Who

Amina AlTai is an executive coach, leadership trainer, and chronic illness advocate. She's an Entrepreneur Magazine expert-in-residence, a Forbes contributor, and was named one of Success Magazine’s Women of Influence.

What

The Ambition Trap is the anti-hustle guide to getting what you really want. Ambition isn’t a dirty word, but an invitation to design your life with even greater purpose, meaning, and joy.

Why

Amina says, “I wrote this book to inspire you to change your relationship to striving. It’s an invitation to lean into your most natural gifts, nourish yourself in the long-term pursuit of your goals, and allow contentment to guide the way.”

& We

…chose The Ambition Trap because it’s a needed reminder that it’s never too late to escape the cycle of overwork and redirect your ambition toward building the life of your wildest dreams. Enjoy!

Here’s Your Exclusive Excerpt

It was a sweltering summer Friday in Manhattan. By eight a.m., the streets were already filled with people in a state of agitation over another heat advisory. The air was sticky with humidity, forcing my dress against my legs like a damp cloth. I hopped into a little red MINI Cooper, the Zipcar I had rented for the day, the steering wheel almost too hot to touch. I safely placed my work tote and laptop onto the passenger seat as if it were a companion. Then I blasted the AC, pulled out of the parking garage, and floored it.

I flew up I-95, making my way from New York City to Connecticut to visit a client for our regular Friday meeting. Like many career-driven perfectionists, I loathed being late. I wove in and out of traffic, jerking the car across lanes to avoid slowdowns. I had already clocked a sixty-hour workweek and was eager to get to the weekend.

And then my phone rang.

I quickly glanced at the caller ID on what would now be a vintage iPhone and saw it was my physician, Dr. Gulati, who was calling.

“Hello!” I answered, rather annoyed. I didn’t need anything slowing me down.

“Where are you?” Dr. Gulati asked, sounding panicked. There was a strain in her voice and an urgency in her tone that I’d never heard from her before.

“Driving to my client . . . can we make this quick?” I said, a bit dismissively.

I could hear her sipping the air in on the other end of the phone, taking a deep breath, and I was curious what she was steadying herself for. I will never forget what she said next.

“If you don’t go to the hospital now, instead of going to your client, you will be days away from multiple organ failure.”

I blinked hard, not quite comprehending what she was saying.

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“You have become dangerously anemic,” Dr. Gulati said. “Without IV infusions, you are at risk of widespread organ dysfunction and possibly failure.”

The last few years flashed before my eyes. Building a company, achieving major milestones, the good-girl tendencies. How could this have happened to me? I asked myself. I did everything “right.”

I didn’t know it then, but I had inadvertently fallen into what I later would call “the ambition trap.”

It turned out I had celiac disease and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and because I was not taking care of myself, I had lost the ability to absorb critical minerals. Because I was too ill to take a gradual approach, in the weeks to come I had to work with a hematologist to use intravenous therapies to restore my health. But the diagnoses (and my genetics) weren’t the real problem; me and my mind were. My workaholic tendencies and painful relationship to success were—quite literally—killing me.

The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working

In the decade-plus since my near-death experience, I have told this story on countless stages and podcasts. The one thing that is never lost on me is how many people queue up or message me after to tell me they have a very similar story— and it wouldn’t surprise me if you had one, too. How could that be? How could so many of us be working ourselves into pain and suffering?

After my health scare, I started to put my ambition under the microscope and a distressing though very common pattern emerged. Probably like many of you reading this, I started my career just before one of the worst economic declines in US history. Late-stage capitalism taught me to derive my value, self-worth, and identity from perpetually competing through jobs and by gathering achievements. I learned to put my head down, work hard, and hustle tirelessly. Like many of us ambitious folks coming of age at this time, I felt like my work wasn’t just a job but my whole personality. This ethos no doubt cost me my relationships, my hobbies, and ultimately my physical and mental health.

Can you relate? Maybe you’ve also tried to outwork (whether consciously or unconsciously) everyone in the room to prove your value, and it’s made you sick.

Maybe you’ve been chasing achievements, money, and titles, but it now feels empty and pointless.

Maybe you’re battling your way to the top but feel crushed by the microaggressions and are wondering if it’s worth it.

Maybe you’re having an existential crisis of your own, as the peak of the mountain you just climbed doesn’t feel like the dream you had in mind at all.

One of the challenges in the way we’ve come to be in relationship with ambition is that we believe it has a never-ending upward trajectory—that being ambitious means never stopping, never taking a break. In fact, the pervasive impression of all-things-ambitious is about more growth at all times, no matter the cost. This has caused many of us to reject ambition altogether, to see it as a dirty word. But let’s make one thing clear—ambition is neutral and natural.

From The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living by Amina AlTai, published by The Open Field, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. © 2025 by Amina AlTai.

Audio excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from THE AMBITION TRAP by Amina AlTai, Foreword by Rachel Rodgers; read by Amina AlTai and Maria Shriver. © 2025 S Amina AlTai, ℗ 2025 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.