Sustainable Ambition Forum - 7.25.23
This month, I’ve been inspired by a lot in this round-up, and in particular by my three podcast guests featured below. What they brought forward in our conversations is:
The importance of consciously choosing what you want to be striving for vs. getting sucked into what might be externally expected.
That purpose is within our reach. As Sabrina Moyle shared: “Your purpose could just be to show up as a person who is kind or being a good friend or working on being a really excellent listener.”
Changemakers are great examples of and inspiration for good ambition. They are the ones moving us forward toward doing better on so many fronts.
How we need to put just as much attention and fight for sustaining ourselves as we do toward the ambitions themselves. I love how Hadley Dynak said, “The idea of taking a step back and thinking about how to sustain ourselves is actually a radical act.”
And that we need role models and partners in our ambition journey.
This idea of community to support our goals is showing up in so much of the research I’m doing on my book, podcasts I’m listening to, and interviews I’ve had with academics. We know who we surround ourselves with matters. But really—our community is important both to reach our life and work ambitions and our ambition to sustain ourselves.
A few inquiries for you to consider inspired by my guests Sabrina, Lauren, and Hadley:
Sabrina: Who can be your purpose partners? Sabrina intentionally meets with two people in her life every two weeks to provide coaching to each other to support her own purpose of “trying to figure out how to live in a more sustainable, intentional and happy way.” Sabrina believes it’s helpful to have teachers and guides (she provides so many great resources in the conversation. Check them out in the show notes here.). So, this approach helps her on this front.
Lauren: What small step do you want to make towards progress on something meaningful to you? Lauren has interviewed hundreds of changemakers. She knows progress can be slow, but step by step progress is made. Where can you just put one foot in front of the other and take the next step? And as Lauren says, “Trust in your power to change the world.”
Hadley: What radical sustaining act do you want to make this summer? As inspiration, Hadley picks out one of her favorite sustaining acts from the book—nurture other living things. She sees it as “very metaphoric for our own self care,” and it relates to the garden endeavor she and her family have taken on with Western Hills Garden in Occidental, California.
And rounding things out below with the podcasts are some resources and inspiration for creating summer breathing space now or in the future.
I hope you continue to indulge in all summer has to offer!
Cheers,
Kathy
Come Behind the Book with My Next Summer Workshop
This next workshop will be held: Thursday, August 3rd at 12-1:30 pm PT / 3-4:30 pm ET
I’ll offer another lens of Sustainable Ambition and share tools around the third pillar, Right Effort, to put Sustainable Ambition principles into practice.
This will be the first of two workshops on Right Effort. In this one, we’ll explore what’s challenging about managing our effort and energy, creating your Sustaining Plan, and how to think about pace to create more sustainability. This workshop will keep us in the summer vibes and help get us prepared to take it back to work with us in September. In Part 2, I’ll have us look at our ambitions and explore where to put in the hard work.
I’d love to have you join me on Thursday, August 3!
Get it on the calendar here.
Can’t attend this workshop, but want to be involved in the book journey?Join in here.
A reminder that the workshops are FREE and in exchange I would simply love your feedback with a short survey and feedback in the session to help me ensure the content is helpful and usable for yourself and others. 🙏
I hope to see you soon!
The Round-Up: Create Summer Breathing Space
How to sabbatical. I was coming across a lot of inspiration on sabbaticals over the last few months, so in the spirit of summer and breaks I thought I’d pull forward two podcast episodes (below) and also re-share my how to guide on taking sabbaticals. I know sabbaticals aren’t possible for everyone (they take a lot of planning and saving), but I also believe in the concept of taking breaks of any length. I personally think that given how intensely we work these days sabbaticals should be more of a norm in our society, and I wish more companies would support them.
Why more companies should have a sabbatical policy. And I was happy to see that someone else agrees, is forwarding the cause, and has endorsement from Harvard’s HBR IdeaCast. This is a conversation with DJ DiDonna, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and founder of The Sabbatical Project. Here’s another episode with DJ on Jenny Blake’s Free Time podcast. I want to talk with him!
Sabbatical creative inspiration! A woman I used to work with, Erica Meade, during her sabbatical took on a phenomenal creative project, a mini house, for another friend’s daughter. Check out her amazing work, and the gleeful response of her tiny client. 😄
Get all the juice out of your vacation post-vacation. I love what this article champions, which is smart planning to help you maximize the effects of taking breaks.
📚 Reading: Featured Books from our Guests
Escargot for It: A Snail's Guide to Finding Your Own Trail & Shell-ebrating Success: This one from Sabrina is for the adults! Tips to find your own path to success. Learn more here.
It's a Good Day to Change the World: Looking for inspiration to contribute in a meaningful way? Get inspired with and savor this book! Learn more here. The audio book comes out August 8!
🎙️ Listening: An aha podcast with insights on Sustainable Ambition.
I loved this interview on Adam Grant’s WorkLife podcast (okay, I love almost all of his podcasts). But this conversation with Brian Little, an award-winning researcher and pioneering psychologist who inspired Grant to choose his profession, connected a lot of dots for me that relate to Sustainable Ambition. One of the topics they talk about about is how our personal projects shape our well-being and the importance of aligning meaning, or I might say motivation, and manageability. For me, this is how I’ve thought about Sustainable Ambition in terms of Right Ambition and Right Effort.
The Sustainable Ambition Podcast
Join me for conversations with experts, authors, and friends on what it means to live with Sustainable Ambition.
🎙️ E110: Living A More Sustainable, Intentional, Happy Life with Sabrina Moyle
“I was looking for ways to alleviate my own suffering, and try to show up in a better way, as an employer, as a mom, as a partner, and as a daughter.”
Sabrina is the CEO of Hello!Lucky. In this conversation, she shares her journey through founding the company with her sister, redefining success on her own terms, and the inner work she’s done to support creating a sustainable, creative, joyful life for herself and her family. We discuss finding purpose in our day-to-day and she shares valuable insight about managing time and nurturing the community around us.
Listen on your favorite player here or on our website here
🎙️ E111: “It’s a Good Day to Change the World” with Lauren Schiller and Hadley Dynak
“Change may be slow, but we can keep moving incrementally upward. Little by little, big progress can be made.” — Lauren Schiller
“The idea of taking a step back and thinking about how to sustain ourselves is actually a radical act.” — Hadley Dynak
What can we learn about Sustainable Ambition from amazing women who are changing the world?
In this episode, we hear from Lauren and Hadley about their new book, It's a Good Day to Change the World: Inspiration and Advice for a Feminist Future. The book features the inspiring stories of 30 ambitious female change makers from a variety of backgrounds, the tools they use for change, and how they sustain themselves.
Coming soon to your favorite player here
You can also find the podcast, subscribe, and listen on your favorite player.
Wondering how to say no to an opportunity that you don’t want to do or don’t have time for? I loved hearing about the power of a polite decline, as modeled by Danny Meyer, the founder and chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group, and shared by Tim Ferriss on his show.
Here’s what it looks like:
“Jeffrey, greetings and thanks for writing. I’m grateful for the invitation to participate in Tim’s next book project, but I’m struggling at this moment to make time ends meet for all we’re doing at USHG, including my ongoing procrastination with my own writing projects. I thought carefully about this, and it’s clearly a wonderful opportunity, but I’m going to decline with gratitude. Know the book will be a big success! Thanks again. Danny.”
Saying no doesn’t have to be harsh. One can do so with grace and kindness.
The Monthly Progress Practice: July
At the beginning of each year, we share our Monthly Progress Practice. Progress is made through small, consistent action. We offer a monthly practice of small actions or inquiries to inspire positive change this year. Practice makes progress.
Our guidance for July – Choose. We can’t do it all at once. We must make choices. What will you choose not to do this summer to create more space?
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
— Herman Melville