172: Ambition In-Between: How to Deal With Unexpected Outcomes
Overview
Since the June release of my first book, Sustainable Ambition: How to Prioritize What Matters to Thrive in Life and Work, a number of people have asked me how it feels to have achieved this big ambition. Have I checked that box and moved on to something different? Or am I percolating another book idea?
Over the last few months, I’ve been mulling over those questions as well as doing some research to help me process the experience of writing and releasing the book and what it means for my future ambitions.
This episode kicks off a new series exploring how we navigate the ups and downs of our ambitions, and what happens if we don’t end up quite where we thought we would. I’ll be sharing some insights from Chapter 5 of Sustainable Ambition, as well as what I’ve learned in researching and reflecting on both the intellectual and emotional experiences of finding ourselves not where we expected to be.
Pursuing our ambitions is ultimately a process of learning more about who we are and what we want. And even when things don’t turn out as we thought they would, it still moves our stories forward.
Listen below or on your favorite podcast player.
Listen to the full episode to hear:
How the nature of complex adaptive systems can help us make sense of the tension between ambitions and outcomes
Why we sometimes have to come to the end of an ambition to fully understand what it means
A concept for explaining why we tend to be bad at predicting how we’ll feel about future achievements
Why disappointment is not evidence of failure, but an opportunity for discovery
Five tips to help you move through disappointment to acceptance and integration
Resources Mentioned
Thanks for Listening!
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