WEBVTT 00:01.933 --> 00:05.000 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% AMNA NAWAZ: Freelance writer Rainesford Stauffer focuses her work on younger generations. 00:07.000 --> 00:10.266 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% Her upcoming novel "All the Gold Stars" takes a closer look at how they view work 00:12.166 --> 00:16.100 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% and burnout. Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on rethinking ambition. 00:18.000 --> 00:20.033 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% RAINESFORD STAUFFER, Freelance Writer: At one point, I think my professional life 00:20.033 --> 00:24.800 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% was my life. I behaved very much as if work was the centerpiece of everything. 00:26.666 --> 00:30.900 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% I started realizing how much of that was rooted in insecurity that I was never going 00:32.933 --> 00:35.966 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% to be good enough. And once I figured out that we were having a conversation about 00:35.966 --> 00:40.066 align:left position:20% line:77% size:70% self-worth and not work, that really changed the way I thought about it. 00:43.700 --> 00:48.433 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% I was too ambitious as a child. Part of the thing that I'm trying to get away from in 00:48.433 --> 00:53.166 align:left position:10% line:71% size:80% adulthood is sort of reconfiguring what my relationship with ambition is. In some ways, 00:53.166 --> 00:57.033 align:left position:20% line:77% size:70% ambition was reinforcing the worst impulses of my mental health, 00:57.033 --> 01:00.366 align:left position:10% line:83% size:80% that I was only as good as the last thing I produced. 01:00.366 --> 01:05.300 align:left position:10% line:71% size:80% The messaging that I got about education and work and coming of age in general when I was a young 01:07.766 --> 01:11.333 align:left position:10% line:71% size:80% adult, I think was really grounded in a sense that we're all running out of time. I felt like 01:13.333 --> 01:15.433 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% there was a lot of messaging around figuring out who you were going to be in the world, 01:15.433 --> 01:20.400 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% what you were going to do, where you were going to go do it as early as you possibly could. And 01:22.866 --> 01:25.800 align:left position:10% line:71% size:80% if you hadn't managed to lock down the answers to those kind of key questions, you had failed. 01:25.800 --> 01:29.733 align:left position:10% line:83% size:80% I felt like I was failing young adulthood, when, in reality, 01:29.733 --> 01:34.733 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% that kind of changing course is exactly what young adulthood is. When we focus so much on 01:37.300 --> 01:40.500 align:left position:10% line:71% size:80% what someone achieves and how early we do it, the part we miss are all of the other parts of them. 01:42.500 --> 01:46.933 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% And so one of the things that makes me so passionate about reporting on these intersecting 01:49.533 --> 01:52.500 align:left position:10% line:71% size:80% ideas of achievement in young adulthood or life trajectories and ambition is that the more we can 01:54.566 --> 01:58.133 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% unravel these myths of what it means to be good, the closer we can come to feeling good enough. 02:00.233 --> 02:04.433 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% I'm coming to understand that there's a way to pursue things that matter to you, and it also 02:06.533 --> 02:09.766 align:left position:20% line:71% size:70% not be the whole of your identity, which I think is where I was a little bit misguided before, 02:09.766 --> 02:14.766 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% is, I felt like I needed to be one thing. And, in reality, we're all a lot of things. 02:16.766 --> 02:19.600 align:left position:20% line:71% size:70% There were a lot of conversations I had with young adults when I was working on my first 02:19.600 --> 02:24.600 align:left position:20% line:71% size:70% book about how work was consuming all their waking hours. They were working three separate 02:26.600 --> 02:28.966 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% jobs and still couldn't afford to pay their rent. And they had no health insurance. And 02:28.966 --> 02:33.966 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% it felt like the more they tried to expand the scope of their lives and to be full, 02:35.533 --> 02:38.566 align:left position:20% line:77% size:70% fulfilled human beings in their lives, the more work took from them. 02:38.566 --> 02:43.566 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% I think, for a lot of us, it was mostly kind of looking over our shoulders, thinking, I should 02:45.633 --> 02:48.066 align:left position:20% line:71% size:70% have more figured out by now than I do. I should be doing something other than what I'm doing. 02:48.066 --> 02:50.533 align:left position:20% line:83% size:70% And I think the tricky part about that is those 02:50.533 --> 02:55.100 align:left position:10% line:77% size:80% goalposts of what it means to achieve just keep moving. They never stop. 02:55.100 --> 03:00.133 align:left position:10% line:71% size:80% My name is Rainesford Stauffer, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on rethinking ambition. 03:01.333 --> 03:03.333 align:left position:20% line:83% size:70% AMNA NAWAZ: Good life lessons for all of us.