The Ambition Gap: Reinventing Success on Your Own Terms

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Hello everyone, and welcome to the Dr. Sam Collins podcast. Today, I want to talk about ambition, and I want to talk about having a bigger ambition for ourselves and for others than perhaps we might envision for ourselves. And I want to start with a story. I remember being at an Aspire workshop in London once, which I was running, and it was a small group of women, 20 25 women, and we were I can’t even totally

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remember what the subject was. It was a leadership workshop, but that’s it. We were talking about different leadership styles, and women were becoming more comfortable with their authentic style and thinking about how they communicate with others, and usual kind of leadership workshop type stuff a few years ago. Anyway, my main memory of this is there was this amazing woman there. She is a professor and doctor for respiratory medicine for the National

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Health Service in the UK. And so, incredibly bright, you know, brain the size of a planet. She’s [snorts] done incredibly well in her career, and she’s not, let’s say, what you might stereotypically expect when you would meet someone like that. She doesn’t look like that. She doesn’t sound like that. She’s completely relatable, normal. Just love her. Can’t And she’s really quite good with the F-word, using it

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quite a lot. So, I was like, “Hmm, well, I like her. Very rebellious.” Anyway, we’re all talking at the end, doing a little bit of networking at the end, and she’s talking to someone else, and she looks over towards me, and she looks at me, and she points at me, and she says, “You should be a professor.” First of all, I thought she was talking to someone else, like someone behind me, so I sort of turned around just to say, “Oh, who she talking to?” She said, “No, I’m talking to you. You would make the

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most amazing professor. You should think about it. I can help you. We can follow up afterwards. We can talk about it, and we can figure out how you’re going to do it.” Now, first of all, I was like, “Professor?” I’d never ever thought about being professor before. I have a doctorate degree, but you know what? I barely got that. My professor, who was my supervisor during my PhD, told me infamously, “To me, you’re not an academic. It will be a real shock if you

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actually pass, but we’ll do our best.” So, to actually get a doctorate was uh a little bit of a surprise, especially as I decided, as it is my style, to do it in a more countercultural way. So, I used a lot of storytelling in my PhD and future studies and visioning and not the usual, perhaps, PhD stuff. Maybe it is now, but this was actually 18 years ago. Anyway, so I thought to myself, “What?” Also, I had a dad. Have a dad

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who, when I did my O levels in the UK, you do O levels, it’s now GCSEs, I was the last year to do O levels, so you’ll get to know my age, but when I did my O levels, he said, “Oh, you’ve done your O levels. Now you Now you do your A levels.” No, like, “Well done, well done,” or anything like that. I did my A levels. I was never an A student. I was more like your Bs and Cs student, so he was a bit disappointed a lot disappointed at that. But he did my A levels and came, “Now you’re going to do your degree cuz you’re going to be the first person in the family to do a

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degree.” Not really, I think, for me. It was more that he wanted to be able to say, “She’s the first person in our family to do a degree. We’ve got We’re in degree family now.” Anyway, so I did my degree in business studies in Liverpool John Moores University, formerly Liverpool Polytechnic. For any Liverpool fans out there, I wanted to get as far away as possible as I could from my little hometown of Farnborough in Hampshire and the council estate that I grew up on. And so, I applied to Liverpool secretly.

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I also applied to Portsmouth, which is like the closest one. And I did that because I had a boyfriend at the time that wanted me to go somewhere close by and I thought, God. I remember going to Portsmouth and thinking, “This is just not for me.” And going to Liverpool, listening to The Cranberries music on the train up to Liverpool and thinking, “Oh, my life changing every day.” You know that song? Anyway, that’s my anthem. They’re going to play at my funeral. And I remember thinking, “This is me. Liverpool, woohoo!” And I Oh my god, I had the most

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amazing Anyway, I did go to Liverpool. Let’s cut a long story short. I did my degree at Liverpool. Pretty dramatic in the end because my mother passed away in my final year of studying. So, that was a very different path for another podcast. Anyway, so I did my degree and then what did my dad say? “You’ve done your degree. No, well, you know, a master’s.” So, I Yeah, I’m doing that. Anyway, well, after a certain number of years, I did end up doing a master’s in training and

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human resource management because I thought I was doing this job that I didn’t really love, but the part of the job that I loved was working with people and I was working in restaurants and I would be do the team meetings and I would train them into the the meal of the you know, the specials and all of that and customer service. And that’s the part of the job I love, but it was only 20 minutes of my day. So, I decided to do a master’s in training and human resource development because I wanted to really get good at the small part of my

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job that I actually loved. So, I did my master’s and of course, what did my dad say after that? What about the doctorate? And when I started aspiring in 2001, I thought to myself, I’m pretty young. I was 29. What do I know? People are going to expect me to be an expert in the field. So, that’s when I started the doctorate. And I’m telling you all of this because, you know, fast forward to I think it was like 2018 or something, when I was told, “You should be a professor.” My first thought was I was going to could hear my

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dad being like, “Well, you’ve done your doctorate. Now, what about being a professor?” And so, what I realized it was so many myself and I I don’t know whether you associate with this, too, is that we do things because we feel like we should. We do things because there is an expectation from a parent or a manager or a partner or a society or a friend or whatever that we should be doing the things that we’re doing. And we end up doing things that we don’t particularly love. They might be helpful

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and useful for our careers and our lives and our financial success and the rest of it, but we’re not we don’t really love it. So, when she said this to me, “You should be a professor.” I thought, “Well, when anyone uses the word should, I normally like start to back off slowly.” But when I looked at her face, I realized this and it was really important. She was saying this because in her mind, she could see my potential. And she was offering me a path to something

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in her view better, greater, more impactful, more influential a use of my skills. Something that she would enjoy perhaps me to be, so we could perhaps even be some kind of peers one day. And so, this was coming from this wonderful, beautiful, genuine place of being able to see someone else’s potential. So, that I believe is a skill in itself. Because don’t you find that it’s easier

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sometimes when we look at people and we can see their potential and we can almost sort of see this future unfolding for them before we can even see our own. So, we look at them and we say, “Oh my god, you could be the most amazing manager. You could be the most amazing chef. You could be the most amazing artist.” And they’re like, “Okay.” As maybe in their mind they have a little glimmer and glimpse of yeah, there is something that they want. Or maybe in the case when I was told you could be a professor, I’d never

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considered it. I thought it would be too much work, too academic, beyond me. Now, let me say, I did not pursue the path of professor. I’m not sure I ever would, but my point here is that people, other people can sometimes see our potential to be more, whether that whatever that looks like, than we can. All right? And I think that when that happens, it’s really important to take

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that on and say, “Okay, what is possible for me? What are my ambitions?” And I don’t know that we really spend enough time, energy, and effort in that kind of visioning or dreaming for ourselves. And if we do, we put all sorts of barriers in place, don’t we? All the

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women in leadership staff, the women as leaders, the women as as CEOs, women as board members, women as politicians, women as academics, women as doctors, women as lawyers, when we understand that and say, “Okay, well, maybe I could do that, but look at all the barriers that are in the way. Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that because I’ll never have a life. I’ll never have a family. I’ll never be able to deal with those

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politics. It will be too much. It’ll be too overwhelming. So, we put and you know, I’m not saying those things aren’t out there. I’m not I’m not completely unrealistic. They are out there. So, we put all of those in place and say, “Oh, yeah. Okay, nice idea, but you know, thank you.” So, we are constantly shoving things away that are possible. And I believe that this is really one of the biggest problems and issues that we have in the

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world right now. Because there are a lot of people, perhaps some of the people that are running the planet, running organizations, running your company, your institution, your school, who maybe they didn’t think like that. They were like, “Oh, yeah. Why not me? I can do that. I’m completely and utterly amazing and competent.” And then they apply for that job and they get it, probably because not enough competition from those of us that are a lot more humble

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and a lot more busy. So, is being humble and busy really going to get you to where you want to get to? Is being humble and busy really going to change the world into or your world into a world that you want to live in and you want your friends and your family and your children to really want to live in. We are so distracted with our to-do lists, back-to-back

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meetings, the day job, the housework, the health, the getting through the day, the caring, all of the caring, so much on the caring, the the kids, the elderly parents, ourselves. There is so much caring going on and we understandably put ourselves at the bottom of a very very long list. And dare we, dare we put

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ourselves on top of the list occasionally? No one else is calling us selfish, but we are calling ourselves selfish and we feel very guilty about it. Very, very guilty and you know, hide away. I’m so sorry. I’m going to have a break. I’m so sorry. I’m really unwell and so therefore, I’m not going to come in. I have to literally convince one of my one-to-one coaching clients this week, which is technically in

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coaching not what you’re meant to do convince, but I had to ask her the right questions, listen in the right way and support and challenge her to take some time off because she has internal cancer. Internal cancer. And through a big load of cancer treatment. I had to convince her to take some time off of work so that she can focus on herself, on her health, on getting better. I mean,

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blow my mind. But this is how we are. We just go on we go on and we go on and we go on and we go on until we drop. This has to change. The ambition for ourselves must grow and must be bigger. When I say ambition for myself for myself and yourself and ourselves as well, I’m not just talking about being a CEO. A lot of them don’t want to be a CEO. For you. What I’m talking about ambition for your health, ambition for your day, ambition for your

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sleep, ambition for your psychology, ambition for your ability to love and be in a loving partnership. Ambition for yourself to not get so angry and irritated and annoyed and not be Not saying don’t get angry and irritated and annoyed because I actually think these are great channeling emotions to make some great changes. But to have those emotions and learn and have the ambition and the skills to channel those into doing great things.

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I believe that we are all capable in our own individual ways of being absolutely extraordinary. What about that? What does your extraordinary mean? Having an extraordinary level of health. And I’m not talking about making the most money, having the biggest car, having the most social media likes and followers, having the most skinny body and the best clothes. I think that is

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all the biggest load of to be honest, all right? I’m talking about creating a more equitable, just, socially conscious world. It’s a big ambition, but we can all have a role in it. We can have a role in take in creating a socially just, equitable family, a socially just, equitable workplace, to make sure that we have friend groups

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that are not all exactly the same as us, that we open our minds up to new ideas, to new thinking, to try and understand those that are different to us. These are the small daily actions that in my mind are incredibly ambitious. I’m not asking you to quit your job and start a global charity tomorrow. I’m not asking you those of you who run

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a global charity to quit your job and do nothing and just focus on your health for a year. I’m not asking you to do any of those things. Although for some that might be true for some of you. It really is about finding your own individualized ambition for yourself at whatever age or stage you are. Whether you are 11 years old, 27, 49,

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71, or 92. I was wondering last night I I Googled what’s Gloria Steinem doing these days. What’s Gloria Steinem doing these days? You can see the picture of Gloria, picture behind me. And I look Okay, Gloria Steinem’s 92. 92 and still active. And she says that movement creation is not a job. It’s a lifelong It’s lifelong. And I thought, I love that. I still want to be doing what I love and what I do at 92, 102, and

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hopefully at 103 I’ll be like, I did a really I’m really pleased with myself and now I shall go off and come back and be a cat and just relax in the next life. So, ambition. What is ambition for you? Can you see it? Can you start to feel it? Can you also see it in others? And when you see it in others, be vocal with them and say, you could do this, you could do that. Not you should, not I’m going to make you, not this is the right thing for your career. I’m not talking about that. But this type of ambition

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that you can see in the possibility and potential that you can see in other fantastic, extraordinary people around you. So, thank you for listening to Dr. Sam Collins podcast and think ambition. Think freedom. Think what it means to you and start taking your own individual baby steps this week towards that. Until next time. Thank you.