Redefining Ambition: A Healthier Approach to Personal Growth Without the Hustle || with Amina AlTai

For years, I battled with the idea that being ambitious made me appear too eager and self-serving. But I've learned that real ambition should ebb and flow, much like nature itself. It's okay to redefine ambition as a desire for more life, while also allowing ourselves periods of rest and recalibration.

From my discussion with Amina AlTai, it's clear that ambition must be intentional and aligned with our true values. Releasing the need for perfection and instead embracing recovery and personal growth has been transformative. I've seen firsthand that our bodies often signal when our ambitions are misaligned, acting as guides toward a more sustainable path. As we lean into our strengths and gifts, let's transform ambition from a toxic force into a purposeful journey that expands our lives and those around us.

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TRANSCRIPT

Monica Packer: Hi, this is Monica Packer and you're listening to about progress where we are about progress made practical. For a long time, I thought the descriptor ambitious was not so great an ambitious woman, didn't seem to have that desirable of a reputation and it was impossible to miss the insinuation that there was something wrong with an ambitious woman.

Maybe she was too eager, too self-serving too much. When I set out to rediscover who I am 10 years ago with my first do something list, I didn't know I was in for a lot of surprises. I knew I was eager to reacquaint myself with me, but I didn't expect that one of the things I would unearth is a, a quality about who I really am at my core, one that I had both neglected and stuffed down, and that quality is I am ambitious.

Perhaps like me, you have found that in the past, ambition has made you push too hard, burn out fast, and lose parts of yourself. That definitely was also part of my history with ambition, also like my history. Perhaps the misinterpretation of ambitious women around you led you to stuff down parts of your nature that make you want more, more growth, more meaning, more life. Then I also hope that like me, you can redefine ambition and reacquaint yourself with it. Knowing that ambition helps you pursue what you want and need, but healthy ambition also ensure that you prioritize rest, peace, and connection.

In today's conversation, I am speaking with executive coach and author Amina AlTai about why our relationship with ambition is so very broken and how it doesn't have to be this way. We talk about why constant growth is not healthy, how perfectionism and old core wounds often drive the way we chase success and what it looks like to pursue ambition in a way that's cyclical values led and sustainable.

We also dig into how your body knows when your ambition is misaligned and why Learning how to rediscover how to recover matters more than getting it right every time. This conversation completely reframed ambition for me in ways that validated this unearthing I began to experience 10 years ago

and I also validated current realizations that I've been sharing with you the past few years about how we need to validate our desire for more and lean into it. I see this conversation with Amina as a way to extend that broader discussion we've been having and to help you learn how to engage with it healthfully as you pursue this new year.

If you're tired of hustle culture, but you don't wanna give up on growth altogether, this conversation is going to help you do that. Amina Altai is an executive coach and leadership trainer, proud immigrant and chronic illness advocate, a leading coach to notable leaders, executives, and founders.

Amina's Mastery is in connecting us to our brilliance and teaching us to live and lead from it each day. She's the bestselling author of the Ambition Trap, how to Stop Chasing and Start Living. That interview is coming up after a quick break for our sponsors.

Amina AlTai, welcome to About Progress.

Amina AlTai: Monica, thank you so much for having me.

Monica Packer: This is a conversation I've been really looking forward to having because it's a part of myself that I've had to learn to get reacquainted with some part of myself that was lost along the way in the pursuit of not, uh, falling for the breakdown, burnout, hustle, culture that we are all in right now.

Yeah.

wanna begin with your own perspective on what our relationship is like with ambition.

Amina AlTai: Yeah.

Monica Packer: And why you don't think it's working?

Amina AlTai: Yeah, so I wanted to write a book on ambition because I felt like what I understood of ambition and how I was in relationship to it was so broken. I think like a lot of people, I thought ambition is more, for more sake all the time, more success, more awards, more shiny objects, and that's gonna somehow make us all happy.

Right?

Monica Packer: Mm-hmm.

Amina AlTai: What I quickly realized very early in my career is that not only did that not make me happy, but it made me really sick and I ended up developing two autoimmune diseases, and I talk about this in the book, but was days away from multiple organ failure.

And so I had to really radically reimagine my relationship to ambition and success. But I think culturally speaking, how we're taught about it is that it's just this never ending upward trajectory. It's more, for

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: all the time, more money, more power. But that cost us our health, cost us our relationships, cost us our joy, and ultimately upholds oppressive systems.

And so I felt like it was really important to talk about ambition in a different way. And so. My perspective is that it's much more like nature. It goes in cycles like a perennial flower, right? It's not blooming all the time. We have these moments where we're underground and we nurture our seeds, and then we have these beautiful momentary peaks in the sun and the seasons change and we wind down and we go back underground, where hopefully we rest and we nurture enough so we can rise again.

Monica Packer: Yes. I've never heard it described that way, especially with the word that is so charged as ambition, especially with us as women. I think that's a word that we tend to try to not get connected. With ourselves and our reputation. And, and so I'd love to hear about the healthy balance between the two and how you've worked to discovering that for yourself and with your clients.

But I think to do that, we have to go back to that story you just referenced. I'm so sorry that your own experience and relationship with ambition led to such hard, hard consequences and lessons there. Can you share a little bit more about what your relationship was like personally and how it had to be healed?

Amina AlTai: I am the child of immigrants and was taught to just like keep your head down, work really hard, be the first one in the last one out, the super high achiever. Do all those things, and one, you'll get everything you want, and two, you'll be lovable and worthy. And so that's what I did, right? I was like, okay.

Like I grew up as, as a kid, I was in a larger body too, so I was like ruthlessly bullied on the playground. And so what I realized early on was like, well, I'm often the smarter one in the room, so if I just double down in school, then I'll be safe. And so I carried all of that programming into the workplace and it worked until it didn't work.

And you know, at the time it really was devastating because. Who's in their twenties and gets a phone call like that. It's quite rare, also in hindsight, I'm so grateful because it redirected my entire life and it set me on this path to teaching and, and being an executive coach and being able to write the book.

And so, you know, no mud, no Lotus, as they say.

Monica Packer: Yeah. As much as I hate the mud,

Amina AlTai: Oh yeah,

Monica Packer: I, I do love.

Amina AlTai: the mud I would but

Monica Packer: Well, and we all know that though, but it's nice to hear how that's been looking for you, and I'm sure it's an ongoing thing. You mentioned cycles, so I'd love to hear your connection, uh, between nature and ambition and how those two could possibly be related.

Amina AlTai: You know I was thinking about how we talk about in coaching the growth edge right We always wanna be on the growth edge We wanna be coming out of our comfort zone We don't wanna tip into the panic zone right That's It's very fight or flight but we wanna live past the comfort and before the panic zone which is the

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: But I thought about this I was like who's growing all the time Right Like my plant

Monica Packer: Yeah.

Amina AlTai: my plant this is Herb. He's nine years old He's a monster I'm obsessed with him right But he has seasoned where he's dormant where he doesn't grow leaves when I first got him I was like is he okay Like is is everything okay Like does he have root rot whatever it is And then I learned about plants and I learned that they have seasons where they are thriving and they're growing and they're leaves unfurl And then they have seasons where they don't grow any leaves at all And that's mirrored Everywhere Right It's not just in my giant monstera And so I was thinking about this as humans too It's it's virtually impossible to be stretching all the time In fact it's not healthy right If we don't allow time for rest when we go to take action we're gonna break And so I just saw it mirrored back in all of these ways and I was like oh this is this is the key actually It's cyclical

Monica Packer: I think that is the key because when you, when you word it like that, who was growing all the time, I think then we're all like, oh, and that's why ambition can get a bad rep because for so many of us, it's always been about 100% all the time in a never ending cycle that we pay a price for.

Amina AlTai: Exactly

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: you have to be extractive of yourself You have to be super human to grow all the time like it It's just actually not possible And then we end up taking these shortcuts or hurting ourselves or others to keep that growth going And we have so many examples of that out in the world So many toxic examples

Monica Packer: The toxicity of it is, I think what keeps us away then from being on the growth edge. And I, I, and again, I don't like the way it's presented, so maybe it's like, this is when we go into how you want us to be in relationship with ambition and in ways that are reflective of this cyclical pattern and in healthy adaptive ways.

Amina AlTai: Yes So when I was writing the book and I was socializing the conversation around the country people inevitably fell into one of two camps Camp A was I'm really ambitious but that ambition has been expensive and it's cost me something That's my story right So it's cost us our health our relationships are joy whatever And then Camp B was I've seen such a toxic version of ambition I renounce it all together and I was like Well again this is part of the problem right Because we we are making ambition right for some people and wrong for others We're defining it as this growth all the time If we look at it as cyclical if we think of it as neutral and natural we can all find a healthier relationship with it So when it came time for my working definition of ambition I define it as a desire for more life a wish to grow a wish to unfold And again when you think about that a wish to grow or a desire for more life that's inherent in every living thing on the planet

Monica Packer: Yeah.

Amina AlTai: babies to our human babies all of our cells wanna proliferate right So it can't be right for some and wrong for others and it is neutral and natural but it has to be cyclical

Monica Packer: Mm-hmm. So as part of that, I think in reacquainting yourself with ambition, it's about reframing it. Oh, I love that definition so much. A desire for more life. Wow. It is.

Amina AlTai: Who doesn't want that And how could that be wrong

Monica Packer: Yeah, so we can lean into that desire while also owning that it does need to happen at the right time and in the right place, which I'm sure is half the battle to doing so in a good way.

Amina AlTai: And then it can happen in all different areas of our life Right I think a lot of the times when we think about ambition we think about it strictly in the work context but a desire for more life can happen in parenting It can happen in our friendships it can happen in our relationship to play And joy going back to when I was Socializing that conversation I met this one woman and she was like I am not ambitious at all Like I've just seen like a really gross version of it No thank you And then she started to tell me about how she parented and I was like that's ambition right You have this desire to show up in such a nurturing way for your children to cultivate the best home and experience for them so they can thrive Like that's ambition if ever I've heard it

Monica Packer: So this is where the intuition part, I think is a big, it's like almost the, gosh, what's the word? Maybe it's the secret to all of this is, is knowing like it has to be what you want it for, not what you think others. Want you to achieve

Amina AlTai: Bingo The insourcing versus the outsourcing Right

Monica Packer: Mm-hmm.

Amina AlTai: So in the book part of the framework is contentment And it's so funny

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: as I've been on the podcasts and everything people are like wait how does ambition and contentment sit side by side Well I think purposeful ambition which is what I call it It It requires contentment So contentment from Eastern traditions translates to unconditional wholeness or the knowledge of enough right So we have this idea internally that we are unconditionally whole regardless of what's happening around us So then we're not chasing the award the validation outside of ourselves because we realize that life is always up and down and regardless of it we we're unconditionally whole on the inside The award the accolade all the thing that's cherry on top but we don't pin our self worth to it

Monica Packer: Mm. Okay. And that's another shift too. It's not about the outcome, it's about leaning into your season and, and doing so of finding fulfillment and growth even in that process.

Amina AlTai: Exactly the journey

Monica Packer: Okay. I think I'm getting this. I want to talk about the types of ambition, and I'm going to connect this back to the whole nature analogy that you brought up and how, you know, there's different seeds for different things and different people prefer different kinds of plants or seeds.

I know we're just gonna go with it, but can you tell us more about types of ambition that people may want to learn about and identify with?

Amina AlTai: Yeah so we talked a little bit about how ambition moves right So it's cyclical versus more for more's sake all the time And then I believe that there are two orientations for our ambition So it can either be painful ambition which is the more for more sake and that's driven by a core wound Or there can

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: ambition And purposeful ambition is when we've acknowledged and sort of moved beyond the core wound as much as we can and we've connected our ambition to our deeper why

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: So I'll tell you a little bit about the core wounds So there are five core wounds They are rejection abandonment humiliation betrayal and injustice And every human on the planet has 1 2 3 or all five of those wounds It's a very human rite of passage It's the initial injury of the psyche that happens in our formative years and you could have the most perfect parents on the planet You could be the most perfect parent on the planet and still it's gonna happen whether it's on the playground or vicariously It's just a very human rite of passage

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: so Whichever core wound you have we wear a corresponding mask So if you have an abandonment wound the mask you wear is dependent If you have a rejection

Monica Packer: Hmm.

Amina AlTai: mask you wear is avoidance That's one of mine If you have a humiliation wound where we felt like our caregivers were embarrassed of us then we have a masochism wound where we're like you know do all the work Take the hit for everybody to prove that we're worthy betrayal is when we felt like our caregivers didn't live up to expectations And then the mask we wears control And then the last one is injustice And that's when we feel like our individuality in childhood is restrained So the mask we wear is rigidity a K a perfectionism and inability to live in an imperfect world And I know that one's important to this audience

Monica Packer: I know. Did you see the knowing smile there as you were saying? That one, I was like, oh, that sounds familiar.

Amina AlTai: Yep

Monica Packer: let's talk more about that one then, because I, I think that could be really appropriate to our audience. How does that show up?

Amina AlTai: It shows up as perfectionism right So if we felt like so I'm I'll give an example from

Monica Packer: That'd be great.

Amina AlTai: So

Monica Packer: you.

Amina AlTai: up I was not allowed to be messy was just really frowned upon in my family and my parents did their absolute best I loved them so much and I just wasn't allowed to be messy So if ever I looked a little messy or dressed myself or something like that there was shame that came up right So I internalized the story that you must be perfect and if you are perfect you will be safe you will be lovable All the good things will happen for you But what happens is is then when things are imperfect we have this extreme intolerance for them right And it can bring up things like anxiety it can then ladder up to control right So that showed up in my life in a really big way It showed up on this book tour in a big way And so if we have that injustice core wound we probably need to bring a bit of a salve to it to

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: the perfectionism

Monica Packer: Mm-hmm. And that's actually what I'd love to talk about next then. Like what's the antidote, I guess, to these core wounds and the masks that work with them?

Amina AlTai: It is gonna sound simple but

Monica Packer: Yeah. Yeah.

Amina AlTai: believe as a coach 80 of it is awareness So noticing it right So the big ones for me are rejection betrayal

Monica Packer: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Amina AlTai: the masks are avoidance control perfectionism

Monica Packer: Yeah.

Amina AlTai: So just starting to notice those things right And every next level of becoming they may look a little bit different You and I were talking about that before we hit record right So I felt like I was doing pretty well with my perfectionism and then I launch a book and I'm in the spotlight more than I've ever been in the spotlight And guess who comes to visit perfectionism

Monica Packer: Yeah.

Amina AlTai: so I was just noticing it catching it and listen we can use all kinds of modalities especially if there's a somatic imprint from it right So

Monica Packer: Okay.

Amina AlTai: EMDR nervous system work talk therapy all of that has been so supportive in my journey and I wouldn't have been able to get through this tour without the most amazing practitioners but I really do think that awareness is such a huge part of it

Monica Packer: That's helpful to think of because it seems more doable than just suddenly fixing it all overnight.

Amina AlTai: I don't believe in the fix right I feel like the fix is a bit of a story and I think that we can bring healing to it especially for the season right I was doing great before this I was like I got a handle on it I was in my little world of like leading my workshops doing my sessions like occasionally some podcasting and I understood how to work with my wounds at that level and then there was a new level and I needed to learn how to work with my wounds at that level too

Monica Packer: So what did you do that was different? And or what did you do that was just what you did before, but brought back up again or prioritized in a new way?

Amina AlTai: If there was a next level awareness of how much of a grip the perfectionism had on my life because of the context so I'll give you an example started doing a lot of TV segments for the book

Monica Packer: That would be so hard. Could I just say that really quick? That would be so hard. If you've got that core wounded mask,

Amina AlTai: Yeah

Monica Packer: be really hard.

Amina AlTai: before the book I was doing them occasionally like practicing right And I was like oh this is great I've got this no problem And then all of a sudden the day the book launched I just had this knowing the stakes are higher there's more eyeballs And so I

Monica Packer: Mm.

Amina AlTai: of this pressure on myself because the stakes were higher and there were more eyeballs the day of the launch uh we were on CBS mornings which was so incredible

Monica Packer: Scary. Yeah.

Amina AlTai: But it it was scary Exactly it it was incr I went there and I felt fine that morning and then I got on the air and I had like a tiny stumble I think only people that really know me would notice the stumble because I'm usually pretty buttoned up with that stuff But then I internalized the shame of that stumble and then was so in my head for like the next five segments And then I had to do some EMDR work And what I realized was that it was 8-year-old me that was so embarrassed for the world to see my mess And was just trying so hard to protect me from the world seeing my mess and so I had to do some inner child work so then I was like I could go back out there and feel better about it but also I reframed it too because The perfectionist wants to land every talking point right that's not the goal right The goal is to be human The goal is to is to communicate

Monica Packer: Huh.

Amina AlTai: as possible right But humans make mistakes And I think also those mistakes give us texture right They allow people to connect with us Nobody wants to connect with anything that's so perfect There's no texture there And so I reframed this of like well actually my practice is to figure out how to recover well cause there's always gonna be a stumble There's always gonna be a setback And so when they say you've got three minutes land your talking points My practice is not perfectionism My practice is recovery

Monica Packer: Brilliant. I mean, my mind is blown in so many ways and I'm making this connection though, to my own life. So like I'm not gonna be going on TV a lot, and I know the listeners likely won't either. I mean, who knows? Who knows. And at the same time I can see the principles there of being aware of when those little core wounds are popping up and how they're being masked by things and working through in a way where you're meeting yourself where you're at with some compassion, but also some objective pushes.

Well, let's get better at this part of it to help everything else. That's brilliant. Thank you for sharing that.

Amina AlTai: Yeah it's it's honestly come up so big that it feels like I have to share I'm like why am I navigating

Monica Packer: Yeah,

Amina AlTai: lesson has to help somebody besides me

Monica Packer: I mean, especially helpful because you did get to what so many would think is an outcome of being on tv, promoting your book. I mean, those things in one sentence, two of those things are like people's life goals. And so this also is illustrating your original point here that if you are leaning into maladaptive, ambition.

It's never ending and there is no arrival and owning that helps you stay in that process better because you know that's not even it. That's not an arrival. Brilliant. Okay. Let's talk about aligned ambition, because I want to help them understand what they are looking for. If it's not the outcome, what does it look like to be healthfully ambitious, I guess is my terrible wording of that, but, but I think you word it more as aligned ambition.

So in the book, I refer to it as purposeful ambition and it has a couple of hallmarks. So in painful ambition, we're generally in that black and white, either or thinking in purposeful ambition. We're in a growth mindset,

Amina AlTai: In

Monica Packer: okay? In painful ambition, we are instrumentalizing our minds and bodies getting every last drop of productivity out of ourselves.

Amina AlTai: In

Monica Packer: Purposeful ambition. We are honoring our knees. We realize that we can't pour from an empty cup. In painful ambition, we're focused on individualism and hoarding power. Like me, me, me. I need to shine as an individual. My awards might shine,

Amina AlTai: in

Monica Packer: and in purposeful ambition, it's collaborative. We realize we all win together, and that when we all come together in our strengths, it's just even more expansive.

Amina AlTai: it

Monica Packer: painful ambition, we move at unsustainable paces like the self-imposed urgency.

Amina AlTai: In

Monica Packer: In purposeful ambition, we take aligned action. So those are just some of the signatures. Okay. I feel like one word for all of that to me is space. There's just more humanness there to me.

Amina AlTai: More

Monica Packer: humanist, and I love that you brought up space, right?

Because Brene Brown talks about this, right? The transformative power of space.

Amina AlTai: between

Monica Packer: like

the impulse or the trigger, we need space in order to choose how we wanna respond. And I think when we do have that space, we can choose how we wanna respond versus I think painful and ambition can be very reactive.

Ooh.

So that's another good way for them to recognize what it looks and feels like to be in purposeful ambition, is that they feel like they're actually choosing it.

I

Part of the hamster wheel of the painful one is like you're not really choosing. You're just like you have to should.

Amina AlTai: Well okay A lot

Monica Packer: okay, a lot of shoulds,

Amina AlTai: some

Monica Packer: right?

But some people do choose painful ambition. So another signature painful ambition is, um, a desire to win no matter the cost.

Amina AlTai: And there's

Monica Packer: there's nothing wrong with winning winning's a beautiful thing, right? It doesn't like to win, but it's the no matter the cost piece that is really tricky, right? The costing our health, our joy, our relationship.

Et cetera.

Amina AlTai: But

Monica Packer: But I have met quite a few people that are so consumed with the desire to win that they don't,

Amina AlTai: They're

Monica Packer: they're not worried about the cost.

Okay. Yeah, I think that's right. Like they're choosing the cost too. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. That's a great way to say it.

Okay. I, I would like to bring up something you mentioned earlier, like if we're in the painful ambition mode for too long, it hurts, and how often that can translate to literally hurting like our bodies.

And also in other ways, like our relationships, our careers, our bank accounts, um, that body connection, the somatic side to things that you brought up. How would they know in their bodies too? Like what does it feel like when you are aligned?

Because that's tricky for a lot of women. They've been so out of that, that they don't even know what it feels like.

Amina AlTai: You know

Monica Packer: You know, that's a really interesting question, and I think it feels a little bit different for each of us.

Amina AlTai: What I

Monica Packer: I wanna say is that it feels like a nervous system that is resonant with the space that we're in, right?

So a nervous system that is choosing appropriately versus a

Amina AlTai: nervous

Monica Packer: system that is like super reactive, going a bit haywire.

Amina AlTai: And

Monica Packer: Okay? And so I do think it's different for each of us, but more of that resonance because when I was in my previous career.

Amina AlTai: You

Monica Packer: You know where I was working really hard and it ended up getting really sick.

Amina AlTai: I

Monica Packer: I can honestly say that I was probably in like fight flight, freeze on most of the day,

Amina AlTai: and

Monica Packer: and that probably wasn't the appropriate response, right? There was no lying in the room with me, but I felt like there was, and I think that's partly what exacerbated my autoimmune diagnoses, and I think that

Amina AlTai: Purposeful

Monica Packer: purposeful ambition

Amina AlTai: be

Monica Packer: can be more of that resonance, right?

So it's like, okay, I got a scary email, but I know that there's no lying in the room and.

Amina AlTai: I'm

Monica Packer: I'm gonna allow my nervous system to respond from a rooted place

in studying your work, one of the things that really struck me was how our gifts play a major part in purposeful ambition. I think both in healing those core wounds.

And also helping us recognize what is aligned for me in this season and what is right for me right now. What do I want to pursue? Can we spend a little more time on the gifts aspect of this whole thing? Because a lot of us are similarly when we're out of tune with being ambitious, we grew out of tune with our own gifts along the way.

Amina AlTai: Yes. I I'm obsessed with this conversation.

I

Monica Packer: love talking about gifts because.

Amina AlTai: I

Monica Packer: I believe each and every one of us has a zone of genius, but we live in a world that tells us genius looks a particular way. And I actually think that upholds.

Amina AlTai: dynamics

Monica Packer: dynamics, right? Because

Amina AlTai: go

Monica Packer: we go off the typical definition, uh, geniuses being based on high IQs, that's one quarter of 1% of the population.

Amina AlTai: So

Monica Packer: those are the people that get to call the shots. Wow. Those are the visionaries, right? And then everybody else is just kind of in service to those people.

Amina AlTai: But

Monica Packer: everybody has a zone of genius, right from the bus driver that makes everybody on the bus feel safe.

Amina AlTai: to the

Monica Packer: the chef in your neighborhood who with every bite makes you feel at home to the friend that's a such a good listener that makes you feel heard and seen.

All of those things are zones of genius and when we all come together in that, we democratize it. Mm-hmm. And also

Amina AlTai: The

Monica Packer: the world changes too. 'cause like we're not in service to this one vision. We're all on the court with the best parts of ourselves. And when we're on the court with the best parts of ourselves, that's the highest yield contribution we can make.

How can some women rediscover what those gifts are?

I'm

I'm so glad that you asked that because.

Amina AlTai: I work

Monica Packer: work with a lot of high achievers and I cannot tell you how many people I've sat across from, and they will literally have like gold medals in the background, and they'll be like, I don't have any genius. I'm like, this is hilarious.

I literally see it staring back at me,

Amina AlTai: so

Monica Packer: so, so many of us do need to rediscover it,

Amina AlTai: and

Monica Packer: and so there are a series of exercises in the book that help you uncover it, but even just thinking about the places where your innate gifts are, where you don't have to push force or effort, just it kind of flows through you.

Amina AlTai: It's

Monica Packer: It's the thing that people probably compliment you for a lot, but you probably toss away. You think like, well,

Amina AlTai: this

Monica Packer: thing that comes so effortless, they could it ever be perceived as valuable?

Amina AlTai: Um when

Monica Packer: when we're doing that thing, we often find ourselves in the space of flow too.

Amina AlTai: But

Monica Packer: homework assignments, people love this exercise.

Amina AlTai: Ask three

Monica Packer: three friends that really see you

Amina AlTai: really see you

Monica Packer: see you is the operative phrase here, because

Amina AlTai: people will

Monica Packer: will project.

Amina AlTai: So

Monica Packer: So you wanna choose friends that really see you and ask them what they think your genius is.

Amina AlTai: where you're

Monica Packer: You're most exceptional.

Yeah. I think where we get, uh, you know, kind of stuck in that is a lot of our gifts, I would say like probably 90% because we all have a lot of gifts.

But even of those gifts, most of them are not tangible, meaning like you can't hold it in your hand or see an outcome.

Amina AlTai: Okay

Monica Packer: Okay. Love this question too, right? So our gifts can be hard skills, which are a bit more fixed, or they can be power skills. Okay? So power skills are what was formally known as soft skills.

They got a rebrand because there's no love that talk about them,

Amina AlTai: but

Monica Packer: but they're things like empathy or resilience. Leadership, deep listening, excellent communication. All of those things are power skills. And so yes, we might not be able to hold it in our hand, right? We, we might not be genius at welding, which is very tangible skill, right?

Amina AlTai: But

Monica Packer: But maybe we are genius at asking questions. Maybe we're a genius at holding space and all of that counts, all of that matters.

Can you give an example? I mean, I know I'm putting you on the spot, but I would love to hear about one of your hard skills, like one of your tangible gifts and one of your. Power skills.

I, I used the new word.

Yeah

So

writing, right. That's, that's a pretty tangible skill. I think that's, I'm,

Amina AlTai: I'm uh

Monica Packer: uh, really excellent at distilling complex information into something that other people can understand and is like a soundbite. So I

Amina AlTai: writing

Monica Packer: and then

Amina AlTai: Honestly I

Monica Packer: I think my true genius is seeing other people's genius and it's like, well, that's not tangible at all.

Like, how are you gonna package that and sell it? But I do.

Oh, I love that so much. I, when I was thinking, about that, I, I think one of my soft slash power skills is persistence.

Oh I

love that.

That's a

know, that's a good one. But I feel like all the other ones, I'm like, well, that wasn't a gift. That's a skill I worked at, but I'm gonna have to make more of a connection.

But this is, this is such a good conversation for our listeners who are so out of touch with it and what they can do. And I love your homework assignment to help them do that. And sometimes it's just acting. Acting the part like putting your feet one foot in front of the other and just saying, I think this is a gift.

So what if I just pretend it is?

A

hundred percent. Right? And Gay Hendrix, who wrote the book, the Big

Amina AlTai: and

Monica Packer: Leap, and he coined the term Zone of Genius.

Amina AlTai: Invitation is to

Monica Packer: is to just spend an extra 10 minutes there a day and see what happens right? Because inevitably, like you said, it's like either we're having trouble claiming it, or we feel like we don't have time to spend more time there.

So if you can just start with an extra 10 minutes a day and see what shifts, and go up from there. Go to 15, go to 30, go to 60 from there, and see how your life shifts. You're gonna see big differences.

So going back to the core wound and the masks that we use with them, how does harnessing our gifts, developing them, leaning into them, staying in that zone of genius, how does that help?

Those core wounds?

Well,

if we think about a little bit differently for each of them, right? So if you have rejection wound and the mask is avoidance or withdrawal, you might actually never throw your hat in the ring around your zone of genius because you're like, I'm so worried that I may get rejected again, that I'm just gonna not put it out there.

or if you have the perfection wound, right.

Amina AlTai: We

Monica Packer: We might actually avoid putting things out there

Amina AlTai: we're like

Monica Packer: because we're like, well, like maybe I can get better at my zone of genius. Maybe I can do it in an even bigger way. Like it's not fully baked yet,

Amina AlTai: and

Monica Packer: and so it shows up differently for each of them.

But you can imagine that those core wounds would get in the way of ODing the zone of genius, or like the dependence one, for example, right? People thinking that they need all of these other people to bring their zone of genius to life, but actually it's innate and inherent in you, and you can probably do it by yourself.

So do the gifts just help us actually do the same thing, but in a different way? Meaning to try and grow, to try to get better at something that matters to us that may have been prevented or exacerbated by the core wound and the mask that goes with that. Um, but again, in a different way.

Amina AlTai: Working in

Monica Packer: in our zone of genius builds our confidence because who doesn't want to work in a space that they're amazing at, right?

It's like other people are gonna feel the impact of that. What you can contribute far out cases, what, what other people can, and then not from a competitive space, just like that's your gift, right?

Amina AlTai: So you just do it in a

Monica Packer: You just do it in a really beautiful way and so you build so much confidence with it. And so there's less of a propensity to be coming from the place of pain with it.

But I do think that we need to do that work side by side to look at the core wounds and build the confidence of the genius and those things will will flourish together.

Mm-hmm. I mean, this is kind of striking me something that we often say in our community here, and it's that the opposite of perfectionism is, not trying, that's actually perfectionism.

The opposite of perfectionism is progress. it's it's trying but from a different place and for a different thing. Um, and it, I know there's a lot of similarities between that and ambition, and I'm grateful that we were able to break that down in particular for. Those of us who are feeling a little bit stuck in in- action thanks to these, uh, shadow sides, I guess, of ourselves that come out with this topic,

Amina, this has been so amazing and power packed. Thank you again for joining us on about progress.

Amina AlTai: thank you so much for having me.

I hope this episode gave you the hug and kick it, the pants you need to grow. I now will share the progress pointers. These are the notes that I took so you don't have to, and an expanded version is available each week with our newsletter. You can sign up at about progress.com/newsletter number one, if your ambition requires constant growth, it's not healthy like nature.

Ambition should be cyclical and followed with rest. Number two, there's a difference between painful ambition, driven by core wounds and purposeful ambition driven by values and intuitively paced. Number three, perfectionism isn't solved by trying less. It's healed by learning how to recover. Number four, your body often knows when your ambition is misaligned before your mind does.

Number five, your gifts are clues to aligned ambition, but they're often the ones you dismiss. Again, for an expanded version of that and in a graphic form, sign up for our [email protected] slash newsletter. Quick reminders before we go, our Do Something List Workshop is happening this week. If you haven't signed up yet, you can do so with the link in the show notes.

This podcast is listener supported. Members of the Supporters Club make my work with about progress free and available to all. And in exchange they get access to three levels of exclusive benefits from more time to more content with me. This includes my private premium, ad free podcast, more personal, where I lean into the personal side of personal development.

We have such amazing things coming for you on more personal this year. I hope that you consider supporting about progress by going to about progress.com/support. You can always support the show for free. The best way to do that right now is by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

We have just a gift or two left of the favorite things giveaway going on right now, and leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts automatically submits you to that giveaway, which was all in honor of our nine year anniversary of about progress. And as you've heard by now, we are currently in year 10 of about progress, So this conversation with Amina was really timely for me as I'm doing everything I can to ensure this podcast doesn't just make it to its 10 year anniversary, but we make it so it's here to stay. Thank you for doing your part to ensure that happens. thank you so much for listening. Now go and do something with what you learned today.

Monica Packer: so in the book I refer to it as Purposeful ho. Hold on just a second. I, for some reason am off, it just left my microphone. Did I suddenly sound different?

Amina AlTai: No

Monica Packer: Okay. Hold on. Just, just a moment.

Amina AlTai: so

Monica Packer: just a moment. It did this, oh gosh. It did this in another session, like weeks ago and we had to just start it over.

Okay. Can you hear my mic? Mm-hmm. Okay. Well maybe we'll just keep going then and because I can still hear you, you're just coming from a different spot now, and they should edit that out. Okay, so my question was, what is an aligned ambition? What does it look like? And then we'll get into how it feels and how they can recognize it.

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