1 00:00:01,933 --> 00:00:05,000 AMNA NAWAZ: Freelance writer Rainesford Stauffer focuses her work on younger generations. 2 00:00:07,000 --> 00:00:10,266 Her upcoming novel "All the Gold Stars" takes a closer look at how they view work 3 00:00:12,166 --> 00:00:16,100 and burnout. Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on rethinking ambition. 4 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:20,033 RAINESFORD STAUFFER, Freelance Writer: At one point, I think my professional life 5 00:00:20,033 --> 00:00:24,800 was my life. I behaved very much as if work was the centerpiece of everything. 6 00:00:26,666 --> 00:00:30,900 I started realizing how much of that was rooted in insecurity that I was never going 7 00:00:32,933 --> 00:00:35,966 to be good enough. And once I figured out that we were having a conversation about 8 00:00:35,966 --> 00:00:40,066 self-worth and not work, that really changed the way I thought about it. 9 00:00:43,700 --> 00:00:48,433 I was too ambitious as a child. Part of the thing that I'm trying to get away from in 10 00:00:48,433 --> 00:00:53,166 adulthood is sort of reconfiguring what my relationship with ambition is. In some ways, 11 00:00:53,166 --> 00:00:57,033 ambition was reinforcing the worst impulses of my mental health, 12 00:00:57,033 --> 00:01:00,366 that I was only as good as the last thing I produced. 13 00:01:00,366 --> 00:01:05,300 The messaging that I got about education and work and coming of age in general when I was a young 14 00:01:07,766 --> 00:01:11,333 adult, I think was really grounded in a sense that we're all running out of time. I felt like 15 00:01:13,333 --> 00:01:15,433 there was a lot of messaging around figuring out who you were going to be in the world, 16 00:01:15,433 --> 00:01:20,400 what you were going to do, where you were going to go do it as early as you possibly could. And 17 00:01:22,866 --> 00:01:25,800 if you hadn't managed to lock down the answers to those kind of key questions, you had failed. 18 00:01:25,800 --> 00:01:29,733 I felt like I was failing young adulthood, when, in reality, 19 00:01:29,733 --> 00:01:34,733 that kind of changing course is exactly what young adulthood is. When we focus so much on 20 00:01:37,300 --> 00:01:40,500 what someone achieves and how early we do it, the part we miss are all of the other parts of them. 21 00:01:42,500 --> 00:01:46,933 And so one of the things that makes me so passionate about reporting on these intersecting 22 00:01:49,533 --> 00:01:52,500 ideas of achievement in young adulthood or life trajectories and ambition is that the more we can 23 00:01:54,566 --> 00:01:58,133 unravel these myths of what it means to be good, the closer we can come to feeling good enough. 24 00:02:00,233 --> 00:02:04,433 I'm coming to understand that there's a way to pursue things that matter to you, and it also 25 00:02:06,533 --> 00:02:09,766 not be the whole of your identity, which I think is where I was a little bit misguided before, 26 00:02:09,766 --> 00:02:14,766 is, I felt like I needed to be one thing. And, in reality, we're all a lot of things. 27 00:02:16,766 --> 00:02:19,600 There were a lot of conversations I had with young adults when I was working on my first 28 00:02:19,600 --> 00:02:24,600 book about how work was consuming all their waking hours. They were working three separate 29 00:02:26,600 --> 00:02:28,966 jobs and still couldn't afford to pay their rent. And they had no health insurance. And 30 00:02:28,966 --> 00:02:33,966 it felt like the more they tried to expand the scope of their lives and to be full, 31 00:02:35,533 --> 00:02:38,566 fulfilled human beings in their lives, the more work took from them. 32 00:02:38,566 --> 00:02:43,566 I think, for a lot of us, it was mostly kind of looking over our shoulders, thinking, I should 33 00:02:45,633 --> 00:02:48,066 have more figured out by now than I do. I should be doing something other than what I'm doing. 34 00:02:48,066 --> 00:02:50,533 And I think the tricky part about that is those 35 00:02:50,533 --> 00:02:55,100 goalposts of what it means to achieve just keep moving. They never stop. 36 00:02:55,100 --> 00:03:00,133 My name is Rainesford Stauffer, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on rethinking ambition. 37 00:03:01,333 --> 00:03:03,333 AMNA NAWAZ: Good life lessons for all of us.