Have you ever looked at your life and thought, I did everything I was supposed to do… so why doesn’t this feel better?

In this episode, I’m joined by writer and cultural voice Amil Niazi for a candid, relatable conversation about her new memoir “Life Beyond Ambition” (out January 6!) and dive into not just ambition, but burnout and the moment you realize that chasing “success” doesn’t always deliver the fulfillment it promised. We dig into what happens when the timelines, expectations, and definitions of achievement we grew up with start to crack — and how freeing it can be when they do.

✨ (0:00) — Why feeling “behind in life” is so common (and so rarely talked about)

📖 (4:30) — A look at Amil’s early life and how ambition became a survival strategy

🏃‍♀️ (8:30) — Hustle culture, scrappy early jobs, and saying yes to everything just to get ahead

🧠 (13:00) — The myth of meritocracy and why “working harder” doesn’t level the playing field

⏳ (17:00) — The millennial career crisis and realizing the playbook we were sold no longer works

🔥 (21:30) — Burnout, box-checking, and why success doesn’t feel the way we expected it to

🧩 (25:30) — Letting go of exceptionalism and questioning why “average” feels like a failure

👩‍👧 (29:30) — Motherhood, ambition, and the impossible standard of doing everything perfectly

🌍 (33:30) — Pandemic life, shrinking worlds, and the unexpected freedom of “only enough”

💭 (36:30) — Redefining ambition, identity, and self-worth beyond productivity

🛋️ (38:30) — What rest really looks like in midlife (and why modeling it matters)

🌱 (41:00) — Life after ambition: choosing contentment, presence, and a different definition of success

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🪩 Find Amil on Instagram at @amilniazi and order your own copy of Life After Ambition here

🥽 Dive into the Millennial Career Crisis discussion on Instagram: @janelabrahami

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📱 Check out @foundat40podcast on Instagram for extras, outtakes, and mild oversharing

🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Foundat40

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keywords: midlife reinvention, millennial burnout, life after ambition, redefining success, hustle culture recovery, burnout and motherhood, working mom identity, letting go of exceptionalism, the millennial career crisis, ambition vs fulfillment, productivity and self-worth, midlife identity shift, redefining ambition in midlife, choosing “good enough,” contentment over achievement