentially, there's a reason for that and a opportunity that you don't know yet, but in the future will all make sense. So hang in there. Yes.

Amina AlTai 6:04

Can I add to that? Yes? So what I kept saying, I, like, literally, for two days, like, cried. I got the call from the agent initially, when they said, No, I was standing outside of pizza shop, and I'm just, like, hysterically crying outside the pizza shop. And then I pulled together, I go home, and I journal, and I remember telling myself, the work isn't ready yet. It's not what it's supposed to be, yet it's still becoming, and it's going to be what it's supposed to be, and then it'll have its moment in the sun. So for everybody listening, it's not what it's supposed to be, yet it's still becoming. It's going to have its moment in the sun. I promise you,

Jamila Souffrant 6:33

I love that. So can you tell you have a lot of great concepts and things you go through in the book. And so I want to get to the ambition part, and just straight to it, just because, as a woman and as someone who considered myself very ambitious, we could talk about me not necessarily feeling as ambitious in my life anymore, if that's a good or bad thing. But I'd love to get into the types of ambition you I think you identified too, and I would love to hear more about them, yes.

Amina AlTai 7:00

So I love what you're saying, because part of the reason that I wanted to radically reframe ambition is because I think how we're taught about it is broken. We're taught in late stage capitalism that ambition is more for more sake all the time, right? That it is this line that is going towards the sky, and we never take a break. But I think that's part of what's broken. I actually think ambition is much more what you're doing right now. It goes in cycles. So I think of it as a perennial flower, like a flower that comes back every season where you drop a seed in the ground, and it's a seed of desire, right? I want to write a book, and you take care of the inner and outer environment. The seed starts to blossom and come through the ground. It has this moment in the sun where the petals are, you know, all their glory. And then the seasons change, and the petals fall off, and you wind back down, and you go underground, and you stay there until you're ready to come out again. You rest, and you recover, and you pace yourself. And so what you're talking about, to me, sounds much more like purposeful ambition, is what I call it. So ambition, there's two types. I believe there's painful ambition that is that more for more sake all the time, and it's driven by our core wounds. And I'll tell you about those in a minute. And then there's purposeful ambition, ambition that honors our natural cycles. It is much more connected to our truth and our

Jamila Souffrant 8:10

purpose. Oh my gosh, I love that. So let's talk about painful ambition first, because when I think about some of the people that I've known or no and see, and they're talking about like hustling and not wanting to repeat cycles from maybe growing up, and they're very ambitious. So would that be considered a painful ambition? Maybe it really depends.

Amina AlTai 8:33

Yes, exactly. It's a maybe, right? We'll hop in a coaching session and figure it out. So painful ambition is when it is coming from a core wound. So there are five core wounds, and this is a body of work from least borbo, where she says the five core wounds are rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal and injustice. And for every core wound we have, we wear a corresponding mask. So for example, the rejection wound, the mask we wear is avoidance. For the abandonment wound, the mask we wear is dependent, where we're overly dependent on others for humiliation, when we felt like our caregivers were somewhat embarrassed of us, it's masochism or martyrdom, where we'll, like, really, like, take ourselves out and we'll take all the hits, and we'll, you know, hurt ourselves to get to the goal. Then there's betrayal, and betrayal is when we felt like our caregivers didn't live up to expectations. So the mask we wear is control. That's me. Those are the people that will just control everything because we feel like we can't trust other people. And then the injustice where we feel like our individuality was wrong or repressed. And so then the mask we wear is rigidity, where we feel like we have to live in a perfect world. And so all of us have 123, or all five of these wounds, I have three, and if we are unaware of them, they're going to drive our ambition, right? So I probably shared this on the on Episode 390 but my origin story is that I started my career in marketing, brand management. I'm the child of immigrants, and have this betrayal wound, right? So I work really hard, and I control everything, and I did that so much. To the point that I burned out and developed two autoimmune diseases, where I got a call from my Doctor Who said I was days away from organ failure. So that's where ambition goes awry, right, where the pain is so big and the desire for more is coming from that place that we'll do whatever it takes to get to the goal, and whatever it takes is often hurting ourselves and hurting other people.

Jamila Souffrant 10:18

Wow, I'm writing notes and the mask, I think this is so important. It's almost as you were saying them. I was like, yep, check, check for myself. And so like you said, it could be one, it could be a combination. And it's funny, because, like these also are protective measures the mask that get us out of the situation and what we feel keep us safe, but then become our kryptonite, become like at some point it's hurtful to us or it we can no longer have the benefits outweigh whatever negative things come with. It so

Amina AlTai 10:54

beautifully. Said Yes, when I used to talk about control, I used to say it was my lifeboat, right? It was a thing that got me off the rocky water and got me to safety. But there's a certain point in our life where it stops helping us and it starts hurting us. Yes,

Jamila Souffrant 11:06

yes. Okay, so we can come back to painful ambition. I want to touch upon purposeful ambition and how that comes about. So

Amina AlTai 11:16

purposeful ambition is when we've acknowledged and done some work on the core wounds, right? I don't think we're ever done, and I think that we're always becoming right. So even in this book process, my cute little core wounds were tapping me on the shoulder, control came up again, right? So I don't think we ever, quote, unquote, heal them, but I think when we acknowledge them, when we start to see them, and then we allow our ambition to come from a different place, right? So for me, my ambition now is coming from this place of a desire to help, right? And recognizing that I'm not going to hurt myself in the process, and if I do, that's actually not purposeful ambition. I'm actually not doing the thing that I set out to do. And so it can look a couple of different ways. Purposeful ambition is when we understand the system that we're operating in and that it's not the same for all of us, right? So we're not insisting that everybody pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make their own way. It's when we recognize that we have an we want to have an expansive mindset versus a narrow mindset. It's when we are honoring our bodies, not hurting our bodies. It's when we're collaborative versus hyper individualistic. Those are some examples.

Jamila Souffrant 12:16

So how does one know when you know, it is coming from a painful ambition place versus purposeful. I mean, it seems pretty obvious, but I think in the moment, like, as you're trying to get something accomplished, maybe, and maybe we can give an example, because first, I think the desire and goal has to be set of something, you know, like, it's funny, because as I was running today, I was, I always say this to myself as a as someone who runs now, and it's hard for me, but I do it. I always look at people who run run, and I'm like, how can they not accomplish everything in life like this? Because to me, that's such a hard task to do. And so that could be like one area, like someone set an ambition for a goal for that they're going to run, and they for whatever reason they do that. But then there's other areas of our life where maybe it doesn't feel like we are as ambitious, or people are are as ambitious. So is there a difference between, like, being ambitious in certain areas of your life versus not? And then how do you know if you're doing it from these places of purposeful versus painful?

Amina AlTai 13:18

Yeah, great questions. So first of all, there's no right or wrong way to do it, and that's one thing that I want to kind of debunk in the book, because when I was looking at the research, I saw over and over again that we make ambition right for some people and wrong for others. So we see that ambitious men are seen as strong and powerful and driven. Ambitious women are seen as too much and aggressive. And then you add in other intersectionalities, and it complicates it even more. So there's no right? The ambition is beautiful. It's neutral and natural, and it's for everyone, and it's simply a desire to grow, a desire for more life, a desire to unfold. And you can have big ambitions, and you can have really quiet whispers of ambition, right? It can look any way that you want it to look, but we'll start to notice that we're tipping in painful ambition. And it's, you know, kind of a bit redundant to say it, but it feels painful. And I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example from my own life. So I'm in the process now of marketing the book, and like I said, I am. I'm the perfect person to write this book because I have navigated the ambition trap pretty much my whole life, and I just noticed in the process of getting the book out into the world that some of these core wounds were coming up. So I set a goal. I want to hit the USA Today bestseller list. And it's not coming from a place of external validation, which is a signature of painful ambition. It's coming from a place of actually, it'll move my flywheel, right? So if people see me on the list, more people will buy it, more people buy it, more people will read it, more people read it, more people will be changed by it. And that's what I want to do, right? That's kind of my purpose. That's my goal, to hit this list. But I started to see where I was losing the thread of the purposeful piece and dipping into the painful piece, and then over revving. So control came up again, and I was like, I'm not getting the results. I want people that are here to support me aren't stepping up in a big enough way. I'm going to over rev. So I over rev to make up for other people's under REV. Thing, and then I started to hurt myself again. I noticed my anxiety coming up, and actually just wrote about this on social media today, where, just two weeks ago, I was in the shower, and I looked down my resting heart rate was 140 and I was like, I'm not even doing anything. What is happening? Anxiety was there Right? Because there was this idea that I wasn't going to get it right, that I was going to get it wrong, and everything was out of control. And so you will notice when you're in painful ambition, because it's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt physically, emotionally, spiritually, and

Jamila Souffrant 15:26

it sounds like intention and awareness are very important in this huge, huge exactly like you first have to know yourself and be honest with yourself on what's motivating you. That's

Amina AlTai 15:38

exactly it. Where is the come from? Why? Why are we doing this? Ask yourself the five whys right? Ask yourself why? Over and over again, until you get to the real essence of it. And

Jamila Souffrant 15:47

when you say five whys, when you answer the first why, you say, why again? And you do that five times. Yes,

Amina AlTai 15:52

I don't know who came up with this body of work, but they call it the five whys. And it's like, Well, why do you want to hit the best seller list? Okay, well, why? What's under that? Well, why? What's under that? And then after five, you'll usually get to

Jamila Souffrant 16:01

the root, yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. Same thing with when I think about money and people's motivations for certain things. I talk about this in my book too, about you may want the nice car, and the honest reason for wanting the nice car is to, like, prove and show. Because you know, you want other people to know you can have a nice car too, or it makes you feel good. It might be a very superficial reason for it. And I like to say, like, if that's the reason, that's okay, be honest with yourself, though, yes, exactly, you know, don't say it's like, because I like the leather in that car. I mean, that might be part of it. But even with like, certain things, like, I think being honest is like, one of the first place to start, because you can only lie to yourself for so long, but it's, you know, the truth. And so there's where you come in, exactly

Amina AlTai 16:47

100% if we're lying to ourselves, then we're just living in a delusion. It's not helping us. It's not helping anybody else.

Jamila Souffrant 16:53

Yeah. So what did we do, though? If so, with their example of I want to hit the list. What if the reason was, you know, I want to hit the list because someone told me I couldn't write a book and be successful at it, and I want to prove them wrong, or I want to prove these people wrong, or I want this car, like, I actually just want it because I live in a maybe a society, or in a neighborhood, at place where people judge me for it, and I don't want to be judged for not having a nice car. What do you do when the reason is that, like, Yeah, going back

Amina AlTai 17:20

to the example of, like, I want to hit this list because like, I want to prove people wrong therein is probably a rejection wound, right? And so we have to look at that, because the goal may still be exactly the same, the goal is still the same for me, but when the come from, when the intention is different, the energy is really different, how we show up is really different, and therefore the results are really different. Like, honestly, two weeks ago, when I had that moment in the shower, I realized what I was doing, and I had this moment of just surrender, just surrender, you've done everything that you can do, you've done your best, and that is beautiful. And then the next day, coincidentally, I got invited onto a really big podcast, and I was like, you know, I don't think that that is coincidence. I think that's energetic shift. And so there's no shame or shade if you're coming from a place of pain, right? This is the dominant paradigm that's most of us. And even if you had the most magical upbringing and most amazing caregivers in the world, it's a very human right of passage to have a core wound, and so we're all operating with them. So we just want to understand that original rejection wound and what that younger part of you really needs, because you're probably looking for it in the car or in the list. And guess what? You're gonna get the car, you're gonna hit the list, and it's not gonna fill the hole, because the hole's inside, right,

Jamila Souffrant 18:27

right? Is that the ambition trap that you talk about, where it's like, you know, you think, when I get this, just like, with money, when I get this thing, I'll be okay, and then you get there, you're like, Oh no, that's, I still feel empty, exactly.

Amina AlTai 18:39

That's one of the traps, right? And the trap, in essence, for me, is what I was seeing over and over again with myself, with my clients, is that especially when you're a historically excluded person, you occupy this in between space of being told that you are both too much and not enough in the same sentence, and believing that is the trap, right? How could we be both things and so we have to basically retrain our brains, while we also work to shift a system that makes space for us. Yeah,

Jamila Souffrant 19:04

as you bring that up, if you are viewed or feel you're viewed as less than worthy, whether it's actually true or not, but you feel that way based on their statistics or people telling you these are deeper wounds like that are generational, right? Even the ambition part, like I think about how my parents, probably yours or I immigrated here, and just our lineage, how hard they had to strive and work and have ambition to get here and then to succeed enough to, like, have kids and then instill that ambition in us so that listen, you have to move forward. You have to carry the baton further than we could. So I just feel like all this generational trauma and things that sometimes we cannot control being told to us that's deep work that takes takes time. It's deep work.

Amina AlTai 19:52

And I'm so glad that you hit on this, because I think that is some of the most important work. So in the introduction of the book, I talk about my dad. My dad is a. Brown man named Mohammed, and immigrated here, did his schooling overseas, and I watched him my whole life really struggle to find his place in the world of work, right? He was somebody that was often discounted on identity alone, and he is Iraqi, and the US was at war with his nation of origin a lot of the time, while he's out there in the world trying to make it. And so I just had a front row seat to watching a marginalized person really struggle with their relationship, to taking up space and having more. And it impacted my relationship too. I was watching what he was doing, and I was replicating certain things, or over rotating because of certain things and and that's why I became a student of this work, because it is so deep in the lineage, and we need to look at all of those stories and heal our wounds there too. You mentioned like

Jamila Souffrant 20:44

it was one of the ambition traps, feeling like you've reached a peak or something that will fulfill you. What are some other ones?

Amina AlTai 20:51

They can look any type of way, right? So the idea of feeling like we're both too much and not enough at the same time, overworking and tipping ourselves into burnout, believing internalized bias, right? Believing certain stories about ourselves being the hardest working person in the room because we're believing those stories about ourselves, they look so different for all of us.

Jamila Souffrant 21:10

Right? The list probably goes on so and on. Yeah. Hey, journeyers, if you are loving this podcast, then you will love my book, Your journey to financial freedom, a step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness. I wrote this book for you. This book is for you if you want a clear and enjoyable path to having more money options and a rich life, this book is for you if you hate your commute and the fact that you need to seek approval or permission from a boss. I hated that when I worked this book is for you. If you weren't born into wealth, you didn't marry rich or won the lottery, but you still want freedom. This book is for you. If you're at a crossroads, a major decision or event is imminent, maybe a career change, marriage, starting a family, pressures are reaching a tipping point, and the discomfort and the desire for more can no longer be ignored, and this book is for you. If you find yourself zoned out at meetings, looking out the window or daydreaming about the life you truly want, so go pick up your journey to financial freedom.com. So I can show you how to map out how to get from where you are today to where you ultimately want to be. And enjoy the journey. While you're on the path, head over to your journey to financial freedom.com. To see where you can pick the book up. It's available on Amazon, bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore everywhere. Go to your journey to financial freedom.com. To get the book now. So you talked about like, and I bring myself up because like, the waves of feeling ambitious or maybe shifting to purposeful ambition versus coming from painful. What do you say to someone who doesn't feel very ambitious, and it's not necessarily like this, not even purposeful. Maybe they don't recognize that as purposeful, because it feels like there's nothing. There is no goal. There's like, really nothing they want to do. How do you talk to that person about their ambitions or their life? At this point, it

Amina AlTai 23:13

was so interesting because as I was writing the book, I'd be out in the world just kind of talking about, oh, I'm writing a book on ambition. And people would have one of two reactions. People would either say, Oh, my God, I'm so ambitious. I need this book, or people would say, I fully reject ambition. I am not ambitious at all. And I think that's really interesting, because I actually think every living thing on the planet has ambition. I think ambition is just a desire for more life, right? So a plant, like a blade of grass, has a desire for more life. It's growing towards the sun. Dogs, cats have a desire for more life. They're growing, right? So I actually believe it's in all of us, but how we've been taught about it is so dysfunctional that people reject it. So one of the people that I was talking to was a mother, and she was like, you know, I just completely reject the ambition. I'm not about work at all right now. And I'm like, ambition doesn't have to be about work. And then she was telling me about her kid and how she mothers and how she parents, and I was like, That is the most beautiful, purposeful ambition I've ever heard, right? You're so intentional, you're making sure that your child has this beautiful life. You're showing up so creatively, you're bringing in all of these amazing tools that you didn't have. Like, that's purposeful ambition, if ever I heard it. So I think a lot of redefining this, people will find a new relationship with it.

Jamila Souffrant 24:19

Yeah. Actually love that you brought that up, because often we we will relate ambition with work, and that honestly was the way I was even just, even though I know it's deeper than that, it's all the ways, like when you brought up the mom, and I'm like, Alright, I don't necessarily feel as ambition with work. But then when I think about all the other things that I am doing, if there is a bucket or a hole like, you know, a circle or pie chart. It's maybe that work is not as big as it was four or five years ago, and that's because there's all these other things that we are striving for that I'm striving for, whether it's like running my next half marathon and then the kids and all this stuff. So that's actually that puts it into perspective. And

Amina AlTai 25:00

that's such a beautiful example in your life. And I want people to hear that and really take that in of ambition doesn't just have to be tied to work. You can be ambitious about your fitness goal, about your children, about, I don't know, your baked goods. It can be anything that you have a desire to grow in.

Jamila Souffrant 25:13

Yeah. And I think also this idea of doing it all, sometimes you forget how much you're doing, and so it feels like you're not doing anything, or not doing enough, because that one part of the pie that everyone says, Well, you have to do all these things, or it feels like you have to do all these things. It's not there, versus no, like it's, you know, that work balance and life balance. Or I forgot your stance on the balance part of things, like, there actually is a balance. But as I'm living my life, I'm just like, I don't think, for me, I don't see a balance. Like, there's sometimes where certain things take priority and sometimes where it doesn't, but there's never, it's never 5050, or nothing's equal for me, at least, I

Amina AlTai 25:54

completely agree. I don't like the word balance because it implies stasis, that it's like this, 5050, like you just said. I prefer agility, right? So what I hear you saying is that you're incredibly agile between your kids, your work, your self care practices, and that's how it has to be, because there's always going to be one area that demands a little bit more based on the season, and so we just have to be agile in moving from space to space. What

Jamila Souffrant 26:15

else can you tell me? I know you did a lot of research and shared a lot of research with the book. Can you talk about other things about ambition that we meet myself the audience may not know about, or that can be impactful in our day to day lives?

Amina AlTai 26:31

Yeah. Well, one thing is that is interesting is that people of color historically excluded, people women, we experience what's called an ambition penalty. So those of us that are seen as ambitious, we often take a hit for it inside of our organizations, because they don't want people that look and move through life like us to be ambitious. And that's part of the radical reframing that we need around it, right, that everybody gets to be ambitious and that there's space for us all. You know, I think scarcity is a myth that is manufactured and perpetuated by people in power that want to stay there, and so I want us to not have to experience the ambition penalty. I want us to be able to have all the things that we want in life. And we need system wide shift and the power of we to do that. I

Jamila Souffrant 27:12

was going to ask you about that, because in those situations, like in your household, you have more locus of control a bit, hopefully, whether it's with a partner having like, conversations around the things you want to do. I think about maybe have, as a woman or a spouse or a partner, wanting to do something and needing more help, right? You have ambitions for something, but you don't have the time or energy or like you're stepping up to do something, but you need other people to step in and help you that you might have more control over, versus a work environment or whatever else that's outside of your control. So how do we work in within these systems when it feels like we can't change them, like, right? I think sometimes people just get discouraged and they're just like, why? What's the point? Yeah, I think there's

Amina AlTai 27:51

a couple of things that we can do. So one, community is so important, right to the power of we if we can rally our allies, advocates, our community members, and we can sit with them, and we can share our stories with them. First of all, it gives us It allows us to feel seen, right, and it makes meaning of our stories. And so that's one of the most important things that we can do, and it helps us build confidence. So we we need confidence to exist in these spaces, right? So we can rise to the next level, and community is the safest place for us to practice that. So I think it's super important that we rally our allies, advocates, people like us, so that we feel like we have those spaces, and then there are people that work in the system and on the system, and we need both types of people, right? So if you feel like you are working in a system, and we need somebody to work on the system, are there ways that we can pull in outsiders, consultants, things like that, to really help us shift some things. The third thing I will say is a lot of the times we place so much emphasis on work being our, be all, end, all, right? I know I did, and so much is to be said for not just our vocation, but our avocation, right? So if we're in a system that doesn't allow us to be ambitious, but we can't quit, because we need the money and that is so real. Then we need to look at, how can I flex my ambition outside of this space, through my avocation, so maybe through my hobbies, through my community groups, through my other spaces in the world, so that I feel like I'm still fully expressed. I

Jamila Souffrant 29:17

love the idea of that, but that switch, because it actually goes hand in hand in what I talk about here, with achieving financial freedom on the way to financial independence, and this idea that you know you can take your talent and ambition elsewhere, like you can still work. That's you know, for most people, including myself, at one point, I was working in a job and doing well, but also took my interests and talents to do my own thing, which led me to doing what I'm doing now, where I have more control over how my day looks, which I think a lot of people want. Yeah, exactly perfectly. Said, let's go back a little bit to maybe, and I don't know. So do you view ambition? I'm assuming you. Don't view ambition as a negative thing, because you're we're talking about it like it's okay to have ambition. Yeah, for

Amina AlTai 30:05

sure, I think it's neutral and natural. I think it's in all of us, but we've made it right for some people and wrong for others. Right

Jamila Souffrant 30:10

now I'm going to talk now as a mom, like with kids, because I feel like it's so relevant, especially the ages of my kids, where, you know, they're like, 10, eight and six all turning their birthdays, all coming up, but by the time this is aired, they'll be a year older. And I just find it so interesting, the dynamic, whether it's within with my family or watching other parents, especially immigrant parents, or just parents of like in my generation, I'm an elder millennial, as they say, Me too, right where we work, like we didn't have as much, like our parents, who were like, directly immigrants, didn't have much, didn't have a lot of time, but for me, stressed education. They made sure the basic needs were met, and like, I had enough, but it also instilled in me a lot of independence and striving for more in my life, which I think helped me to have the ambition as early as I did, and to want more and now like me as a parent, where it's like my kids have more, they have access to more. For example, I'll just go back to my sport, my kids playing sports, and I'll bring up my husband, because he played basketball, but his family, they were working. They didn't have time to take him to practices or help him. But at a very young age, he identified that he wanted to play basketball, so he was getting himself to practices, getting himself to games, working out on his own. No one had to tell him this like he just wanted it. Now we have kids that play basketball, we are helping them a lot more, like it's almost being handed to them, the opportunities of working out and games and all these things. So the ambition for them, to me, is not there as much, and I see that as a through line where it's like, how can we raise or instill ambition in our kids who have more or is that a limited way of thinking? Because I'm just like, maybe because we had less, and maybe from a scarcity mindset, we strive for more. Now, I feel like abundance and happiness is all you know. So you don't you you don't know, like, a hard life, not that I want you to have one, but it's like, you know, I want you to have a mission and to strive.

Amina AlTai 32:17

Yeah, I love this question. I was talking to a client about this recently, because they were, they're saying the same thing, like they, you know, immigrant background. Their parents worked really hard. Education was stressed for them, and then she was wildly successful, and now her kids have this amazing life, and she finds that her daughters are quote, unquote, less ambitious than her sons. And I think there's a couple of things in here. I do think that I identify similarly to you, like I had this hunger and this striving in me, and mine wasn't always coming from a good place, right? But I think from the outside, it's like, Oh, what a go getter, right? Like they're over revving to get to the goal, and so I think it's really good to want to get to the goal, but the over revving, I think sometimes isn't great, and in my own life, has hurt me. I'll just speak from my own experience. So I think oftentimes the next generation doesn't have that piece, right? They're not striving from a place of pain. But it doesn't mean that they don't have ambition, right? They care about something they do, right? In the example, with my client, her daughter, is like, really loves art, is really driven by this art practice, and like, she has ambition to be a great artist, and it's a beautiful thing. She's just going to move towards it and go after it in a very different way than we did, because they're not, they don't feel like they're being chased by the lion in the way that we did. Right?

Jamila Souffrant 33:30

Well, that, and that's great too. And I was thinking like, if they ever listened to this, like, in the future, that like we were ambitious, we still got good grades, and they do. They're great kids. But I think that is also, like, a great point to bring up is that it doesn't look the same like for us. It felt and looked different, but in their world now, it's different, just like we didn't have, I didn't have an iPad that wasn't invented, you know, I didn't have cell phones and all that, and so the access, it looks different, but their brains are still working, or the ambition is in there. It's just different for them, and they have more choice, don't they? I think maybe that's and that's not necessarily a bad thing, this idea of choice and not striving to where it's like leading to burnout and all the things that we had to kind of do to get us to a certain place, like it's it's a luxury that they don't have to but you want to make sure that they do know it takes work to get to a goal. Things are not going to be handed to you, right? And

Amina AlTai 34:23

you still have that fire and passion inside of you to do something and to contribute in some way.

Jamila Souffrant 34:27

Yeah. What other stories maybe, or examples from your book, can you give or just in your line of work? Because I know you do this, you coach people on whether it's work and balance and like burnout and ambition. Are there any stories that can maybe help someone listening who doesn't know what they want to do next is working very hard and trying to figure out what's next for them?

Amina AlTai 34:50

Yeah, you know, it's really interesting, because I work with a lot of people that were in painful ambition, and they got to the top of the mountain in their career, and they looked around and they realized. This isn't it, right? I kind of didn't make choices in a conscious way. I followed the shoulds, but now either like, I'm sick and burnt out, or I'm wildly unhappy and I want to choose again. One thing that I want people to take away from the book is that it is never too late to choose again, and that our careers and our ambition doesn't have to look one way. It doesn't have to be linear. It can look any which way you want, and there is always an invitation for us to just keep coming back to ourselves. And it's so scary for so many people, right? Like, when I first came to this work, I was so scared to be myself. I was like, I'll never be hired for a job ever again if I'm myself, like, I can't fit this version of me in a corporate context. Like, what are you talking about? So I feel like people get really scared of that, but it doesn't happen overnight, it happens bit by bit and bit by bit, you'll create a wildly different life for yourself. And so if anybody is sort of afraid of the pivot and where they're going to fit in and all of those things, it happens sequentially, and that therefore feels a lot more psychologically safe for us. And so doesn't have to look anyway. It's often not linear. But please keep following your truth. So I know that wasn't a specific story, but it felt like an important thing to say. Important

Jamila Souffrant 36:02

thing to say, Yeah, I mean, and again, and your path to that is going to look different. It's never going to look the same, right? Like everyone's pathway is different,

Amina AlTai 36:14

exactly, and it's meant to be. It's meant to and one of the I end the book basically saying, you know, your ambition is going to look different than the dominant paradigm, and it is meant to, because the dominant paradigm is broken, and so if it doesn't look the way that you know, all the people that we have on pedestals looked great, it's not supposed to. We're supposed to do it differently now, because things have broken a little bit, and we need a different

Jamila Souffrant 36:36

way, right? I actually love that you said that, because I think so many of us because we're living in these systems, and that's how we were raised. Is it printed upon us, culturally, socially, economically, when we have a different thought or want to do something different, or just, we just kind of seem like, wait, what's for? I used to think this about myself, like I just feel different, like I don't want to do that thing or but it's like, it's not, nothing's wrong with you, and nothing necessarily wrong with the other person that's doing it that way, or wants to do something different, but the system itself is like one thing, and you are, you know, individual with your own like, life. And I often think we can create our own rules, right, whether in our household, even, like, for your own business, sometimes I forget that, like, wait, I am the I can live. Like, why am I? I don't have to follow the same thing. Like, I could do what I want, like, why? So I think that's important and reminder for people. Yeah,

Amina AlTai 37:25

I think about this all the time, everything is made up, right? It's like, even, like tax

Jamila Souffrant 37:29

code, the money is made up. They print it, like, at will, yeah, exactly.

Amina AlTai 37:33

That's a perfect example, right? Like, we're just making all these things up. So why can't we make up what we want for our lives? I love that you said that.

Jamila Souffrant 37:41

Yes, okay, I'm gonna please tell everyone more about the book. Who should get it and where you can find it and where they can follow you. Thank

Amina AlTai 37:49

you so much. So the book is called The ambition trap, how to stop chasing and start living. And you can find it everywhere you buy books, whether that's your favorite indie bookstore or a national chain. And the book, I really think, is for everyone. I specifically wrote it for historically excluded people, because I think our relationship to ambition is a bit more tenuous. So if you are a woman, a person of color, a queer person, a person with a disability or an ally, this is the perfect book for you to help you redefine your relationship to ambition and lead in a new way, because I want us to role model this right, so then we can have a whole cultural shift. Because I think that's really what's necessary. What's necessary. So I hope you'll pick it up, and I hope it serves you in the highest possible way. And where can they find you? Oh, thank you. You can find me on my website, Amina altie.com or on Instagram at Amina Altai or LinkedIn. Amina Altai, awesome.

Jamila Souffrant 38:36

Thank you so much for this insightful conversation. I know it will benefit

Amina AlTai 38:39

a lot of people. Thank you for having me. You are the best. I love sitting with you. Don't

Jamila Souffrant 38:44

forget you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this and you can still grab your jump start guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch com slash jump start, if you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcast, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this in Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and I love, love, love interacting with journeyers. There three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you. Sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here, so show them some love for supporting your girl. Four, and last but not least, share this episode, this podcast, with a friend or family member or COVID. Worker so that we can spread the message of Journey to launch. All right, that's it until next week. Keep on journeying. Journeyers. You.

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