Deconstructing Ambition: A Syllabus
*Here is the link to the syllabus for folks in a bit of a hurry. :)
The year was 2018, early May. I sat in the front row under a white tent on the lawn outside Cornell’s Architecture, Art, and Planning building, dressed in a flattering white Zara dress I bought months ago during a trip to New York City for a UN-Habitat job interview. Graduation season filled the air with excitement as I glanced at the event program in my hand, eagerly searching for my name. It was listed with an asterisk under the Dean’s List for urban planning students, indicating that I was graduating Magna Cum Laude. The ceremony was brief but beautiful, and I felt honored to receive two awards — one for an outstanding dissertation and another for a community design project. After the ceremony, my proud parents, who had invested thousands of dollars in my tuition, insisted on taking pictures wherever my university’s name or logo was visible on campus. As the pomp and circumstance in Ithaca came to a close, I packed my belongings and embarked on a five-hour bus ride to New York City, ready to start my OPT year at my dream job as an analyst for UN-Habitat in Manhattan.
Following a year in New York, I moved to London for graduate school. Naturally, I considered attending Oxbridge or one of the top London schools, with a particular affinity for LSE. However, I didn’t want to limit myself to urban policy work, and pursuing an MBA was the most practical choice. After 21 months, I graduated from London Business School with an MBA focused on marketing and joined Deloitte’s Dubai office after a pleasant summer exploring Europe. Fast forward to today, June 2023, and I have ascended the ranks in my consulting career at Deloitte, reside in a beautiful apartment, recently returned from the Forbes 30 Under 30 summit in Botswana, and I am preparing to launch my housing-focused startup in hopes of securing a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
This is how I envisioned my life unfolding five years ago. However, it is far from my reality.
In May 2019, my friend Grace and I stood at the back of the tent on the lawn outside the Architecture, Art, and Planning building, indulging in hors d’oeuvres and giggling. Donned in sun dresses from Shein, we felt no need to dress up because this event was primarily for students in our department receiving awards. The rest of us had come for the free food. As we watched our classmates accept their awards, we exchanged snickers, acknowledging that we barely made it to graduation. Graduating a year later than expected, we anticipated the impending burden of student loans. Instead of joy and excitement during graduation season, I was overwhelmed by a sense of relief. When thousands of students and I tossed our graduation hats into the air in a euphoric frenzy, I knew I was finally free. After a short, unenjoyable holiday in Florida with my family, as I anxiously pondered my next steps, I found myself back in my childhood home in Nigeria. Partially by choice, seeking the space to heal from years of burnout, but also due to a lack of viable alternatives. A few months later, I started my NYSC program.
Unfortunately, the international real estate company where I had secured an internship before graduation had recently closed its operations in Lagos and Kenya, leaving me jobless. Although an alumnus helped me secure a position at Deloitte in Lagos, they ultimately declined to hire youth corps members that year. Once again, I felt lost and unemployed. After several months of interviewing and revising resumes, I secured a position at a real estate company in VI. I was incredibly underpaid and ultimately laid off when Covid hit. Throughout the pandemic, I spent most of my time applying for jobs until I reached a point of surrender. I turned to freelance marketing and design journalism, focusing on my spiritual and healing journey. At the end of 2020, while on a family holiday in Dubai, I came close to landing my dream job as a junior writer at Architectural Digest Middle East but unfortunately fell short. Returning to Lagos in 2021, I found myself depressed and unemployed but filled with hope. As I continued to share content and write about my spirituality, my words and curation began to resonate with people. A few months later, I co-founded The Table Community and eventually secured a position with a prominent remote startup, working on their customer experience team. Fast forward to today, June 2023 — I have paid off my student loans, attempting to transition careers, The Table Community is now two years old, and I am diligently working on a manuscript for a book.
Similar to heartbreak, where you grieve the loss of a future possibility that will never come to fruition, I occasionally find myself mourning the career-oriented, academically-driven future I never experienced. I am especially reminded of this lost potential life when I come across someone else via a LinkedIn update or Instagram graduation post, living a version of the achievement-based narrative I once envisioned for myself.
But as I reflect on my journey, I realize that I don’t miss the life I had before, which revolved around accomplishments and external validation. It was riddled with unending anxiety and an inherent competitiveness that eventually led to a crippling experience of burnout. There is something profoundly liberating about walking away from that identity, despite occasional longing and curiosity for what could have been.
Traumatic experiences have a lasting impact, with the potential to forever alter the course of our lives. That is what my experience at Cornell as a transfer student was. Traumatic. For years, I have been ashamed to properly name the experience because, as a family member put it, ‘You’re not the first person to go to a top college,’ and after a lifetime of hard work, I should have been prepared. But nothing prepares you for a sinking feeling of disappointment that unexpectedly chokes you in the middle of the night as you lay on your single bed in your dorm room when you realize that you had tied all your happiness and meaning to this single moment. You feel the ache in your bones from years of work, only to discover that the hedonistic treadmill of success never stops. To heal from something, you must first name and acknowledge it. Whether you ignore or face life’s hardships head-on, they will profoundly shape you. My own experiences shifted my trajectory and forced me to reassess my path. Although painful, this life-altering experience opened up new possibilities leading me down a path I never knew existed. It introduced me to an inner world I would have never explored had I remained rigid in my previous course.
“There is no Forbes 30 under 30 recognition for inner work.”
Throughout my spiritual journey, acceptance has been a recurring theme. Accepting the challenges, embracing the changes, and embarking on new paths due to accepting my reality. Initially, I attempted to bypass my current reality and ‘get back on track’ by attempting to heal my burnout through incremental rest and somatic practices. But once I realized surrender was the first step to healing, I knew that to experience sustainable change, I had to fundamentally shift my previous value system that tied my identity and self-worth to my accomplishments. I had to redefine success for myself, detach from external validation, and cultivate a value system that allowed for a balanced and healthy approach to life.
There is no Forbes 30 under 30 recognition for inner work. It won’t be celebrated in extended family group chats or recognized with awards. Because it is a deeply personal journey that often requires you to leave behind a version of yourself that everyone else knows, you are the only one that can validate and affirm yourself throughout this journey. The lack of societal accolades does not make this experience any less significant or transformative. Your peers might not marvel at the sight of your resume, but your soul will thank you.
Post-burnout, post-anxiety, and with a deeper understanding of myself, the life I imagined for myself at this point, the one filled with accolades and external recognition, is not the life I have. I am constructing a new reality by learning to work with the cards I have been dealt. I find myself asking, ‘What is the life available to me? What is the life I truly want?’ And as I explore these questions, I understand that my motivations and aspirations are deeply connected to my spirituality. Intentionality becomes my compass, allowing me to build at my own pace and show up more authentically, unburdened by rigid expectations and societal pressures. Maybe the impact I currently have is enough. Perhaps getting a few friends to read bell hooks’’ ‘All About Love’ and the heartfelt messages I receive from them are my own form of validation. Rethinking the traditional notions of greatness and achievement has been necessary for me to find happiness and true fulfillment. I am now writing, building a community, and reclaiming what I wanted to do years ago; this collection of transformative moments, realizations, and actions for me are what living a successful life looks like.
By popular demand, I have created a syllabus of 40+ resources that aided me in my journey of healing from hustle culture, toxic ambition, and an achievement-based identity. Although I have read and listened to so much and can’t quite remember everything, I believe this syllabus is extensive and hope it will be helpful to folks on a similar journey. Below, I highlight three of my top resources from the syllabus.
Media Type: Podcast
Creators: Krista Tippet, Abraham Verghese, Denise Pope
I remember walking around my Lekki neighborhood during the early months of the pandemic, listening to Denise Pope addressing anxious Stanford students and assuring them that our education system does not support the creation of full, well-rounded human beings and challenging the students to rethink their cultural view of success as one that prioritizes a life filled with presence and vulnerability. I stopped in my tracks and cried.
2. How Millennials Became The Burnt Out Generation
Media Type: Article
Creator: Anne Helen Petersen
This article was great because it made me feel less alone in my disillusionment and exhaustion. I realized that some of what I had experienced had been systemic and that the life we were promised following our hard work wasn’t always available to many of us.
3. The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life
Media Type: Book
Creator: David Brooks
I heard David Brooks speak to Oprah about his book on the Oprah Super Soul Podcast and immediately went to download it on Z-library. David shares two metaphorical mountains we must climb to live a moral life. He described the ‘first mountain’ as self-centered and egotistic and the ‘second mountain’ life as other-centered with new commitments. I immediately recognized that I had left the first mountain and found my way to the second one over the past few years. This book is one I have referenced multiple times over the years.
Check out the rest of the syllabus on Notion, and I wish you well on your healing journey.
