Five Shiny Nuggets of So-Called Careers Gold

Ambition: the desire and determination to do something

Hallo!

How’s everyone doing?

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Right.

Now onto the good stuff.  This month I have been thinking about ambition. I wrote a blog post about ambition back in 2020 - you can read it here - and it come to my mind recently after it came up in a few client sessions.  One of which got me thinking about how both over and underwhelm can act as blinkers for ambition.  When we are in survival mode it can feel like our vision narrows - we can’t see any possibility other than what is in front of us and the idea that we could think bigger, differently, or have more impact eludes us.

This can leave us feeling as if we lack ambition.  But most of the time that is simply not true.  Our current circumstances are making it harder for us to connect with our ambitious sides - the sides that perhaps feel more accessible when we are thriving - but they are still there.

Reminding ourselves of this can be a really valuable first step toward strengthening our inner connection.

Another thing that gets in the way of us honouring our ambitious sides is a disconnect between our wants and wishes and society’s shoulds and coulds (thanks to Sara for this framing if you’re reading!).  

The traditional take on ambition is one that revolves around varying degrees of bigger, better, faster, more, or, infuriatingly, that women should want nothing more than marriage and motherhood.

But perhaps your most ambitious future sounds more like slower, surer, fewer, further, or steady, secure, stable and safe? 

Perhaps you want to have children and a fulfilling career (shock horror!), or children couldn’t be further from your radar. An ambition based around quality of life or personal impact rather than status and salary is just as ambitious, possibly more so in a society that is increasingly oriented around achievement, grit and gains.

The more generous we can be in sharing our ambition with the world, the more likely we are to shift that dominant narrative over time, and the more likely we are to create ambition anchors - people and things that can remind us of our boldest desires when our determination deserts us.

An authentic ambition which is informed by your values will look different to everyone else's.  That’s how you know it belongs to you.

If you’re feeling stagnant or stuck, and that you might be lacking in ambition, take it as a sign to get curious.  Check-in on your values - your internal motivators - and use them to help you think about a future that feels meaningful and fulfilling for you. 

💡 If you value community, perhaps your ambition might include less paid work and more time volunteering, or a move to somewhere you feel you belong

💡 If you value stability, your ambition might include permanent rather than contract based employment, or a plan to be mortgage free in future

💡 If you value freedom, independence or autonomy, your ambition might involve going freelance, or starting your own business

💡 If you value equality, justice or fairness your ambition might include working in or supporting certain types of organisations or causes

💡 If you value family, your ambition might centre around a life that allows you to flex work around the needs of yours

Instead of seeing ambition as an absolute, therefore, something we either are or we aren’t, it can be more helpful to gently enquire:-

❓What feels authentically ambitious to me rather than externally ambitious?  Something 15-year-old and 85-year-old me could both get behind.

❓What does the most ambitious side of myself want from her so-called career?

❓How is where I am now supporting or subverting that, and how do I feel about it?

❓What might an ambitious next step look like for me right now?

❓What scaffolding might I need to support me as I make it?

❓Who can help me and how?  What role can my career community play in supporting me?

I would love to hear your thoughts on ambition if you would care to share. It can be a gnarly topic for women, with a lot of unlearning involved. The more practice we can get at unashamedly articulating our ambition, the easier it becomes, and the more able others are to help you achieve it.

Now onward into your five shiny nuggets of careers gold….

PJ

📚 Work with me

If you are considering working with me this side of summer, this might be your last chance as I am about to close my books until September.

I have TWO spaces left for longer term partnerships before my books and my brain will be at capacity for a while. So if your so-called career needs a kindly kick up the bum, drop me a line and see how I can help you own your ambitions.

Hit reply to this email, or contact me here to discuss.

This is what Sarah had to say about our recent work together.

This is a hard read - it’s dense and often depressing - but a helpful reality check on some of those shoulds and coulds we’ve had forced on us to the detriment of our own wants and wishes.

📖 Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee

A little hit of fiction here, by the author of Pachinko which I read earlier this year and could not put down (thanks to Kate for the recommendation 📚🐛).  Free Food For Millionaires chases a ‘bright glittering life’, but at what cost?

📖 Happy Ever After, by Paul Dolan

I love this book.  Paul Dolan takes the most pervasive social myths of happiness and effectively busts them using sociological research and data, leaving you free to pursue your own authentic ambition without worrying about what society says you should want.

💻 I really enjoyed this blogpost about extreme achievement culture and its impact on ambition by Karen Rosenkranz.  This quote hit me hard…

“The only time we’re allowed to scale back our ambition just a bit is when we’ve gone out too hard….The overachiever burned out, unable to continue to work in the same way, learning the hard way that this is unsustainable. Like we have to go to a very dark place first to have this epiphany about our messed up success metrics. Only then it is ok to say, you know what, I’m going to take it easy for a while. You’ve earned your right to downshift. Otherwise, you’re just lazy. What kind of culture is that? What are we trying to prove?” 

This is the original essay that inspired David Graeber to write Bullshit Jobs.  A perfect tl:dr if life is just too short for the whole thing.

This amazing insight into the realities of working in television as a woman had me fuming.  This is what we reward ambitious women with after bringing them up to believe they can be anything they want to 😤😤😤

Two tips for you to try this month….

🚀 Big Bigger Biggest

If your current circumstances are standing in between you and your most ambitious side, it might feel impossible, overwhelming, or intimidating to pull a great big shiny future out of your ass.  The gap between where you are now and what you would like your future to expand to include might just feel too large.

If this is the case, start by envisioning something that feels big to you right now.

That might be enough for now but in time, or on a more confident or expansive day, perhaps you can challenge yourself to go bigger.  To think about the ambitious version of the big future.

And once you’ve gone bigger, you might find that the biggest version - the one where you are absolutely smashing it on all fronts in every way possible - feels slightly more accessible.

Once you’ve got your big, bigger, and biggest ambitions, it might further help to get really clear on the key points.  To do this, practice simplifying it.

Start with stories or sentences, and then boil down to bullet points that allow you to easily articulate your ambition.

🚀 The Boasty Bio

Your bio doesn’t only have to represent where you are now.  It can also be a super helpful tool to help you think about where you want to go next, and what you want from your future.

If you find future thinking really challenging, start by writing your bio as you’d like it to be in 12 months time.  Then 3 years from now, and then 5.

And because our bios are written to be shared and to shine a spotlight on our achievements, make it the boldest and boastiest version of your future bio that you can, to really give you something to work toward.

Rachel is an incredible leader in this field.  She is currently the Advocacy Lead for Sustainable Fashion at the United Nations Environment Programme,  she has advised multinationals and start-ups alike, and is the co-founder of FashMash a community of changemakers shaping the future of fashion.

Last year she began offering monthly ‘office hours’ sessions to students and those starting out in sustainable fashion which immediately booked out.

Owning It builds on that generosity of experience and approach which underpins so much of Rachel’s work and leadership.

“...aiming to paint a picture of what it's like to work in sustainable fashion, from the reality of the work - all the highs and all the lows - to the who to know and what to know and where to find out more about it. It's intended to help those in fashion wanting to be in sustainability, and those in sustainability wanting to be in (sustainable) fashion. It's as much for those starting out as those starting over - for the fledglings and the phoenixes, with a few fashion peacocks thrown in for good measure, and it will accordingly also be a place to connect over it all, to build a community of like-minded individuals and to facilitate some solid peer-to-peer networking.”

I am lucky enough to include Rachel among my clients and my career community and I cannot wait to watch Owning It fly. If you, or any of your career community work in this space, I can’t recommend highly enough.

If you have a wonderful woman who you want to shout about, whether it’s your boss or your best mate, a client or a colleague, your sister or a sponsor, I want to hear about them, so I can shout about them with you.

Send me your nominations by hitting the big pink button below.

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