Ambition became my four-letter-word.

After many failed introductions and attempts to explain what I do (admittedly there were some really good ones in there!), I finally found the language that keeps my eye on the prize and provides my audience with the context for what I’m working towards.

I want to be the Brené Brown of ambition.

What she did for shame and vulnerability* I want to do for ambition. Juicy, hey?

*What she did: learn from her clients and people around her, reflect on and write about the experiences she had, build expertise in the subject with some cold hard data and academic cred, and then translate it to be impactful and more accessible to a wider audience, publish multiple books and be on shit hot stages.

Here’s the kicker: lately, ambition has felt like a four-letter word, like I’ve shackled myself to something I don’t even fully understand, and I’ve stalled. I sit down to write something and think “well, I don’t know enough about this yet to make anything meaningful” and “what if I’m wrong?” and “what if I write about something that I’m experiencing but haven’t yet worked out how / if it is connected to ambition?” “Will I lose the trust, credibility, and respect that I’ve worked to earn, if everything I write isn’t directly about ambition?”

And yet. I KNOW is value in sharing the words and talking about big ideas, even if they aren’t tied up in nice little bows.

(And I’m sure there are millions of people who would read Brené Brown’s Costco shopping list if she shared it, because there is probably something in there that we haven’t thought of that we needed to hear about.)

I know I don’t have every t crossed or a heart over every i, and my silly brain continues to imagine the (very unlikely) possibility of flash-mob-style performance of people reading this emerging into a choreographed dance while shouting:“HEY. YOU SAID YOU WERE THE AMBITION LADY, THE WORD AMBITION ISN’T EVEN IN YOUR ARTICLE! GET BACK IN YOUR LANE.”

Maybe my work is in more than one lane? Maybe the connection isn’t there yet. Maybe I’ll figure it out later. Maybe I won’t. Maybe this document will live and die on a boring blog page. Maybe it will be the one that goes viral. 

(Story for another time: I had someone offer me unsolicited business advice that included the words “you should go viral”. Thanks, Steve.)

The wonderful Tanya Geisler reminded me that ambition is the doorway. There is more to my experience and my work than this one word. Her brilliant words:

“Ambition is a context but it’s not the only context. Everything that moves through you is fair game.”

At the core, I am an ambitious high achiever. And yes, I want to understand ambition (and use it to dig into some of my other loves - entrepreneurs, con artists and grifters, Real Housewives!) Turns out, I don’t have to be so heavy-handed about it. Being stringent about it is one of the things keeping me stuck.

Onwards I go, writing about the things that I want to write about. The connections will come.

Xo,

AW

for 2024, I set the goal of publishing 40 things. Blogs, articles on LinkedIn, guest posts, lengthy social media posts - doesn’t matter. It matters that I do it over and over. And that my words stop dying in documents that never see the light of day. I started reading Jami Attenberg’s 1000 Words after listening to her on Jo Piazza’s podcast, Under the Influence. Each day when I sit down to write, I open it up and read until I find *the thing* that makes me feel like I can write.

Here’s what I got me writing today:

“There’s never a day where I just slide back inside my writing like I’m putting on a silk robe. … All you have to do is find your place at the beginning. You don’t even have to write about the thing that you want to write. You just have to write about it. Write a little letter to yourself. Sit down somewhere quiet. Tell yourself why you want to write it, what you think it can be, why you dream of doing it, why this pen feels good in your hand, why this notebook looks nice on your table, why this stolen moment you claim for yourself is important, how it felt the last time you wrote, however long ago it was, and how it feels to be back at it again, here with yourself and your brain. Start there, and see what happens next.”

-Jami Attenberg, 1000 Words, pg 16