Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Ambition is a force, and you can harness that force
Speaker 2: for good, or you can harness that force in a
Speaker 2: way that takes you away from yourself.
Speaker 1: For so long, writer Jennifer Romalini prided herself on her
Speaker 1: work ethic. She climbed to the top of every corporate
Speaker 1: ladder and worked herself to the bone. But after years
Speaker 1: of burning herself out, she realized her ambition had turned toxic.
Speaker 2: I've really looked to the outside world like I had everything,
Speaker 2: but I was already at the top of that going wait,
Speaker 2: is this it? Because I had not been building in
Speaker 2: my personal and life resume at the same pace that
Speaker 2: I had been building my professional resume.
Speaker 1: On today's show, rethinking ambition and what we can be
Speaker 1: ambitious for, I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans, a show about who we are and
Speaker 1: who we become in the face of a big change.
Speaker 1: I first came across Jennifer's story when I read her
Speaker 1: memoir Ambition Monster. The book covers a lot of ground.
Speaker 1: She dives deep into unresolved childhood trauma, romantic relationships that
Speaker 1: turn sour, and the costs of chronic overwork. I was
Speaker 1: most struck by the way Jennifer writes about ambition and
Speaker 1: how a big and unexpected change can make us rethink
Speaker 1: our relationship with it. Jennifer grew up in a working
Speaker 1: class family just outside of Philadelphia, and in her family,
Speaker 1: ambition meant one thing survival.
Speaker 2: Both of my parents did not graduate high school and
Speaker 2: they worked to survive. My dad was in the produce business.
Speaker 2: He started out working as in a grocery store in
Speaker 2: the produce department, and he then was like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a big markup here on lettuce. I think I
Speaker 2: could sell it for cheaper and still make a profit.
Speaker 2: So he started out selling cases of produce on a
Speaker 2: stand on the street. He built that business into a truck.
Speaker 2: He eventually turned that into a store, and he turned
Speaker 2: it into force stores around South Jersey and Philadelphia. It
Speaker 2: took effort and force to build that business and to
Speaker 2: get us out of what was, you know, poverty. So
Speaker 2: I saw work as an act of force. I saw
Speaker 2: work as survival. I saw work as something that made
Speaker 2: you feel safe. This was all wrapped up in ambition.
Speaker 2: For me, ambition was wrapped up in survival. So the
Speaker 2: idea of work and compulsive work and never stopping work
Speaker 2: and having an incredible work ethic and never letting anyone
Speaker 2: down was just built into my bones.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I read that you grew up loving Sassy magazine
Speaker 1: and it's what made you want to become a writer.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yes, If you were a girl in the eighties and
Speaker 2: the nineties, Sasse was just this life raft. It was
Speaker 2: so different than like seventeen or teen magazine because it
Speaker 2: really was teaching you independence, and it was teaching you
Speaker 2: like a sense of autonomy that nothing else really was.
Speaker 2: I didn't want you to be there just for sort
Speaker 2: of the male gaze. It wasn't teaching you makeup tips
Speaker 2: per se. You know. It was about music and culture
Speaker 2: and issues that girls were dealing with and I and
Speaker 2: also it really put forward the personalities of its writers,
Speaker 2: and so I became obsessed with those writers. And you know,
Speaker 2: they all lived in New York, which was a place
Speaker 2: I kind of knew I wanted to live. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'd like to be a magazine editor someday or writer.
Speaker 1: I know that you started working in restaurants when you
Speaker 1: were thirteen, and you ended up working in restaurants for
Speaker 1: a decade, but you held on to this hope, right
Speaker 1: like in the back of your mind that one day
Speaker 1: you might want to become that writer, the one that
Speaker 1: you had read about in Sassy magazine. So tell me
Speaker 1: how you started on the path towards that dream.
Speaker 2: If there's no model in your life for the life
Speaker 2: that you want, it's so difficult to conceive of it
Speaker 2: because you cannot conceive of how you get from where
Speaker 2: you are to where you want to be. Because I
Speaker 2: had no context for white collar work, creative work, I
Speaker 2: just had no context for it. Everyone I knew was
Speaker 2: a blue collar worker, you know, that was just what
Speaker 2: we surrounded ourselves with. That was who my parents knew
Speaker 2: and I didn't have. You know, my childhood home was
Speaker 2: very chaotic. My parents weren't They did the best they
Speaker 2: could with the tools that they had, but they were
Speaker 2: not very intentive. And my parents were teenagers when they
Speaker 2: had me, and like most teenagers, they were reckless and
Speaker 2: irresponsible in a lot of ways. And you know, I
Speaker 2: was witnessed to a lot of things I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: been witnessed to. There was violence in our home. There
Speaker 2: was some abuse, but more than anything, they just did
Speaker 2: not have the capacity to to my emotional needs, and
Speaker 2: I often felt like I was on my own. I
Speaker 2: was a really sensitive kid. I was a really creative kid.
Speaker 2: It was probably clear very early that I was going
Speaker 2: to take a different path than they did, that I
Speaker 2: was not going to be satisfied with the lives that
Speaker 2: they had, which is already a sort of alienating feeling
Speaker 2: when you feel different from what you grow up around.
Speaker 1: Absolutely right, Yeah, And I wonder whether in making that clear,
Speaker 1: either implicitly or explicitly, they felt rejected by you because
Speaker 1: you were saying the life you're living isn't going to
Speaker 1: be enough for me.
Speaker 2: Of course, and I think that for me, what I
Speaker 2: did was I tried to live the life I thought
Speaker 2: they wanted me to live. I married young. I married
Speaker 2: a man who was working class. I married a man
Speaker 2: who I didn't have a lot in common with, but
Speaker 2: I felt like I should marry. He was a nice man,
Speaker 2: he had a good job. But I felt so suffocated.
Speaker 2: I felt so oh, like there was like a cloak
Speaker 2: over me because I wasn't living the life that I
Speaker 2: really wanted to live, and that I somewhere like in
Speaker 2: the back of my mind, thought maybe I could live. Finally,
Speaker 2: I managed to get out of that marriage. And getting
Speaker 2: out of that marriage if you come from any kind
Speaker 2: of traditional background, you come from immigrant family, if you
Speaker 2: come from a Catholic family, religion, all sorts of things.
Speaker 2: Getting a divorce young especially, it's like, you know, what's
Speaker 2: wrong with you? What are you doing? You know? So
Speaker 2: it took so much courage to make the move to
Speaker 2: get out of a marriage that was not right for
Speaker 2: me in my mid twenties, And at that point I
Speaker 2: was like, Okay, I'm all in because I already feel
Speaker 2: like such a failure. I had already dropped out of college,
Speaker 2: I had already gotten a divorce. So by the time
Speaker 2: I'm twenty five, I'm a college dropout and a deva
Speaker 2: or say, I have no money to my name, I'm
Speaker 2: waiting tables. I feel like my life is over, which
Speaker 2: is ridiculous at twenty five, but that's why I felt.
Speaker 2: I think the fact that I had sort of made
Speaker 2: what I thought were so many mistakes at that point,
Speaker 2: and I felt so messed up. I was like, well,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to go for it because I had
Speaker 2: nothing really to lose. I think I had like less
Speaker 2: than one hundred dollars in my bank account when I
Speaker 2: left my husband. So I did. I put myself through school.
Speaker 2: I waited tables full time at night, I went to
Speaker 2: school full time in the day. I had two internships.
Speaker 2: At all times, I was trying to catch up. I
Speaker 2: was just racing and racing and running and running. And
Speaker 2: I knew what I wanted. I wanted to get to
Speaker 2: New York and I wanted to work for a magazine.
Speaker 1: You did dozens of interviews and were rejected from them,
Speaker 1: all right, yes, and so eventually you ran out of cash,
Speaker 1: you had to move back home, live in your parents' attic.
Speaker 1: But then you got your first media job. Tell me
Speaker 1: the story about how that happened.
Speaker 2: So I didn't know how I was going to be
Speaker 2: perceived by this elite you know, extremely white. I'm white,
Speaker 2: but this is like an extreme like elite white, you
Speaker 2: know environment, you know, publishing is built on connections and
Speaker 2: on pedigrees, and I didn't have either of those things.
Speaker 2: So at this point, I've been through, you know, dozens
Speaker 2: of interviews, and I get this call about this job
Speaker 2: interview in New York for this business magazine. I take
Speaker 2: the train up and the interviewer said, what school is this?
Speaker 2: And he pushes my resume over to me, and I
Speaker 2: was like, just because you haven't heard of it doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it's not a good school, and pushed the resume
Speaker 2: back to him and he he had interviewed like ten
Speaker 2: people before me, but because I had such an attitude problem,
Speaker 2: he just wanted that as his assistant. And that's how
Speaker 2: I got the job. It was like a miracle happened.
Speaker 2: I was so myself, I was so over it. But
Speaker 2: I also clearly like what I had was I had
Speaker 2: been around, I knew how to deal with like customers
Speaker 2: in a restaurant, like I had a lot more experience
Speaker 2: of being alive than most of the people going for
Speaker 2: an assistant job. I was twenty eight years old. He was,
Speaker 2: you know, interviewing all these twenty two year olds, And
Speaker 2: to be somebody's assistant, you have to put out a
Speaker 2: lot of fires that I was actually perfect for that job,
Speaker 2: even without a pedigree.
Speaker 1: So, Jennifer, after that job, you started working for the
Speaker 1: publisher Conde Nast. Right, Yes, you were an editor at
Speaker 1: a fashion magazine called Lucky, and at this point you
Speaker 1: were hobnobbing with celebrities. You're interviewing actresses for photo shoots
Speaker 1: that your dream of what you thought this job would
Speaker 1: be like did not actually match your day to day reality.
Speaker 2: So, because entry level jobs pay so little in publishing
Speaker 2: across the board, and I think this is important to know,
Speaker 2: most people who work in these jobs come from some
Speaker 2: level of generational wealth, because you can't really afford to
Speaker 2: take these jobs and have a life in New York
Speaker 2: City unless you are subsidized in some way. I was
Speaker 2: subsidized by credit cards and taking on as many side
Speaker 2: jobs as I could, you know, writing for the Kitchen
Speaker 2: and Bath magazine, I wrote for the Target in House magazine.
Speaker 2: I was always working three or four jobs just to
Speaker 2: support my main job. So the level of wealth at
Speaker 2: Conde Nast was something that I had not prepared myself for,
Speaker 2: and I was really a bad fit because of that.
Speaker 2: Instead of looking at this environment and thinking, oh, this
Speaker 2: isn't for me, this doesn't work for me, instead I
Speaker 2: thought there was something wrong with me, and I had
Speaker 2: to contort and make myself acceptable to a place that
Speaker 2: I didn't respect.
Speaker 1: What do you think prevented you from stepping away in
Speaker 1: that moment? Why didn't you leave?
Speaker 2: At that point, I was so far into the tunnel
Speaker 2: of success and those foundations of scarcity and survival, my
Speaker 2: father's work, ethic and NonStop work. It was just so
Speaker 2: foundationally who I was. I had not unpacked any of
Speaker 2: it right, any of that, And I think that what
Speaker 2: happened was I was applying that sense of scarce city
Speaker 2: and survival onto work that didn't really didn't matter. I
Speaker 2: was writing about shoes and belts and lip gloss, right,
Speaker 2: but I had that same survival intensity. It was really
Speaker 2: about how do I get to the next level, how
Speaker 2: do I get a promotion, how do I make more money.
Speaker 2: I was in it. I was in it so hard,
Speaker 2: and to have walked away it wouldn't have made sense
Speaker 2: for a resume. And I needed that resume to make
Speaker 2: sense because I was climbing a ladder and I was
Speaker 2: very strategic about climbing that ladder.
Speaker 1: You kept climbing the ladder, and you ended up achieving
Speaker 1: management roles like you were very successful, and eventually you
Speaker 1: got married, you had a child. From what I've read,
Speaker 1: it seems like it was during this period of your
Speaker 1: life where your workaholism took a turn for the worse. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: can you paint me and pay picture of what an
Speaker 1: average day looked like for you, So, your your mother,
Speaker 1: your spouse, and you're also working. What you say like
Speaker 1: sixty hours a week? Is that right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sixty sixty more and more as much as I could work.
Speaker 2: I was working. So an average day looked like, wake
Speaker 2: up at five am, breastfeed, shower, change, check my email,
Speaker 2: answer emails, breastfeed again, take the child to daycare, head
Speaker 2: into work, work, work, work, work, work, pump breast milk like,
Speaker 2: take the train home, pick the child up from daycare,
Speaker 2: breastfeed work, bathtime, breastfeed work, take out, sleep. It was
Speaker 2: NonStop and I probably should have And again this is
Speaker 2: all gets into class things, right, I was, so I
Speaker 2: resisted help. I didn't want to bring a nanny into
Speaker 2: my house. I didn't know anybody who had nanny's I didn't,
Speaker 2: you know, I didn't. That felt so wrong to me.
Speaker 2: But I needed support so badly, and I was making
Speaker 2: enough money that I could have had support, but I
Speaker 2: just didn't understand what that kind of support looked like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually think this is an important moment to clarify.
Speaker 1: You know, some people actually just do have to work
Speaker 1: that much or even more to make ends meet, and
Speaker 1: something you clarify about your story, is that you were
Speaker 1: working beyond what you would have needed to work to
Speaker 1: be financially secure.
Speaker 2: Yes, so what we're talking about here is an exceptionally
Speaker 2: privileged position to be in, and we're talking about going
Speaker 2: beyond basic survival. Because yes, I could have had to
Speaker 2: have worked like I had throughout all of my twenties
Speaker 2: two jobs. I was no longer in that position. I
Speaker 2: was making six figures, which was beyond my conception of
Speaker 2: money I should have. I just couldn't even I was like,
Speaker 2: I probably could have afforded to get help, but I
Speaker 2: didn't really understand that. I didn't understand that that's how
Speaker 2: systems like that, that's how people work, you know, they
Speaker 2: have support. I didn't understand that my mom never had help,
Speaker 2: you know. Yep, So this ignorance was really a problem.
Speaker 1: You know. Eventually your body issued a wake up call
Speaker 1: for you. You developed chronic laryngitis from over using your voice
Speaker 1: right giving all these presentations and talks as an executive.
Speaker 1: The doctor told you that you needed to go on
Speaker 1: vocal rest. You had to get vocal cord surgery. And
Speaker 1: it sounds like this was a rare moment where the
Speaker 1: universe kind of intervened and was like, Jennifer, you got
Speaker 1: to slow down.
Speaker 2: What happened with my voice and let me just say here.
Speaker 2: I had had so many physical issues around work. I
Speaker 2: had a guesst ulcer, I had massive stress, I had
Speaker 2: panic attacks, I had headaches. I had so many physical
Speaker 2: symptoms brought on by overwork. But the one that shut
Speaker 2: me down was the one that had to shut me down.
Speaker 2: Like I couldn't speak. My vocal cords were bleeding. I
Speaker 2: was going to have to get surgery, and I understood
Speaker 2: that I might not ever be able to speak again
Speaker 2: if I spoke during this two week vocal rest. So
Speaker 2: I took it seriously and I would sit in meetings
Speaker 2: and just listen and watch. And at this point I
Speaker 2: was in the c suite, and I found it to
Speaker 2: be an unkind, unproductive, callous environment because I do think
Speaker 2: that over time in corporate environments and as an executive,
Speaker 2: you make concessions. You do things that in your regular
Speaker 2: life you wouldn't do. You tow the company line. You
Speaker 2: fire people in ways that you are not comfortable with,
Speaker 2: but you know this has to be done. You cut
Speaker 2: budgets when you know you shouldn't cut budgets, you do
Speaker 2: things that go against your values. And when I really
Speaker 2: was observing it, I thought, this is no longer scratching
Speaker 2: whatever itch I originally had. I don't belong here anymore.
Speaker 2: This isn't for me. And even having that thought was terrifying,
Speaker 2: because what happens if I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 2: My entire identity was wrapped up in what I did
Speaker 2: for a living, I mean, beyond motherhood, but I had
Speaker 2: room for nothing else. I didn't have any real friendships
Speaker 2: in my life. I had an entirely unbalanced life, and
Speaker 2: most of my energy went into my career. And at
Speaker 2: this point, my career was public like I had magazines
Speaker 2: at this point like doing interviews with me asking how
Speaker 2: to get my life? You know, I had to the
Speaker 2: outside world an absolute dream job. I had this precocious
Speaker 2: child that you know, people saw pictures of on Instagram.
Speaker 2: I lived in a nice home in Los Angeles. I've
Speaker 2: really looked to the outside world like I had everything,
Speaker 2: but I was already at the top of that going wait,
Speaker 2: is this it? My life did not feel like my own,
Speaker 2: and the worst part of it was I had zero
Speaker 2: connection to myself because I had not been b my
Speaker 2: personal and life resume at the same pace that I
Speaker 2: had been building my professional resume. So my life was
Speaker 2: completely unbalanced and it was very scary.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans. After years of climbing the corporate ladder, Jennifer
Speaker 1: Romalini had finally made it to the c suite. She
Speaker 1: was an executive at a celebrity owned website for women.
Speaker 1: But less than a year into the new job, she
Speaker 1: developed an issue with her vocal cords. A doctor told
Speaker 1: her she needed surgery and a two week vocal rest,
Speaker 1: and it was during this period that Jennifer began to
Speaker 1: see her workplace as quote a great dance of winner
Speaker 1: take all dysfunction.
Speaker 2: And so following that surgery, I did the job. I
Speaker 2: showed up to everything. I put in good work, but
Speaker 2: I stopped going above and beyond. I stopped meeting unrealistic demands.
Speaker 2: If I got an all caps slack tirade at four
Speaker 2: in the morning, I didn't answer it. As soon as
Speaker 2: I woke up, I let go of work a little bit.
Speaker 2: I took like my white knuckles off the steering wheel.
Speaker 2: I still was working and I had not let any
Speaker 2: balls drop, but I wasn't available for anybody's whim at
Speaker 2: any time. So about six months after this, after not
Speaker 2: answering every just ridiculous call, after six months of not
Speaker 2: treating everything with like a level of like life and
Speaker 2: death urgency, it turned out that the person they had hired,
Speaker 2: who had done all of that versus the person I
Speaker 2: was now I was no longer a good fit.
Speaker 1: You got a knock on your office door, tell me
Speaker 1: about that that day.
Speaker 2: So it's Monday afternoon. It's about four o'clock. So I
Speaker 2: have two people come into my office and they tell
Speaker 2: me that they're going in another direction. They don't say fired,
Speaker 2: and I say, so, you're firing me because I want
Speaker 2: to disrupt the script, like I was such an asshole
Speaker 2: brought this whole process. But I was in shock.
Speaker 1: Of course.
Speaker 2: I couldn't fathom that I would be fired after how
Speaker 2: hard I'd worked. Yeah, and I felt so ashamed that
Speaker 2: I had not held it together. I felt like I
Speaker 2: had really let my family down. There was so much
Speaker 2: to process after getting fired. It was a real sense
Speaker 2: of grief, and I know people go through grief much
Speaker 2: heavier than this. But I really grieved so much after
Speaker 2: getting fired. I grieved the life that I had given
Speaker 2: away to various toxic jobs. I grieved the time I
Speaker 2: would never get back. I grieved the person that I
Speaker 2: wished I had been in different situations, the concessions I
Speaker 2: had made, and I found after I got fired. I
Speaker 2: had always been able to like talk myself up, you know,
Speaker 2: just get over it, pull this shit together. But I
Speaker 2: was just fried, Like I no longer had like the
Speaker 2: password to my brain. I was just kind of broken
Speaker 2: by this experience, and I needed to process it. I
Speaker 2: was in absolutely no shape to go back to work.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of your being fired. How did you
Speaker 1: put the piece is back together?
Speaker 2: I didn't take any jobs that we're going to have
Speaker 2: any kind of high profile, and I was offered a
Speaker 2: lot they start They just kept coming, and I had
Speaker 2: to reject them, and I had to say, we're going
Speaker 2: to make a lot less money in this house. And
Speaker 2: I reconnected with my life. I started taking like I
Speaker 2: took a woodworking class, Like I just started doing things
Speaker 2: out of curiosity. I flexed like creative muscles that I
Speaker 2: forgot that I had, and then eventually I said, okay,
Speaker 2: I think it's time to get a job that has
Speaker 2: health insurance. I think we need some more stability here.
Speaker 2: This is not feeling sustainable and stable. And I made
Speaker 2: a very intentional choice about the kind of job I
Speaker 2: would go back to. I was so thoughtful about the
Speaker 2: peace that I had gained and protecting it. So I
Speaker 2: started thinking about what I like about work, because I
Speaker 2: love work like I love it. It brings me so
Speaker 2: much pleasure. I love mastery. I love learning new things.
Speaker 2: So I started to think, well, what did I love
Speaker 2: and work? How do I work so it serves me
Speaker 2: not some external idea of me.
Speaker 1: But how do you actually practice that. It's not like
Speaker 1: there's a switch in your brain you can just flip.
Speaker 1: That's like, I don't care anymore about how I'm perceived
Speaker 1: externally or where I am on the ladder. So what
Speaker 1: advice would you give to people who want to train
Speaker 1: their brains to get to the place that you're at?
Speaker 1: What does that look like?
Speaker 2: I'll tell you exactly how this all changed for me.
Speaker 2: I sort of pursued this what I thought was going
Speaker 2: to be a freelance job, and it was a cannabis website,
Speaker 2: a website that was about weed it was run by
Speaker 2: these like twenty five year old Irish kids. This job
Speaker 2: was the dumbest job I've ever had. Okay, it didn't
Speaker 2: even pay that well, but it paid enough to pay
Speaker 2: my half of the monthly bills. Everybody in my life said,
Speaker 2: this is a joke job. You're going to go be
Speaker 2: the editor of a weed site?
Speaker 1: What are you?
Speaker 2: Twenty three? This is the death of your career. Like
Speaker 2: people I trust and advise, they're like, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: How are you going to explain this? And I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it seems like fun. So I took
Speaker 2: this stupid weed job and I worked it for a
Speaker 2: year and it was the best thing I ever did.
Speaker 2: And so after that ended, I was like, well, what
Speaker 2: do I like? What do I want to do?
Speaker 1: What did you want?
Speaker 2: I wanted stable, contained work. And while I had enjoyed
Speaker 2: being a manager solving other people's problems, was I felt
Speaker 2: like I had done my time for that. So I
Speaker 2: very intentionally climbed back down the ladder. I was at
Speaker 2: the top. I was in the C suite, and I
Speaker 2: started applying for jobs that were mid level jobs with
Speaker 2: mid level salaries. But you know, I could handle a
Speaker 2: mid level salary I'd handled much less. It took a
Speaker 2: lot of convincing because I had to people would I
Speaker 2: would be in interviews and interviewers the recruiter would say,
Speaker 2: you know, you're overqualified for this, and I'd say, yes,
Speaker 2: I know I'm overqualified, but this is the kind of
Speaker 2: job I want. It took a very long time. It
Speaker 2: took like six months to finally convince somebody that I
Speaker 2: just wanted to be in the middle again. But I
Speaker 2: have a job now that I I just write about
Speaker 2: beauty products all day and I love it, and I'm
Speaker 2: excellent at it, and I'm respected, and I have a
Speaker 2: lot of autonomy, and I have a lot of free
Speaker 2: time after I finish my job to pursue creative projects.
Speaker 2: If I choose to spend time with family and friends.
Speaker 2: The job does not fill up my whole brain because
Speaker 2: it's not I'm not thinking of high level strategy all day.
Speaker 2: I don't have executives coming at me from every direction.
Speaker 2: The job is very focused, which allows me to do
Speaker 2: it very well in the hours I do it each day,
Speaker 2: and then to leave it behind. And that was what
Speaker 2: I wanted.
Speaker 1: You know, you write about how ambition can be so
Speaker 1: toxic that at the same time, you're not repudiating ambition.
Speaker 1: You say you love ambition, And so it really just
Speaker 1: becomes a question of how we channel our ambition. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious to hear from you how, especially as women,
Speaker 1: I don't want us to do away with our ambition
Speaker 1: because there's already factors working against that. Right, So, how
Speaker 1: do we channel our ambition in ways that are maybe
Speaker 1: healthier or make us happier, or are more sustainable.
Speaker 2: You pair ambition with self a way awareness. You stay
Speaker 2: aware of what is happening. You don't use work to
Speaker 2: stuff things down, to bury your feelings in. You don't
Speaker 2: hide in ambition. You use ambition to bring your life
Speaker 2: into color, into fullness. Ambition is a force, and you
Speaker 2: can harness that force for good, or you can harness
Speaker 2: that force in a way that takes you away from
Speaker 2: yourself and the things that you actually care about. We
Speaker 2: think success has to be big, when it's so often
Speaker 2: like the most satisfying success is quiet and small.
Speaker 1: Tell me what small and quiet looks like for you
Speaker 1: in your day to day life.
Speaker 2: I've designed my life in such a way that nothing
Speaker 2: is neglected. My relationships aren't neglected. I'm not neglected. Work
Speaker 2: is not neglected. Everything is in balance. And I'll tell
Speaker 2: you my cat died over the weekend, and I had
Speaker 2: to make a decision last week. She got very sick
Speaker 2: last week. And she was my cat for sixteen and
Speaker 2: a half years, and I was very close to this animal.
Speaker 2: She was a companion. And because of the way I've
Speaker 2: designed my life, I was able to be present and
Speaker 2: non stressed to make decisions about the end of this
Speaker 2: animal's life, to take a full day to grieve, to
Speaker 2: tell my boss I'm I might not be working a
Speaker 2: one hundred percent the next couple of days. I'm in
Speaker 2: some pain. And because I've done that, I'm going through
Speaker 2: the challenges of life. I'm riding them like a wave
Speaker 2: much more naturally because I'm not gripping, because nothing requires
Speaker 2: that kind of hold on me. And I think that
Speaker 2: that was a success because I got to see this
Speaker 2: cat off in this very peaceful and quiet way, and
Speaker 2: I had the luxury of work not intruding in that space.
Speaker 2: And that's what I want for everyone, is to have
Speaker 2: a spaciousness. I think that that is success. And when
Speaker 2: work is all consuming and doesn't have boundaries and when
Speaker 2: you are chasing something inside of work that you're honestly
Speaker 2: never going to find, you lose all of this other beauty,
Speaker 2: which is what a successful life really is.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks so much for listening. Coming up on A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans, I speak to David Yaeger, a
Speaker 1: professor of psychology and an expert on adolescent development. If
Speaker 1: you've ever wondered how to better support the young people
Speaker 1: in your life, or if you're a young person wondering
Speaker 1: why on earth older people just can't seem to understand you,
Speaker 1: this is the episode for you. David bus cultural myths
Speaker 1: about the young adult brain and share some amazing science
Speaker 1: about what's really going on.
Speaker 3: You can think of the adolescent brain as like this
Speaker 3: social R and D engine of our culture. Something that
Speaker 3: looks like risky and idiotic to us is maybe their
Speaker 3: way of creatively trying to solve the problem of having
Speaker 3: more of the thing that brings you social success and
Speaker 3: fewer of the things that bring you social failure.
Speaker 1: That's of next on A Slight Change of Plans. A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced
Speaker 1: by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change Family includes our
Speaker 1: showrunner Tyler Green, our senior producer Kate Parkinson Morgan, our
Speaker 1: producer Brianna Garrett, and our engineer eric I Wwang. Louis
Speaker 1: Scara wrote our delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped
Speaker 1: arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries, so a big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at doctor Maya Schunker. See you next week.