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Ambition can't be your identity
Before the baby
Before motherhood, Chelsea Ryckis could not have imagined canceling a meeting to take care of her son. While pregnant she figured a nanny or babysitter could handle that kind of situation, because she needed to grow the business. In the last year she has canceled about four speaking trips. Redefining ambition has been one of the biggest struggles of her life, apart from a brain injury in college.
Worth tied to applause
Choosing her baby over the stage means no applause for spreading the mission and changing American healthcare. She gets no recognition from the baby or from anybody else. That showed her that all of her worth was tied to what other people in business think about her. It is why the award did not make her feel better, and why ten million or any other number would not either. She would keep chasing for the rest of her life while her body kept giving signals she kept ignoring.
Pulling ambition apart
She decided that is not the woman she will be. She will not let pressure turn her into a mom who reacts and a boss who cannot coach. Ambition has to sit apart from identity, and she is still working out what that looks like. It is messy.
Why does tying worth to success backfire?
Psychologist Jennifer Crocker at the University of Michigan developed the idea of contingencies of self-worth, the areas of life in which a person stakes their self-esteem. In a 2001 paper with Connie Wolfe, she argued that when self-esteem depends on a domain, successes bring a lift and setbacks bring a sharp drop. The paper appeared in the journal Psychological Review.
Why does a strong work identity make change hard?
Research on athletes shows a parallel. In 1993 Britton Brewer, Judy Van Raalte, and Darwyn Linder published a paper titled "Athletic identity: Hercules' muscles or Achilles' heel?" They described how a strong identity as an athlete can bring motivation but also difficulty when a career ends or an injury occurs. Later studies linked high athletic identity to harder adjustment after retirement from sport.
Why does a bigger number never feel like enough?
Economist Richard Easterlin reported in 1974 that richer people within a country reported higher happiness, yet average happiness did not rise over decades as national income grew. One explanation is that people judge their lives against a moving reference point, so aspirations climb along with income. The finding became known as the Easterlin paradox.
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