Get Styled

Episode 24: When Ambition Meets Alignment - A Conversation on Style & Self

• Elsa Isaac

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What happens when the way we chase success starts to pull us away from ourselves? In this episode of the Get Styled podcast, Elsa sits down with dear friend and client, Amina AlTai to talk about just that! Together, they discuss the health scare that led Amina to rethink how she approaches goals, the idea of “letting someone down” that is so pervasive in society (especially as immigrants), and Amina shares how working with Elsa supports her stepping into the boldest version of herself (so far).

Whether you’ve been feeling the pull to redefine success or you’re ready to step into a style that matches who you are becoming, this episode may just be the encouragement you need!


Amina AITai (pronounced AH-MIN-UH) is an executive coach and leadership trainer, a proud immigrant, and a chronic illness advocate. A leading coach to notable leaders, executives, and founders—Amina's mastery is in connecting us to our brilliance and teaching us to live and lead from it each day. She is the bestselling author of The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living, with Penguin/The Open Field.

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RESOURCES + REFERENCES 

aminaaltai.com

Find Amina on Instagram

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aminaaltai/


SHOW NOTES 
0:37 - Elsa introduces what we will be talking about today!

1:38 - Elsa welcomes Amina to the podcast

2:14 - Amina shares what her book “The Ambition Trap” is about, and what inspired her to write it

5:58 - Amina details “painful” vs “purposeful” ambition, and what it took for her to come out of the painful ambition fog

10:15 - Elsa and Amina discuss made up timelines and the “should” messaging around them

13:32 - Amina shares how publishing her book was like a birthing process x2 (and takes us through the five core wounds that drive painful ambition)

16:45 - Amina explains how she lovingly works through challenges and mental blocks while meeting deadlines to make big things happen

20:06 - Amina explains how she differentiates the thought of letting herself and others down as coming from the ambition trap vs. a human-centered place (through the lens of an immigrant)

22:24 - Amina describes her styling process with Elsa as she was stepping into such a visible season of her career

30:13 - Elsa reveals how she knew that Amina was ready to step into the limelight 

33:59 - Amina walks through the work she had to do to transform from someone working in the background, to a spokesperson

40:07 - Elsa brings the episode to a close

SPEAKER_01:

hey i'm your host elsa isaac a personal wardrobe stylist for ambitious women professionals i started this podcast because i want to have deep and meaningful conversations about the clothes we wear and the impact personal style has on our lives you'll hear stories from beautifully daring women as they share their journeys of embracing themselves fully and showing up as their best selves this show is about endless possibilities for you for me and for anyone who's ready to be seen i'm so glad you This is the Get Styled Podcast. Welcome back to the Get Styled podcast. I'm your host, Elsa Isaac, a personal wardrobe stylist to ambitious women professionals. What happens when the way we chase success starts to pull us away from ourselves? In today's episode of Get Styled, I'm sitting down with my dear friend and client, Amina Altai, a celebrated leadership coach, speaker, and the bestselling author of the groundbreaking new book, The Ambition Trap, How to Stop Chasing and Start Living. Amina's work is a powerful invitation to rethink our relationship with ambition. She shows us how to move from a life driven by external expectations and shoulds to one anchored in alignment, joy, and truth. Whether you've been feeling the pull to redefine success or you're ready to step into a style that matches who you're becoming, this conversation will inspire you to do both with courage, with grace, and maybe even a bold new idea. Enjoy! Amina, I love you so much. Thank you for being here. I love you. I'm such an Elsa fan girl. It's so funny though, because we didn't, our paths didn't cross until like many years too late because we were both in the same city and we have all these people in common, but we didn't meet in person until like, I don't know, a couple of years ago, if that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, exactly. Yes. We have so many people in common. We're part of similar communities. It's wild, but I'm so grateful that we know each other now and I'm never letting you go. So thank

SPEAKER_01:

Same, same. You're like a soul sister, that's for sure. I'm going to just dive into the book. First of all, congratulations on your incredible book baby being out into the world. Thank you. What is exactly, what is the ambition trap and what inspired you to write it?

SPEAKER_00:

So in the ambition trap, I'm talking about sort of the double bind that we experience around ambition and the we is women and other historically excluded people. people. Because if you're a woman, a person of color, an immigrant, a person with disability, we experience what's known as the ambition penalty. So just to kind of give you a little bit of insight, there isn't much data that's done beyond the gender binary, but men and women enter the workforce with more or less the same levels of ambition. Ambitious men are rewarded for theirs. Ambitious women, it's seen as a detractor. They're seen as aggressive. And if you're an ambitious woman that negotiates her salary, you get extra demerits. Women of color are actually the most ambitious cohort in corporate America and we experience the most headwinds. And so there is a mindset piece that complicates this because when the system is constantly telling you, hey, B, you're too big, but you're too much and you're not enough all at the same time. And we tend to internalize those messages and then weaponize them against ourselves. And then there's also the system that is perpetuating these ideologies. And so the trap is that the idea that we are both too much and not enough at the same time. And it's when we are chasing that ambition from a place of pain and we're looking for the external validators, but really the work needs to be done on the inside and on the system.

SPEAKER_01:

There's so many layers there. And so hearing about a book like yours talking about like a different way to be ambitious that isn't so harmful. I don't think you think about the harmful ways that we create these goals for our lives and how we go about doing them. getting them. Right. And then sustaining them. It's not, not even an afterthought. It's, it's

SPEAKER_00:

just not. Yeah. It's what you do. Right. It's I opened the book by sort of telling my, my ambition story and my fall from grace, right. Child of immigrants. I'm an immigrant. And I was just taught, you keep your head down. You work really hard. You don't make any waves. You are as exceptional as you can be. Right. And I did that. And my life looked great on paper, but I had worked so hard that I burned out and developed two autoimmune diseases. And And in the book, I tell the detailed story where I get this call from my doctor and she says, if you don't go to the hospital now, instead of going to your client near days away from organ failure, I had no idea, right? That like all of the thoughts in my head and the way that I was working in my definitions of success were literally killing me. But I think that in the immigrant conversation, it's extra interesting, right? Because I think it almost necessitates that we start our careers, right? Coming from the wound, as I talk about in the book, right? Because if you don't work super hard, how will you get to the place that you want to go? And then once you've sort of established yourself enough, then maybe you can choose a different way. But I think for so many of us, it's like, there doesn't feel like there's another way, right? So I think we have to give ourselves grace and compassion for working in a dysfunctional way because we were just trying to survive. We were just trying to thrive in a system not designed for us. And I love that because

SPEAKER_01:

in your book, you call it misaligned ambition, right? Painful ambition. So there's purposeful ambition and painful So the painful and I don't even like when you talk about head down and also you don't you feel like if I don't do this right like then I'm squandering or you know like not taking advantage of all of the advantages that I have readily available to me that my parents and my parents parents and their parents didn't have access to so you know there's the guilt factor as well. So what are some of the signs like You clearly got a very physical rude awakening about being caught in this ambition trap. What are some of the signs that we might be operating from that space?

SPEAKER_00:

Painful ambition has a couple of hallmarks. So in the book, I have this side-by-side chart of what the traits of painful ambition are, what the traits of purposeful ambition are. So in painful ambition, we'll often instrumentalize our minds and bodies to to get to the goal. So that looks like squeezing every last drop of productivity out of ourselves to get to where we want to go. And we treat others that way too, right? Because we treat ourselves that way. We show up that way with others as well. It looks like a desire to win no matter the cost. And there's nothing wrong with winning, right? Like you like to win. I like to win. It's a lovely thing, but it's the no matter the cost piece that is the harmful piece, right? Because we're willing to hurt ourselves or others to get to the goal. It looks like moving at an unsustainable pace, right? Kind of move with this self-imposed urgency. It looks like black and white thinking versus more expansive growth mindset thinking. So there's quite a few hallmarks in there. And then the results of that can be physical illness like I experienced. It can be having an emotional experience like anxiety, depression, et cetera, manifest differently for all of us. But painful ambition is really driven by our core wounds. So each and every one of us has a core wound and it's something that originates in childhood. Even if you have the most magical parents in the whole world, there's five wounds and we each emerge with one, two, three, or all five. And when we build our ambition upon that, that's when things get a little wobbly.

SPEAKER_01:

When you got sick and you are in kind of like, whoa, right? Like what is happening? How long did it take you to kind of... I don't know, uncover where this might have all come from? Like, what did that look like for you in terms of next steps coming out of that fog, so to speak?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, to answer the first part of the question, I think I'm probably still uncovering it. I think I'll probably always be uncovering it. But in the immediate moments, I tell people this story and they're like, what is wrong with you girls? But when I got that call from my doctor, I actually didn't go to the hospital. I went to work. I know. And it was like throughout the course of the day that I was like, oh, oh, maybe I should go to the hospital. Like, I think I lived so far outside of my body and just was so used to being in momentum and being hardworking that I didn't even put, like, I wasn't realizing and putting two and two together. So it was the end of the day that I went to the hospital. Wow. And I ended up like going down this path and sort of really getting deep into the wellness space because I was like, oh my God, okay, clearly everything that I've been doing has been wrong, right? I don't know anything about life or success. I've worked myself almost into the ground. And so I just started spending time in the wellness space, right? Sort of changing the way that I was eating, moving, learning about mindfulness, learning about coaching, and then just felt so much better. I wanted to teach it onward. And I'm telling this story in a very linear fashion. It was, it was messy. It was a mess where I like basically left the company that I was, that I had co-founded and I had taken on marketing roles at two different wellness companies because I wasn't ready to start my own thing yet. And I was still learning. And then over the course of three years, I eventually jumped off the cliff and started my coaching business. Three years.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Like, yeah. And I think that's also part of it, right? Isn't so much of this, like this, this like made up timeline of like, when we're supposed to have achieved what by, you

SPEAKER_00:

know? 100%. I was at a talk yesterday for my book. And there was a woman in the audience that was like, I just have all these messages about, you know, when you're in your 20s, that's the time to really accelerate it and work like that's, that's when you have the most time. And I was like, girl, first of all, it was a room of like, the average age was probably 4550. I was like, you know, I just entered my fourth decade. And I think I'm just hitting my stride. So like, all these stories that we have about timelines, like whose stories are they? Right? Are they yours? Are they societies? Probably societies, right? But I really like my grandma who was my idol worked until she was 87 and so like we have we have time unless we tell ourselves we don't have time but we have time

SPEAKER_01:

so true

SPEAKER_00:

like and I

SPEAKER_01:

just saw something yesterday I can't remember what platform it was on it was on social media but it was you know like the idea of 60 retiring at 65 is really just it no longer works for us you know like I think we're killing ourselves trying to make it so that we retire by this age not realizing that we could just stretch those years a little bit more and work less hours and enjoy the life that we're living now up until you know like and it's 100% society standards also depends on what where you're living and what that society is telling you but I think we were given you know I'll speak for myself you know growing up in Canada then moving here but like graduate by this time then You should have a well-paying job. And then, you know, also, by the way, you should think about settling down. So breaking away from the thing you've been taught to build your whole life, the success, and then also have a baby already. Like, what are you waiting for? And so I'm like, for a long time, I was like, wait, how do I do all of these things at the same time? Not at the same time? Like, it's very confusing. And also, like, conflicting. Girl's name! Yeah, just to get it out there. So I'd love for you to share a little

SPEAKER_00:

bit about that. going to go. And they had told me, they're like, ambition is exalted in your chart. You were really the person to write this book. And I do think that that is true because I have rumbled with this my whole life. And even watching my dad, he's a Brown man named Muhammad who finished his schooling overseas. And he had a really tenuous relationship to striving and success and taking up space. And I was taking notes and cues from him. And so I really do feel like I'm a student of this work. In the book, I talk about the five core wounds that drive painful and mission. So they are rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. And then for each wound we have, we wear a corresponding mask. So for rejection, the mask we wear is avoidance. That's one of mine. And that's where we avoid throwing our hat in the ring for something because we're afraid that we are going to get rejected again. There's the abandonment wound and the mask that we wear for that is dependence. So we're so worried about being abandoned again. We're overly dependent on others. There's the humiliation wound and the mask that we wear for that is martyrdom. That's most of my clients. So that's when you felt growing up, your parents or caregivers were somewhat ashamed of you, maybe your size or your, you know, natural vivacious personality. And so now because you don't feel worthy, you will martyr yourself at work and otherwise. Then the fourth wound, okay, rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal. So betrayal is when we felt like our caregivers didn't live up to our expectations. So the mask we wear is control. That's another one of mine, because we're like, oh, I'm so worried that somebody will let me down. So that never happens again. I will control everything. And then the last one is injustice. So that's when we felt our individuality in childhood was restrained. And so the mask we wear is rigidity, basically perfectionism. We have an intolerance for living in an imperfect world. And I'm telling you all of this because, you know, mine, as I mentioned, were the control mask was a big one. And that really came up in the process. Writing a book is so out of control. And the whole way through, I just noticed my propensity for wanting to control it because I felt so triggered by it. And so, you know, just kind of lovingly watching that trait come up and just asking these younger versions of myself what they needed to feel safe in the process so I could move that control mask out of the way. But it's a journey and it's a journey for all of us. And we just want to kind of watch and catch those traits and then see if we can invite another way of being. But I think it's a lifelong journey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, I think that's the part none of us want to hear. We're like, wait, what? You can't just fix this and move on? You know, it's like the, and we're surprised, at least for me, I'm always surprised, but I'm like, am I still working through this? Like, has this not resolved, you know? And I think one of the biggest, I think, challenges for me is how do you do that? Like in your specific case with the book, right? There was several challenges that came up for you in writing it. then releasing it. How do you lovingly kind of work through that knowing also you're working within time restraints, like there are deadlines and then there are like real life, you know, kind of containers or consequences, you know, for making that happen or getting past it in a way that is respectful, I guess, of of other people's timelines or, you know, the agents or publishers, you know, like that are involved. I think that's kind of like the tough, toughest part for me is being true to who I am and, you know, honoring what I'm working through while also, you know, keeping within whatever time restraints I've been given.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. I mean, well, to answer that question, I'm a Scorpio cap rising. I have never missed a deadline in my life. You know what I mean? You're really amazing at that, yes. It's just like, it's innate to me. I have like, I joke, but it's serious. I have an internal clock. It's like, I kind of always know what the time is. It's a very strange thing. And so I'll always do my work on my side of the street, but I don't know, I can't and won't miss the deadline. And, you know, sometimes I've worked through the thing. Sometimes I'm still working through the thing. Sometimes it's, you know, still a little bit messy. And I think all of that is okay. You know, one thing came up during the book process. I think it's helpful for people to hear. this is that I had decided that as an executive and leadership coach, a big part of my strategy for getting the book out in the world was going to be partnering with employee resource groups because I already did a ton of work with them. They'd bring me in to do trainings or one-off talks. And so I was like, I have relationships with over a hundred of these groups. And so, but when in January, February, when the executive orders were released, basically dismantling a lot of these ERGs, a Basically, that strategy just exploded. And I had this one day where I was just crying, where I was like, why me? But then I just decided, I was like, you know what? It would be so easy to stay here and make myself the victim. But I respect myself and this work too much. I will not. I'm going to find another way. I was like, come hell or high water, I'm going to find another way. And I did. And I cobbled together another strategy. And I've done a lot of work with sort of different community groups as a replacement for that. And it's been beautiful and wonderful I think it would have been so easy to just be like, well, that was ruined. I'm a victim. I'm going to stay here now. But I felt a responsibility to the work. And also, I'm curious if you feel this way too, right? As a woman of color, as an immigrant, I felt a responsibility for people that identify like me, right? I wanted to knock it out of the park so I could say, look what we can do, right? Just give us a chance. Give us a shot. We make magic happen. And if I didn't do that, I didn't just let myself down. I let everybody down. I get emotional even just saying

SPEAKER_01:

that. Yeah, no, and I do. I resonate with that because oftentimes, I don't know, I'm not going to, it feels like as an immigrant and a child of immigrants, like that's always there, right? That's a lens that I view the world from often, if not all the time. And so in that instance, right, like that's a perfect example. What was like a real tool that you used to separate that very, that feeling of like, I can't let all these people down or myself down. How did you differentiate between that being coming from the ambition trap as opposed to like that coming from a heart centered place that you weren't using as a mask for the ambition trap?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, this is such a beautiful question. I think my victim trait, that is definitely painful ambition, right? Like that's all that's the version that is like, oh, like, I'm being and like, some parts of that are true, right? Like, we probably have been genuinely victimized, right? But when I live into that trade, it really doesn't serve me. So I think when I was coming from that place, that is definitely painful ambition. And then when I kind of reconciled and moved that out of the way and said, Okay, I want to figure out a way to do this in an empowered way. That's when I was starting to shift into the purposeful ambition piece. But the line for me was, I'm not going to hurt myself to do this, I'm going to try my my best I'm going to do everything that I can but I will not hurt myself because that's my old story right of like I will outwork this broken system and it was it was very clearly a trap set up for me right like I could have then ticked into it and been like I'm going to outwork this broken system and the fact that you've taken away the ERGs right easy to fall in but that was the line for me I said I will not do that this time and I got very close to the line a couple times but I saw it and I stopped

SPEAKER_01:

yeah and they often right it's often you'd run Recognizing it in and of itself is part of like the major shift, right? Of being able to steer yourself, stop and steer yourself in another direction.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

And we can know our traits to be able to catch them, right? Which is like why it's great to know the wounds and the masks or the types of painful ambition that you tend to live into because then you can start to see the patterns of them.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Yes. Hence your book. So you have been in my styling chair Yeah. choosing clothes that feel that felt aligned for you

SPEAKER_00:

yeah honestly I feel like it's some of the best money that I spent on the whole book process and I spent a lot of money on lots of different things books are expensive you all but because it really okay one of the reasons that I wanted to work with you is I had been following you for a while I had seen people that you styled and the thing that I had said to you I was like Elsa when you style people it's like you look at them and all of a sudden they make more sense it's like you understand more of who they are and their personality because of the way that you've styled them it was like incredible I was like I understand this person on a whole new level because of what you have put them in it's such a gift and an art and I knew that I wanted some of that because I have a tendency to hide sometimes and like my wardrobe before working with Elsa was entirely black and white like literally entirely and I had pieces from when I was 18 years old and you all I'm about to turn 41 because like I would just pick the timeless piece right the good girl piece all of the things that kind Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. She

SPEAKER_00:

just wanted to fade into the background. And so it was so wonderful. And just, you know, you and I, like, you really It really took me to some edges because I was not comfortable in the color and the patterns. And you were like, you know, just try it, just try it. And so it was just so helpful to have the, the fitting with you where you, you just like put stuff together and have me layer them. And you just took me to these edges that I really needed to go to. It was such a beautiful growth process. And I'm just forever grateful that it was you and that you knew exactly where to take me. And And people were messaging me, one being like, okay, the looks are amazing. Who's your stylist? And some people were like, oh, wow, you've really dressed for your season, you know, like the color analysis. So I'm technically a winter. I've never done the analysis, but somebody once came up to me and told me I was a winter. And you put me in exactly the right, all the right colors for quote unquote a winter because I have high contrast features. And so we need like the bright jewel tones, nothing too yellow, no beige, like all of those things. Yeah. And so you, I think, made me make more sense. And it was just very empowering to show up in these rooms with all these people that you've never met when you need a confidence boost and to have on something that you love. But I'll never forget, you had me buy one of the most expensive items I've ever bought. And you were like, is this the immigrant in you that literally can't spend this on a dress? And I was like, I think so. And you're like,

SPEAKER_01:

just do it, girl. It's hard. You know what it is? And I don't care about the price of a garment. I really don't. I'm not one of those stylists that is like you have to only do like designer I think for me it's like obviously there's like a whole strategy that I use when shopping and sometimes that garment tends to be really high priced and I'm like okay you just have to try it on there's no pressure you don't have to buy it because I don't even know how it's gonna look on you yet right but then when I see it on you and then how you feel in it it's worth it like it you know obviously within reason like you have to Don't go breaking bank accounts for a garment just because, you know, you love it. But I think if you can afford to, there are those pieces that you just can't duplicate.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, like we found a blazer that we absolutely still can't believe we found because we can't find this blazer for sale anywhere else. Like we've never been able to find it again. And I keep looking to be like, will you do other colors, please? And they never have. They have. I don't know why. It's like the most perfect blazer ever.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh my God. In my roundup, I said that that blazer was my whole personality and it really is.

SPEAKER_01:

It really is. It's like personified. It's so good. And so how would you say that like stepping up in your wardrobe plays into our purpose? Like you were almost done, I think, with the book. I don't know if you had submitted it yet when we worked together. You did, right? You had? Yeah, it had just been accepted. The manuscript had just been accepted when we started to work together. So was there any correlation into terms of like just stepping in to the limelight in the boldest version of yourself, were there any traps there that you found you had to work through? Or did you feel like it played a supportive role in your healthy, you know, the healthiest version of yourself with your ambition as you are becoming prepared to be out there as the author of this incredible book and this message?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm really grateful for the way that we work together. So you and I split our process into two parts. We did part one for the book photo shoot and then part two for the tour. And what I loved about that is that that part one for the photo shoot, you had already stretched, you'd taken me to the growth edge and I needed that practice, right? Because I think if we went straight to the book tour and you were taking me to the growth edge on the book tour, it almost would have been too much for me. So that warming up process was so helpful. So when it came time for the book tour, I was like, all the colors, like, give us all the jewel tones. I was like, ready for that. And I think that what I loved so much about it is, again, I think it made me make more sense to the world, right? They could kind of read me and my personality and my energy through the, like through the optics, through the visual experience before they even read the words or got to know me. And I think that that's a really beautiful thing. It like warms people up to you. And it sends a message and it tells people about you even before you open your mouth and just being more conscious about the things that we want to tell people before we open our mouths, right? Like I wasn't super conscious of the fact that I was hiding in my clothing, right? So that's already a message that you're telling people before you open your mouth. And so the process just got me so much more conscious, which I think is an invitation into more purposeful ambition for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's funny because I always like, I, again, we had just kind of met not that long ago. So I was like, oh, but you look like you have thought, you know, like you put effort and time into your wardrobe. Yeah, but not in the same way. was also like you were ready because I don't I know I know you had some a team help you with the with the book cover but the fact that that's where you landed meant to me that it was perfect alignment right because I didn't even know what the book cover looked like until we were finished round one yeah right and so I was like she's totally open to color and she it it will definitely embrace it is how I kind of took that to be because round one I didn't think you were in to color at

SPEAKER_00:

all. You know, it was really, so actually you didn't even see the book cover until after round two. You all, Elsa picked a dress for me that literally matched the book cover without seeing the book cover. And I wore that on launch day for my CBS interview and everybody was like, hold the phone. Did you get this dress to match the book? And I was like, no, my stylist picked it and didn't even know. People were obsessed with that dress and how it matched the book cover. And you know, I think that you're right because how I picked the book cover, I had four different options And I'm a former marketer. So I did a mock-up shelf of different books in my category. And I was like, which cover stands out the most? And that's how I chose it, right? But for me in the past, standing out the most would feel unsafe. I was just going to say, yeah. I do think it really supported my evolution in a big

SPEAKER_01:

way. You were doing this work. You were in marketing, right? And yet you were hiding. So you were marketing these brands and these companies, but you felt most comfortable hiding behind the scenes. And so here you are. Would you say this has like been your most visible point in your career yet?

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And, you know, being an immigrant and a person of color, right? Women of color get the most hate on the internet. Like it is data driven. It's a fact, right? But I knew all of this and I knew that to prepare myself for it, right? Because there was definitely a part of me that's like being more visible means that you're also going to potentially experience more harm. Yeah. So like I talked about it in therapy, I like rallied my allies and was like, okay, some one comes for me, you all are going to get in there and support me, right? Like, just like I had my support system ahead of time. So to ready myself for it, but I think it literally took years of nervous system attunement to feel safe enough to be seen in this way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there and I it's interesting, because, again, we were talking from a place of like, immigrant parents, immigrant selves. And I don't I'm sure it's not limited to just immigrants, but I grew up feeling like I needed to be quieter and Right. who are very good at marketing themselves like that is that is kind of their superpower and kind of like the business they sell is themselves yeah well yeah exactly it's almost the second thing the second good thing that they're good at you know what I mean and so whereas I feel like I'm like can't I just I just want to style you know I just for itself yeah yeah and so what kind of vulnerability Did you have to work through to kind of come from the person hiding themselves to becoming the person at the forefront delivering this very important message to all of us?

SPEAKER_00:

And it's such an important question because I think it's been like decades of work because I'm half Iraqi, half Welsh. And I, first of all, I grew up in a larger body and was like the only one of like a handful of people of color in my school. and in the area that I grew up in. And so early on, I felt like I stood out not in a good way. And I entered the workforce just after 9-11, right? Being an Arab person around that time was really challenging. And I just learned to like, just blend in, like it's safest to blend in. Don't stand out because that's when you could experience harm. And so I think it's literally been probably the last 15 years of therapy, nervous system work, coaching, And bit by bit, just chipping away, knowing that I have enough internal stability that I can be out there and be seen. And, you know, most of it is really wonderful. Like, I have to say that, right? My experience has been really wonderful. And then there's the occasional, you know, uncomfortable, not kind thing, but I have enough internal stability to hold myself in that now.

SPEAKER_01:

It's

SPEAKER_00:

almost like

SPEAKER_01:

the timing was meant to be now, right? Because you just have way more internal tools to support yourself through the hard times. I think that's

SPEAKER_00:

really

SPEAKER_01:

true. I would not have been able to before. I think that's really true. Right. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

There's something to be said for just trying things. Just trying and moving on and just trying more things. Yes. I've had plenty of things not work out, right? And then you just keep going. So the ambition trap has

SPEAKER_01:

been out now for, gosh. Two months. Why? Two months out in the world. How do you see your message continuing to evolve?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, when I was in the marketing meeting with my editor and the whole team, we were talking about like what we wanted, like what our goals were. I said, I wanted my book to be somebody's favorite. That wasn't my mom. Right. I wanted one person in the world to be like, this is the book to change my life. And my editor was like, you know what I want? She's like the way that people reference zones of genius. She's like, that's how I want people to talk about purposeful ambition. She's like, I want it to be this term that is in our vernacular that everybody's talking about. Yeah. And I'd love to that too I think that that would be so special because we do live in a world where ambition is really dysfunctional right where it's more for more's sake all the time and it costs us our health and our relationships and upholds oppressive systems and if we could live into this purposeful ambition and we could all do it together we could radically change the world and I know that sounds like a little woo woo and delusional but the change starts with us right and when we're different everybody around us is different and there is a ripple effect and so that's my hope

SPEAKER_01:

you know I love that about you too. I remember, you know, you and I were talking, we were going back and forth one day and I was like, you know, capitalism and, and like capitalism I don't want it. will do things different, will create different opportunities and support different people in an ethical way. We just

SPEAKER_00:

need more of us. Exactly. I really believe that. We need more. And if people don't see you, right, because we're not waving our flags, then they won't know that's possible. And then they won't be able to change the world in their ways. So it's so important that we exist and that we are seen. So thank you for helping us be seen.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for helping us be seen. helping us navigate how we can do this in a way that honors ourselves and the things that we believe in, the type of world that we believe in. And we need to be healthier in order to do that. We need to do that in a way that supports our nervous system, our bodies, our mental state. I think that all those things are not worth sacrificing for success. And I think that's why I love your book. It's like this gives us an alternative where there hasn't been. So congratulations.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you so

SPEAKER_01:

much. On an incredible, incredible accomplishment and for just being you and yeah, you're amazing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

You are. I'm so grateful. Thank you for being on this journey with me. Thank you for helping me shine. And thank you for being such a wonderful friend.

SPEAKER_01:

Anytime. You're the best. Thank you for being here, Amina.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you for having me. Love you. Love you. And thank you everyone for listening.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks. so much for listening to this episode of the Get Styled podcast. If you like what you heard today, please be sure to follow, subscribe, and leave a review. I'd be oh so grateful. And if you'd like to see firsthand how upleveling your wardrobe can transform your life and learn more about working together, head on over to ElsaIsaac.com slash Get Styled to get signed up and stay in touch.