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Amina AlTai: Redefining Ambition on Your Own Bold Terms · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Amina Altai.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is an executive coach and leadership trainer, proud immigrant and chronic illness advocate, a leading coach to notable leaders, executives and founders.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Amina's mastery is in connecting us to our brilliance and teaching us to live and lead from it each day.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: She is the author of the Ambition Trap how to Stop Chasing and Start Living with Penguin and Open Field.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Amina has partnered with progressive companies such as Google, roku, deloitte, snap, outdoor Voices, nyu and Huge.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: She is an entrepreneur magazine expert in residence, a Forbes contributor and was named one of Success Magazine's Women of Influence.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Additionally, she has been featured in a goop Well and Good, the New York Times, yahoo, nbc and more.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And importantly, she was my coach when I first started off as an entrepreneur and didn't know what the heck I was doing.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So I'm really excited to have you.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I'm so, so excited about your book and ready to really talk about ambition, because I remember when you said you were writing it, I was like what's wrong with ambition?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: So I'm super, super stoked.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Lounge.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me and just everyone listening.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I'm sure you already know this, but Leigh always knows what she's doing, so even when she came to work with me, she had a fully fledged plan and brilliant ideas.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I had somewhere to start, but I think what I learned from you was all the things I didn't know, right?
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I am so excited to hear what your definition of bold means to you.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: What does bold look like in your world?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Bold to me is being unabashedly ourselves really peeling back the layers of what's been projected onto us and being the essence of who we are.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: That's what I think bold is.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I think being ourselves even though you didn't say, I felt alignment was in there yes, I love that word.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: You're not trying to play a game, right?
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: You're really you and that is bold, no matter when you're doing it.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: I think it's one of the boldest things that we could ever do, Because for most of us it's so scary to be ourselves right.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: We're told that it's more acceptable to be this way or to look this way, and so to peel back all that conditioning and be like, no, I'm actually going to be who I came into planet Earth to be, I think is one of the biggest and boldest things we could do in our lifetime.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's scary sometimes.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Honestly, most of the time so, do you have like a memorable moment of bold that's aligned with that particular definition?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: It's so funny because I think you know, as a kid, I think a lot of us we come to this earth and we're like fully formed humans and we're really bold, right, we're kind of ourselves, and then life happens and we go to school or you know, life happens to us and then we start to kind of live from these projections.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: And so I think for me I was thinking about this it's not even the first time I started my own company, because that was in my early 20s.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: It's actually when I got really sick from working too hard and I was diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases and I think the boldest thing was for me to say I'm not going to work this way anymore, because how I was working was not aligned, was not me being unabashedly myself, it was me being a version that I thought was appropriate and acceptable, and that's what led to me getting sick.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: So I think choosing to leave that business and go another way and be like, okay, I'm going to do this step by step, but I'm going to be more myself, I think is the boldest thing I've ever done.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: That came to mind for me in the sense of, you know, I have my soccer example, but I think it was my late forties that I was so out of alignment that, you know, I couldn't even look in the mirror, I didn't know who I was, like it was really being what I thought I was supposed to be, and a lot of it actually was pretty sharp edged and you know, matter of fact, and you know I'm a straight shooter, but I'm, you know, I'm kind of mushy on the inside, very kind, yeah, yeah.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: So I think, you know, in that sense, I wasn't using those muscles hardly at all, and I think that was one of the reasons I felt out of alignment and it pushes you to the point of illness or sickness or you knowness, because we have to operate.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: That way right.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: We have to be the sharp edged version, we have to be the buttoned up version, and so I just have so much compassion for those older versions of us that didn't quite yet have the tools to step into our full boldness.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I go back now and think, wow, if I could have just told myself like chill, or just step away or take time off or whatever it may be, you know I wouldn't be where I am today, but it was just like I just wasn't.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I would just think I wasn't very kind to myself.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever felt like that.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You look back, you're like I wouldn't have done that to my worst friend you know, or someone, I don't even like and like.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: here I was treating myself in a way that you know, just wasn't in alignment but also wasn't very kind.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so true.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: You know I talk about this in the book and we'll get there.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: But I talk about two different types of ambition.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: There's purposeful ambition and there's painful ambition.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And painful ambition is when we're coming from a wound and sometimes we will hurt ourselves or hurt others to get where we want to go.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: But in my life and it sounds like in your life and in most of my coachee's lives we hurt ourselves.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: We don't hurt other people, but we'll just like squeeze every last drop of productivity out of ourselves.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: We won't be kind to ourselves to try to get to the goal and we have to include ourselves in the definition of kindness and boldness.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Why is that so hard?
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you come up with that answer, you'll be a billionaire, right, you know?
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: In that sense, because I think choosing ourselves first, or even in the top five sometimes, is challenging, I think that might be harder for women than men.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: I would co-sign that too, because just so many of the women that I work with right it's culturally reinforced that we need to be nice, we need to be kind, we need to be soft, right, sort of these stereotypically feminine traits.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: And if we're not that way, then there's something wrong with us, and so I think a lot of it is culturally reinforced.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And somehow in business we're supposed to be both yes, even how we dress, and those types of things.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: You know, being in healthcare administration, like we had to dress a certain way in college, like we had to wear suit and heels, and all that to school.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Wow, I showed up in a hoodie and jeans the first day and I was like, oh, we don't do this.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, track suits here, come on now, you know.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: So I think it was interesting, kind of like it gets ingrained in you of like how you're supposed to be, almost like a uniform, it felt like yes, I used to joke that my last job in corporate America was a challenging situation for me.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: We'll leave it at that.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: I used to joke that I'd pull on my life size callus to go to work every day.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: So, whether it's the suit and that's the armor, or the metaphorical callous, we feel like we have to protect ourselves.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly yeah, we get to that point for sure.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: When you kind of went through your career, your path, you didn't plan on being a coach, a coach for entrepreneurs, particularly in a very specialized coach Like you don't just help people start the business.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I remember, like the entrepreneurs like I don't even know if you still use that term, but it was just like you see the person as a human being who is launching a business, not just someone.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Here's the facts about launching a business, which to me, that's seeing me and other women in a 360 degree way.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Right, Did you set out to always do that or did you think you'd be doing something different?
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Well, so when I was really young, I wanted to be a lawyer, because I was always kind of like the mouthpiece of the family, and so when I grew up, I'll be a lawyer.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, my older sister is the attorney of the family, though Not me and so I went to school and I studied marketing and economics and so very quickly started my career marketing and brand management and it was really fun.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: And actually the coolest experience I had was early in my career.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: I worked at Cartier, the jewelry brand, and that year that I was there, they had just launched the Women's Initiative Awards, which is this contest for women-run businesses where you can get funding and mentorship to grow your brand, and I was like this is so cool, and because it was so new, there was only me and one other woman working on it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: And I was like this is so cool, and because it was so new, there was only me and one other woman working on it.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: And I was like wow, and I thought, okay, if I could figure out a way to do this full time, I will be so delighted with my life if I could just support these female founders.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And so I left and I co-founded an agency where one side was traditional marketing agency and the other side was working with these emerging female entrepreneurs and taking sweat equity.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: And I did that for seven years and I call it my MBA and it was a very high low experience right, where you're like running the company and coming up with a strategy and also like sweeping the floors and doing the payroll and all the things.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: And it was through that experience that I burned out and developed two autoimmune diseases and it just it happened so dramatically for me.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: I know you have a situation too where there was like a dramatic culmination point and my doctor called me to say you're days away from multiple organ failure.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I was like 27, 28.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: When you get a call like that, it's a wake up call, right.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: And it's so funny because people are always like well, what did you do when you got that call?
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: I went to work.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: After I got that call I didn't go to the hospital like she told me to do, and it took until the end of the day where I was like, huh, maybe I shouldn't be here, maybe I should go look into this.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: And then it was.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: I call it my eat, pray, love year, because I literally went on this journey, just kind of trying all these things on for size to see if I could feel better in my own life.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: So I went to coaching, I went to nutrition school, I studied meditation, I studied somatics and then at the end of it I was like, wow, like I feel so much better, I can't be the only one.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: And so after a couple more stints in corporate America where I just like got my grounding and the good insurance, I was like, okay, now I'm ready.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: And when I first became a coach, the coach that I was working with she told me for years she was like you're meant to be a coach.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: And I was like I don't know, I don't think so, hildy, that's not for me, like you know business lady through and through.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: And after a couple of years I was like I think she might be right.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: But first I was kind of teaching from other people's playbooks and it wasn't working for me and I was like, oh my gosh, am I not supposed to be doing this?
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: And then I I think I need to teach my own curriculum.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: I think I need to teach from my own experience.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: And it's true, right, you have these painful moments and these rock bottoms.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: And I was like, wow, if I could mitigate this rock bottom for some people, I bet that'd be really valuable.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: And so that kind of birthed my curriculum where I thought we're not just in it for the business growth we need to be taking care of ourselves as we do that, otherwise what's the point?
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Right, and that was from the beginning.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the other thing that's so, so important that I think we forget at least I did is if you don't heal from whatever it is that brought you to wherever you are now, you may not even know you need some healing or nurturing, but most of us do in some form or fashion.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: But if you don't take care of that, you can't actually do the things you need to do in your business, the way you want to do them or how you want to do them.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: At least that's how I felt and I could come like with the best plan.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: But if I wouldn't have healed from some of those things that I didn't even know some of them, and I think you know some of those shadows that came up for me and also just realizing where some of my habits came from, like when we talked about perfectionism, I was like I'm not a perfectionist and you're like, okay, let's keep going.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if you remember these are like moments of time over the time that I was coached and I was like I just remember saying it, but definitely that tendency I think I have a little bit of imposter syndrome.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Being an entrepreneur and then people pleasing was my most recent one.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: That was a ding ding, ding moment for me, which I think is founded from me losing my brother so early and just never wanting my parents to be unhappy.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: So I was always like doing the very, very best, like whatever I could.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: No one's going to cry, no one's going to be sad, and I pulled that all the way through into my job.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: But if you don't even know that, then you're doing these things that could, you know, be holding you back or could be even harming you.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: So that's, I think what you do is in your coaching and in your engagements, that you really do shine a light on things that we didn't even know were there.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Good and bad, right and not bad, and like it's a bad thing, but it wasn't helping you or serving you.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Right and the places that we need to grow, because one of the things that I realized from my own life is, like, everywhere we go there, we are Right, so we can change the job, we can start a new business, but it's still us, and if we have those big wounds and we're leading with the wounds, it's going to be another painful experience, and I was just so bent on not having another experience like the previous one.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Right, it wasn't going to be perfect, because we're always growing and evolving, but I just didn't want to feel the level of pain that I felt before, and so I'm like okay, we have to heal in place, and I think this is also why so much of the workplace feels uncomfortable for so many people, because so many people are actually living and leading from a wound.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: You know they aren't doing the healing work, and I'm not pointing fingers or anything like that.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: I think that this is a relatively new conversation, but I think that this is a relatively new conversation, yeah, but I think that's why work is painful for a lot of people, because we're just bumping up against each other's sore spots.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Exactly right.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, oh, why was that so hard?
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: You probably have something more in common.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's something I heard early on.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: One of my mentors was like if you're having conflict or you're kind of, you know, rubbing someone the wrong way, maybe you have something in common.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: That's really the thing that's coming up.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't always find that to be true or know if it was true, but I think there is hurt under there, like with there's tension or some type of challenge.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: You know there's something there that potentially could be not yours to own, but it's theirs to own, but they don't even know they have it.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: So is that why you worked towards I mean, you're very, very thoughtful and pragmatic about what you do and when you do it, and always at the highest level of quality of creating a way for us to understand ambition better through your book, like what made you want to write a book particularly about this?
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's called the Ambition Trap, right?
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this question.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: My editor very lovingly said to me early on we write the book that we need the most, and I think that's absolutely true.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: It's like my curriculum was born of my own pain and rock bottom.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: I think my book was born of my own pain as well.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: I just I'm somebody and I see this in you too right.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: We are people that really care about our work.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: We really care about our contribution.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: We want to make the world a better place.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: We want to deliver an amazing product.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: We want to make the world a better place.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: We want to deliver an amazing product.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: And then there were times in my life where that desire chewed me up and spit me out and I was, like what is happening here?
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: I started to study ambition and I started to see, like, actually, it's this very culturally complex, politically loaded word that will either highlight our benefits or our drawbacks, depending on who's being labeled.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: There's all these studies that say and like I'm not shaming men in any way.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: There's all these studies that say, and like I'm not shaming men in any way.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: We love men, you know we need them.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: But there are all the studies that say that you know, ambitious women are often seen as aggressive and we don't like them, and ambitious men are seen as strong and powerful.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: So automatically I was seeing this tension, a gender tension.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: And then you add in things like if somebody is queer or a person of color or has a disability there's this other tension around ambition too.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Or a person of color or has a disability there's this other tension around ambition too.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: And I saw so many people in my practice really struggling with this and I had been struggling with it too.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: We want to take up space, we want to amplify our voices and contribute, and we're told to be and not to be in the same sentence right Of like, yeah, throw your hat in the ring.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Who do you think you are to throw your hat in the ring?
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: And so I just saw all this tension around it and I wanted to explore it for myself and for my clients.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And then there came the book yeah, so I think I love the way that it's written and I always love a good visual, so I love the visuals that I've seen you releasing as the book's about to come out on May 13th, in the sense of being able to understand that it's not a bad thing, but you need to know where it's coming from, and you particularly talked about you know whether it's coming from a wound or whether it's coming from you know something positive when you think about the book itself is there learning you had for you out of all the research and all the people you've spoken to and the things that you've learned through the writing process around ambition and yourself?
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so many learnings.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: So first of all, I just want to define ambition as well.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Again, there's so many studies about how we define ambition, and some people feel like it's power over or being better than others.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: What I think ambition is is simply a desire to unfold.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: It's a desire to grow, and I think it's neutral and natural.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: But we make it right for some people and wrong for others.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: But everything on the planet that is alive has a desire to grow right Like this plant behind me has a desire to grow, like your dogs have a desire to grow, and so it's encoded in all of us, and sometimes it's coming from a place of pain and sometimes it's coming from a place of purpose.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: And if it's coming from a place of pain, my invitation is for us to just look at it, like look at where those wounds are, so then we can come from that more purposeful place.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: And as I was writing the book and you know this from writing your own book too is like you become the work.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: You have to be the work when you're writing the book, right.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: So I'm writing this book on ambition, and in the book I highlight the work of Lise Bourbeau.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: She's a Canadian psychologist and she talks about five core wounds that we all have one, two or all five, and they are abandonment, rejection, humiliation, betrayal and injustice.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: And we could have the most amazing parents on the planet or caregivers on the planet, and we'll still have a core wound, because it's a very human rite of passage.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: And so then sometimes our ambition is coming from that wound and then we wear corresponding masks.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: So let me give you an example One of my core wounds is humiliation and the corresponding mask is control.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: So when I was a little kid, I was on the heavier side.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I lived life in a larger body and my parents were uncomfortable with that, and so I felt that humiliation wound and so I over-rotated towards control and I felt the betrayal wound, which is also control.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: And so as I was writing this book, I really showed up in that control process.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: I really was like, oh my God, I have to like dot every, I cross every T and I have to make sure that the work is quote unquote perfect, right, I have to control the publicity and control the social media, all the things.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: And I had this light bulb moment where I was like there's my control mask again.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Here she is, and you think you've done so much healing work but you're at this next level of becoming and it taps you on the shoulder again a little bit and there's nothing wrong with that right Again, perfectly human rite of passage.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: But I think it's really beautiful for us to see where there's still some work for us to do.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: How do we identify our wound?
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: How do we even know it's there?
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Because I think I definitely knew when I started working with you that I had some stuff to work on.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I couldn't name it that time, it was really just from being burnt out, but I think you know in the sense of like, how do we identify what our wounds are?
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: where we need to start when it comes to that.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so for some people it's like just hearing the word rejection, right.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Like for me, hearing the word rejection, I was like, oh my God, I definitely have a rejection.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: Sometimes, for people like those, the wounds don't resonate but the mask does right.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: So I'll say control.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: And they're like, oh my God, I definitely see control cropping up in my life.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Or I definitely see where I can be avoidant and withdraw.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: So we find our way in either through the wound or the mask.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think about this and like I think I'm going to look at other people differently too, who have some of these, you know, even like people I love, like oh yeah, I could see that my mom would have that because of that, just knowing the things that she's gone through or she's overcome, and those sort of things like a very positive way, but like oh, showed up this way, right.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: I think I've always looked at ambition as positive.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I am ambitious, like I really feel like I'm an ambitious woman, same and I feel like sometimes we have to apologize for it or mute it or not be anything that makes anybody else uncomfortable.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it's women that get uncomfortable with other ambitious women.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that's generally what happens or what people see.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: We hear a lot about women and men, but I think sometimes it feels very, very competitive.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So how do we loosen that up a little bit or make ambition more acceptable for all of us to be?
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: I really do think it starts with the reframing.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Right, because we have this cultural narrative that it's right for some people, wrong for some people.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: It's neutral and natural and it's for everyone, and that's what I want people to take away from the conversation the most of like we all get to have it.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: But, to your point, sometimes people feel uncomfortable with our ambition and that points to a wound in them.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Right, because they're uncomfortable us being in our bigness, because maybe they weren't allowed to be in their bigness, right, so some shadow there, probably.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And also, I think, to further complicate it, there's some scarcity around this right, especially because there are less women in leadership.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Right, even though we represent a large swath of the population.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: There are less women in leadership right, even though we represent a large swath of the population, there are less women of color in leadership.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: And so when you feel like there's only one spot for somebody like you at the top, then it makes us feel like we have to fight out our friends or our sisters to get where we want to go.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: But I think that that scarcity is manufactured.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I really believe that there is space for all of us and we need to live into that mindset that there's space for all of us, because we make very different choices from that space, right, like I think about you and I and how we've supported each other in our book launch process.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: People aren't buying either my book or either your book.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: They're buying both, right, they need both, and I'm so happy to see you shine.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: I feel like I shine more when you shine, right.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: So we're not coming from that space of like.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: There's only space for one of us.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: I firmly believe we need lots of different teachers, lots of different helpers, and we each teach a little differently, and there's space for us all, and I think that's a very important mindset shift that we all need to step into.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember one of the questions you know, along the way of just me kind of figuring things out, was, you know, is there a lot of competition in the area, that I want to go or try and figure out my niche?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: And I remember just thinking that you know, and this was something I said there's a sea of problems, like there's so many challenges out there and we need as many people helping solve them as possible, exactly, and to me that means like we need all the help, like everybody, come, like let's get it done.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: We need you because I'm not maybe for everyone, you're not made for everyone, but together, if we just find our people, we can make a bigger dent in a more positive way into what needs, you know, supported or helped or known or just celebrated, even.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: I always say that there are more people that need help than there are helpers.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think that's true.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so people should hear that out there.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: So in the book you talk about the concept of the resentment line.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, can you explain what that is and how people can recognize when they're operating?
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I think below it.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, okay.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: So the resentment line is exactly what it sounds like.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: It is this tricky little line that we have in our lives that if we're operating below it, we feel resentful, and sometimes the word resentment doesn't land for everybody.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: And so for them I'll say, okay, well, think about the opportunity cost, right?
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So I'll give you an example.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: If somebody is starting a new business and they put out their offer and I ask them about the resentment line, what does it mean?
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: To price above the resentment line where you feel like you can give everything that you want to give and you feel like you're in right relationship with your client, they give us a number.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Then they go and do that work and they realize, actually I'm doing a lot more work and I don't feel like this is an even exchange.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: They're living below the resentment line and the opportunity cost may be.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: They don't have as much time with their family because they're working more.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: They can't afford to hire help because they haven't charged enough, right?
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: So there's a big opportunity cost there and if we spend a lot of time there, we're going to live in the resentment, we're going to be disgruntled, we're going to start to reject our own businesses or our own work and feel like it's not aligned anymore, we'll kind of want to distance ourselves from our coworkers, our customers and constituents, and it starts to create a really an experience full of friction.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: And so we want to ask ourselves where the resentment line lies.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: And most of us don't know, and so people trespass it over it all day, every day, and we have no idea until we sit down and we say where is the resentment line for me?
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Or we're like oh, that's where that came from, right, even as you're talking, like I'm trying to think back over, just like the last six months, I was like, oh yeah, I did feel like resentment or anger or hurt, but maybe that was that line that I didn't even know I was going jumping over, basically back and forth, right, there's a bit of trial and error with it too, right?
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: The first time we do something we really don't have any idea.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: Maybe we can hypothesize where the line is.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: But then you do it and you're like, okay, now I actually understand what this exchange is and what I need to feel whole in the process.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a perfectionist in me, like when I think, oh, I have resentment, like I did something wrong, I need to fix that.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Like I shouldn't feel that way.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Like I, it is just this voice in me that I did something wrong.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: If I'm feeling resentment and it's not that it's like you need to be aware of it and intentionally understand what you might need to change.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Right To feel better, to not feel resentment Is that accurate, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: And you know, what's interesting and I noticed this, I do this myself, my clients do this as well is we often make ourselves the problem first.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Right, if I'm feeling resentment, I must have done something wrong.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do for sure, same and sure.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: There's always something on our side of the street that we can learn and clean up.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: But I think the automatically making ourselves the problem is part of the problem.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Got it, yeah.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So I think when we're talking about resentment, when we think, you know, we realize we're not carrying it again.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Thinking back, just letting someone think about you know the last six months what's a prompt that they could do or what's something that you could think about?
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: You know you have some examples in the book, like feeling less committed about doing your best work.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Like it is what it is.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Are there other things that people can identify as maybe a symptom that's coming up with that?
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: I think a big one for people is where is the opportunity cost too expensive?
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Right, because there is an expense to this, and so if it was eclipsing time with your family to overgive and not be resourced, we need to look at that.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Was it actually costing you money?
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Was it expensive in that way?
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Was it expensive in that it cost you your joy?
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Where is it too expensive to live below that line?
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Any experiences that you had over the last six months where you're like energetically, this just does not feel like we are in right relationship.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, too expensive.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: So just listen in as we're talking, because I think it's important for people to realize that it doesn't mean you did something wrong first, and, I think, also just realizing you can change it.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: 100 once you know it, you can do something about it, and I think that's that's the beautiful thing about the book, thank you.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: So, when it comes to our identity and ambition, there's a intersection that you talk about, and our identity could be our gender, our race, our ability, our class and our lived experiences, right, so can you tell me more about that intersection?
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I really became really keenly aware of this from watching my own family.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: So, you know, child of immigrants, my dad is a brown person who studied overseas, and when we came here, I just noticed my dad having this like very tenuous relationship with his ambition.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Right, he was a cardiovascular surgeon and like really struggled to find his place in the world and like racism was a real part of his experience.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: And so I started to notice, okay, and this is something that you know, anybody that is a historically excluded person knows, right, the playing field isn't equal.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: We all have different starting points, and so that can further complicate our relationship to ambition, because we may try to work harder to outwork the system, and that's something that was so true for me too, of like I will be the first one in the last one out.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: I see this with a lot of my female clients right Of like why are you so hardworking?
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Because I have to be, because if I work at the 85% that you're working at, I'll be called lazy, right, and so there are a lot of these double standards.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: And so, starting to notice that pattern in my family system, starting to notice that pattern in me, starting to notice that pattern in my clients and I thought, wow, okay, there is really this intersection with ambition and identity, and I think that we need to piece that apart so that we can understand the full story of what's happening here, versus blaming ourselves.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Right, because the core wounds are a piece of it and yet, like I said before, we always have something that we can look at on our side of the street.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: But I think we also have to recognize that the system complicates things for some people.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think when you think you have it figured out, you don't Totally.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: You know, like in my sense, like okay, now I got it figured out and it's like you know an hour later, no, I don't.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: And I think sometimes that can be very frustrating for someone who's ambitious and trying to do good and provide for their family and just live a happy life.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: You know, so I always tell people just keep going, just take the next step.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: You know, like, just keep moving forward.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: You know, I think when it comes to ambition and the things that we're doing in our businesses or in our roles that we have and we have so many roles in our life but I think, just realizing that it's okay to start again, it's okay to stop as well.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So the start, stop of ambition, when you think about all the pieces and parts of the book and the research, you know there are certain times where we think being resilient and doing it and keeping at it and doing it over and over again is what I should be doing, when really we might want to stop and maybe take a different path or maybe never start up that piece of it again.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Is there something around ambition and resilience that you learned through the book that we can understand a little bit better of maybe when to stop and when to start, or maybe when to pause.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this question, and I also just want to underscore the action piece that you were talking about, because I feel like you're so amazing at this, of like you don't stay frozen in place, you keep going, and that action clarifies our experience in the next step, and so I just want to shout you out for that, because you're so good at it.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's nothing that helps anxiety better than action.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly exactly.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Thank you for that In the book I talk about how a lot of us think ambition means more for more sake, all the time, right, this never ending upward trajectory.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: Actually, what I think ambition is, I think it's much more like a perennial flower where it goes in cycles, right.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: So we have this seedling of desire, we want to grow, we want to go to the next level, we want to start the business, we want the new title, whatever it is.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: We drop that seed in the ground and we take care of the inner and outer environment, and then that seed starts to grow and then it breaks through the ground and it has this beautiful momentary flowering in the sun where the petals come out and it's so gorgeous and it smells great.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: And then the seasons change and the petals fall off and it winds down and it goes back underground where maybe it's fallow for a season until it gets the right nutrients to come back through the ground.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: And our ambition is exactly the same way.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: So there's going to be moments where it's like your book, right, you're out in the world Like be.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Moments where it's like your book, right, you're out in the world.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Everybody's seeing the fruits of your labor.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: It's this peak moment.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: And then the seasons change and then you go back underground to write your next book, and so I think it's really important that we recognize the cycles, that we give ourselves the break, that we don't actually think that we need to be hard charging all the time, because that's where we get in the burnout, that's where we get the compassion fatigue for ourselves, where we get the emotional fatigue, and so it's really important that we take those underground moments as well as the growth moments.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: I think, in the sense of especially being spring and when your book's coming out like the beginning of summer, it's a great moment to really take that analogy and think about where you are.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Are you at a point right now that you're misaligned with the seasons of your life in a way, or are you at a point where you're feeling like it's really where you want to be?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: And I think, for me, I feel like there's always something I could be doing right In the sense of becoming and understanding.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I used to think it's like about the end, it's about the finish line, it's about what I'm going towards and I have realized, certainly in the last five years, it's about right now.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: It's about what you're learning, it's about what you're going through, how you're understanding who you are and how you see yourself go through the ups and downs of life, and they, they happen to all of us and I think just I just want people to hear that, because what you see sometimes in social media and all the things that are out there like I don't want to put my worst day on Instagram, sorry, you're probably not going to see it when I'm, you know, crying or doing this that's not going to happen, but they happen.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So I tell people, you know so, when we're thinking about that and thinking about our ambition, I just want people to realize that they I think that the way that you define it is so, so helpful for us to realize that, oh, we're not failing if we're just, you know, germinating in a way, right, exactly, and this is something that I noticed.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: It's hard for me, it's challenging for my really high achieving clients, because they feel like if they're not producing something, if they're not achieving something, they're not valuable.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: But what I try to remind them is like in these quiet moments where we're nurturing the inner and outer environment, we're getting the resources we need.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: So when that moment in the sun comes, we can shine super bright.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, if you're asking, should I put it out of office on for Saturday and Sunday, like I did, you know, a couple months ago, like you need to do a reset of some sort and something is not aligned.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: So, when it comes to purpose and one of the things I talk about is being aligned with your purpose and your passion, and some people are like, well, I don't know what my purpose is and it feels very big to try and it's a big question and honestly, I think I'm still trying to figure it out.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I think I'm on the right path, but I'm still tinkering.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I'm still like, oh, maybe this way and maybe that way.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: So how do you define it in a way that feels approachable for us to kind of take that big, big question in?
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I think there's two parts of purpose.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: First of all, there's the actual purpose and then there's the expression of the purpose.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: And the expression of the purpose can be our business, our art practice, our day job right.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And sometimes we conflate the two, so I think separating them is really important.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: But there's this beautiful book called the Great Work of your Life by Stephen Cope, and I always loved the way that he defined purpose.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: He talked about it as bringing forth the best that is within you, and I added in any given moment, because I love that right.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: Like what does it mean to bring forth the best that's within us in this conversation, lee?
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: What does it mean to bring forth the best that's within us when we are sitting with our clients or with our families?
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: And it's such a simple question, like, for me, right, it's to help people come home to themselves.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Right, to reveal the truth.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: That's my purpose.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: Like, whether I'm sitting with a friend, whether I'm sitting with a client, whether I'm sitting at a dinner, and I have this one friend who she used to be an opera singer and she became a coach, and her purpose remains the same it was to bring forth joy, and she did that from the stage as this amazing world-renowned opera singer.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: And she did that from the stage as this amazing world-renowned opera singer and she does it now as a coach, and so the purpose could remain the same and the expression of our purpose can really change over time.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: And so I think sometimes the hardest part of the lift actually feels like the expression of the purpose.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Right, I know I'm here to help people come to their truth, but what does that look like in practice?
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Like what?
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: How do you make that a job?
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: I'm going to right.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes they're like, well, I can't do that.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh well, you know, like for me, when we were doing the achy guy, you know what are you good at, what are you passionate about, etc.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: And I was like, well, I really love you know anything around dogs or saving dogs.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, I know I'm not doing that right.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Other interests I think people try to put it all in one.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: We try to make sure everything fits in the bubble or in the van and it doesn't have to be that Exactly.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Some things are great just to have as a hobby.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Right, we don't have to commercialize everything, make everything monetizable.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: The expression of our purpose, I think, when we want to live purposeful lives, is we want to get on the court with our zone of genius, we want to be connected to the impact that we care about, we want to live into our values, we want to have our needs met and we want to feel a sense of contentment.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: And if we're checking those boxes, we are expressing our purpose in a beautiful way.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you should like make a journal and like that's your check at the end of the day and like what could it you check and what can you do differently to kind of get that back into alignment from that perspective.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I'll sell that to my publishers.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely yeah, let's get that.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: So the ambition trap how to stop chasing and start living.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Now everyone's going to pick this book up, but I would love, just as we close out, how does someone realize they're chasing versus living?
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: And I think I've definitely now can see where I was chasing chasing the next promotion, chasing the next promotion, chasing the next raise, chasing the next.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: You did enough to be good enough to go to the next thing.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, you need to do this now, like now you have to be on a board, now you have to be published.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Now it's now you have to get your doctorate.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: It's just all these rules.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: And I was trying to check all the boxes but I felt like I was chasing it, but I didn't realize it.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: So, as we close out, if someone needs just to realize they might be chasing versus living, what would you ask them or what would you say?
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: In the book I talk about never enough syndrome and so I'd ask are you suffering from never enough syndrome?
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: And I have absolutely suffered from never enough syndrome where I needed the book and the podcast and the XYZ revenue business and the XYZ accolade, right, when we're chasing this never-ending upward trajectory of more for more sake, like I talked about before, it is an indication that there is an internal void, an internal wound that we need to sit with and to look at.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Right, because we want all these things outside of ourselves, because the hole is actually on the inside and none of the things out in the world are going to be enough to fill that hole on the inside.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: We have to sit down and do that work and ask ourselves why, right, like where's the real pain coming from?
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: And then we shift and we get to the sense of contentment where we're definitely ambitious.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Right, we still have this strong desire to unfold.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: We want to contribute to the world.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: We're making the world a better place, but it's not at the cost of ourselves, it's not fraught, it's not this frenetic pushing and forcing to make life happen.
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: I say to people all the time they're often a little worried like does she want me to be ambitious.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: Of course I do right.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I don't want anyone to renounce their ambition.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: You and I are two of the most ambitious women that I know, and I think that's a beautiful and important thing.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: I just want us to be in right relationship with it.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: I just want us to not be hurting ourselves or anybody else in the process.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Healthy ambition, right.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly Through this book.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: I think what we can see is when it's unhealthy, or we can begin to identify where it might be rooted in something that isn't good for us in that way and I think that's what's so wonderful and different and needed in this book is for us to really be able to say oh, that is me, Okay, what else can I learn?
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: So, everyone, please do pick up the book Ambition Trap how to Stop Chasing and Start Living by Amina Altai.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: All the information is down in the episode notes.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Please also listen to her podcast and all the things that she has to offer at her website, which is also included.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I appreciate you being on the Bold Lounge and I'm looking forward to seeing your book fly and the impact that it's going to have.
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, Leigh, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with me today, for asking the most beautiful questions and for being such a huge part of my cheering squad.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: I couldn't do this without you.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.