Amina AlTai on The Ambition Trap: From Burnout to Wholeness |EP 689

Amina AlTai, executive coach and author of The Ambition Trap, joins John R. Miles to expose why top achievers burn out despite “having it all.”They dismantle hustle culture’s grip, swap wound-driven ambition for gift-aligned purpose, and unpack Amina’s 3 E’s (Excellence, Enjoyment, Ease) plus the Resentment Line to end self-abandonment. From her near-death wake-up to systemic ambition penalties, they prove rest is resistance and wholeness at work heals teams and organizations. Listen + Watch + Go DeeperFull shownotes here: https://passionstruck.com/amina-altai-the-ambition-trap/All episode resources—including guest links, John’s books You Matter, Luma and Passion Struck, The Ignited Life Substack, and the Start Mattering Store—are gathered here:👉 linktr.ee/John_R_MilesTo learn more about Amina AlTai, visit aminaaltai.com.🧠 About the EpisodeThe Wake-Up Call: How Amina’s workaholism and toxic relationship to success nearly cost her life—and what it took to rebuild both her health and her definition of success. Painful vs. Purposeful Ambition: The crucial difference between ambition driven by wounds and ambition driven by purpose—and how to know which one is guiding you. The 3 E’s Framework: How identifying what brings Excellence, Enjoyment, and Ease helps you uncover your inner genius and design a life aligned with it. The Resentment Line: Why burnout begins when we live below our “resentment line”—and how to set boundaries that honor your worth. The Ambition Penalty: How gender, race, and identity shape the way ambition is judged—and why historically excluded groups face a double bind when they strive. Rewriting Hustle Culture: Why “working more” doesn’t make you more valuable, and how leaders can redefine productivity through presence and permission. Collective Wholeness: What it means to move from individual achievement to collective ambition—a model of success where we rise by being more ourselves, together.🌱 Join The Ignited Life CommunityIf this episode stirred something in you, The Ignited Life is where the transformation continues. Each week, John shares behind-the-scenes insights, science-backed tools, and reflections to help you turn intention into action.🔗 Subscribe free at TheIgnitedLife.net💫 Support the MovementEveryone deserves to feel valued and important. Show it. Wear it. Live it.🛍️ StartMattering.comConnect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking/Keynotes, books, podcast, and resources: https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesChildren’s Book — You Matter, Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Substack: https://www.theignitedlife.net/Support the Movement: https://startmattering.com/. Every human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Last year, as I was finishing up the book, I was working seven days a week. And now that I had a big burst of energy on the book tour that finished, I have a bit of a slowdown period. So I've been working three days a week for this. And that, to me, feels right. Last year, when I was working seven days a week, nobody asked, are you okay? This year, when I'm working three days a week, people are like, are you okay? Yeah, I'm great. But we're so indoctrinated to believe that going 90 miles an hour all the time is the way that when somebody slows down to take care of themselves, we think that's the problem. I think the biggest lie is that the more you work, the more valuable you are.

• 0:37John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 1:26John R. Miles?

  Welcome back to Passion Struck, friends. I'm John Miles, and this is episode 689, where science meets soul, where data becomes devotion, and where we turn the invisible threads of human connection into superpowers you can feel in your bones. We're in week two of our series, The Irreplaceables, rediscovering human worth in an age of acceleration. If this podcast has ever inspired you or helped you live and lead more intentionally, here are two quick ways to help it grow. First, share this episode with someone who matters, a teammate, a partner, a friend, who could use a reminder that connection is still our greatest strength. Second, leave a five-star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It takes less than a minute, but it's the single best way to help new

• 2:11John R. Miles?

  listeners discover these conversations and to join our growing community of intentional leaders. Earlier this week, I was joined by Elias Wise-Friedman, or as millions know him, as the doggus. He reminded us that the smallest act Of connection can restore our humanity. And before that, Dr. Zelana Momeni showed us how to reclaim focus in a world that constantly steals it. Together, these episodes ask a powerful question, what does it mean to live as if we truly are irreplaceable? Today's guest, Amina Altai, answers that question through a new lens, wholeness. Amina is an executive coach, author, and thought leader who bridges business strategy and mindfulness to help leaders

• 2:55John R. Miles?

  align ambition with authenticity. Her new book, The Ambition Trap, How to Stop Chasing and Start Living, is a blueprint for success that doesn't require self-abandonment. In our conversation, we explore why ambition itself isn't good or bad. It's about how we relate to it. We go into the difference between painful ambition driven by wounds, hustle, and validation, and purposeful ambition rooted in gifts, values, and alignment. We then go into how her frameworks like the three Es and the resentment line can help us reconnect with our genius while preventing burnout. And lastly, how leaders can rewrite hustle culture to create workplaces where ambition fuels wholeness, not sacrifice. Before we begin, two quick notes. You can now preorder my new children's book,

• 3:40John R. Miles?

  You Matter Luma, at Barnes & Noble, a story for ages four to eight about courage, kindness, and the ripple effect of mattering. And join theignitedlife.net, our growing Substack community where I share weekly tools, workbooks, and frameworks to help you live and lead with greater intention. Now, let's dive into this deeply reflective and paradigm shifting conversation with Amina Altai. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin.

• 4:13John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to have Amina Altai on Passion Struck. Welcome, Amina. How are you today?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  I'm awesome. Thank you so much for having me.

• 4:22John R. Miles?

  And one of the things I love to do is to have guests on the show who are also fellow podcasters. And I got a chance to listen to some of your shows, love what you're about, and was so excited to hear that you've launched a new book, which I have here in my hands, for those of you who can't see it, The Ambition Trap, How to Stop Chasing and Start Living. I can't wait to dive into this. How does it feel to have this book come out into the world?

• 4:49Speaker 01

  It's honestly such a feeling of just major relief. And I'm curious if you felt this way, but it's when you're behind the scenes and you're working on something, it can be such a solo and singular journey, even if you have collaborators. I had wonderful editors, but you don't get much feedback. And then it's finally out in the world and you're in these rooms with people just hearing how the concepts are landing and resonating. And that has nourished me so much, way more than I ever thought it would. It's been extraordinary.

• 5:14John R. Miles?

  I sometimes felt that there was more work on the backside of the book, getting it out into the world than there was actually writing it. I don't think people realize how much you have to work to promote your book. I feel like my first time, I made some really good moves and there are things that I wish I would have done differently. So as I'm approaching my new books, it was a great learning lesson and a great foundation of what's next to come. Not sure if you found the same thing true.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  It's so interesting because I thought the hardest part would be writing the book and I'm a former marketer, so I knew there would be a big, heavy lift in the marketing piece, but I assumed there'll be a flywheel moment and then there'll just be momentum and off it'll go. And I haven't hit that flywheel moment yet, so I'm still working quite hard to get it out there. So that's the piece that's interesting to me. If I thought there'd be more speed behind it and I wouldn't have to push so much, but it's still requiring quite a bit of my effort, I'm seeing.

• 6:09John R. Miles?

  That's exactly what I found and I think what we'll hear from most authors.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Literally, that's what I'm hearing from everybody. So it's like, okay, it's not that I've done something wrong. Nothing's broken here. This is just something that requires a lot of energy.

• 6:22John R. Miles?

  Absolutely. Never stopping. I'm still, mine came out February of 2024 and I'm still trying to push it as much as I can.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Wow. Yeah. The author life, not for the meek.

• 6:35John R. Miles?

  So let's jump into the book. You write, "My workaholic tendencies and painful relationships to success were quite literally killing me." Why was it so important to open the book with such a raw and vulnerable story?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  This story stops people in its tracks and it's interesting. So I opened the book by telling the story of what I call my stop moment. So I was six years into my marketing career and the child of immigrants and was raised in achievement culture and told to just put your head down, work really hard, have a good on paper life and everything will be great. And unfortunately, that didn't work for me. Things looked great on paper. I achieved all the things that I wanted to, but I'd gotten really sick and... I'd been to seven different doctors and finally I get a call from one of them. And she says, Amina, if you don't go to the hospital now, instead of going to work, you'll be days away from multiple organ failure.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And being 28 years old and getting a call like this is just, you never think that's gonna happen. You're like, I'm in my twenties, I'm in the prime of my life, I'm so vibrant. This is the beginning of my career. You never expect to get a call like that. And it was alarming, right? And it really changed the trajectory of my entire life. But what's shocking is the more I tell the story on podcasts and stages, the more people message me or line up afterwards and say, I have a very similar story. So I think it's super important that I share it, one, because it's so alarming. But two, so many of us have an experience that is similar. So there's something here that we need to talk about, that we need to unpack together. And it's such an attention grabbing moment, too.

• 8:09John R. Miles?

  Well, it certainly is. And speaking of attention grabbing, I love to ask like punchy questions. So if you had to describe the ambition trap in just three words, what would they be?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. That's the same gal, but three words is, I don't know if I've got three for you.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Never enough syndrome.

• 8:33John R. Miles?

  Never enough syndrome. Okay, I'll take it. You just described that event that happened with your doctor. And I think there are a lot of people, as you said, I being one of them, who you realize at some point or another that your work is actually draining you. It's making you less healthy. It's like making you a nervous wreck. And in some cases, it's even shortening your lifespan. And I think a lot of us don't wake up to it until we start feeling the symptoms. And oftentimes, as is the case of me, they're so subtle at first that you just push them off as something else.

• 9:15John R. Miles?

  And I'm not sure if this happened with you, but what I found is that over time, it went from low level symptoms to then medium grade where I realized the world was changing colors. But I couldn't figure out what was beneath it to all of a sudden you have this hockey stick, like you did with the organ failure, where all of a sudden it like slams across you like two by four.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:39John R. Miles?

  You think that's pretty consistent with people you talk to?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  I do think it is consistent and it's the old adage that the universe whispers and then it shouts. Because for a lot of, I am a stubborn person and I wasn't listening to the whispers and I had to let it get to the shout before I was willing to make a change. And I'm super curious of your perspective, but as someone who is a coach and has a front row seat to people when they are making changes. What I notice about many of my clients, not all of them, because there's always an exception to the rule, but it has to be uncomfortable enough for us to make a change. So a lot of us have to get to that shout moment to that where the universe is yelling at us because we're not listening to the whispers. It's not uncomfortable enough for us yet to make a change.

• 10:20John R. Miles?

  I have to ask you, what was harder for you rebuilding your health or rebuilding your relationship with success?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Oh, 100% rebuilding my relationship with success. The health was interesting. The health was a little bit more like one plus one equals two. And I know that's not the case for everybody, but for me it was. It was like the doctor said, do this thing, take this medication, make this lifestyle change. And it wasn't overnight. It honestly was a slow ship to turn around. But over the course of a couple of years, I really was able to get my health back on track. It was just a bit more linear. Whereas when it comes to my relationship with success, it was not one plus one equals two. It was not linear. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance, I think, that I experienced around my relationship to success.

• 11:04John R. Miles?

  I was curious about research and reports. And so I try to keep up on what Gallup is putting out in their most recent study of global workplace culture and basically what's happening out there. They described that now six out of 10 people globally are emotionally detached at work and nearly one in five are absolutely miserable.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, 90% or downright miserable. I saw that same study. It's wild.

• 11:36John R. Miles?

  So it's obvious if you look at that study as just one, that the way we're working isn't working. If it was up to you and you could redesign work culture tomorrow, what would be the very first change you would make?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  If I had a magic wand, right, because I don't think it's simply about the introduction of certain tools or structures. I think it's about people's willingness to create spaces where everybody can thrive and everybody can feel a sense of belonging and everybody can feel a sense of psychological safety. But that requires us to dismantle a lot of our own internalized biases as well. And so I think the biggest thing is a willingness and openness to create cultures like that because the tools without that willingness are always going to fall flat.

• 12:18John R. Miles?

  Yes, and I spent a lot of my career, in case you didn't know, in Fortune 500 companies. I was a senior exec at Lowe's and Dell. And I have to say, I worked with some very engaged people and I worked with some very disengaged people. But the ones who were completely engaged, who seemed to love what they were doing, were the far minority. What is causing that large gap between those two? Do you think it's people just find themselves down career experiences they never expected for and they get into it so far, are making so much money, lifestyle, everything, that it's hard for them to peel back? Or what causes this gap?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I think it is so multifactorial, as you just elucidated, right? Some people have golden handcuffs and they feel like, I'm really far down this path, I'm making a tremendous salary, it's sucking the life out of me, but I can't warrant a change because I'm getting so much money here. I think a lot of it is also us being completely unaware about what our gifts are, what purpose means for each of us. I've, literally, I have an entire career that is built around that exact person that follows the shoulds and the must dos and gets to the top of the mountain in their career, looks around and realizes, this isn't it. None of this leverages my genius. I am not happy. I don't feel a sense of contentment. And now I finally want to do something that is true to me. But so many of us can't give ourselves permission to even do that until we've gotten to the top of the mountain, right?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Until we've checked every box and looked over our shoulder and thought, I can't try anymore. Which leads me to another piece, which is permission. I think so many of us don't have permission to go after that from the get go. I had a lot of programming around career. I'm half Arab. I come from a very big STEM family. And the story there was like, all you girls need to go to medical school. And my dad, I remember taking me to the hospital environment and I was like, there's no windows here. Like where the doctor, I can't thrive here. There's no sunlight. That was my first thought. And so I think there's a lot of conditioning we all have, whether it's familial, cultural, or systemic. And so I think that we have to really peel back the layers on that to understand who we are, what we want,

• 14:24Speaker 01

  and how we can leverage that in the context of our careers. And I think the last piece is that it is a, you don't have to have a job that leverages purpose, right? For me, I do. I feel like actually that's super important for me. I spend more of my heartbeats at work than I do anywhere else. But not everybody, that doesn't matter to everybody, right? Some people want to have what I call the good enough job, right? Where it pays them the great salary, they have the benefits that they need, and then they have lots of time off where they can spend with their families and invest in meaningful hobbies. And for them, that is enough purpose that they're getting outside of work that they don't need the purposeful work. So there's no right or wrong way to career. But I feel like a lot of us don't feel like, well, we feel like it is a form of privilege to have purpose in our careers.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And in lots of ways it is, and we just don't feel like we can get to it.

• 15:12John R. Miles?

  I think a lot of us have an idea of what ambition is. But for the purposes of the ambition trap, what does ambition mean to you today? And how do you define it?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Well, I really wanted to redefine ambition because I feel like the conversation around ambition is a bit of a dysfunctional one. I think culturally speaking, what I initially thought ambition was more for more's sake all the time. Like this never-ending upward trajectory, right? More money, more power, and that's somehow going to make me more fulfilled. And guess what? It doesn't, right? I have all of these super high-achieving clients, and I'm sure everybody listening is nodding along too. They're like, yeah, the more for more didn't work for me. And so I think that ambition is neutral and natural. It is a desire for more life. It is a wish to grow, a wish to unfold. And the thing about that is that's inherent in every single living thing on the planet. It's in our plant babies and our human babies, right? Our cells are all saying, hey, we want to grow, right?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  It's a very natural, neutral thing. But we make it right for some people and wrong for others. And that's part of what I wanted to dispel in the book as well.

• 16:17John R. Miles?

  Yeah, you're right. Ambition isn't a dirty word. It's an invitation to design your life with greater purpose and meaning.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:24John R. Miles?

  Yet so many of us see ambition as negative or selfish, which, yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, there's even religious connotations around it. An example that I've been using is I watched the movie The Conclave, which was about selecting the new pope, and there's a through line of ambition. And they keep saying, oh, my gosh, I shouldn't have ambition to be pope. Ambition is such a bad thing, such a taboo thing. And that's why in the book, I distinguish between painful ambition and purposeful ambition. Ambition, like money, is neutral, right? We just load it with meaning. And then there can be painful ambition that's driven by a core wound, which we can talk about. And there's purposeful ambition that's connected to our truth. It's coming from a place of wholeness. And that's a very different orientation.

• 17:06John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I thought Rife Feins did a great job in that, as did a number of Stanley Tucci.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yes, so good.

• 17:14John R. Miles?

  And I think he did great. But one of the things that, or the lines that really caught me is that the pope they pick should be the one who doesn't aspire to have the job, who just wants to be the humble servant. And wouldn't we be better off in the world if more of our leaders were that person and that persona who got selected instead of the person who was climbing up the ladder to get the job? I just wonder how much different the world would be.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yes, because the come from is so different, right? The orientation is so different. I want this thing because I just want to have it versus I want to be in service. That's so different. That's such different energy, such different intention.

• 17:53John R. Miles?

  So I love talking about gaps. And you have a fundamental one in your book. I call it the fulfillment gap in my own vernacular. But you really look at the difference between what you call painful ambition and purposeful ambition. How do you define that gap?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Yes. So as I mentioned, ambition is neutral and natural. It's this desire for growth, desire for more life. And it's very funny because when I was writing the book, I was socializing the topic of ambition and people fell into two camps. Either they were like me, which is Camp A, I'm very ambitious, but that ambition has been so expensive and it costs me something. Or they fell into Camp B. And Camp B was, I fully renounce ambition because I've only seen a dysfunctional version of it. So I'm not ambitious at all. I don't believe that's true. I think that each and every one of us has ambition. It's inherent in all of us, right? It's just that desire for more life, that wish to grow. And so in the book, I distinguish those two pieces, right? The painful ambition versus the purposeful. So in painful ambition, we are driven to win no matter the cost. And no matter the

• 18:55Speaker 01

  cost being the operative phrase, because there's nothing wrong with winning, right? But it's when we'll step over everybody and hurt ourselves to get to the goal. In painful ambition, we'll instrumentalize our minds and bodies to get where we want to go. We move at unsustainable paces. We think in this black and white either or mindset. So there's a couple of trademarks. But ultimately, it's all driven by a core wound. So initial injuries of the psyche that have us needing all of these things outside of ourselves to feel whole and worthy on the inside. And I can dig into those if that's helpful.

• 19:24John R. Miles?

  Yeah, no, I think it is.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Okay, so the core wounds, this is work from Lee Sporbo, who's a Canadian psychologist. And she says there are five core wounds. They are rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. And these are essentially initial injuries of the psyche that we experienced in our formative years. And each and every one of us has one, right? Even if you had the most miraculous upbringing with the best parents on the planet, we'll still have that initial injury. And as a result of that, we'll wear a corresponding mask. So for example, if you have a rejection wound, the mask you wear is avoidance or withdrawal. If you have an abandonment wound, the mask you wear is dependence, so like overly reliant on others. If you have a betrayal wound, the mask you wear is control. And so we can see that if we're coming from either that wound or we're wearing that

• 20:11Speaker 01

  mask, we're going to have a really wobbly relationship with ambition. So I had a rejection wound and betrayal wound. And so I was trying to control everything, but avoiding throwing my hat in the ring for things. And you can imagine, as you're trying to grow, trying to take up space, it's going to create some complications. And so the invitation in the work is to really look at those core wounds. And even bringing awareness to them shifts things so dramatically. And then can we instead be coming from that place of purposeful ambition that's connected to our deeper why that's coming from that place of truth that's coming from that place of wholeness?

• 20:42John R. Miles?

  I hope you've been enjoying my conversation with Amina Altai. Want to watch this episode? You'll find the full interview shorts and exclusive content on our YouTube channels. Want to wear your purpose? Visit our store at startmattering.com to explore intention-driven apparel designed to remind you that you matter. Live like it. Now, a quick break from our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 21:15John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now, back to my conversation with Amina Altai.

• 21:23John R. Miles?

  So if I had to summarize it, painful ambition is you're fueled by your wounds, hustle, external validation. And purposeful ambition is you're aligned, you're regenerative, you're sustainable. If someone is experiencing painful ambition, but doesn't realize it, what might be one or two of the first symptoms that they might want to recognize?

• 21:46Speaker 01

  And I think that it's important that we recognize this for ourselves, right? A lot of people ask this question. They're like, well, I'm noticing it for myself, but other people around me aren't noticing. And I think that the work starts with us. And when we show up differently, other people will notice and we're in a dance with everybody. So they'll move to accommodate us as well. But we're usually experiencing some kind of hit for it, whether we're conscious of it or not, right? So the hit for me was my health, right? I was definitely coming from painful ambition, trying to control every last I dot every or control everything in my life. And it's just not possible. And that's when my body broke, right? So maybe you're experiencing physical challenges. Maybe you're experiencing a lot of conflict because of that voracious desire to succeed

• 22:28Speaker 01

  and how you're showing up with your community and your collaborators. Perhaps you're noticing a lot of mental stress, right? And it's impacting your mental health, right? So there's going to be signals along the way for sure. And we want to look and see where the rub is. Where's the discomfort? And where's it coming from? And can we choose another way?

• 22:47John R. Miles?

  I want to go into kind of the background on systems that keep us trapped. And one of the quotes that I really liked from the book is that ambition is complicated, especially for historically excluded people. So it begs the question, how do race, gender, identity intersect with ambition in ways that our listeners might not even realize?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Yes, so again, this is why I wanted to write the book, because I wasn't seeing anybody talk about identity and ambition. And those things are so intrinsically linked. There's something known as the ambition penalty. And what that is, if you're a woman, if you're a person of color, if you're a queer person, a person with a disability, anybody with a marginalized identity, we experience backlash for our ambition. So I'll share a bit more data. Men and women, and the research was done in a gender binary, men and women enter the workforce in more or less the same levels of ambition. Men are rewarded for theirs, women it's seen as a detractor. And ambitious women who negotiate their salaries are seen as aggressive and difficult to work with. Women of color are actually the most ambitious cohort in corporate America, but they experience the most pushback for that ambition.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  So there's this double bind that we experience, right? We're told to be and not to be in the very same sentence. And we want to take up space, we want to grow, but oftentimes it's seen as really taboo. And so I think we have to talk about that complexity.

• 24:07John R. Miles?

  Yeah, Marshall Goldsmith wrote the famous book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There?

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 24:14John R. Miles?

  So for those people who are painfully ambition ambitious, how would you relate what he's trying to convey in that book to what they're missing?

• 24:26Speaker 01

  That's interesting because some people have said to me, I'm gonna, if you're an immigrant, if you're a person of color, you have to work harder to be seen and to take up space. Right. But again, it's what got us here is not going to get us where we want to go next. Right. Sometimes we have to use these tools to get where we want to go. And sometimes it's deeply painful and we take a really big hit for it. And I'm speaking from experience here, but I think that if we want a life of joy, of meaning, of ease, of comfort, those tools that we use to grapple our way to the top, that they're, it's very different than the tools that are going to get us to that next place that we want to go to. And so I think we have to be really compassionate with ourselves because sometimes people take a framework like this and weaponize it against themselves. And that's not the point at all. It's awareness.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  And sometimes we had to use these tools to survive in this system to get here. But now it's something else.

• 25:17John R. Miles?

  I want to talk a little bit about some of the Gen Z listeners who might be tuning in today. So I have two kids who are in this quadrant and I think both of them are really struggling right now because I think they both have ambition, but they're worried about all the complexities that are being thrown at them, especially how fast technology is chasing the workplace. And I know for my son, he was really worried about what college degree to pursue because he's AI is going to make so many of these different jobs so redundant. So what would your advice be to people in that quadrant, that generation on how they

• 26:00John R. Miles?

  can approach ambition differently, knowing that the playing field is changing?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  So I think that your son is asking all of the right questions. I think these are important questions to ask. And so what I would be thinking about is yes, where is AI going to replace some of our work? I think in lots of ways, AI is going to be complementary, already is complementary versus completely replacing. But of course, it's going to replace some things. So thinking about where AI is going to make some roles redundant, but also bumping that up against where our genius is. And we want to be thinking about our zone of genius. Each and every one of us has a zone of genius, and that's our highest yield contribution. That's where our gifts are innate. So thinking about, okay, well, if we are making quadrants, right, what is AI potentially going to replace? Okay, let's cross that out. Where am I in my zone of genius? And how can that potentially be something that either AI can't replace,

• 26:50Speaker 01

  or AI will work complementarily with? And how can I double down in that space? So that way, we're not, because I never want people to work in a space so outside of their gifts, that it's going to feel like friction every single day. And we also have to be really conscious of how technology is going to change our lives and is going to change our jobs. A great example is, a lot of people are using AI for coaching and for therapy, right? But one thing that people are noticing about AI is that it has a lot of confirmation bias, and it can be a big echo chamber, right? There was a study that a therapist had done, or an analysis that a therapist had done, basically like affirming a lot of this, there was basically a kid that was like, it was a scenario where this therapist was pretending

• 27:32Speaker 01

  to be a kid, saying to AI, hey, like, my parents are really hard on me. And then eventually says, oh, I think I should kill my parents. And then AI is like, yeah, you should kill your parents, right? Just like really affirming the bias. And so this is where an excellent coach, an excellent therapist is really going to differentiate, right? It's like, they don't have that same echo chamber bias. So thinking about where we can really bring in our human factors, that a machine won't be able to replace, especially not right now, right? They're getting smarter and smarter all the time. But really thinking about where does my humanness really add the most value?

• 28:06John R. Miles?

  I think that is really important. It always makes me come back to Marshall's book because in my own life, man, I was burning up the ladder. I was climbing faster than anyone. Youngest vice president at Lowe's, youngest partner select at Arthur Andersen. And I met with this clinical psychologist who was evaluating a bunch of the top leaders at Lowe's and she said that very phrase to me and which my weakest point was my emotional intelligence of getting out of drive mode and getting into more connection and collaboration mode. And when I think about what AI will do and what it won't do, one thing it's never

• 28:51John R. Miles?

  going to replace is human interaction. And I think if we're in work, we're always going to have to work with other people. So the more you can learn how to influence people in the right way, I think that's one of the greatest skills that anyone can learn because I don't think it's going to go away, no matter what else happens.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. So beautifully said.

• 29:14John R. Miles?

  So you have worked with leaders at the highest levels. And for those who don't know your background, you were the front face in front of millions of people for a top brand. As you look across the space and companies today, where do you see hustle culture is the most deeply ingrained?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  That's such a great question. And I think it's in so many places, right? Even places that we think that it's not, even places that are saying, hey, our values are this. It's in the smallest ways, like even moving with a sense of urgency, right? That's hustle culture, like valuing the written word over people's intuition. That's hustle culture, instrumentalizing our bodies. That's hustle culture. And so it's so pervasive and it's so insidious. It's everywhere, right? And it's so counter-cultural to choose another way. I'm going to give you an example. Last year, as I was finishing up the book, I was working seven days a week. And now that I had a big burst of energy on the book tour, that finished mostly in June, July, and I have a bit of a slowdown period. So I've

• 30:19Speaker 01

  been working like three days a week for this. And that to me feels right. Like I'm recouping my energy. I talk about how ambition goes in cycles. You have these peaks in the sun and then you have these moments where you go back underground to recuperate. And I'm in an underground moment. And last year, when I was working seven days a week, nobody asked, are you okay? This year, when I'm working three days a week, people are like, are you okay? Yeah, I'm great. But we're so indoctrinated to believe that going 90 miles an hour all the time is the way that when somebody slows down to take care of themselves, we think that's the problem. And so it's just so insidious and it's so pervasive that I feel like we have to question everything.

• 30:56John R. Miles?

  I hope I have the statistic correct from your book. I'm doing it off the memory, but like it said in 2016, 745,000 people lost their lives to hustle culture, which is a hard number to even fathom. If you think about that and how devastating it is, what do you think the biggest lie that hustle culture tries to sell us is?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  I think the biggest lie is that the more you work, the more valuable you are. That's the thing that keeps us in motion. And I think this is why your work is so important, right? Like, we all matter. We are all born worthy, but we believe that we're not because of our initial injuries of the psyche, because of everything that we experience out in the world. And so then we are relentlessly seeking our worthiness outside of ourselves. And that is the carrot that we're chasing inside of hustle culture. And it's never going to fill the wound that's on the inside until we get the message and we feel it in our whole bodies that we are worthy. We are always going to stay in that constant motion until we hurt ourselves like I did.

• 32:01John R. Miles?

  So there's another quote you have in the book. When we are living and leading from a place of pain and chasing ambition, no matter the cost, we hurt everyone around us, including ourselves. What advice would you give to leaders who are quietly thinking to themselves, maybe I'm operating from that place?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  First of all, if you are, I think it's so important that we have compassion for ourselves and we forgive ourselves, right? I said before, I don't want anybody to weaponize this framework against themselves. We're in a system that rewards this way of being. And it's counter-cultural. It's like swimming upstream to choose a different way. And we likely were raised inside of organizations and structures that said, hey, this is the way to be. This is the way you are successful. This is the way you thrive. So if you're noticing that you're operating that way, first of all, compassion and forgiveness for yourself. Where then is it getting in the way of you having the life that you want? Where is it really interrupting true success, true alignment, true fulfillment, true contentment? And then starting to mine those pieces for yourself? And then seeing if you can show up differently for other people too. A lot of the times, people I feel like fall into two camps.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  And I don't want to make, you know, this about a binary, but I feel like either we will, it's like the impact on ourselves will make us change, or the impact on other people will make us change. There are so many people that don't want to hurt other people, but they're willing to hurt themselves. Right? And then there's people that are like, oh, the minute I hurt, I need to change it for everybody else too. So if you can't change it for yourself, think about the people that you're impacting negatively and like what their experience is going to be. Most people don't want to hurt other people. And so if you're noticing where your patterns are potentially hurting those people around you for that reason, can you make a change?

• 33:39John R. Miles?

  I think that's really important. However, in my career, I've met quite a few of the people who are in the camp where I call them in my own book, Passion Struck. I call these people bloodsuckers. They're typically painfully ambitious. This whole chapter is about this thing I call the mosquito audit, whereas you're trying to revamp your life. One of the things you have to look for is the hidden influences that are around you. And oftentimes we don't even realize these influences are there until they bite us. And one of these mosquitoes I call the bloodsucker. And they're, I think, one of the most painful types because these are the people who will do whatever it takes to move up.

• 34:20John R. Miles?

  And so they're trying to steal or take away from you all your blood, anything they can get with you for personal gain. If someone is working with a person like that,

• 34:32John R. Miles?

  and they're working with someone who's painfully ambitious, what is the best way for them to interact where they're developing a relationship with them, but they're also protecting themselves and setting the right type of boundary?

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. You use a perfect word, right? Boundaries are so important. I love the Prentice Hemphill definition of boundaries where they say, boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. And I think in the work context, it's the distance at which I can honor you and me simultaneously. And I think in a conversation where somebody has such a rapacious desire to succeed and it's coming from that really painful place, it's so important to stick to the facts. Or what are the facts? The facts are, we need this project planned on. The facts are, this is the deadline. Because a lot of the time, people like that will want to pull you into the drama too, right? Because they get some sort of adrenaline dump from bringing you into the drama as well. And that's where boundaries become even more important. So thinking about what are the, what's the distance at which I can honor this person, the work and myself at the same time?

• 35:28Speaker 01

  And just resisting the urge to fall into the trap, right? Because when we're around people that operate like that, it often initiates an impulse for us to operate the same way. I noticed this about myself. I wrote a book on a more harmonious relationship with ambition. But when I'm around people that are really in the painful ambition, I notice there's an impulse for me to move at the same speed or to choose the same behavior. So I just have to watch myself more, just be a bit more judicious, a bit more conscious. And sometimes that means I'm moving a bit slower. Like still fast enough, right? I'm still getting everything done. I've never missed a deadline. And so just being conscious of how we're operating when we're around that because that behavior is contagious.

• 36:07John R. Miles?

  One of the things I really loved in the book was your idea of something that you call the resentment line. And you're right, we all have a threshold. When it's crossed, resentment sets in. How can any of the listeners out there recognize when they've possibly slipped below that line?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the resentment line is exactly what it sounds like. It's the space that if we live below it, we feel resentful. And it's really about having our needs met and being in right relationship with those needs being met. So let's say we're showing up at a job, we're giving a lot. We don't feel like the salary is commensurate. As a result of that, we live below the resentment line. To live above the resentment line, we have to know what our needs are and we have to articulate what they are. And then we have to ask for what we need. And that's really hard for a lot of people because so many people don't know what their needs are, don't know how to ask for them to be met. I want people to just guess our needs and intuit them and miraculously show up with them. I used to live that way for sure. I was like, oh, people can't read my mind around my needs. And so we have to be really clear on what they are for ourselves. And there's some exercises in the book.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Asking you for different areas of your life, what do you need in order to show up whole, nourished and fully? And then stating those things. And listen, in a work environment, sometimes that's a little tricky. There's a certain budget that's allocated. And so sometimes we're working around that, but there's always ways to get creative, right? When people are negotiating comp and things like that, I'm always talking to people, well, how can we get creative around how they can make you whole? Whether that's a personal development stipend, some more day, some more PTO, right? What are the ways that we can build in more so that you can feel more nourished and like your needs are being met and you're not living in that resentful place? Because the thing about the resentment line too, is we think that nobody knows that we're there, that we're kicking rocks down there. Everybody feels it. And so it doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve the people around you.

• 37:52John R. Miles?

  I want to go back to something you brought up earlier, and that was you were talking about inner genius. And to me, inner genius is something like purpose or meaning that a lot of people have a hard time discovering. You have three E's, ease, excellence, enjoyment, that I'm hoping that you could go into in more depth and talk about how they relate to possibly finding your inner genius.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Yes. So in the book, I have a framework called the three E's and the E's stand for the eh, like which is the space that we're average at, the excellent, which is the space that we're practiced, polished and really proficient, and the exceptional, which is the place that we're off the charts genius. And each and every one of us has a zone of genius, but we live in a world where we think that genius is for the select few, or that it has to look a certain way. It does not. It's different for all of us and we each have this magic special sauce. And so I invite people to take themselves through that framework into really freeing to find the places that we're average at. So many people are afraid of that exercise. I'm like, it's the best thing ever, because then we can figure out how we can give that to other people whose zone of genius that is, right? Like, why do we need to hoard everything when actually somebody could do that in a genius way? And

• 39:03Speaker 01

  then that frees us up to double down in our zone of genius. So you can take yourself through that three E's exercise and you can categorize your work into things that you like and don't like for each of those three areas. And then the invitation is to spend more time in that exceptional or zone of genius every single day, just starting with 10 more minutes a day. Because inevitably, when I teach this framework, someone's hand shoots up and they're like, Listen, like it's a form of privilege to live in your genius. I can't do that. I'm inside of this corporate framework, but each of us could probably find 10 minutes a day and start to build from there and there. And then over the course of a year, our lives will be remarkably different.

• 39:39John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. And I had a philosophical question for you.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Great.

• 39:43John R. Miles?

  Contentment or achievement, what comes first?

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, that's such a good question. Okay, I think that achievement without contentment coming first is probably going to be painful ambition. And I literally, I, this is the first time I'm hearing this question. That's, that's my first thought, and I could probably piece this apart a little bit more. But it feels like if we don't know what makes us feel whole, and we're looking for achievement, then we're going to do that thing where we're chasing all the things outside of ourselves. But if we do know what creates that unconditional wholeness, we can build. And that, to me, feels like very different energy.

• 40:19John R. Miles?

  Yeah. And as a follow up, just hit my curiosity meter. What brings you the most contentment in this series, in this season of your life?

• 40:29Speaker 01

  I love this question. I think I'm really relearning that right now. I just wrote a Substack about this, about how my North Star in my constellation of purpose for the last couple of years was the book. I've been working on this book since September of 2022. It's a long time. And now that I'm not writing it, the promotion for it has slowed down a little bit. I have a lot of spaciousness. And in that spaciousness initially felt really dysregulating, because I'd been used to moving at this really quick speed for a while, even though I've had spaciousness before in the past, and I write about it, I teach all the things. It's been really disorienting because of this North Star piece and because of the slowdown. And so what I've been letting myself do is get bored. And I think that's actually

• 41:12Speaker 01

  such an important piece to find resonance in the boredom, right? And to let that be okay. And I think that's also where magic happens. I'm actually redefining this answer for myself in real time right now. And I don't have a neat and tidy bow to put on it for you.

• 41:29John R. Miles?

  Well, isn't it so interesting that so much of us are constantly on the go-go that we never have that time for boredom? And I was recently reading an article about Jeff Bezos and how he starts his morning, where for the first hour of his day, he specifically puts himself into a state of boredom, just to think about what's going on in his life, what's going well, what's not going well, what's he grateful for, what could be improved upon. But I think most of us don't give ourselves space for that. And let's face it, there's, we've got to get to the gym to get to work on time. We've got kids, we've got to get to school. So how have you found, even during those times where you were working

• 42:13John R. Miles?

  seven days a week, to build some boredom into those periods? Or do you think sometimes you can't, and other times you have to recoup?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  I think that you can. And I think you can microdose it, let's say, because even last year where I was working seven days a week, I was still so judicious about taking really good care of myself. I was going to therapy, using my nervous system tools. I'm always in coaching myself. I was, if I couldn't take off a weekend, which I couldn't, and couldn't is interesting, right? It's, I don't know, maybe I could have if I organized my schedule differently. I couldn't figure it out, right? So I couldn't take off extended periods of time, but I was finding pockets of rest, right? So I would lay on the floor between client sessions with my weighted blanket on top of myself. I might do squats between sessions, or I might take a walk outside and notice like 10 things that I could see in the park, right? So there's ways that I could bring rest and regulate

• 43:08Speaker 01

  my, or resonance from my nervous system that could be really helpful for me. And then I think also, in those moments of rest, resisting the impulse to stimulate ourselves, because a lot of us will reach for the phone, or will reach for Netflix, or because we feel so uncomfortable with that feeling of boredom, or spaciousness, or the emotions that are underneath it. So resisting the impulse to busy ourselves mindlessly, and actually sit with the feeling.

• 43:36John R. Miles?

  I think it's important for us to discuss collective change. And I picked this quote from you to do, you write, "True success won't come from doing more, but from being more ourselves and doing this work as a collective." What does collective ambition look like to you?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Collective ambition, I hope, is purposeful ambition, right? Where we realize that the more we each show up in our zone of genius, the more that we're each coming from that place of wholeness. And we've looked at our core wounds, that we can come together and drive true change around things that we need to drive change around. I think we've lived in such a scarcity mindset and a lot of manufactured scarcity of like, only one person can win and only one person can do this thing. And it creates so much fighting that then we don't address the real challenges. But I think if we remember that there's space for each of us has a beautiful contribution to make, whether it's to our family, our community, or the greater good. And when we come together in our genius, we're so much stronger and we can tackle a lot of these big issues that we're experiencing.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  So less infighting, more realization of our genius and more addressing the things that fundamentally are broken.

• 44:46John R. Miles?

  Well, that leads me to a fun question for you. You are suddenly selected, since we were talking about Jeff Bezos, to be on the mission to Mars. You're going to be one of the first people who gets to go to Mars. And for each one of the first settlers, they get to retire a cultural myth about success forever. What would yours be?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  That our value is in our productivity.

• 45:13John R. Miles?

  And how would you counteract that from spreading over time?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Oof, maybe that's going to be my next body of work.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  I'm going to sit with that one. I don't have the fully baked curriculum for that answer yet.

• 45:29John R. Miles?

  I mean, it's an important question because there are a lot of these myths that people talk about, but things end up spreading like wildfire in ways that are hard to contain at times. And absolutely, the way to contain these things is when they first start coming off of people's tongues. But it's difficult to do that, especially on Earth, where you've got so much connection now through social media, and that's where these things take fire. But I think on Mars, there could be a way to somehow maybe build a world without social media, maybe build a world where we get back to growing up with connections

• 46:10John R. Miles?

  being the most fundamental things and learning from our elders and learning through example and not being in a world where safety is so rampant in everything else.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Yes. You know, what came to mind as you were saying that was I'm watching the new Jason Momoa series on Apple TV. I've forgotten the name of it, but it's about indigenous Hawaiians. And one of the things that Jason Momoa was talking about was as they were being colonized, people's obsession with money and ownership and things like that. And going back to Mars and teaching about our worthiness and productivity and dismantling that myth is the knowledge of enough, right? And this is what I talk about in the book around contentment. Contentment from eastern traditions translates to unconditional wholeness or the knowledge of enough. And I think if we're taught from an early age what unconditional wholeness looks and the knowledge of enough looks like, we're not perpetually seeking that more for more's sake. And that, I think, is the thing that we need to be teaching

• 47:03Speaker 01

  from day one. I don't know what that curriculum fully looks like for kids and everybody, but I do feel like that's the essence, from my perspective, anyway.

• 47:12John R. Miles?

  One of the things I am really curious about is I think a lot of times, one of the things success results in is personal sacrifice. So how do you start teaching people?

• 47:26John R. Miles?

  To achieve the goal of success without self-sacrifice.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Sacrifice is really interesting language, right? And self-sacrifice is really interesting language. And I think that we have to make trade-offs sometimes, right? I think that's really important to level set of like, there are times where we have to choose one thing over another thing and there's a trade-off to be made, right? Maybe we can't do it all or achieve it all at the same time, right? So we have to be really clear of the trade-offs. But sacrifice in the line is like, where are you hurting yourself? Where is it going to take you below the resentment line? So I think we each have to understand where that line is for us as individuals and how we can live in integrity. Integrity isn't a judgment that's about right or wrong. It's about wholeness, right? So how can you be whole? How can you not cross over the line or live below the resentment line as you navigate the trade-offs?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Because there's gonna be trade-offs. We have to be honest about that.

• 48:18John R. Miles?

  I think that is such an important thing to bring up. There are always trade-offs. Do you accept this job that for six weeks is going to put you on a show as you were talking about on another podcast with a celebrity chef, but it's going to keep you from your kids? Or do you lean into that? We're tested all the time. And I think it's such a dangerous thing to do when we live our lives in the rearview mirror instead of, and I'm the worst at this because it's easy to second guess yourself. But I think we need to look through the front window and not try to justify all the decisions we made, but learn from them and move forward. What are your thoughts on that?

• 49:01Speaker 01

  100%, right? I might be the opposite to you where like, I go to, I'm like, oh, it was a learning moment. I don't need to look back, but we need to be where our feet are, right? If we're constantly looking back and even if we're constantly looking forward, we're not where our feet are. And the more we look back and the more we look forward, actually, the more often we are dysregulated because we take ourselves out of the moment. Our brain can't update the map of the moment. And so I think it's important to mine the past, absolutely, to get our lessons, absolutely, because we want to move forward differently. But be where your feet are and make the best choices you can in this moment to moment.

• 49:34John R. Miles?

  I want to show the audience the book again. The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living. You end the book with an invitation. What's the invitation you hope each reader and each listener here will accept for themselves?

• 49:47Speaker 01

  I really hope that people, first of all, I want to eradicate the idea that ambition is not for all of us. Right? It is for each and every one of us. And we've seen this really dysfunctional version of it. And that's the story that I wanted to rewrite, that it doesn't have to be harmful. It doesn't have to be dysfunctional, but we each need to find our harmonious relationship with it. And we each need to be more and more of ourselves. Right? That's the work, really coming home to ourselves, asking ourselves what's alignment versus achievement? And living from that place. And so I really hope that people can embrace this and this way of being, because I do think that purposeful ambition could shift a lot of things for a lot of people and a lot of workplaces.

• 50:27John R. Miles?

  I wanted to thank you so much for joining us today. It was such an honor to discuss the book. And congratulations again on its release and for joining us here on Passion Struck.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me. It was such a joy and congratulations on your books coming out.

• 50:41John R. Miles?

  Thank you. Almost surreal, as they always are. That's a wrap on today's conversation with Amina AlTai. And I hope it left you rethinking your own relationship with ambition, whether it's lifting you up, quietly pulling you under. Here are a few powerful reminders from today's episode. First, ambition is neutral. It's our wounds or our purpose that determine how it shows up. Second, painful ambition depletes. Purposeful ambition regenerates. True success isn't about doing more, but about being more ourselves. If today's episode resonated, I'd love for you to take 30 seconds to talk about it by leaving a five star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

• 51:24John R. Miles?

  It's the best way to help more people discover this movement. And as a reminder, if you want to go deeper, join me at theignitedlife.net for weekly insights, curated playlists, and exclusive tools that help you live intentionally. Next week, we continue The Irreplaceables with Scott Anthony.

• 51:42John R. Miles?

  Clinical professor at the Tufts School of Business at Dartmouth and author of the new book, 11 Epic Disruptions. We have a powerful discussion on the human side of innovation, why imagination, not iteration, drives the future. We'll explore what it means to lead as pattern breakers in an algorithmic world, drawing from Scott's 20-plus years at Innosight, where he helped triple revenues expand globally and advise CEOs on six continents.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  You need this duality, almost a paradox in your mind, where you are simultaneously thinking about long-term future and present reality, recognizing if you don't care and deliver for today, you don't earn the right to do tomorrow. But if you don't have a vision, a direction to which you're trying to go to for tomorrow, the efforts that you have in today are going to be misguided or even counterproductive. And the thing that I generally counsel leaders to do is make sure that you just stop and you apply different timeframes and mental models as you're looking at different things that you are trying to decide around.

• 52:51John R. Miles?

  Until then, live boldly, lead with heart, and as always, live life passion struck.