Ambition Beyond the Corporate Ladder: A New Measure of Success
Are You Ambitious? Maybe you felt ambitious at some point and now you’re wondering where it has gone.
Ambition: A Desire for Success
But whose version of success? It’s interesting how ambition is so often equated with climbing a corporate ladder, launching businesses, or outpacing competitors. The language itself is aggressive: climbing, crushing, nailing, launching. It assumes ambition is about domination, about getting ahead at all costs.
But I have worked with countless ambitious women. All of them are deeply ambitious, just not in the narrow way ambition is often framed.
Ambitious to:
Not let work be the centre of their lives
Parent in ways that honour their needs and their children’s emotions
Change the culture in their children’s schools
Build businesses that align with their calling without exploiting others
Create more time for what truly matters
Say no at work and honour their capacity
Find joy and creativity in everyday life
Carve out breathing space amidst endless demands
Develop a healthy (non-codependent, non-exploitative) relationship with work
Where Ambition Meets Opportunity
Many people are quietly quitting the rat race, realising that the conventional success narrative is flawed. We have one life, and corporations shouldn’t consume the best of us. Ambition isn’t about exhausting ourselves in service of someone else’s goals, it’s about aligning our efforts with what truly matters.
Real ambition is about stepping into our full capacity, creating opportunities that reflect our values, and choosing success on our own terms. It means saying no to toxic productivity and yes to work that feels meaningful.
How Does Success Look? Can It Be Measured?
Success isn’t a single destination; it’s deeply personal and fluid. For some, success is financial freedom. For others, it’s more time, better relationships, or impact in a chosen area. Success can be measured not just in outcomes but in alignment, how well your life and work reflect your values, capacity, and joy.
Reclaiming Ambition
Doing work that is important to you, whether paid or unpaid, is ambitious. Living in alignment with your values is ambitious. Resisting societal pressures that demand you give more than you have is ambitious. And it’s not easy.
Going against the norm can feel lonely, scary, and full of self-doubt. That’s why we need each other, to hold one another accountable, to remind each other of what we said we wanted, and to celebrate ambition in its many forms.
Let’s reclaim ambition and step away from schedules and workplaces that drain us. Let’s redefine success to include capacity, joy, and alignment. Let’s honour ambition that builds, sustains, and creates not just ambition that competes and consumes.
