68. Same Fire, Different Fuel: What Ambition Looks Like When You Know Yourself

Ambition isn’t supposed to look the same at 25 and 45, and pretending it should is a fast track to burnout. We pull back the curtain on how drive matures, why rest becomes a performance tool, and how boundaries can protect your best work without dulling your edge.

We talk through the hidden cost of overstuffed days, the myth that “real hustlers” never need a break, and the subtle art of saying no without apology. 

To make this stick, we share a four-pillar framework—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—that keeps your energy steady across busy weeks and big goals. Then we get tactical with five moves you can start today.

Lift Like You Mean It, our new strength program, is almost here—check the show notes to join the waitlist and text us what you’re working on. 

If this conversation helped, share it with a friend!

If you want the deeper lessons behind strength training, I write a weekly newsletter called Between Reps: Building the Unbreakable Woman. Check it out HERE

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Disclaimer: This show is for education and entertainment purposes only.  This is not intended as a replacement for therapy. Please seek out the help of a professional to assist you with your specific situation.

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Focus

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Welcome to the Unbreakable Mind and Body Podcast. I am your host, Tiana Gonzalez, a multi-passionate creative, storyteller, and entrepreneur with a fierce love for movement. This is our space for powerful stories and actionable strategies to help you build mental resilience and elevate your self-care practice. Together, we will unlock the tools that you need to create an unbreakable mind and body. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Tiana, and on this episode, we're going to discuss how ambition evolves as you evolve and how protecting your peace actually becomes a huge part of the work that you must do. It is required if you want to sustain that high level of ambition. I was thinking back to a younger version of myself that used to push through everything. I was always exhausted. I was always stressed out. I was under a lot of pressure, high tension. And I had something to prove. And a lot of times I said yes to everything that crossed my path because I just wanted to prove that I could do it. I had to show the world that I was fully capable with very little resources. I was capable. That was a big deal for me. And the truth is, I'm not her anymore, and I don't ever want to be here again. Now, in your own life, you might be feeling similar. Where you're waking up and you have this fire or this passion, but how you want to spend it, how you want to tap into it, might look different than it did when you were in your 20s and 30s. And that's valid. That's definitely not burnout and it's not giving up. But I think it's it's preference. That's what it really is. So through this episode, we're going to talk about why energy, ambition, and priorities evolve, what it looks like to be fiercely driven and simultaneously deeply protective of your peace at the same time. And how taking care of yourself is one of the most responsible things that you can do for the people around you. When I refer to energy, there's this physical aspect of it, but there's also the mental bandwidth piece. Now, when we're talking about the physicality, right? In my 20s and 30s, I was able to push through things. I could function on very little sleep. I was able to bounce back. I mean, really, that's just biology. As I got older, I needed more of recovery windows, recovery time post-workout. My body was starting to ask for more as far as you know, sleep and stillness and quiet, decompression time, just more space in between difficult things. I was always, when when I was younger, I was always the person who would take on way too much in one given day, let's say on a Saturday, and I would try to fit it all in, meaning the gym, laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning the house, maybe getting my nails done, running an errand, doing some shopping. And then it's like, oh my gosh, we have plans this evening, and I need to then hurry up, take a shower, but I'm exhausted from my very busy day, and then get a second win, maybe have a cup of coffee in the evening time to sort of wake up, go out to dinner with my friends, maybe go out after to a club or a bar or a party somewhere. And it was this cycle that I just kept repeating over and over and over again. And also, I used to be late to many things and I hated it, but I didn't understand why I was always late to things. And it's because I wasn't giving myself enough time and enough space to get from place to place or from event or and function to chore and responsibility. I was very ambitious in my timing, and I just couldn't keep up. Now, thinking about a serious athlete, when you look at their program, they have rest days built into their program and they cannot skip those days because the rest day is actually where the growth happens. And for the rest of us who are not pro-athletes, life still works that way for us. We need that space. Now, on the mental side, just think about decision fatigue when you're doing a deep, intentional, focused task. Maybe it's for work, maybe it's a personal project. Those require a lot of mental energy. And it's difficult to switch from thing to thing, even when it's a mental sort of project. For example, I work full-time during the day. I train clients in person, but then I leave that and I come home and I have other things I do on my MacBook. And, you know, some of those things are this podcast, content creation, journaling, a newsletter, I'm also working on a big project behind the scenes. So I'm getting all those last little bits and pieces tied in and getting it all together. And so if I was somebody who had to consistently switch from one thing to the other, or let's say I used to train people in the morning and then in the middle of the day and then at night, and I was shifting from the physical work to the mental work back to the physical work, I would be exhausted and run down. Now I will tell you the schedule I have right now is a little bit ambitious and rough because I'm very tired when I get home from the end of my workday. And I usually have to rally, but instead of having coffee, I had a little bit of coconut water. It's got a little bit of sugar in there and some electrolytes. So hopefully that'll boost me up a little bit. But this is a season, it's not the way I'm choosing to live all of the time. But that mental bandwidth piece, I really have to slow down and consider it. And the thing for me is that solitude has become much less of a luxury, but more of a requirement. Some people in your life won't understand that if that's the case for you. And I have to tell you, that's okay. They don't need to understand. And by the way, you don't need to explain yourself to everyone. No is a full and complete sentence. You do not have to accept every invitation that you receive. You do not have to say yes to every time somebody wants to go out to dinner or somebody wants to get together or somebody wants to meet for a drink. At some point, you're gonna have to honor yourself first before everyone else. Now, you don't want to get to this point, but you may have, or you may in the future get to a point where your body is gonna tell you when it's had enough and it's going to slow you down. This shows up in ways such as having a cold or getting sick or just feeling fatigued all the time, or really lacking zest, vigor, and excitement for things that you normally are excited about. And those are clear indications from your body that you need to slow down. Because if you ignore it, you could end up very ill. And trust me when I tell you, you don't want to go down that path. It is very hard to pull yourself out of it once you are in so deep into that terminal or I'm sorry, not terminal, in that long-term exhaustion in that space. But let's talk about ambition and how it evolves. Because this is really the key. This is the meat and potatoes of this episode. Because you can have ambition throughout your life, but it's gonna look different and it's gonna mean something different to you as you grow, as you evolve, as you flourish. When I was in my 20s, ambition looked like proving myself. It looked like stacking achievements, it looked like being at the top of the leaderboard, maybe in my CrossFit gym when I was a coach and I used to work out at CrossFit. It also could be being at the top of the leaderboard at work. You know, if you're on a sales team and they share everybody's numbers in an email and you're comparing where you are with your coworker, your friend, or your frenemy, or somebody you don't like, you know, and you want to make sure that you're at the top of that leaderboard. You want to be in the top percentages. And you spend a lot of energy, or I spent a lot of energy at least, on the things that felt urgent, were important, lost sleep over things that made such a big deal about. But in retrospect and looking back, they really didn't matter. So there's a fine line between, you know, being tidy, being organized, being professional, but then going really far off the deep end and wanting to have control and having something to prove and making sure that, you know, your name is sh is looked at in a good light. But maybe now as you've gotten older, it's not as important as it once was. Maybe now you get that email with the leaderboard on it and you don't even look at it. Maybe now you look and you just see where you finished for the last month or where you are currently in the existing month. But that's just so you can keep yourself on track with your own personal goals. And yeah, I'm talking about myself right now. But maybe you want to build something different. Maybe the ambition that you have is more along the lines of a personal project or a hobby, or growing and developing something on your own terms, not defined by someone else. Not something that you have learned, but something that you now know from your core and from your being. I have some financial goals that I want to hit. I have some personal goals about what I'd like my life to look like, but I'm not as attached to how I get there. I know that feeling good is probably my number one priority. And I wish that I could say that about everyone I know who's in their late 40s, but that's certainly not the case, and that's okay. For some people, they don't understand that. They don't get it when I say you have to take care of yourself first. You can't pour from an empty cup. I know if you're one of my regular listeners, you've heard me say this many times on many episodes. But there are people who don't understand that. They live for their kids, they live for their job. They feel like they need to be valuable, and this is how they have attached value to themselves through their work, through their kids, through their family life, through their assets. This is not wrong. It just may not be what everyone wants. Certainly not how I measure success or happiness. But I used to think about every little interaction with a prospective client, with an existing client, with an existing client's partner or husband, or I would feel like the other shoe was always gonna drop. So I really had to outdo everyone around me and shine and make sure that I was number one, that people knew I was the best. And that just does not matter to me anymore. Because living life that way, I really drained myself. I was always exhausted and having something to prove all the time just didn't work out well long term. So a quick prompt for you, something you can maybe journal on after you listen to this episode or when you want to come back to it. Ask yourself, is there something that you're losing sleep over that if you're really honest with yourself you might have outgrown? Think about it. Something that's not as important to you now as it once was in the past. Now, talking about taking care of yourself as a part of your job. Let's think about self-care and let's reframe it. Because I feel like self-care gets really watered down in the fitness, in the health and wellness space. People think of it as bubble baths, face masks, hot tub, massage, all of those things are fine. But self-care could also be waking up extra early because you know that you need a little bit more time to sort of collect yourself and get pull it together in the morning. Self-care could be making sure that you have that cup of coffee and you can sit on your deck or look out your window and just kind of ease into your morning. Self-care could look like getting ready for work, not checking your emails while you're still half asleep. Maybe going to the gym first thing. Self-care could look like packing your food the night before with nutritious and delicious foods and ingredients that you're excited to eat, not because it's gonna make you lose five pounds or make you look better, but because you enjoy it, because it's high quality, because you know that you're putting in a little bit of an investment into the retirement plan, into that 401k. Remember, I've said it in other episodes. You're putting a small little deposit into that retirement fund for later. Every little thing you do now for yourself, for health and wellness, for vitality, for a better quality of life as you get older will make a difference. And when you don't show up for yourself first, everything downstream suffers. Your work suffers, your interactions with the people you love may suffer. The things that you put out into the world may suffer. Like it's just not your best because you're not at your best, because you didn't do what you needed to do to be at your best. So you see how that all is connected, and it's a domino effect. So for me, I have four pillars that I'm consistently thinking about and making sure that I tap into each day. The physical part, making sure I get movement, that I got a good night of sleep, that I do a little stretch or recovery, my mental, thinking about my bandwidth, thinking about giving myself some space to just think, having some silence, or just creating a little bit of a of a space where I maybe I take a nap, maybe I read a few pages of a book. I by the way, I am the worst reader. I have a stack of books by my bedside, and if I'm lucky, I'll get through three or four pages before I fall asleep. But I try. Now the emotional part. This pillar is important because you gotta know who fills your cup and who drains it. And sometimes the people who drain it are the people that are immediately closest to you. Sometimes the people who drain it are the ones you love the most, but they still drain your cup as opposed to fill it. So you've got to be able to do a little dance and manage that relationship. And then there's the spiritual pillar, and this is really just thinking about doing things that align with who you are becoming your faith, the things you believe, whatever that higher power is, honor that. And make sure that you are giving yourself a little bit of space to think and contemplate, maybe to pray. Maybe not, but I think it's valuable to at least highlight that. And like I said before, you can't pour from an empty cup. So you really need to make sure that, yeah, even though you're leading from the front, you've done what you needed to do for yourself in order to do that well. Now, I'm gonna give you some practical takeaways because this would not be an unbreakable mind and body episode if I did not do that. All right. So here we go. Number one, I want you to just audit your energy. Think about, you know, where are you giving a lot of yourself? Maybe where do you need to reallocate your bandwidth or your energy stores so that you don't get home at the end of the day and want to completely collapse? And this does take a little bit of time. It's a little bit of practice, a little bit of trial and error. You're not always gonna knock it out of the park. It is forever an evolving sort of flow. Some days you're gonna feel great, some days you might miss the mark a little bit, and that's okay. Next, make sure your to-do list does not continue to get longer and longer and longer. Maybe put one or two main objectives for the day at the top of your list that you want to take care of. And if anything else gets done, that's great. I know for me, uh chores, household chores, things like cleaning, laundry, the groceries, and cooking. Can I do all of that in one day? Yeah. Do I want to do it all on my day off? No. So if I do it on a workday, that means it's getting done in the afternoon or evening. And that's really tough because now I'm tired and I don't necessarily have the desire to do all of those things. So maybe I'll do one or two of them and I'll push the other two to another day. That just means I have to make sure that I have enough underwear and socks to get me through the next couple days and I don't need to do my laundry immediately. Or I have enough chicken breast cooked or turkey breast cooked or cans of tuna so I can get through the next day or two without starving. Number three, build rest into your plan. This is my favorite. If you wait until everything else is done, you're gonna be going to bed late. But if you give yourself a pause, if you give yourself a 20-minute break in the middle of the day, if you give yourself a moment to just step away from the desk, blink your eyes, look at the sun, maybe, smell the outside air, it'll do a lot for you. Number four, stop explaining yourself to people. At this point, you don't owe anyone an any sort of explanation or justification for wanting something different. And this will come up when you're with friends that you've had for a long time or coworkers that you've known for a really long time. Sometimes people see you the way you used to be and not the way you are now. And you have to find your way of just politely declining the invites or politely saying, No, I'm not available for that, and keeping it moving. And then the last one check in with yourself with what ambitious really means to you, to the you right now, not to the you. From five years ago, because I guarantee you, some of the things that were once so incredibly important to you are not anymore. They're probably not even a fleeting thought anymore. I remember when I started my online training business. The idea came up probably around 2012. And at the time, my vision was to live somewhere tropical, somewhere beautiful, and be working completely remote from my laptop, not customer-facing, doing programming for my online clients that lived all over the world. Sounds great, right? Now when I think about that, I say to myself, no, thank you. I would rather work in person and then have my online stuff be things similar to this, to a podcast or a body of work, or my paintings, or dancing, but not something where I still need to be attached to my computer 24-7. Now, listen, I know this episode might be all over the place, but this is just all the stuff that's top of mind for me right now. And I always speak to you from the heart. I always speak to you with what's going on in the current moment. And I think it's important that we consistently check in with ourselves and identify, you know, what are we still carrying around that we've genuinely outgrown? And what can we look forward to? What's what are what are we working towards? What are we moving ahead to? The thing is, it doesn't have to be this big, huge undertaking or this big overhaul of your life. It could simply be the next three or four steps, or maybe even just the next step period. Now I want to remind you that showing up for yourself is self-care. It's not selfish because you have to do whatever you can to be healthy as you age, as you get older. And that includes your mental health. Now, the project I've been working on for months is almost ready to be launched, and it's a strength program called Lift Like You Mean It. I'm gonna include a link in the show notes that you can check it out. If you want to sign up for the wait list, there's a way to do that. And if you want to send me a text and let me know what you're working on, I would love to hear from you. There is a way to do that in the show notes as well. As always, I appreciate your time and attention each and every week. If you found this episode helpful, do me a favor and share it with a friend. Every time you share one of these episodes with somebody else, you give me the opportunity to get a little bit more visibility and to connect with more incredible human beings just like yourself. Thank you for being here, and as always, I'll catch you on the next one.