The Goldilocks Zone for Your Ambitions
Have you ever worried or wondered if you should be striving for more? Or if you are meant to do bigger things in the world? Yeah, me, too.
Part of my 2025 growth agenda is to have a syllabus for learning. A book that has been on my radar for some time finally made it to the top of that list, The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, by Stephen Cope. On a cold, dreary day in January, I dug in.
I don’t know why it took me so long to check the book out from the library given its topic, but you know how things show up when you need them or when you are ready for the message? That’s how I felt about the book overall. I read it at the right time. I needed to have some of my thinking affirmed.
Many of the book’s concepts jumped out to me, but one in particular grabbed my attention: that we often confound size with ambition and what we’re called to do and be in the world.
For example, in the book Cope tells a story about Henry David Thoreau who in his mid-twenties left Concord, MA to make his way to the big city of New York and attempt to become a part of the literary scene there. He pursued what he thought he should do in the world, but it didn’t work. He didn’t succeed. He returned home to Concord, writing at the time, “Be humbly who you are.” It was after this trip to New York that he leaned into his true calling, spent time at Walden Pond, and continued with his profound reflections.
I just happened to have visited Walden Pond last November and saw where Thoreau had his cabin in the woods, along with a replica of the cabin and what it looked like inside. The top left picture shows the pond from the opposite side of his cabin. The bottom right shows his view from the cabin.
Cope goes on to share what happened to Thoreau: “...[he] emerged from a dharma error most of us have made at one point or another in our lives: the attempt to be big. The attempt to be, in fact, bigger than we are. A confusion about the right size of a life of dharma.”
(If you’re not familiar with the term dharma, Cope explains it this way: “Yogis insist that every single human being has a unique vocation. They call this dharma.” It’s meant as “vocation” or “sacred duty.”)
He goes on later in the chapter to say: “What is really the right size of the dharma? Not too big. Not too small.” What matters is that it fits you, just like what was true for Thoreau.
Being who we are, finding what fits us—this is why I use the term “right" in the Sustainable Ambition pillars, in particular around Right Ambition but also Right Time and Right Effort. When I talk about “right” I mean that you make choices and decisions that are right for you. I believe that is how we can reclaim personal success and ambition as our own. Right means a self-defined ambition, a personal choice at this time, and a self-directed and desirable or appropriate level of effort.
We often think ambition needs to be big and grand. But do they have to be? It’s a question I was asked enough such that I now have a section in my book titled, “Right-Size Ambitions” and it considers the questions: Are my ambitions big enough? Am I playing small? Are my ambitions too big?
For me, the key lesson is: the size of our ambitions, the size of our work, the size of our calling is immaterial. What’s most important is that we find what is right for us. What fits us.
As Thoreau wrote: “A person’s own calling ought not to be forsaken!” and “Do what you love! Know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”
This idea of confounding size with impact also relates to both my podcast guests’ guidance this month. I loved these conversations which center around optimizing our work for more fulfillment and sustainability:
I was lucky to have **Merideth Melhberg, master coach and author of “Your Finest Work,”** on with me a second time.
What came through in our conversation was not that we need to push hard to optimize our work and life, as if it’s a big project that requires hard work. Rather, where Merideth points us is to step into our own knowing, listen to our bodies, simplify, and embrace ease, experimentation, and evolution.
I loved this! Such a good reminder not to confound big, hard, and effortful with what can lead to positive impact. We can choose an easier, simpler path.
As Merideth said, “So what occurs to me is, whatever your practice is, ratchet it down to make it simpler and faster and trust that you will connect with what's important to you.”
Listen to the full episode on your favorite player here or on our website here.
I really enjoyed my conversation with Dr. Richard Safeer, who currently serves as the Chief Medical Director of Employee Health and Well-Being for Johns Hopkins Medicine. He leads the Healthy at Hopkins employee health and well-being strategy and is the author of A Cure for the Common Company: A Well-Being Prescription for a Happier, Healthier, and More Resilient Workforce.
While building a well-being culture can seem overwhelming, I love how Rich offered us smart, simple tips to embed the practice into our daily work lives (e.g., stop meetings 5 min early for a break, start meetings with a 2-min breathing exercise, share what stresses you out at work and invite your team members to tell you in private or as a team what stresses them out).
Listen to the full episode on your favorite player here or on our website here.
Given the environment we swim in, it’s easy to confound size with ambitions and our actions. Small, or really what fits us just right, like Goldilocks, just may be the way to find what truly works for each of us.
So perhaps consider:
What’s the Goldilocks wisdom for you—what’s not too big, not too small, but is just right for you when it comes to what you are called to do now?
Where might you be able to ratchet things down and trust you’ll get or do what you need?
What small action can you take for your own and your team’s well-being?
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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.