Are your life and work working for you?
It’s energizing when I have friends join me on the podcast. My latest episode features the brilliant Cheri Magid, an artist creating everything from plays and screenplays to narrative podcasts, opera, and television, while also serving as an Associate Arts Professor in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch.
Cheri embodies what it means to lead a full, ambitious, creative life. I’m drawn to conversations with artists like her because they’re masters at juggling multiple projects, work, and life demands. Plus, as Cheri candidly shared, “It's really hard to shut off as an artist. I don’t know how to have a good separation between life and art.”
Creative minds, like Cheri’s, offer us valuable insights on reimagining how we live and work to create more sustainable, fulfilling lives. (Dive into our conversation here!)
During our talk, Cheri and I explored “living on the edge”—that challenging territory where we’re stretching beyond sustainable limits and find ourselves wondering, “Is this really working for me?”
While it’s easy to be hard on ourselves for repeatedly landing in these situations, I like to remember that striving isn’t inherently negative. It’s perfectly natural to push ourselves toward ambitious goals!
In fact, these edge moments become powerful teachers about our true limits. That’s why I pay attention when I hit these thresholds—they create valuable opportunities to:
Challenge ourselves with the vital question: “Are my life and work truly working for me at this moment?”
Make immediate, practical adjustments to create more sustainability
Gather wisdom to prevent future overextension and burnout
We can’t always avoid intense periods, but we can certainly navigate them with greater awareness, intention, and ease. Check out the suggestions below for a few tips to make your life and work work better for you—because true sustainability comes from honoring your limits, not constantly testing them.
Want to get insights, tips, and tools on how to live with Sustainable Ambition? Join in here. Welcome!
Sustainable Ambition offers a strategic approach for pursuing our professional and personal goals in a way that is motivating, meaningful, and manageable from stage to stage, rather than be all consuming in a way that compromises other important aspects of our lives or sacrifices our well-being.