Amina AlTai has always been a high achiever.
As a child of immigrants, she was told to “keep your head down, work really hard, and if you do that, you’ll have everything you want,” she tells CNBC Make It.
Her early career looked “great on paper,” she says: AlTai opened her own marketing agency in her late 20s, and says she was “achieving all the milestones” of success.
At the same time, she was overworking herself to the point of illness, she says. One day, while driving to a client meeting, she got a call from her physician.
“My doctor called to say that if I don’t go to the hospital now, instead of going to work, I’ll be days away from multiple organ failure” due to severe anemia, AlTai says.
In hindsight, the moment was “such a wake-up call,” she says — but instead of heading straight for the hospital, AlTai first attended her client meeting.
She says she was subsequently diagnosed with celiac disease and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, both of which were exacerbated by exhaustion.
“My workaholic tendencies and painful relationship to success were — quite literally — killing me,” AlTai, now 41, wrote in her recent book, “The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living.”
Today, AlTai is a leadership coach who teaches her clients how to protect their wellbeing and practice healthy ambition.
“So many of us are working ourselves into pain and suffering,” she says — but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s her advice for building a healthy mindset around ambition.
‘Painful’ versus ‘purposeful’ ambition
Though AlTai’s unhealthy relationship with ambition caused her to “crash and burn,” she says, it doesn’t mean that being driven is inherently a bad thing.
“I think ambition is neutral and natural,” she says. She defines it as “simply a desire for more life, a wish to grow, a wish to unfold.”
In AlTai’s view, people tend to experience ambition in two ways, she says: “painful” ambition and “purposeful” ambition.
Painful ambition, which AlTai defines as “the voracious desire to advance, regardless of the cost,” stems from a feeling of “not-enoughness,” she writes in “The Ambition Trap.” From a psychological perspective, painful ambition is based in emotional “core wounds” like rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal and injustice, she says.
“If you build your ambition upon that, it’s going to be a bit of a house of cards,” AlTai says, “because we’re perpetually looking for the salve on the outside for the wound on the inside, and that never works.”
On the other hand, purposeful ambition “comes from a place of wholeness,” she says. People who practice purposeful ambition are driven by a desire to make a positive impact, AlTai says. They excel at collaborating with others, protect their needs and approach their mistakes with a growth mindset.
Self-awareness is the key to turning painful ambition into purposeful ambition, according to AlTai. She encourages her clients to journal about their thought patterns without self-judgement, taking note when they fall into unhealthy mindsets.
Habits for healthy ambition
In order to stay in the zone of healthy ambition, one essential practice is “honoring your energy,” AlTai says. That means making time for the things that nourish you, from nutrition and exercise to spending time with loved ones.
Without taking care of ourselves, “it’s really hard to show up fully,” AlTai says.
From a career standpoint, honoring your energy could mean designing your work week around the times you’re most productive, taking walks in between meetings or blocking off certain times on your calendar to allow uninterrupted focus.
Another important habit is to “celebrate your wins,” she says.
As a leadership coach, AlTai noticed a pattern among many of her “really ambitious” clients: They were “always moving the goalpost,” she says.
Instead of taking time to enjoy their successes, her clients immediately started working toward their next goal. That mindset makes it “very tricky” to feel satisfied with your accomplishments, according to AlTai.
AlTai encourages taking time to rest after reaching a major milestone.
“In those quiet moments, you take inventory, you take stock, you see what worked, what you loved, what you didn’t love, what you would do differently, and then you rise again,” she says.
Earn more and get ahead with CNBC’s online courses. Black Friday starts now! Get 25% off select courses and 30% off exclusive bundles with coupon code GETSMART. Offer valid November 17 through December 5, 2025.
Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life, and request to join our exclusive community on LinkedIn to connect with experts and peers.