This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - The Ambition Trap with Amina AITai | 309

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

For a lot of us—especially high-achieving women—ambition can feel like a double-edged sword. It drives us, fuels us, and pushes us forward. But it can also drain us, disconnect us, and quietly lead us away from who we really are. That’s exactly why I invited Amina AITai back to the podcast. She’s a holistic business and career coach, a chronic illness advocate, a proud immigrant, and one of the most grounded voices on what it means to live and lead with intention. In her new book, The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living, Amina unpacks the toxic side of ambition—and how to reclaim it in a way that actually serves you. We talk about the ambition myths that keep women stuck, the pressure to perform at all costs, and how to get out of the cycle of striving and back into alignment with what really matters. This isn’t about playing small—it’s about playing smart. Purposefully. Intuitively. Sustainably. In This Episode, We Cover: ✅ What the ambition trap is—and how to know if you're in it ✅ The difference between aligned ambition and external pressure ✅ Why burnout isn't a badge of honor ✅ Practices to reconnect with your brilliance and body ✅ The surprising role rest plays in achievement Ambition isn’t the problem. The problem is chasing a version of success that was never really yours to begin with. It’s time to stop striving and start living—from the inside out.   Connect with Amina:  Website: www.aminaaltai.com  IG: https://www.instagram.com/aminaaltai/ Book: https://www.aminaaltai.com/book Related Podcast Episodes: The Power of Enough with Elizabeth Husserl | 299 How To Know When It’s Time to Quit with Goli Kalkhoran | 266 Abundance: Secrets to Prosperity and Ease with Cathy Heller | 260 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I'm Nicole Kalil, host of This Is Woman's Work, the podcast where we're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today, with you as the decider. Whatever feels true and real and right for you, whether it comes from your gut, your intuition, or that tiny whisper inside that says, yes, you're meant for this, or this is meant for you. And maybe the reason I'm so passionate about this, about you as a woman doing whatever it is you feel called to do, is because for many years years I didn't. For many years I didn't listen

to that voice inside. I ignored gut feelings. I did what I felt people expected. I molded, I proved, I pleased in so many ways, but mostly in that I made myself small. Yes, physically, with an eating disorder, fad diets, and regularly starving myself. But as is so often the case, that was just the external symptom of an internal issue. I had bought into the idea that I was too much. Too loud, too opinionated, too ambitious, even too successful. And because of that belief, I stayed in places and with people that weren't meant for me for far too long. I've come a long way.

I've worked day in, day out to build my confidence, to be proud of who I am, while also staying committed to growth and curiosity. But I'd be lying if I said that those old beliefs never creep back in. The too much, the too difficult, yeah? It still shows up sometimes. And I've started wondering about all the things that contribute to that feeling, and how I can swing almost from one extreme to the other.

On one hand, I can think of so many moments, even today, though not as often, where I've felt judged for being ambitious. The unspoken but clearly implied judgment being that I'm too ambitious for a ambitious. The unspoken but clearly implied judgment being that I'm too ambitious for a woman. And on the other hand, I have let ambition lead in ways that didn't serve me. I've turned myself into a productivity junkie

who couldn't turn it off. I've had to learn things like efficiency, effectiveness, slowing down and saying no. For me, ambition has often felt like both a blessing and a trap. Which is exactly why when today's guest reached out to share that she was releasing a book called The Ambition Trap, it might have been the fastest yes we've ever said. Well that and the fact that she's already been a guest on this podcast. She joined us for episode 208,

and she was an A-plus guest then, so we knew she'd be an A-plus guest now. Amina Altai is a holistic business and career coach, a proud immigrant, and a chronic illness advocate. She is a leading coach to notable leaders, executives, and founders, and her mastery is in helping people connect to their brilliance,

and live and lead from that place every single day. Her debut book, The Ambition Trap, How to Stop Chasing and Start Living is out now and today she's sharing the hard earned wisdom that made her write this book in the first place. I want to thank you for coming back to the show and I'm curious your thoughts about my opening because I haven't read your book yet. I am gonna read it. So I don't know if what I'm thinking about

as my own ambition trap is at all what you're talking about. So let me start by asking what is an ambition trap? Well, I'm super curious if you saw me nodding along because every single word you were saying, I was like, yes, yes, I have felt that. My clients have felt that exactly that underline exclamation point, yes. I honestly thought you had read the book because of the way that you were describing it. It's on pre-order, friend. I haven't gotten it yet.

Yeah. Okay. We'll make sure to get you an advanced reader copy. So the ambition trap is exactly what you were talking about. It is the space between feeling like we are both too much and not enough at the very same time. It is the mindsets that we have about us not being good enough or that we are too much or too something. It is what is systemically reinforced as well, right? So ambition, and I wanted to write a book on ambition because it is one of those culturally complex, politically loaded words that will either highlight our benefits or our drawbacks, depending on who's being labeled. You said this in the intro,

ambitious women are often seen as too much, right? In quotations, ambitious men are seen as driven and powerful. And then we add in other identities and it's even more complicated. And so I wanted to really radically reframe ambition because I think it is neutral and natural and at its core, it's simply a desire to unfold but we need to reclaim it because the story we've been sold is that only certain people are

allowed to have it. Yeah it's unflattering on certain people right like that's sort of the message that we're getting and forgive me but it's sort of fucked up if you think about it this idea that we're somehow both too much and not enough simultaneously. Like those things can't both be true and yet how often we operate or vacillate between the two and interact with them as if they're true, right? Yeah, absolutely. I've lived my life in that gap, in that trap, in that space, and so have all of my clients.

And so it's not true, right? It can't be real because how can you be both of those things at the same time? Right. Okay. So you talk about purposeful versus painful ambition. I'm curious about that. Yeah. So painful ambition, which is the dominant paradigm that we're taught is ambition that comes from our core wounds. So I came of age, I graduated right into the 2007, 2008 recession. I came of age in the girl boss tech bro eras and we learned that ambition is more for more sake all the time, no matter the cost, right? So you squeeze every last drop of productivity out of yourself, you hurt yourself, maybe you hurt others in the process of getting to the goal.

And when I came on the podcast before, I shared about my stop moment where I burned out and developed two autoimmune diseases because of that relationship to ambition. So the ambition coming from the core wound is painful ambition, and there's five core wounds. There is abandonment, rejection, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. And we all have one, two, three, or all five of the wounds. They're just a very human rite of passage. We could have the most gorgeous parents on the planet, the most amazing caregivers, and

you will still emerge with a core wound because it's just a very human experience. But when we let our ambition, our desire to grow come from that place, it can be the energy of destruction. I'll give you an example. I had a rejection wound growing up. For every wound we have, we wear a corresponding mask. Rejection wound, the mask is avoidance. And so if you feel like you've been rejected, you'll just avoid getting close to people because you

don't want to get hurt again. But the thing about avoidance is then you end up doubling down on things by yourself. It sort of perpetuates the myth of individualism. So I can do all of these things on my own because if I get close to people, maybe they'll just let me down and that's where we hurt ourselves. But purposeful ambition, which is what I'm inviting people to pivot into, is ambition that's coming from a place of wholeness. A place where we're not trying to hurt ourselves or others. We're not trying to be the fastest, the strongest,

no matter the cost. It's a much more harmonious relationship with ambition. Okay, I'm having 1 million thoughts flooding my brain all at the same time. I think, you know, when I think of painful ambition, those core wounds and how they... The mask that you put on, if I'm understanding it correctly, speaks to my personal experience.

I think so many people listening in. And I just wonder, like, for me, it was always this feeling of needing to prove myself, which was, you know, I'm a daughter of immigrant parents, as I know you are, and a woman, and it just felt like I needed to do 10 times more in order to get the recognition or the reward or the whatever. Is that... I'm assuming that's painfully ambitious,

right? That's painful ambition. Any thoughts or reactions on that? I feel like that's a pretty common thing. I hear that a lot from women I work with. Not surprisingly, you attract a lot of who you are, right? But thoughts or reactions on that? Absolutely. And that's the systemic piece, right? So I'm always really cautious because there's stuff for us to own in our relationship to ambition and where it's gone awry. And also we're operating in a system that doesn't always support women and other historically excluded people, right? So women, people of color, people with disabilities, we are often told that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far. And that's evidenced in things like the pay gap, right? It's like you can be, you know, at the top 1% performer in your

company and you're still going to make seven cents less than your Cishet white male peer. And so the system also encourages us to source our esteem from a place of pain, to source our ambition from a place of pain. So we need to be working on both things at the same time. And I think it's really important to say that because I think especially as women, we have a tendency to make ourselves wrong and we're the problem and it's just our mindset. Yeah, it's a piece of it, but it's both things. Okay. You also mentioned this idea of more for more's sake, and I have to imagine,

both from observation and personal experience, that one of the problems of painful ambition is overworking, exhaustion, burnout, whatever you want to call it. Talk to us about that. I actually think that overworking is a systemic and economic problem because if we didn't have the racial wealth gap, if we didn't have the pay gap,

a lot of us wouldn't have to overwork, right? And so again, we talk about burnout as if it's a moral failing. And this is how I felt about it when I was first burned out. I was like, what have I done to myself? I am such a problem. And we talk about it as something that can be ameliorated by introducing productivity hacks or like an adaptogenic beverage.

It's not the case, right? Sure, those things help. And we're in a system that asks us to overwork because there's so much inequity. And so I think, of course, we have to take better care of ourselves. We have to lean into self-care and community care. All the while, we're working on the system to close some of these gaps so that we don't have to hurt ourselves to make ends meet. I'm curious if you have any insight in how to delineate between being hardworking and

overworking. Because as an entrepreneur, I do know that there is, I'm going to say a need, I guess there's probably anomalies, but I would imagine the vast majority of entrepreneurs or business owners would tell you, especially early on, that it takes a lot of hard work, it takes a lot of risk. And then there is a point where it's like we hold onto it as a badge of honor or like we don't know how to stop working hard when we don't need to anymore and we fall into

that overworking or more for more sake that you mentioned earlier. Any idea or information about how to delineate between when we're hardworking what I would imagine purposeful ambition and when we've gone into overwork. Yes. I think the difference is the why behind it and if we're in integrity because I will tell you straight up right now I'm working my buns off, right? I am working hard. I have a coaching practice. I got a book out and same for you. I know that you are working hard over there, but it's the why behind it. Am I working hard because I don't feel worthy? Am I working hard because I'm coming from a place of not enoughness and I need the external validation? I need other people to tell me that

I'm a shiny bright star because that's painful ambition, right? And that's out of integrity for me. But am I working hard while also taking care of myself to get what I think is an important body of workout into the world so that other people's lives can be changed? That's integrity for me. And so there's a line, and sometimes it's blurry. And as you and I were talking about before we hit record, of like, this moment is asking a lot of me and I have to be really, really judicious

to not dip into the burnout space. And it's such a fine line. It absolutely is. And it's crazy how easy it is to default if you're not paying attention to old patterns or just working for work sake. In the spirit of integrity, I will be upfront that I am not working hard. I am working easy right now and have been for the last couple years. But mostly because of my end of 2022 is when I released my book and I was the poster child for painful ambition and perfectionism and

burnout and like all the things, right? And I just made the commitment that I couldn't wouldn't do that to myself anymore. And so for me, the last couple of years has been about being in integrity to what I didn't have words for, but this more purposeful ambition that you're talking about and working easy, because I am trying to shift my belief to the idea that I've put in a lot of hard work. I have taken a ton of risks and there is supposed to be a point in time where that begins to pay off and it becomes easier. So maybe easy isn't the right word,

but easier, lighter, more flow, more ease, less force, less stress, like that is really important to me right now. What I heard is that you made a big pivot, right? A big pivot around your mindset and how you were going to show up because having just gone through the book process, it's very easy to default to those well-worn pathways that say, work really hard, be the hardest working person in the room, and you'll get to the shiny goal.

But therein lies a lot of our pain, right? So for me, one of my wounds is betrayal, right? When we felt like our caregivers didn't live up to expectations and the mask is control. So I see like every week where my little control mask pops up and it's like, well, if you just control everything, everything will be great, right?

And that's an invitation and an opportunity for me to heal. And we can't control everything, especially in this process. And I also think that, and I'd love to hear your perspective on this, but writing a book is really interesting. I just learned that 97% of books won't sell more than a thousand copies. I know, I read that too.

I was like, oh my God. I think- It's wild. The average book sells 300 copies in its first year or something like that. That blasted my mind. Right. Okay, so that was such an important reframe for me because I've already sold a thousand copies.

I'm sure you sold way more than that. But then what happens is, is we compare ourselves to the 0.0000001% that hit the number one New York Times bestseller list. And then that comparison, again, fuels our painful ambition. So I just had just a reframing for myself around that of like, girl, you're already in the top 3%.

That's a beautiful thing. And you are not gonna hurt yourself to get to the point 0.001% because you're coming from a place of pain and you feel like you need that validation. I think the point is well received. I often say comparison is the thief of confidence and the thief of joy and how often we fall into that trap

and how closely linked it is to this painful version of ambition. Yeah, exactly. Just looking at other people's lives and measuring sticks and highlight reels and then telling ourselves that we're not enough. And it couldn't be further from the truth. So how important is it that we understand, and I'm gonna say our purpose,

but I wanna make sure that I am clear that I don't believe that most of us have just one purpose and our purpose can evolve and change over time. But if we are calling it purposeful ambition and alignment is part of it, how important is it that we understand our purpose, our true gifts, our natural talent, and that we're using those things when we are employing our ambition? Is my question making

any sense? It's completely making sense. And I think you and I say the same thing in slightly different ways. So I believe there's through lines of our purpose for a lifetime, but the expression of our purpose is changing all the time. So one of the examples that I give in the book is one of my dear friends, she's a fellow coach, her name is Shirin, and she used to be a famous opera singer. And I just like, I love, I'm obsessed with it. I'm like, you're a famous opera singer. Now you're this really cool coach.

So her purpose has kind of remained the same. It has been to bring forth joy in every interaction. And she did that as an opera singer, moving these huge opera houses, and now she does it as a coach. And so the expression of purpose is perpetually pivoting and evolving over our lifetime, though there may be some through lines as to the what of the purpose. And so we want to make sure that we're centering the essence of our purpose in this, but giving ourselves permission to evolve over the course of a lifetime because as humans, we liveally, not destinationally. My friend just wrote a book on this, Megan

Hellerer. She talks about how we get so obsessed, especially in the West, with the destination of like, must get to CMO of this company, that title. But when you take one step and you learn something, you're like, well, actually, I don't know. Maybe it's something else. We want to live destinationally. Inside inside of this purposeful ambition framework is, yes, we have a through line of purpose, but we're living directionally. So we're always getting new information. So the expression of our purpose is always evolving.

So you can have as many careers as you want in your lifetime. And listen, career isn't always purpose, right? Those things can be different. But the invitation is to keep evolving. Yeah, so you were being kind. You said it way better than I do. I love this idea of that there is a through line because that, again, speaks completely to my experience.

I often think of it as like breadcrumbs, right? But the expression changes is, I think, really a cool, almost invitation. So I don't even know where this ties in. It was in my notes, something about the resentment line and living above the resentment line. And that just was of interest to me. What do we need to know about that?

How does that tie into our ambition? Yeah, so the resentment line is exactly what it sounds like. And I didn't coin this term. I heard it from another coach, Daniel Cohen, and I just loved it. Because right away, you know exactly what she's talking about. So the resentment line is a line and if we live below it, we're resentful, we're kicking

rocks. We haven't asked for what we need, we're not being supported in the right way. This could be in the context of our salary, the team we have around us, anything, or even in friendship, how much you're giving versus receiving. And so to be in right relationship with purposeful ambition, we have to be conscious of the resentment line. We have to be conscious of the deposits and the withdrawals. And we have to make sure we're nourishing ourselves

in the right way. Because if we're living below the resentment line, we're coming from a place of pain. And that's going to show up in everything. And it doesn't serve anybody for us to be resentful, right? It's like, even if we've over given and we think that's a nice thing, people are going to feel that we feel resentful.

And so it serves everybody to meet our needs and we don't have to earn the right to have our needs met. And that's kind of what I'm talking about with the resentment line is meet your needs, state your needs, allow them to evolve as your purpose evolves and always be advocating for them. Okay. And there is four ways you say that we can make sure that we are content at work and that we're above the resentment line. What are those four ways? One of the things that I really wanted to write about in the book was contentment because in the West, we're obsessed with this idea of happiness, right?

It's like, do work that you love and you'll be happy or all those things, right? Bullshit. Exactly. People calling bullshit on that. The thing about happiness, it's an emotion and is therefore transient. It's supposed to be, right? So if we become obsessed with this idea

of like gripping onto happiness, we are going to be miserable because happiness is supposed to fluctuate, right? And there's a study from the world's first happiness hacker and they talk about how basically the happiest people or people that live the longest, that live the most fulfilling lives world's first happiness hacker and they talk about how basically the happiest people or people that live the longest, that live the most fulfilling lives are actually the ones that have emo diversity.

So they actually allow a full range of human emotion to come and to go. So when it comes to centering contentment, a couple of things are really important. First and foremost, we need to be really clear on what our values are and really center our values. And this might sound obvious, but I think especially for every next level of becoming, we need to sit down and take inventory of our values and what's important to us. And one of my favorite exercises in the book is when we think about our values, think about a couple of interactions you've had over the last year where they didn't go your way, where

maybe you were upset or you felt violated or you felt that there was an injustice, that's going to point to your values. And so when we center our life around our values and our work around our values, it really helps to build that contentment. The next piece is what we were talking about earlier around comparison, right? We live in a world where, especially through social media, we're always comparing ourselves to others, but that does not contentment make, right? Especially when we're comparing ourselves to people's highlight reels. And so instead of comparing ourselves to others and always outsourcing our self-esteem, can we look inward? Can we cultivate that from an inward perspective? The next piece is community. And this is such a big one. There's so many

studies these days that suggest that who we spend our heartbeats with, who we spend our time with and having a really good front row as you called it. I think Michelle Obama calls it that too, which I love. Oh my gosh, does she? That makes me the happiest. I'm sure I got it from her through other people, but anyway, keep going. Yeah, you two should be besties. Obviously.

I totally see it. That's definitely where this is going. That's where this is going. Exactly. So cultivating really aligned community, people that share your values, people that want to lift you up. And there's several tiers of community, and I have an exercise on this in the book

because this is something that I noticed with myself and with all the high achieving women that I work with. So I believe there's five levels of community. Our tier ones, which are our ride or dies, our tier twos, which we like love, we'll do so much for them, they just don't get the all access pass. Our tier threes, which are kind of acquaintances, people that we're still building intimacy with, our tier fours, who are not values aligned, and our tier fives,

who are not healthy for us to be around. But with a lot of the high achieving women I work with, we treat everybody like they're a tier one. We're like, everybody gets the all access pass. Let me do everything for everyone. Oh, I just met you. Let me help you move. Let me pack all your boxes with you, right?

And then that kind of contributes to the resentment line because we're treating everybody like they're a tier one, and when we don't get that back, we're upset about it. And so we want to be really conscious about how we cultivate our community, and that leads to contentment in a really big way. I'll also add there too, I think one of the things that I see us as women often do is when we are around

tier five people at work, for some reason, we're more willing to excuse or dismiss it. I feel like that's very true. I have experienced myself and interacted with a lot of women and coached women where they are very clearly working with a toxic leader or in a toxic environment. And I'm just defining toxic in this case in that it really doesn't work for them.

Like it's harmful for them. It could be borderline abusive for them. And yet we stay. We do that in romantic relationships, I think sometimes too for sure. But I see it often being excused in a work environment. It's confusing not because I haven't experienced it, but like when are we gonna get on the other side of this?

Like under no circumstances in a professional environment should somebody be screaming at somebody. Like, I'm sorry. Under no circumstances in a professional environment should somebody grab or slap your butt. I'm sorry. Like, I'm sorry, not sorry, right? Like under no circumstances in a professional environment should people be demanding that

you do something after hours or on weekends. And under no circumstances in a professional environment should we be micromanaged at the level where we have absolutely no choice or say so or ability to use our talents. And for whatever reason, when you slap a label like leader or job or we get all like, oh, it's not that big of a deal. That's just, I don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. I talk about this in the book. So the toxic visionaries, right? And so many of us excuse their behavior because they're visionary, because they're a good leader, because they made a lot of money for the company. But as a collective, we need to stop excusing the behavior. I use the example of Sam Bankman Fried. He founded the FTX exchange. It was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. And he built wealth faster than almost anyone on the planet.

He became a billionaire super fast. He was called the boy wonder of cryptocurrency. When he was raising money, he was in a conversation with one of the biggest VC firms in the world and he was playing a video game League of Legends. He wasn't even presenting, was literally there, like, feed up, playing this video game. They were so impressed with his irreverence that they funded his venture to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. And I remember reading this being like, if a woman, if a person of color ever rolled

up and behaved that way, oh, heck no, right? We already only get 2.7% of VC funding. If we behaved that way, we'd be getting a whole lot less. And so as a collective, we need to stop excusing bad behavior, especially for certain identities. Because like, oh, they're a rainmaker or, oh, they're creative. Listen, you got a lot of other rainmakers and creative people here that you need to take care of too. Yeah, 100%. Okay. I feel like I took us a little off track. The four ways you're- Yes.

To make sure you're content at work. I think you covered three, right? Yes. The last one is the art of play. And so this was a really interesting one and a hard one for me. So I was a parentified child. And so I did, there wasn't a lot of time and space to play and I carried that into work as well. And so a lot of people would give me feedback

about being like all work and no play and just like, oh, you're so ambitious. You're only focused on the work piece. And after a while, I was just so annoyed of hearing it. I was like, okay, let me do something about it. So I hired this creativity coach and they literally taught me how to play. They made me set up these PlayStations in my home from like a painting corner to a dance corner.

And at first I was so annoyed, like, what is this? And then over the course of three months, it kind of returns you to your childlike self where you're in the moment. And being in the moment is one of the best places we could ever be, because it updates the map for our brain, right? When we are future tripping or we're living in the past, we usually send ourselves into fight or flight.

And so the art of play cultivates contentment in a very big way, my friends. Okay, so I love this idea of contentment over happiness. I have a quote in my office that says, don't wish me happiness. I don't expect to be happy all the time. Wish me courage and strength and a good sense of humor because I'll need all of those or something like that.

And so that always spoke to me, this idea that we say this so much with our kids, I just want them to be happy. And it's like, well, they're not going to be all the time. That's not how it works. So let's hope that our kids have courage and strength and a good sense of humor because they are going to need all of those. What I really love is this idea of contentment being linked to ambition because I think there could be the sense that these are opposites.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Ambition, and I talked about this in the beginning when we hit record, ambition in its purest sense is simply a desire to unfold, a desire for more life. And every living thing on the planet has that desire, right? From a blade of grass to our cats, right? Their cells have a desire to unfold. So there could never be anything wrong with that,

but we make it wrong like we talked about. And so contentment sits so beautifully with this because contentment in Eastern traditions is described as the knowledge of enough internal stability, regardless of what is happening around us. And sometimes the things happening around us are really hard and really uncomfortable. And it is very challenging to cultivate that internal stability. It's sort of a lifelong journey. But if we can cultivate it, if we have that knowledge of enough inside of

ourselves, we're not chasing our ambition from a place of pain because we feel like we need more. We're letting ourselves unfold from that place of truth. Again, I'm loving this. And in full transparency, I think my brain is having a little bit of a hard time processing it because it feels like a paradox and because it's contrary to what we constantly hear over and over again, this idea of ambition being about an unfolding versus a drive or a push, right? Or this idea of contentment or even like harmony, some of these words that I don't think

are often associated with ambition that really should be. So I don't even have a question here. I'm just hoping Amina, if you can kind of keep talking, because my brain is like, I think trying to process this new paradox. Yeah, I love that you're saying this because I'm sure so many people will feel this too. But I am reframing. I'm radically reframing ambition.

I'm saying it's not a win no matter the cost. It's not a hurt yourself. It's not an external validation thing. And those are all the things that we've been taught. So what it requires is a fundamental neural rewiring, right? Because our neural pathways defaulted the other way and now we're going a new way in this conversation. And what I'll say about it is, it's a minute to minute choice, right?

And I noticed that for myself, right? Even in the process of writing this book and getting the book out into the world, it is a minute to minute choice to have my ambition come from a place of purpose versus a place of pain. Every time I choose to put down control and ask myself, am I in integrity? I am inviting myself deeper into the place of purposeful ambition. But it's minute to minute. And I

think we all are in recovery from it, right? Even me who wrote the book on it, I wrote the book on it because I needed it. I'm still relearning and rewiring. I can relate to that as well. And I've already ordered my copy, but I want to make sure everyone listening orders theirs. So, again, the book is The Ambition Trap. If you go on Amina's website, aminatalti.com, they're also doing a bunch of giveaways associated with the book this week. So make sure you check that out. I know I will, too. I'm gonna thank you for being here today,

for writing this book in alignment to your purpose, right? And for helping us to rewire, reframe, radically reframe, as you said, ambition, in a way that's so much healthier and so much more supportive. So thank you for all of it. Thank you so much for having me here for your beautiful questions

and for always sharing your platform and shining a light on beautiful work I'm really grateful for you. Same friend same. All right Ambition like most things is neutral. It isn't good or bad It's the relationship that we have with it that matters Is it aligned with who you are and what you actually want or is it fueled by shoulds external? and what you actually want? Or is it fueled by shoulds, external expectations, or fear of falling behind? Amina reminded us that ambition can be purposeful

instead of painful, expansive instead of exhausting, and maybe most importantly, that you get to decide what success looks like for your life, for your body, for your work, and even yes, for your rest. Because isn't that the work, the real work, deciding for yourself, listening to yourself, honoring both who you are and who you get to become. I am not the decider for you.

But all of that sounds like woman's work to me.