Conscious Ambition Tips: For Navigating Edge Moments
We can often find ourselves “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.
A few tips from me:
🧭 Reconnect with your why—remind yourself why your current activities truly motivate and matter to you
✂️ Practice strategic subtraction—what can you remove that isn’t essential right now?
🧘 Build in small sustainability practices—even brief breaks during your days and weeks can make a difference (like taking 5 minutes to watch the Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest cam - have you seen this?!)
⏸️ Schedule a significant recovery period for when the intense period is expected to end (a twofer: time to recover and added motivation having a break on the horizon)
🛠️ Create support systems to lighten your load at work or at home
A few tips from Cheri Magid from our podcast conversation:
✨ Don't ignore the activities that feed you. While juggling multiple creative projects and teaching responsibilities, Cheri intentionally preserves space both for her creative practice—even if it's less time during busy periods—and for activities that sustain her and provide essential fuel for all her pursuits.
✨ Don’t work seven days a week. This sounds obvious, but this is hard to manage when work and life boundaries blur when it’s hard to shut off one’s work. Cheri insists on at least one complete day each week free from feeling the need to produce.
✨ Start a simple creative practice. Investing in your own creative practice could be a way to add to your sustainability. Cheri recommends Julia Cameron’s well-known and well-regarded “The Artist's Way,” highlighting practices like morning pages (stream-of-consciousness writing upon waking) and artist dates (solo creative adventures). Such small, manageable habits can go a long way to feeding our well-being and ability to be ambitious sustainably.
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.