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When I started off as a young reporter at my community newspaper, I had grand hopes and aspirations of someday becoming editor-in-chief of a teen magazine. After all, it had been my dream since I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper and literary magazine (what can I say? I’ve always been ambitious).
Indeed, I’d selected every credit, every internship and every job with the goal of eventually reaching the top of the masthead. I like to think my motivations were noble. After an adolescence spent reading teen magazines that didn’t reflect me or my experience as an awkward Black girl, I decided to be the change I wanted to see in the world and set my sights on becoming EIC of such a magazine. As a result, I spent the majority of my career set on that mission—until recently.
I’d never considered my ambition a problem until I burned out in 2014 and then again in 2020. It wasn’t enough to simply be good at a job, I had to be the best. My trajectory always had to be onward and upward. There was no space for grace, mistakes or pivots.
It’s a sentiment that other high-achievers can relate to, especially Rainesford Stauffer, author of All the Gold Stars, a book that examines how burnout is a symptom of our ambition. A few years ago, Stauffer was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and learned more deeply how her personal ambition had been connected to her mental health.
“[The diagnosis] has given me the space to slow down and go, ‘okay, what are you actually ambitious about? What do you really feel motivated by? What feels important in some way versus what are you doing out of fear or a need to control something?’” she says.
Interrogating the motivations for your ambition is just one way to ensure it’s not getting the best of you. Below experts share a few more:
Take a time out
In addition to questioning her motivations, Stauffer also finds that incorporating more intentional downtime into her schedule helps her better manage her ambition and mental health.
“For me, it feels more practical to add things on,” ehs ays. “I think about what I am adding to my day that is bringing meaning to my life, or something I can be ambitious about outside of work—whether it’s a 10-minute phone call with a friend or a creative project that I can dabble in for 15 minutes. It’s something that gives me a bit of space from the productivity-focused nature of work.”
Dr. Addia Gooden, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist, cosigns the idea of incorporating more rest and play with our ambition.
“Having open time and space helps us with achieving our goals,” she explains. “We often feel like it detracts when really these things are additive. We actually do get to our goals better and faster when we take breaks, which is really nourishing and helpful for our mental health.”
But taking time to rest and reevaluate can be uncomfortable at first.
“Taking breaks is a different way of being for those of us who are high achievers and overworkers because it’s more comfortable to overwork. That’s what we know and we find security in it,” says Gooden. “So then it becomes how can we get comfortable feeling okay with who we are when we’re not working and that’s some of the work as well.”
Enlist a support squad
In addition to resting early and often, Gooden suggests enlisting a support team of people who can help you stay grounded when your ambition starts to feel overwhelming.
“Find collaborators. Find sponsors. Find people who are in it with you and can remind you that you’re worthy so that you’re not so focused on this goal you haven’t reached and you’re forgetting who you are,” she says. “Having people who can hold that space for you and remind you of those truths can be helpful.”
Redefine your relationship with ambition
When it comes to consciously uncoupling our self-worth with our work—a common problem for highly ambitious people—Gooden suggests identifying more with our gifts and talents than our accolades.
“It’s important to remember that what we do, the titles we have and the degrees we earn, all of those things are containers,” she says. “Being a therapist, journalist or lawyer is the container—it’s just a part of who you are and it’s one way you bring your gifts into the world, but it’s not all of you.”
Gooden also encourages people, especially Black people, to consider how our country’s obsession with productivity is deeply rooted in capitalism, dating all the way back to slavery.
“Black people were valued based on how much work they could do and how much money they could produce for a white family. So how radical would it be for us to disconnect ourselves from that harmful, horrific and traumatic legacy that our ancestors had to endure by saying I am not my work.”
It’s not that ambition in and of itself is bad, but extreme ambition can be damaging to our mental health (just ask me about the time I cried over losing my Peloton streak).
“When I think about mental health and ambition, I think it’s such a fine line,” says Stauffer. “Because I think taking care of your mental health is ambitious. Healing is ambitious. Taking the time to reflect on your needs and what resources you need to fulfill those needs is really important.”
