Goodbye Burnout, Hello Healthy Ambition with Amina AlTai
Show Snapshot:
Midlife often brings a reckoning with ambition—are we crushing goals or just burning out? If you feel squeezed between chasing your dreams and protecting your wellbeing, you're not alone. For executive coach Amina AlTai, author of The Ambition Trap, relentless overwork led to a devastating health crisis. Now, Amina guides high achievers toward a revolutionary approach to success. We explore the difference between"painful" and "purposeful" ambition and how to recognize when you're operating below your "resentment line." Amina's framework helps you identify the five core wounds driving unhealthy ambition and offers practical tools for honoring your needs while still achieving your goals—without sacrificing your health or relationships. We also explore the concept of "zones of genius," why the healthiest people welcome emotional diversity, and ambition as a force for collective flourishing. Get ready to rewire your relationship to success!
Show Links:
Follow Amina:
Amina’s Book:
The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living
Quotable:
I talk about our zones of genius, and how we each have one. and when we live into that, there's no competition, there's no scarcity, because we realize we all have these powerful gifts and that they are stronger together.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:00
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. What if everything you've been taught about ambition is keeping you from getting what you really want? Today, we are rethinking ambition and discovering how to break free from the exhausting cycle of overwork to create a life that is rooted in purpose and joy. Our guest is top executive coach and leadership trainer Amina AlTai, author of the new USA Today bestselling book The Ambition Trap.
Because here is the thing: you do not need to be trapped. You do not have to endlessly grind away. You can realize your dreams and goals without sacrificing your health, your well-being, energy, your life. As someone with big, audacious ambitions of my own, who does struggle with overwhelm, overwork and balance at times, I am so excited to explore Amina's ideas for rewiring our relationship to ambition so we can thrive, excel, create and iterate on our own terms. Welcome to A Certain Age, Amina.
Amina AlTai 1:12
Thank you so much. What a beautiful introduction.
Katie Fogarty 1:16
Well, you have a beautiful book. I so enjoyed immersing myself in it. I'm at a moment of my life and career where I have multiple balls in the air and a lot going on, and so I truly feel like spending time opening the pages of your book came at the exact moment I needed it.
Amina AlTai 1:33
I love hearing that. Thank you.
Katie Fogarty 1:35
I truly mean it. And I also feel like beyond myself, we are collectively at a moment in time, in our work world, our life, what's going on in the US, where we're grappling with mass stress, we have a chaotic news cycle. There's so much that feels in flux, and we are trying to navigate and swim through it. So I do want to start with some quick stage setting. What was the aha moment that made you say that this particular book is something that I need to be writing?
Amina AlTai 2:05
Yeah, that's a beautiful question. I keep jokingly saying that I am sort of a walking ambition trap. So I am the child of immigrants, and as soon as I entered the workforce, I learned to work really hard and kind of keep my head down and not make waves. But from day one, I had a really tenuous relationship with ambition, and I talk about this in the book, but early in my career, I burned out, and I developed two autoimmune diseases, and it happened in this very dramatic fashion where my doctor called to say I was days away from organ failure.
And that moment really set me down an entirely different path. It had me go to coaching to just feel better in my own life, which then eventually led to me becoming an executive coach. And I'm a firm believer that we attract what we are. And so as a coach, I was working with all of these high achieving, ambitious folks, from Fortune 100 leaders to VC-backed founders to Olympians, and I was starting to notice patterns in them and myself around ambition.
And then there was a really interesting moment in 2020 at the height of the social justice uprisings, I ended up coaching a handful of sort of celebrity girl bosses who were canceled. And I'm very clear that my book is not an analysis of cancel culture, but it sort of elucidated, in sort of a more dramatic fashion, these patterns that were at play around ambition, for myself, for my clients, and for these women going through this experience. And so I put together this ambition framework, and then two years later, I was teaching it to a client, and they were like, "This needs to be a book. Where's your book? My friend just became an agent. The two of you need to meet," and then the rest, as they say, is history.
Katie Fogarty 3:39
I love that, that sort of serendipity with that client, sort of putting you in action. But it truly, it was your own health emergency that made you develop that framework to step back to examine your relationship with ambition. Sometimes, when we hear ambition, we think like power and success. Sometimes we think negative thoughts like greed and control. You have a very different take on what ambition is, and I would love if you could sort of define it for our listeners, so we could continue to all be on the same page as we move throughout the conversation.
Amina AlTai 4:09
Yes, love this. As I was socializing the work, while I was writing the book, I would talk to people, and they would kind of fall into two camps. They would say, "Oh, I'm super ambitious, and it's been a very expensive thing for me," kind of similar to my story. Or they would say, "No, ambition is a dirty word. I fully reject it because it hasn't worked for people." And so I think it's so important that we redefine it together.
So I think of it as neutral and natural. It's simply a desire for more life, a wish to unfold. And that desire for more life is actually encoded in every living thing on the planet, from our plant babies to our human babies. It's just as humans, we have a choice in how we direct that growth, but I think culturally, how we came to understand ambition was more for more's sake. All the time, there's more money, more power, and that's somehow gonna make us feel okay, but that just upholds oppressive systems and costs us our health and our relationships.
Katie Fogarty 4:57
I love this notion of unfolding that's such a phenomenal word, and we do want to continue to expand and grow and to unfold and move in new directions. Let's talk about the distinctions that you make in your book between what you define as two separate types of ambition. One is being purposeful ambition and one is being painful.
Amina AlTai 5:16
Yes, yeah. So painful ambition is ambition that's driven by our core wounds. So there are five core wounds. This is a body of work from Lise Bourbeau, who's a Canadian psychologist, and she says that they are rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal and injustice. And as a result of the core wounds, we wear a corresponding mask. So if we have a rejection wound, the mask we wear is avoidance. If we have a betrayal wound, the mask we wear is control. And we can imagine that if our ambition is coming from the wound or the mask, that's kind of a wobbly place to build it from, and then the invitation is to examine and heal those core wounds so we can live into what I call purposeful ambition, which is ambition that's connected to our truth, that's coming from a place of wholeness.
Katie Fogarty 5:56
And is it possible to have all five of these core wounds? Because what you're saying... I suppose in sort of big and small measures, we've all experienced those wounds that you define.
Amina AlTai 6:05
Yes, so we can have one, two, three, or all five, depending on our lived experience. I haven't met anybody that has zero.
Katie Fogarty 6:13
Let's get them on the podcast if we ever come across them, and learn their secrets.
Amina AlTai 6:18
Exactly. But it's interesting, because some people won't identify with the wound. They're like, "No, none of those really ring a bell," but it's the masks that they connect with. So they're like, "Oh, yep, control, that's me. Oh, dependence, yep, that's me."
Katie Fogarty 6:28
You know, it's ironic that you would say that they don't even connect it as a wound, because there's something about our culture that sort of venerates some of the words that you just use, like the idea of being in control, right? And they don't even recognize that maybe it's tied directly to a wound.
Amina AlTai 6:44
Yeah, 100%. And I think that was me at one point too.
Katie Fogarty 6:48
Well, let's talk a little bit about that, because you share that the genesis of this book really was rooted in your own experience with breaking down due to overwork and due to, I don't want to use the word unhealthy, but having a relationship to ambition that is different than the one that you have now. So for yourself, let's walk a little bit through that sort of that painful ambition in your own life. And then how did you then come out of that, that time period?
Amina AlTai 7:20
I love that you didn't want to use the word unhealthy because, and I know that you're a journalist, but it was really important to me that I not make one right or wrong, right, because I didn't want it to come off as righteous, that one's healthy or unhealthy, one's right or wrong. So I love that you just reflected that back in the book.
So painful ambition has a couple of hallmarks. It looks like instrumentalizing our minds and bodies to get to the goal. It looks like having a strong desire to win, no matter the cost, and "no matter the cost" being the operative phrase, right? There's nothing wrong with winning. It looks like having a narrow mindset and sort of black and white either/or thinking. It also looks like moving at this unsustainable pace a sense of urgency. So those are just some of the hallmarks of painful ambition, and those are some of the ones that I lived into.
So I really was squeezing every last drop of productivity out of my mind and body to try to achieve and be perfect on paper. I was moving at a really unsustainable pace. In the book, I talk about how ambition really goes in cycles like a perennial flower. So there are seasons where we're growing, and then there are seasons where we're underground and dormant. And I did not let myself live that way whatsoever. And I definitely was not living into an expansive mindset. I really felt like success looked a very particular way, and my thinking was very black and white.
Katie Fogarty 8:33
And that sort of that kind of thinking that you were just describing, I mean, it's again we see that kind of praise sometimes in our culture, this hustle, work hard productivity, which can be a trap and which ultimately became one for you. Before we move on to purposeful ambition, I want to hear your thinking on whether or not painful ambition can be a double-sided coin. Clearly, when it's not serving us well, there are negatives. But do you see it as being having aspects to it that can be used positively?
Amina AlTai 9:08
I think that absolutely, right. It often gets us to the place that we want to go, then we can pause and say, "Actually, is it healthy if I sustain this going forward?" Right? I think a lot of marginalized communities have leveraged painful ambition to get themselves to a place that feels more like solid ground, and then from there, we can say, "Can I choose a more sustainable way of doing it?"
And it's really interesting, because there's this documentary that's on—or docu-series. It's on Netflix. It's called Sprint. Have you seen it?
Katie Fogarty 9:35
No, I haven't.
Amina AlTai 9:36
So it's about the fastest people in the world, so the ones that run the 100 to 200 meters in the Olympics, men and women. And I was super curious watching this, because I was like, "Are people running from something or towards something? Are they in painful ambition? Are they in purposeful ambition?" And so I called my nervous system coach, somebody that I work with regularly around nervous system tools and regulations question, and there are certain tells that our bodies have. And I was like, "Will you watch this with me? And can we see if people are running away from something or running towards something?"
And it was a split. There were definitely people that were dysregulated and really in their painful ambition to get to the goal, and then there were people that were doing it in a much more sustainable way. And I feel like that's such a great example for a new paradigm. I think sometimes the painful gets us to a place, and then we can choose again. And there is another more supportive way that we can do it.
Katie Fogarty 10:25
That sounds absolutely fascinating. Before we move on and explore purposeful ambition, tell me a little bit more about this nervous system regulation tools and this assessment and this coach that you work with. That sounds really intriguing.
Amina AlTai 10:37
It is super intriguing. So it is a body of work called the Fajardo method of holistic biomechanics.
Katie Fogarty 10:45
And how do you spell that? If someone wants to go Google it?
Amina AlTai 10:49
It's F-A-J-A-R-D-O, Fajardo method. And the practitioner I work with is Amy Bonaducci Gardner. She has a company called Prism. Prism Movement Studio is the whole name. And so basically they talk about how a regulated nervous system versus a dysregulated nervous system has different tells. So there are some indicators that are black and white, that might indicate fight or flight, and then there are others that are kind of more in the gray area, but they teach you a tool called body mapping, which is sort of, it's almost a mindfulness practice, bringing awareness to different points of your body, and in that you will likely experience a nervous system shift. So if you go into the session and you're fight or flight about a particular thing, you use these mindfulness tools that are body mapping, and then you'll likely experience a shift into a more rest and digest nervous system.
Katie Fogarty 11:37
That sounds so fascinating. I'm off to Google that the moment we've stopped talking, and it's so interesting to have you ask your coach to help you decide, when you're looking at these runners, are they running to or from something? Because I think that distinction is important. It's like why we're behaving the way we do is what matters. Because to your points, ambition is neutral, but it's the spirit that we bring to it, just like things like money is neutral, but it's how we interact with it that causes either a sense of lack or damage or a sense of expansiveness and potential. So let's talk a little bit about the purposeful ambition, which nominally sounds like it's the more positive ambition, but maybe there's a downside as well. So let's start off by defining what is purposeful ambition.
Amina AlTai 12:26
So purposeful ambition is a more conscious relationship with ambition. It's connected to our purpose, to that deeper sense of why. It's coming from a place of truth and wholeness. And it has a couple of signatures, a couple of hallmarks. So it's an expansive mindset versus that narrow one. We're driven by our purpose, versus winning no matter the cost. We're focused on collaboration and using our gifts to support the world, versus focusing on individualism and needing to win no matter the cost. We honor our needs versus instrumentalizing ourselves and our bodies. It's contentment-based and we take aligned action instead of that self-imposed urgency.
Katie Fogarty 13:02
And when you think about your own experience, let's, I mean, you have a very multi-disciplinary career, you work as a coach, you've written a book, you do public speaking, you're a podcaster. You do many, many things. But let's talk specifically about the book, because the book is a concrete project. I mean, you sat down to write it. You had the ambition of creating a book, producing a body of work that was going to reach people and make an impact. So when you look at your experience of even just creating this book, where did it land for you, in terms of the purposeful versus the painful ambition?
Amina AlTai 13:36
It was a constant exercise in inviting myself to live into purposeful ambition. My editor lovingly said that we write the book that we need most, and I think that that was very true in my case. And there were times where I'd get so close to the line and almost fall in the trap, right, where I'd get so close to overworking my mind and body to, quote-unquote, get the book right, and I would just keep watching. I would just keep—awareness is really 80% of it. I'd keep noticing where I'd almost tip in and what the context was, or what the impulse was, and just keep inviting myself another way. And I think it's a great example that it's not an all or nothing proposition. We don't entirely live in purposeful or entirely live in painful, and every next level of becoming or every big project requires something different of us, and we may find ourselves tipping into some of those old patterns, and it's simply an invitation for us to choose another way, moment to moment, not to weaponize this against ourselves.
Katie Fogarty 14:30
In the book, you talk about something that you call the resentment line, and this I loved, and it's not gonna leave my brain. It's lodged in there right now. Can you explain what this is to our listeners, and how can people recognize when they're operating below it?
Amina AlTai 14:47
Yes, the resentment line is exactly what it sounds like. It is the space that if we live below it, we are going to feel resentful, and it often shows up for my clients if they're not being paid enough, if they're not being supported enough at work or at home, and their needs aren't met, and as a result of their needs not being met, they feel resentful. And it's so funny when people hear the phrase, it's almost like instantly they know exactly what I'm talking about. And only in one instance did somebody not connect with this. They said, "I don't think I've ever felt resentful." And I was like, "We should study you."
Katie Fogarty 15:15
Yeah, exactly. But—
Amina AlTai 15:18
For them, actually, it was the opportunity cost, right? So if the word resentment doesn't connect with you, think about the opportunity cost of living in a place where your needs aren't met. What is it? What's not possible as a result of that? But for most people, that resentment line, we know exactly where it is and when we trip over it.
Katie Fogarty 15:35
When I was reading about the resentment line, I know the book is sort of positioned in work, but it really made me think about that phrase with other things, like familiar relationships and like romantic relationships. And I'm a mom of three, but when you have three children, unless you are the magical mom unicorn, there are periods of your life that you do experience resentment because there are unending demands on you and your time, and we do prioritize other people's needs above our own at certain points as a mother. So do you see this work being applicable to personal relationships beyond those that you know of, sort of creative or work, or productivity?
Amina AlTai 16:19
100%. So the ambition framework and the core wounds, all of those are transferable to every area of our life. At my book launch party, I had one of my dearest friends interview me, and somebody in the audience asked, like, "Does this come up in friendship?" And my friend and I were super candid in the fact that I have a rejection wound, she has an abandonment wound. And so in our friendship, that's shown up as an anxious, avoidant dynamic, and so we're constantly in conversation with each other, watching that and supporting each other to choose another way.
And I've also had friendships where the resentment line conversations come up, where one friend feels like they're giving more than another, and we don't feel in right relationship with the give and take. And so absolutely, it comes up in parenting, for sure. So all of these things are applicable in all different areas of our lives. Like, think about the places where we are moving at self-imposed urgency or driven to win, like some of us want to be the best at friendship, right? It's everywhere.
Katie Fogarty 17:09
Yeah, we need to sort of take some of these principles and examine our lives in different ways so there could be differences. So it's interesting that you had this really thoughtful conversation with your friend in this dynamic, because it allows you to probably be better friends to one another. And really one of the phrases that you use in your book, or maybe it was on your website, but that ambition can be a catalyst for collective flourishing, so you're using it there with very sort of personal interpersonal dynamic flourishing, creating a healthy, joyful, supportive friendship where no one feels taken advantage of. But when we think about ambition more expansively as a collective flourishing. How do you see reclaiming ambition as a force for healing and social justice and change? Because I know that's part of your work.
Amina AlTai 17:57
Absolutely, I think one of the biggest reframes around ambition is that it's about the individual, right? It's really about the power of "we." And in the book, I talk about our zones of genius, and how we each have one, and when we live into that, there's no competition, there's no scarcity, because we realize we all have these powerful gifts and that they are stronger together. And that's kind of my invitation here, to stop fighting each other, to stop elbowing people that look like us out of the way, and for us to sit together, to create change together. Because I think that's how it happens. That's how we create the power of "we" by linking arms, knowing that we each have something to contribute, versus that it's competitive. I think that's one of the biggest shifts that we need to make.
Katie Fogarty 18:37
We need to send this book to the people who work in the White House. We need to be linking arms and working together, versus looking at people who are different from us or operate differently as the enemy or a threat. So I agree, like if we're able to figure out how we sort of team up, there can be this collective flourishing. When you think about who this book could be for, setting aside the occupants of the White House—we're removing them from this conversation so we can focus on something joyful—when you sat down to write this book, you had something to say that was rooted in your own personal story. Did you have a sense of who you wanted the reader to be? Who do you think can most benefit from this book?
Amina AlTai 19:22
I think everyone could benefit from this book, if I'm being honest, just because I think we all need to redefine and reorganize our relationship with ambition, because it's not working for any of us. But I really specifically, like when I think about the stories and who I was relating to, it's historically excluded people—so women, people of color, if you're queer, if you are disabled—we've all experienced so many more headwinds and a more tenuous relationship with our ambition. We've experienced an ambition penalty, and so it felt really important to give those people in particular tools, but I'm inviting all the allies to the conversation as well.
Katie Fogarty 19:59
I love that image of conversation, because we want to call everyone in. No one gets left out if they want to participate. I know from spending time with your book and on your website that you are half Iraqi and half Welsh. You were born in London, grew up in New Jersey, and now live in New York City, which is a super fun, disparate threads that you've pulled together. You've had multiple careers, as I've already shared, and you have multiple degrees. So you, like all of us, are the sum of many parts. I'm curious as to how you see, if you see at all, how these disparate threads show up in your approach to ambition.
Amina AlTai 20:34
Oh, 100%, right. That's why I felt like I needed to write the book on ambition, because I think ambition and identity is a conversation that we really need to have together, because I hadn't heard anybody talking about those things together, and because I'm a person of color, because I'm a woman, because I have chronic illness, because I'm an immigrant, I was in these rooms and having these conversations that felt really important to like, add a megaphone to, so I feel like I can't separate identity and ambition, and it feels like a really necessary and important conversation. And I think everybody's lived experience is so important, that's what makes everybody so special and have a unique perspective. And again, that's why it goes back to there's no competition, because we are the sum of our parts, and nobody's had exactly the experience that you've had or I've had. And so we're all going to give voice to these things a little bit differently.
Katie Fogarty 21:20
I always say to my three kids, and like half the time, I say it they roll their eyes, but I am a big believer that there's enough sunshine for everyone, and that ambition is for everyone. It is—you can relate to whatever way works for you. There's not an ambition pie. It's not being divvied out in small slices. And that's also, I think, too, when you think about this collective flourishing like it doesn't have to be limited. We can band together to help everyone rise. I love how you identified that your experience, that you know as an immigrant, and these different sort of factors have played some role. I always ask this question, and you're a little bit younger—I think you're only—how old are you again?
Amina AlTai 21:57
Forty-four.
Katie Fogarty 21:58
I'm 55, so like a decade and a half above. But what role, if any, did aging play in the shift that you made in your own life? When you look at work and wellness and ambitions and dreams and goal setting, did it play a role, or was it more—was it just one thread?
Amina AlTai 22:19
I think it's been a thread and an important thread, but I also think that chronic illness has been a really important thread for me. And somebody once said that, like, we'll all experience chronic illness if we live long enough, or we'll all experience disability if we live long enough. So it's often something that's associated with aging. For me, it happened quite early in life. But I had to, like, radically rethink so many things because of it. I had to radically rethink how I was working, how I was taking care of my body, who I was surrounding myself with. And I think a lot of times we have these moments, sort of midlife, where we're reevaluating a lot of things, because we've gotten to certain mountaintops. But for me, it was a chronic illness, rock bottom that had me radically reimagine a lot of things, and so I often think of illness and aging going hand in hand a lot of the times, but I got invited into that conversation a little earlier, and I think that that's one of the things that shaped me the most.
Katie Fogarty 23:11
And when we think about something like chronic illness, sometimes we can have limited beliefs around things like that, like a door is closed, or it might be hard. And I know from having conversations on this show that sometimes people think where they are chronologically is—there's a limiting belief around that, like I'm too old to do that. It's too late. When you think about limiting beliefs and you think about ambition and wanting to have a more expansive lens, to widen the scope of what we see as possible. What are the tools that you can offer our listeners to sort of move through these obstacles and these beliefs that might put them in one box when they really long to be in another?
Amina AlTai 23:53
Yeah, I love this question so much, and I coach people from 28 to 65. It really is such a wide range, and whether it's chronic illness or it's aging, I think that it's so important that we sort of acknowledge two things: one, our own mindset and operating system, but two, the system that we're operating in, because part of the framework on painful ambition is living in toxic positivity, right? So this idea that like only good things and not acknowledging the rest, because actually the healthiest people in the world are the ones that make space for emotional diversity, so welcoming in all of the emotions.
So I think it's really important that we look at what's on our side of the street, right? So do I have stories about what I think is possible for myself as somebody with chronic illness or somebody over 40? And also for my clients that are in their 60s, right? Ageism is real, and they are having those experiences in the room where they feel like they're getting to the final round of the interview, but they're never being chosen, and they feel like age really is a factor. And so I think that we have to work on ourselves while also working on the system, right? So that comes back to the power of "we" and how do we shift things together? Because unfortunately, we have operating systems in our mind that aren't supportive. But so do organizations. So do cultures. Sort of a collective shadow. And so the work always starts with us, and we can have a ripple effect from that place. But I think that it's important to acknowledge both self and the system at the same time.
Katie Fogarty 25:09
And if the work starts with us, how would you want a reader to use this book? And maybe this is a good time for you to let the listeners know how the book is organized, and how do you recommend they move through it, and what do you hope they'll receive at the end?
Amina AlTai 25:23
So the book is loaded with exercises, because I'm a coach, and I think it's so important that once we hear a concept or read a concept, that we have ways to get on the court with it quickly, so that we can make sense of it in our own lives and make it meaningful for ourselves. And so you don't have to read the book in order, right? You can open up to a particular chapter. So there's a mindset chapter, there's a systems chapter, there's a painful versus purposeful chapter, there's how do we get on the court with our gifts chapter, right? So you can open it any which way you want, but I do invite you to spend time with the exercises, because I think again, that's how we make it meaningful for ourselves.
But really, my invitation with this work, and my goal is, I really want to shift the conversation around ambition and striving. And one of the most exciting use cases, well, two of the most exciting use cases for me. One of my clients is a CEO, and she's been bringing the book into her weekly leadership meeting, and she's been doing an exercise a week with her team, and she said that meeting used to have, like, historically low engagement. People were just kind of like, let's get in and out. And she said, now people are like, so excited about what exercise they're going to do, because it's so helpful for them. And I love that piece—that is so meaningful. And then the other piece is, I was at my LA book launch last week, and one of my clients is in the audience, and she is a new stepmother, and she was telling me about how she's using these tools with her stepchildren to help them relearn and re-understand ambition in a way that is supportive for them. And to me, again, that's so beautiful. So we learn these tools for ourselves, and then we invite others into them as well.
Katie Fogarty 26:54
I just feel like that's so magical. That's such a great piece of feedback. How lovely to hear that. And it's also, it's wonderful that she's paying it sort of forward to like a younger generation too, because I think creating the show has taught me that I've learned so much. There's so much wisdom that comes through with every single guest I talk to every single Monday. And for many years, when I was doing the show, my two older children would edit the podcast transcripts. They moved on to their own kind of professional lives. Right now, they're not doing that, but I was so happy because I'm like, you're learning all this stuff decades before I did, and it's so great.
Amina AlTai 27:29
Yeah, and who knows when that seed that's planted will be fully watered and will bloom? But it's just—it's so wonderful to put these tools in people's hands, because we can often muddle through life like this—what you've created in this book is not spelled out in our high schools or our colleges or universities or even sometimes in our work world. So it's so wonderful to have it be—I don't want to use the word package because it makes it sound like you're selling something—but it's organized in a way that people can move through it and apply the principles to their own life. So what do you want a reader to leave when they close that last page? What do you hope that they will be taking out into the world?
Katie Fogarty 28:07
Yeah, well, specifically that ambition isn't a dirty word, and it doesn't have to be painful, and a lot of times, what happens is then our ambition starts to look different than what we've seen role modeled. And I actually think that that is a wonderful and beautiful thing, because so much of what we've seen modeled is largely dysfunctional. But the invitation is to find your own right relationship with it, to design it in a way that's supportive for you and for our collective flourishing. So that's really my hope.
Katie Fogarty 28:33
And so what are your ambitions for yourself now that this book is over?
Amina AlTai 28:39
So when I was writing the book, I said to myself that I just want this book to be one person's favorite, like I have so many books that have changed my life, that are like dog-eared and underlined and have shifted me in such significant ways. And I thought, if I could be that for one person, I will have done my job with this work. And so I feel so grateful that I think I've done that. And now, true to the framework in the book, I'm going to go back underground and I'm going to nurture myself before I decide to rise again.
Katie Fogarty 29:06
I love this notion of seasonality, and the book is a USA Today bestseller. I have no doubt that you've already impacted way more than one person. I so enjoyed this book and this conversation. Thank you for coming on today to talk about The Ambition Trap. This is truly an anti-hustle guide to getting what you really want and having a thoughtful framework to help you as you move forward in your life and your dreams and in your goal setting. But before we say goodbye, though, how can our listeners find you and keep following your work?
Amina AlTai 29:38
Thank you so much. You can find me at my website, aminaaltai.com, that's A-M-I-N-A-A-L-T-A-I.com and on Instagram, at Amina AlTai, same name, and you can find the book everywhere you buy books, whether that's your favorite local bookstore or a national chain.
Katie Fogarty 29:54
Thank you so much, Amina. This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Thank you for joining me for this thoughtful, thought-provoking conversation. As Amina helps us rethink ambition and our relationship to it, she shared so many ideas that I'm going to continue to think about. I love this notion of the power of "we," how ambition can be harnessed for collective flourishing. That is such a beautiful notion in the time of the world that we are living through. I love the idea of zones of genius, the notion that we should be dropping our masks, that we are stronger together. So many wonderful, thought-provoking ideas. I will be thinking about this conversation for a long time.
If you enjoyed it, if you took something away, let me know in an Apple Podcasts or Spotify review. Reviews make me feel so incredible when I get them. I so appreciate you taking the time to write. Share the show with a friend if you think they're going to benefit as well, and please consider putting The Ambition Trap on your reading list. Books need support. Let's support The Ambition Trap together. Let's help it flourish collectively. Thanks for sticking around to the end of the show, beauties. And special thanks, as always, to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly, beauties.