54. What is Ambition? Our Ambitious-Ish Experiences
Do you ever feel like you've lost that drive, that desire to succeed? While life may look pretty good from the outside, how you feel living it is a different story. If this resonates with you, you're not alone.
In this episode, we're discussing what it means to be "ambitious-ish" and how to find balance between your doing and being energy. We share their own experiences of burnout and chronic stress, and how learning to regulate our nervous systems and get out of survival mode was a game-changer.
Join us as we explore how to go big and actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create. Discover how to lean into more feminine energy, take real time off without fear of being left behind, and get grounded without losing your ambition. If you're ready to redefine success on your own terms, this episode is for you
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How to recognize when you're stuck in chronic survival mode and the impact it has on your critical thinking and executive functioning.
Why finding balance between your doing (masculine) and being (feminine) energy is crucial for avoiding burnout and creating a life you love.
How to use the concept of "dimmer switches" to dial your energy up or down depending on what you need to create in the moment.
The transformational power of easing up on things and allowing more flow and opportunity into your life.
How to show up authentically and unapologetically as an ambitious woman and leader.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Kelle Cobble: What are you going big on right now? It's full of frustration, challenge, friction, and risk, right? Doubt, obstacles, missed expectations, and disappointments.
Nina Lynch: For the things you're moving towards, but don't have yet. For the amount of time you thought it would take to get it, and you didn't. To stay in the process of ambition long enough to create it, you have to get good at the in-between. What's in between you and the having, which is the hard stuff, the challenges, right?
Kelle: Mm-hmm. If you're ambitious, this comes with the territory. Because being ambitious means you have a strong desire to succeed.
Nina: And if you're ambitious, you know that failure is part of success, not the opposite.
Kelle: So you have to be a master of challenges to manage, react, and recover well when things are hard, when there's pain.
Nina: Yeah, you're activated, stimulated, and engaged in challenging circumstances. This is your wheelhouse, your zone.
Kelle: Yeah, you're not in survival or self-doubt. Quite the opposite, actually. You're grounded, collaborative, creative, and strong. They can bring it, all of it, because you can handle it. You can handle all of it.
Nina: But do you ever feel ambitious-ish? It's like, maybe I've lost that drive, that desire to succeed.
Kelle: Because while life doesn't look all that bad around you, how you feel living it does. That's exactly where we're going today.
Nina: Yeah, we've noticed there are quite a few new faces around here, so we wanted to reintroduce ourselves, Ambitious-Ish, and how we help women like you go big and actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create.
Kelle: Alright, let's jump in. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I'm Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina. And welcome to another episode of Ambitious-Ish. We are celebrating our one year anniversary today, the one year anniversary of this podcast!
Kelle: Yay! Happy Birthday!
Nina: Yeah, we are one. We are one. We thought it’d be a cool chance to reintroduce ourselves to all the newcomers. The who, what, where, when, and why.
Kelle: Yeah. Ambitious-Ish was born years and years ago when Nina and I found ourselves where you are right now, or at least we're guessing.
Nina: Yeah, we were questioning a lot of things, like the cost of our ambition and the trade-offs we'd made. It all looked pretty good from the outside, but how we felt living it, it felt pretty miserable.
Kelle: Yeah, we were attacking ourselves along the way and it sounded like, I should be further along. I should be doing better. No one else can do it, so I will. Everyone else has it so easy. And I didn't know how to relax.
Nina: Yeah, it was like no one respects me. No one understands, right? I have to get my shit together. Like I was just always on myself. I can't win. I just have to get through this.
Kelle: Can I just add one in there too?
Nina: Yeah.
Kelle: Like, must be nice. Must be nice for them. Must be nice. Right?
Nina: It's terrible. Yeah. Well and like, because of these thoughts, playfulness and laughter and freedom all took the back seat to daily life. Right, Kel? I mean, the work was never ending. At one point, I was working at work and then working at home. I didn't know how to turn it off. This constant need for productivity started affecting my health.
Kelle: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't understand why I was so competitive and strived so much. I literally could not turn off the drive.
Nina: Yeah. It's like we were in go mode all day. From the moment I woke up to the moment I fell into bed exhausted, it was like my own very exhausting version of Groundhog Day.
Kelle: Yeah. Yeah, I felt like I was constantly late because I was trying to get one more thing done, trying to do too much all of the time. I felt volatile. I was so busy. I wasn't taking care of myself. And if I didn't get a workout in, look out. I could blow up at any moment. And I just felt like no one really understood me. They didn't respect me. They didn't respect my time.
Nina: Yeah, totally. This is where we meet most of our clients. It's ironic because they'd likely never call themselves ambitious-ish, but that's how they feel. It's like, huh, maybe I've lost that drive. I don't know if I can do this anymore.
Where did that desire to succeed go? Who am I? You know, it's sort of a crisis moment because they have a lot of what they've always wanted in their lives, the career, the family, the home, maybe. And they don't get why they don't feel as good as their lives look.
Kelle: And they get to a point where they consider burning it all down. They want to give themselves a break without losing their edge, to slow down without falling behind or really doing less, right? They don't wanna do less. To take real time off without being forgotten or left behind. To find balance without being passed by, right?
Nina: To get grounded without losing their ambition. Right? You're right, Kel, they don't wanna do less. They want more. They're never content. That would mean they're full, like never to be hungry again, right? That's not our client, right?
Kelle: Yeah. Content is like my least favorite word in the world, by the way.
Nina: Just kind of means you're done. You're happy and full, right? I mean, it's, you know, anyway.
Kelle: Yeah. More on that later. But it's more like they go from one having and they're moving towards another. They're always moving towards the next having, which I guess is why I don't love the content.
Nina: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And the first step here, rock stars and a huge part of the coaching we do with clients, is to regulate your nervous system, to get out of survival mode, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. We have a killer episode all about survival mode.
It's one of the top five most downloaded episodes of Ambitious-Ish. It's number 9, so go check it out. But what we explain in that episode is that fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, those survival states, with practice, they start showing up as personality traits, right, Kel?
Kelle: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
Nina: And so survival is a place we need to learn to get out of, to be agile in and out of, and that's a big part of what we do in our coaching.
Kelle: Yes. And before I continue on, I just have to say, this is just on my mind about contentness, and I think just going back to this word content. I really, and I know you are the same, Nina, like we've really landed on sufficiency as kind of our go-to. Like we're not content. Of course we want more. We're still ambitious, right? But there's like a sufficiently like, I'm enough right now. I have enough right now. I don't need more. I just want more.
Nina: That's a good call. It's not a need. It's a want. Yeah.
Kelle: Yeah. Okay. Now that I have gotten that off my chest.
Nina: Completed that thought.
Kelle: Listen, when we're in survival, emotion is high and that's when our intellect drops, our logical critical thinking, our executive functioning literally goes offline when we're in survival.
Nina: And now more than ever, we need your critical thinking. It's chronic for our clients, right? They live their days putting themselves in harm's way. Big goals, big expectations, big risks.
Kelle: Yeah, and if they don't know how to be in the hard part, to be in the challenging part, they'll sink. This is where our coaching is gold.
Nina: Yeah, so how do you go big and actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create? It's by working with coaches who are masters of challenge.
Kelle: Coaches like us, right? We're on a mission to help smart driven women everywhere do ambition better. To go big and actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You can actually do it all.
Nina: Yeah, you see our brains weren't designed to point it and feel present, calm, sufficient along the way to create a life we love that we're obsessed with. You see, our brains are designed for safety, to keep us alive. They're designed to create more of the same. That is what is safe to our brain. It's just like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
Kelle: So if you feel stuck, you're not alone. Nothing's gone wrong. You're not broken. Our coaching helps clients understand how to use their brains for them instead of against them. To shift out of that stuck gear, that survival mode, and expand your edge.
Nina: Yeah, I think every single client we work with comes to us with this desire to feel calm and balanced in the challenges, when the circumstances around them are big and hard, which is often for ambitious women. It's all about finding balance.
Kelle: Yeah, it's not sitting back and putting your feet up and being like, okay, I'm good, right? This is really at the core of being ambitious-ish. It's finding that sweet spot between your doing and your pushing energy and your being energy.
Nina: Yeah, the results we've seen in our own lives and with our clients when they lean into more of that being or feminine energy, we've called it in the past, and create balance, right? It's mind blowing.
Kelle: That sort of unbalanced high achiever mindset is one we can both relate to. Nina worked in PR and I worked in pharma. This constant state of survival.
Nina: Yeah, we were just hustling and just burning out and just still not quite where we wanted to be. And while life looked pretty good on the outside, amazing even, how we felt living it just really didn't.
Kelle: Yes, like we were cycling through the ups and downs, willing our way through it all, fingers crossed so we didn't crash and burn, and not really loving the way we are showing up to it all. We were not being our favorite version of us, for sure.
Nina: Yeah, you couldn't tell the old us to relax. We would do the opposite. You know that ragey anxiety creep when someone suggests you take a break or work less? I mean, I used to be the queen of the jam-packed schedules. I went bell to bell and then open the laptop back up, you know, 10 p.m. To 1 a.m. Sound familiar?
Kelle: Mm-hmm. Totally. Same. And listen, that drive for predictability and planning, that need to get it all done, get all the things done, that was great in the early years of our work and career, for sure.
Nina: Yeah, but not so great as life became fuller as, you know, wives and moms and business owners and, you know, with longer commutes from bigger homes to ambitious jobs in my world, you know, I landed a dream job. And as my family and their obligations continued to grow, I didn't know how to relax. That was so me.
Kelle: Yeah, I couldn't stay calm. I struggled to let things be. I didn't have a lot of patience. I treated family like another project to manage. And I was so anxious when things didn't go according to plan. And even like going to the pool and sitting poolside with a magazine and trying to relax and chill, like I just couldn't do it. My body was just so full of the buzz of like…
Nina: Go energy.
Kelle: Being busy. Yeah, that go energy.
Nina: Yeah. We used to call that fake resting. Remember Kel?
Kelle: Yep. Yep. Fake resting.
Nina: Yeah. Well, the truth here, we were totally out of alignment. I mean, what were we saying yes to? What were we saying no to? And why, right, Kelle?
We talk about this so often with our clients, just from personal experience, and the pushing and driving and achieving were just our go-to gears. And I actually thought that was just who I was. So I was either winning or failing, which sucked.
Kelle: Yelling, angry, resentful, frustrated, burned out, not present, completely distracted.
Nina: It's like we were both going down, so to speak, right? But we didn't have the tools for a soft landing, recovery, and then to try approaching things differently the next time.
Kelle: And listen, it became clear that success while sacrificing your health and happiness in the process isn't success.
Nina: Yeah, because then we were both diagnosed with chronic degenerative diseases. I remember being like, what the fuck? Now what? My body's broken. I can't work out the way I need to? Go, go, go all the time.
What does slow down mean? What does that even mean? How am I going to cope? Right? Like what?
Kelle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Our diseases weren't going anywhere. We didn't want to leave anything behind. We wanted to keep going, but we didn't know how.
Nina: This is truly, truly where that Rumi quote sings to me. Because I think it's so true that the wound is where the light enters you.
Kelle: Yes, yes. I just love that so much. We needed to learn how to cope in healthier ways, not all in or all out. We needed to get out of survival mode, this chronic survival mode, and get into alignment.
Nina: Yeah, alignment's all about being aware of what you're saying yes to, what you're saying no to, and liking your reason why.
Kelle: Yeah, and this one question really changed everything for me. If no one else's opinion mattered, what would I do? I mean, mic drop right there. And my answers here were my starting point. I started to question the rules I'd been following my whole life and realized they were written for a much different version of myself.
Nina: Yeah, younger, greener. Back when you told yourself you had so much to prove, right?
Kelle: Mm-hmm, exactly. And that made sense back then, but I needed to do things differently. So I started experimenting with this kind of like balance, and not in the balance where you stand on two feet like completely even right it's kind of like this surfing balance like up and down, but you've got it. And I know you can relate here to Nina, right?
Nina: Yeah, This was all about taking small steps towards giving myself a break without losing my edge. Slowing down without falling behind. Taking real time off without that fear of being forgotten or being passed by. Getting grounded without losing our ambition. And we didn't want less, exactly. We wanted more, and we wanted to feel better doing it.
Kelle: Yeah, wanna know something funny here? At first, it felt terrifying, and then it felt weird. But eventually, this balance, it felt like coming home to myself.
Nina: Yeah, this is that concept we teach clients about the dimmer switch, right Kelle? I think of it like having a dimmer switch for my energy instead of a light switch. So we dial our energy up or down depending on what we need to create in the moment. We get to choose. We aren't reacting to all of the requests and demands around us. We're responding with intention in alignment and liking our reasons why.
Kelle: As someone juggling all the hats, being a mom and business owner and coach, chauffeur, like total Uber driver here, chef, family therapist, and all-around troubleshooter, this flexibility has been a game changer for creating true balance. So if you're reading this and thinking, but I can't let the unanswered emails just sit there, or I don't know how to just be.
Nina: We see you. We've been you.
Kelle: Yes.
Nina: Yeah. When you feel shitty about yourself, you show up shitty. I mean, let's be real. Let's just call it as it is, you know? And that's where the self-doubt and insecurity start to creep in.
Kelle: Like 10,000% cue the survival mode. This fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And when we're in survival, we aren't using our critical thinking. We literally aren't showing up with our executive functioning online.
Nina: Yeah, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be productive, to succeed, to not make mistakes, to put everyone else's needs above our own, to make them happy at our own expense. And to get through that pressure, we lean into really unhealthy coping skills.
Kelle: Like we beat ourselves up. We attack ourselves with our self-talk in an effort to motivate us. And it doesn't work.
Nina: Yeah. We try to control, fix, and change how other people think and feel about us, which is impossible.
Kelle: We get stuck in all-or-nothing thinking, which makes every decision we make right or wrong, and there's so much pressure.
Nina: Yeah, we have unreasonable expectations of ourselves, and therefore everyone around us, which creates so much resentment and angst.
Kelle: We overwork to feel more worthy, which is a cognitive distortion, right?
Nina: Yeah, it's a trick of the mind, right? It's no wonder we start to doubt ourselves. We start to feel terrible about the way we're living our lives. We're stuck in chronic overwhelm and stress cycle after stress cycle.
Kelle: This is when we really have to check in on our mindset and the thoughts and stories that have been running our lives to date to question them, fact-check them, and then rewrite them.
Nina: Yeah, this goes back to playing with those dimmer switches, right Kelle? We're not saying you need to get rid of that inner mean girl or never strive for the best ever again.
Kelle: No, no. Your perfectionism and ambition can absolutely be your superpowers when you're in relationship with them. When you know how and when to dial them up and dial them down.
Nina: Yeah. The results we've seen in our lives and with our clients when they lean into more balance here again, head explosion, mind blowing. One of our entrepreneur clients realized that when she actually took time off, like fully unplugged, she'd come back to new clients and new opportunities waiting for her.
Kelle: She was always pushing and striving before and her content felt kind of pushy too. When she started practicing more feminine energy, that being energy, she attracted clients so much more easily. She showed up more authentically and creatively, and it spoke to her best clients.
Nina: And what's cool is this balance creates results everywhere, right? Like not just in your work or bank account, but your relationships, health, your whole life. It leads to less burnout because you're more aligned and aware, taking better care of yourself and listening to your intuition, not those old stories keeping you stuck in a stress cycle.
Kelle: Yeah, I think it blows our clients' minds when we suggest they chill out when everyone else is telling them to work harder when they feel like they need to work harder.
Nina: Yeah, the hustle. But let's be real, for ambitious women, especially entrepreneurs, you have to put in the work. Trust us.
Kelle: Listen, so many people make it harder on themselves than it needs to be. It's transformational when you learn to live in more flow and how that actually invites more opportunity.
Nina: Okay, we are not talking about sitting on a meditation pillow and manifesting a six-figure income.
Kelle: No, manifesting and affirmations don't get me started. What we're saying is when you ease up on things, more things come.
Nina: And for those of you so familiar with burnout and stressing out your adrenals, this becomes a superpower.
Kelle: This is how you can actually work smarter, not harder, feel more calm and create more balance, which are the two results 99% of our clients want. And we're guessing you might want to, right?
Nina: Raise your hand. Yeah, this balance opens us up to our intuition and helps us trust ourselves as women first and then as leaders.
Kelle: Because who really runs the world, right?
Nina: Us, the women, let's be real, period.
Kelle: Yeah. When you come to coaching, you're probably very much in your doing energy and you gently become more in touch with your being energy along the way. And it's actually mind-blowing.
Nina: Yeah, the success you create isn't ego-driven. This is intuitive, authentic being energy that allows you to show up unapologetically, proud and humble and badass.
Kelle: So let's break this down. What masculine or doing and feminine or being energy actually look like? So masculine energy is all about doing. So taking action, being honest and accountable, setting boundaries, being decisive and focused, this type of, you know, leadership and achievement thinking.
Nina: Yeah, but there's also a disempowered side to that masculine energy, right? Or that doing energy. You guys are very familiar with it, right? So this is the overthinking, overdoing, being controlling or aggressive, micromanaging and like being emotionless.
Kelle: That's fun.
Nina: And we've all been there, Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of numb out. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kelle: And then the feminine energy is all about being, right? So flow and receiving, intuition and creativity, this vulnerability and authenticity, collaboration and rest, being playful and free, like having fun.
Nina: Yeah, And then there's also kind of a disempowered side to the feminine energy, right? It's that neediness or codependence, feeling unworthy or playing the victim, which we've all been there, having weak boundaries, over apologizing and over explaining.
Kelle: Yeah, and this takes a minute to wrap your head around because if someone told me I needed to be more feminine, I'd be like, what, I need to wear flowery, flowy dresses and like dance around in the grass? And I'm just like, no, okay.
Nina: And bake more. You need to be in the kitchen more. And just be more feminine. No, that's a great call, Kel. This isn't like pro-female, anti-male, right? This is just feminine, masculine. And we're playing with this concept of being and doing energy, right? That's a great call. Yeah.
Kelle: Okay. So our question to you is where do you see yourself? I know I spent years living primarily in my masculine energy and that's where we meet pretty much most people in the world actually. I'm just going to say it, most people in the world.
Kelle: Yeah, a lot of our clients come to us heavily in that masculine energy and it's gotten them really far in life, you know, and so they're reluctant to create balance with it. That's where we go. But I think that happens to a lot of us, especially high achievers. For me, I was born in my feminine energy, playful and curious, but over time I found safety in masculine energy. It became how I controlled my environment and made sense of things, right?
I was always doing, doing, doing, and working, working, working, and not vulnerable. I didn't cry. These were sort of my trademarks. I kept all that locked in a box and was considered strong and reliable. Can anyone relate here?
Yeah, in school, right? Like learning wasn't about being curious, it was about getting good grades. This is absolutely where I cemented my work ethic and I learned that if I prepared and worked hard enough, I'd succeed. So the same happened on the athletic field. I think a lot of competitive athletes can relate to leaning hard into masculine and then burning out.
The big shift for me came when my sister died. You know, I was 24 and it just totally broke me open. You know, the flood of emotions was almost overwhelming and it was this huge invitation to vulnerability and connection for me. You know, I learned I couldn't do everything on my own and that I didn't have to. But if I'm being real in business, I kept leaning on my masculine energy, that doing energy like it was on autopilot.
And that's the only way I knew how to get shit done. I knew how to GSD as Kelle and I call it, right? And the more I tried to control things, the less control I had. Cue the burnout.
Kelle: Feeling you there for so much of that. And it just makes sense when you're stressed, your brain doesn't want to put effort into doing things differently. It wants the path of least resistance. So you're getting shit done the fastest way you know how to because your brain is telling you. It's literally for survival. So in business, disempowered masculine energy shows up everywhere.
The overthinking, the overdoing, this kind of over-responsibility or toxic responsibility. This being controlling, being aggressive. We've all had managers who show up this way, right?
Nina: Yeah, and there's a lot of comparison too. Comparison-itis, right? Our brains make up stories about colleagues or competitors, and these thoughts are so disempowering.
Kelle: At the end of the day, it's fear of being vulnerable, of making a mistake, of being seen as imperfect, of asking for help. This is what keeps us stuck in disempowered masculine energy, this fear and the scarcity. This is when we question our ambitions and we burn out.
Nina: Yeah. So where is your edge right now? What's your invitation? Because this is our mission to help our clients find this balance and be unapologetically ambitious-ish. To redefine what success means to them, to work smarter, not harder, and actually enjoy the life they worked so hard to create.
Kelle: Yeah. If this episode resonated with you, schedule a consultation with us. We'll put a link in the show notes. We meet you on Zoom for 60 minutes to understand your unique challenges and make sure coaching is the right vehicle to get you what you want, to get you the results that you crave.
Nina: Yeah, these consultations can be really powerful and they're free. So schedule a call with us. We'll talk through kind of where you are right now, what you want to create, and how coaching can help you bridge the gap.
Kelle: Awesome, okay. We hope we see you on a consult. So until next time.
Nina: Yeah, that's all for today. Thanks for being here.
Kelle: Yeah, thanks for being here.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity, and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events, and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to KelleAndNina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit KelleAndNina.com for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
Nina Lynch: For the things you're moving towards, but don't have yet. For the amount of time you thought it would take to get it, and you didn't. To stay in the process of ambition long enough to create it, you have to get good at the in-between. What's in between you and the having, which is the hard stuff, the challenges, right?
Kelle: Mm-hmm. If you're ambitious, this comes with the territory. Because being ambitious means you have a strong desire to succeed.
Nina: And if you're ambitious, you know that failure is part of success, not the opposite.
Kelle: So you have to be a master of challenges to manage, react, and recover well when things are hard, when there's pain.
Nina: Yeah, you're activated, stimulated, and engaged in challenging circumstances. This is your wheelhouse, your zone.
Kelle: Yeah, you're not in survival or self-doubt. Quite the opposite, actually. You're grounded, collaborative, creative, and strong. They can bring it, all of it, because you can handle it. You can handle all of it.
Nina: But do you ever feel ambitious-ish? It's like, maybe I've lost that drive, that desire to succeed.
Kelle: Because while life doesn't look all that bad around you, how you feel living it does. That's exactly where we're going today.
Nina: Yeah, we've noticed there are quite a few new faces around here, so we wanted to reintroduce ourselves, Ambitious-Ish, and how we help women like you go big and actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create.
Kelle: Alright, let's jump in. This is Ambitious-Ish.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Kelle: Hey, I'm Kelle.
Nina: And I’m Nina. And welcome to another episode of Ambitious-Ish. We are celebrating our one year anniversary today, the one year anniversary of this podcast!
Kelle: Yay! Happy Birthday!
Nina: Yeah, we are one. We are one. We thought it’d be a cool chance to reintroduce ourselves to all the newcomers. The who, what, where, when, and why.
Kelle: Yeah. Ambitious-Ish was born years and years ago when Nina and I found ourselves where you are right now, or at least we're guessing.
Nina: Yeah, we were questioning a lot of things, like the cost of our ambition and the trade-offs we'd made. It all looked pretty good from the outside, but how we felt living it, it felt pretty miserable.
Kelle: Yeah, we were attacking ourselves along the way and it sounded like, I should be further along. I should be doing better. No one else can do it, so I will. Everyone else has it so easy. And I didn't know how to relax.
Nina: Yeah, it was like no one respects me. No one understands, right? I have to get my shit together. Like I was just always on myself. I can't win. I just have to get through this.
Kelle: Can I just add one in there too?
Nina: Yeah.
Kelle: Like, must be nice. Must be nice for them. Must be nice. Right?
Nina: It's terrible. Yeah. Well and like, because of these thoughts, playfulness and laughter and freedom all took the back seat to daily life. Right, Kel? I mean, the work was never ending. At one point, I was working at work and then working at home. I didn't know how to turn it off. This constant need for productivity started affecting my health.
Kelle: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't understand why I was so competitive and strived so much. I literally could not turn off the drive.
Nina: Yeah. It's like we were in go mode all day. From the moment I woke up to the moment I fell into bed exhausted, it was like my own very exhausting version of Groundhog Day.
Kelle: Yeah. Yeah, I felt like I was constantly late because I was trying to get one more thing done, trying to do too much all of the time. I felt volatile. I was so busy. I wasn't taking care of myself. And if I didn't get a workout in, look out. I could blow up at any moment. And I just felt like no one really understood me. They didn't respect me. They didn't respect my time.
Nina: Yeah, totally. This is where we meet most of our clients. It's ironic because they'd likely never call themselves ambitious-ish, but that's how they feel. It's like, huh, maybe I've lost that drive. I don't know if I can do this anymore.
Where did that desire to succeed go? Who am I? You know, it's sort of a crisis moment because they have a lot of what they've always wanted in their lives, the career, the family, the home, maybe. And they don't get why they don't feel as good as their lives look.
Kelle: And they get to a point where they consider burning it all down. They want to give themselves a break without losing their edge, to slow down without falling behind or really doing less, right? They don't wanna do less. To take real time off without being forgotten or left behind. To find balance without being passed by, right?
Nina: To get grounded without losing their ambition. Right? You're right, Kel, they don't wanna do less. They want more. They're never content. That would mean they're full, like never to be hungry again, right? That's not our client, right?
Kelle: Yeah. Content is like my least favorite word in the world, by the way.
Nina: Just kind of means you're done. You're happy and full, right? I mean, it's, you know, anyway.
Kelle: Yeah. More on that later. But it's more like they go from one having and they're moving towards another. They're always moving towards the next having, which I guess is why I don't love the content.
Nina: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And the first step here, rock stars and a huge part of the coaching we do with clients, is to regulate your nervous system, to get out of survival mode, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. We have a killer episode all about survival mode.
It's one of the top five most downloaded episodes of Ambitious-Ish. It's number 9, so go check it out. But what we explain in that episode is that fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, those survival states, with practice, they start showing up as personality traits, right, Kel?
Kelle: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.
Nina: And so survival is a place we need to learn to get out of, to be agile in and out of, and that's a big part of what we do in our coaching.
Kelle: Yes. And before I continue on, I just have to say, this is just on my mind about contentness, and I think just going back to this word content. I really, and I know you are the same, Nina, like we've really landed on sufficiency as kind of our go-to. Like we're not content. Of course we want more. We're still ambitious, right? But there's like a sufficiently like, I'm enough right now. I have enough right now. I don't need more. I just want more.
Nina: That's a good call. It's not a need. It's a want. Yeah.
Kelle: Yeah. Okay. Now that I have gotten that off my chest.
Nina: Completed that thought.
Kelle: Listen, when we're in survival, emotion is high and that's when our intellect drops, our logical critical thinking, our executive functioning literally goes offline when we're in survival.
Nina: And now more than ever, we need your critical thinking. It's chronic for our clients, right? They live their days putting themselves in harm's way. Big goals, big expectations, big risks.
Kelle: Yeah, and if they don't know how to be in the hard part, to be in the challenging part, they'll sink. This is where our coaching is gold.
Nina: Yeah, so how do you go big and actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create? It's by working with coaches who are masters of challenge.
Kelle: Coaches like us, right? We're on a mission to help smart driven women everywhere do ambition better. To go big and actually enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You can actually do it all.
Nina: Yeah, you see our brains weren't designed to point it and feel present, calm, sufficient along the way to create a life we love that we're obsessed with. You see, our brains are designed for safety, to keep us alive. They're designed to create more of the same. That is what is safe to our brain. It's just like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
Kelle: So if you feel stuck, you're not alone. Nothing's gone wrong. You're not broken. Our coaching helps clients understand how to use their brains for them instead of against them. To shift out of that stuck gear, that survival mode, and expand your edge.
Nina: Yeah, I think every single client we work with comes to us with this desire to feel calm and balanced in the challenges, when the circumstances around them are big and hard, which is often for ambitious women. It's all about finding balance.
Kelle: Yeah, it's not sitting back and putting your feet up and being like, okay, I'm good, right? This is really at the core of being ambitious-ish. It's finding that sweet spot between your doing and your pushing energy and your being energy.
Nina: Yeah, the results we've seen in our own lives and with our clients when they lean into more of that being or feminine energy, we've called it in the past, and create balance, right? It's mind blowing.
Kelle: That sort of unbalanced high achiever mindset is one we can both relate to. Nina worked in PR and I worked in pharma. This constant state of survival.
Nina: Yeah, we were just hustling and just burning out and just still not quite where we wanted to be. And while life looked pretty good on the outside, amazing even, how we felt living it just really didn't.
Kelle: Yes, like we were cycling through the ups and downs, willing our way through it all, fingers crossed so we didn't crash and burn, and not really loving the way we are showing up to it all. We were not being our favorite version of us, for sure.
Nina: Yeah, you couldn't tell the old us to relax. We would do the opposite. You know that ragey anxiety creep when someone suggests you take a break or work less? I mean, I used to be the queen of the jam-packed schedules. I went bell to bell and then open the laptop back up, you know, 10 p.m. To 1 a.m. Sound familiar?
Kelle: Mm-hmm. Totally. Same. And listen, that drive for predictability and planning, that need to get it all done, get all the things done, that was great in the early years of our work and career, for sure.
Nina: Yeah, but not so great as life became fuller as, you know, wives and moms and business owners and, you know, with longer commutes from bigger homes to ambitious jobs in my world, you know, I landed a dream job. And as my family and their obligations continued to grow, I didn't know how to relax. That was so me.
Kelle: Yeah, I couldn't stay calm. I struggled to let things be. I didn't have a lot of patience. I treated family like another project to manage. And I was so anxious when things didn't go according to plan. And even like going to the pool and sitting poolside with a magazine and trying to relax and chill, like I just couldn't do it. My body was just so full of the buzz of like…
Nina: Go energy.
Kelle: Being busy. Yeah, that go energy.
Nina: Yeah. We used to call that fake resting. Remember Kel?
Kelle: Yep. Yep. Fake resting.
Nina: Yeah. Well, the truth here, we were totally out of alignment. I mean, what were we saying yes to? What were we saying no to? And why, right, Kelle?
We talk about this so often with our clients, just from personal experience, and the pushing and driving and achieving were just our go-to gears. And I actually thought that was just who I was. So I was either winning or failing, which sucked.
Kelle: Yelling, angry, resentful, frustrated, burned out, not present, completely distracted.
Nina: It's like we were both going down, so to speak, right? But we didn't have the tools for a soft landing, recovery, and then to try approaching things differently the next time.
Kelle: And listen, it became clear that success while sacrificing your health and happiness in the process isn't success.
Nina: Yeah, because then we were both diagnosed with chronic degenerative diseases. I remember being like, what the fuck? Now what? My body's broken. I can't work out the way I need to? Go, go, go all the time.
What does slow down mean? What does that even mean? How am I going to cope? Right? Like what?
Kelle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Our diseases weren't going anywhere. We didn't want to leave anything behind. We wanted to keep going, but we didn't know how.
Nina: This is truly, truly where that Rumi quote sings to me. Because I think it's so true that the wound is where the light enters you.
Kelle: Yes, yes. I just love that so much. We needed to learn how to cope in healthier ways, not all in or all out. We needed to get out of survival mode, this chronic survival mode, and get into alignment.
Nina: Yeah, alignment's all about being aware of what you're saying yes to, what you're saying no to, and liking your reason why.
Kelle: Yeah, and this one question really changed everything for me. If no one else's opinion mattered, what would I do? I mean, mic drop right there. And my answers here were my starting point. I started to question the rules I'd been following my whole life and realized they were written for a much different version of myself.
Nina: Yeah, younger, greener. Back when you told yourself you had so much to prove, right?
Kelle: Mm-hmm, exactly. And that made sense back then, but I needed to do things differently. So I started experimenting with this kind of like balance, and not in the balance where you stand on two feet like completely even right it's kind of like this surfing balance like up and down, but you've got it. And I know you can relate here to Nina, right?
Nina: Yeah, This was all about taking small steps towards giving myself a break without losing my edge. Slowing down without falling behind. Taking real time off without that fear of being forgotten or being passed by. Getting grounded without losing our ambition. And we didn't want less, exactly. We wanted more, and we wanted to feel better doing it.
Kelle: Yeah, wanna know something funny here? At first, it felt terrifying, and then it felt weird. But eventually, this balance, it felt like coming home to myself.
Nina: Yeah, this is that concept we teach clients about the dimmer switch, right Kelle? I think of it like having a dimmer switch for my energy instead of a light switch. So we dial our energy up or down depending on what we need to create in the moment. We get to choose. We aren't reacting to all of the requests and demands around us. We're responding with intention in alignment and liking our reasons why.
Kelle: As someone juggling all the hats, being a mom and business owner and coach, chauffeur, like total Uber driver here, chef, family therapist, and all-around troubleshooter, this flexibility has been a game changer for creating true balance. So if you're reading this and thinking, but I can't let the unanswered emails just sit there, or I don't know how to just be.
Nina: We see you. We've been you.
Kelle: Yes.
Nina: Yeah. When you feel shitty about yourself, you show up shitty. I mean, let's be real. Let's just call it as it is, you know? And that's where the self-doubt and insecurity start to creep in.
Kelle: Like 10,000% cue the survival mode. This fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. And when we're in survival, we aren't using our critical thinking. We literally aren't showing up with our executive functioning online.
Nina: Yeah, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be productive, to succeed, to not make mistakes, to put everyone else's needs above our own, to make them happy at our own expense. And to get through that pressure, we lean into really unhealthy coping skills.
Kelle: Like we beat ourselves up. We attack ourselves with our self-talk in an effort to motivate us. And it doesn't work.
Nina: Yeah. We try to control, fix, and change how other people think and feel about us, which is impossible.
Kelle: We get stuck in all-or-nothing thinking, which makes every decision we make right or wrong, and there's so much pressure.
Nina: Yeah, we have unreasonable expectations of ourselves, and therefore everyone around us, which creates so much resentment and angst.
Kelle: We overwork to feel more worthy, which is a cognitive distortion, right?
Nina: Yeah, it's a trick of the mind, right? It's no wonder we start to doubt ourselves. We start to feel terrible about the way we're living our lives. We're stuck in chronic overwhelm and stress cycle after stress cycle.
Kelle: This is when we really have to check in on our mindset and the thoughts and stories that have been running our lives to date to question them, fact-check them, and then rewrite them.
Nina: Yeah, this goes back to playing with those dimmer switches, right Kelle? We're not saying you need to get rid of that inner mean girl or never strive for the best ever again.
Kelle: No, no. Your perfectionism and ambition can absolutely be your superpowers when you're in relationship with them. When you know how and when to dial them up and dial them down.
Nina: Yeah. The results we've seen in our lives and with our clients when they lean into more balance here again, head explosion, mind blowing. One of our entrepreneur clients realized that when she actually took time off, like fully unplugged, she'd come back to new clients and new opportunities waiting for her.
Kelle: She was always pushing and striving before and her content felt kind of pushy too. When she started practicing more feminine energy, that being energy, she attracted clients so much more easily. She showed up more authentically and creatively, and it spoke to her best clients.
Nina: And what's cool is this balance creates results everywhere, right? Like not just in your work or bank account, but your relationships, health, your whole life. It leads to less burnout because you're more aligned and aware, taking better care of yourself and listening to your intuition, not those old stories keeping you stuck in a stress cycle.
Kelle: Yeah, I think it blows our clients' minds when we suggest they chill out when everyone else is telling them to work harder when they feel like they need to work harder.
Nina: Yeah, the hustle. But let's be real, for ambitious women, especially entrepreneurs, you have to put in the work. Trust us.
Kelle: Listen, so many people make it harder on themselves than it needs to be. It's transformational when you learn to live in more flow and how that actually invites more opportunity.
Nina: Okay, we are not talking about sitting on a meditation pillow and manifesting a six-figure income.
Kelle: No, manifesting and affirmations don't get me started. What we're saying is when you ease up on things, more things come.
Nina: And for those of you so familiar with burnout and stressing out your adrenals, this becomes a superpower.
Kelle: This is how you can actually work smarter, not harder, feel more calm and create more balance, which are the two results 99% of our clients want. And we're guessing you might want to, right?
Nina: Raise your hand. Yeah, this balance opens us up to our intuition and helps us trust ourselves as women first and then as leaders.
Kelle: Because who really runs the world, right?
Nina: Us, the women, let's be real, period.
Kelle: Yeah. When you come to coaching, you're probably very much in your doing energy and you gently become more in touch with your being energy along the way. And it's actually mind-blowing.
Nina: Yeah, the success you create isn't ego-driven. This is intuitive, authentic being energy that allows you to show up unapologetically, proud and humble and badass.
Kelle: So let's break this down. What masculine or doing and feminine or being energy actually look like? So masculine energy is all about doing. So taking action, being honest and accountable, setting boundaries, being decisive and focused, this type of, you know, leadership and achievement thinking.
Nina: Yeah, but there's also a disempowered side to that masculine energy, right? Or that doing energy. You guys are very familiar with it, right? So this is the overthinking, overdoing, being controlling or aggressive, micromanaging and like being emotionless.
Kelle: That's fun.
Nina: And we've all been there, Yeah. Yeah. We're kind of numb out. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Kelle: And then the feminine energy is all about being, right? So flow and receiving, intuition and creativity, this vulnerability and authenticity, collaboration and rest, being playful and free, like having fun.
Nina: Yeah, And then there's also kind of a disempowered side to the feminine energy, right? It's that neediness or codependence, feeling unworthy or playing the victim, which we've all been there, having weak boundaries, over apologizing and over explaining.
Kelle: Yeah, and this takes a minute to wrap your head around because if someone told me I needed to be more feminine, I'd be like, what, I need to wear flowery, flowy dresses and like dance around in the grass? And I'm just like, no, okay.
Nina: And bake more. You need to be in the kitchen more. And just be more feminine. No, that's a great call, Kel. This isn't like pro-female, anti-male, right? This is just feminine, masculine. And we're playing with this concept of being and doing energy, right? That's a great call. Yeah.
Kelle: Okay. So our question to you is where do you see yourself? I know I spent years living primarily in my masculine energy and that's where we meet pretty much most people in the world actually. I'm just going to say it, most people in the world.
Kelle: Yeah, a lot of our clients come to us heavily in that masculine energy and it's gotten them really far in life, you know, and so they're reluctant to create balance with it. That's where we go. But I think that happens to a lot of us, especially high achievers. For me, I was born in my feminine energy, playful and curious, but over time I found safety in masculine energy. It became how I controlled my environment and made sense of things, right?
I was always doing, doing, doing, and working, working, working, and not vulnerable. I didn't cry. These were sort of my trademarks. I kept all that locked in a box and was considered strong and reliable. Can anyone relate here?
Yeah, in school, right? Like learning wasn't about being curious, it was about getting good grades. This is absolutely where I cemented my work ethic and I learned that if I prepared and worked hard enough, I'd succeed. So the same happened on the athletic field. I think a lot of competitive athletes can relate to leaning hard into masculine and then burning out.
The big shift for me came when my sister died. You know, I was 24 and it just totally broke me open. You know, the flood of emotions was almost overwhelming and it was this huge invitation to vulnerability and connection for me. You know, I learned I couldn't do everything on my own and that I didn't have to. But if I'm being real in business, I kept leaning on my masculine energy, that doing energy like it was on autopilot.
And that's the only way I knew how to get shit done. I knew how to GSD as Kelle and I call it, right? And the more I tried to control things, the less control I had. Cue the burnout.
Kelle: Feeling you there for so much of that. And it just makes sense when you're stressed, your brain doesn't want to put effort into doing things differently. It wants the path of least resistance. So you're getting shit done the fastest way you know how to because your brain is telling you. It's literally for survival. So in business, disempowered masculine energy shows up everywhere.
The overthinking, the overdoing, this kind of over-responsibility or toxic responsibility. This being controlling, being aggressive. We've all had managers who show up this way, right?
Nina: Yeah, and there's a lot of comparison too. Comparison-itis, right? Our brains make up stories about colleagues or competitors, and these thoughts are so disempowering.
Kelle: At the end of the day, it's fear of being vulnerable, of making a mistake, of being seen as imperfect, of asking for help. This is what keeps us stuck in disempowered masculine energy, this fear and the scarcity. This is when we question our ambitions and we burn out.
Nina: Yeah. So where is your edge right now? What's your invitation? Because this is our mission to help our clients find this balance and be unapologetically ambitious-ish. To redefine what success means to them, to work smarter, not harder, and actually enjoy the life they worked so hard to create.
Kelle: Yeah. If this episode resonated with you, schedule a consultation with us. We'll put a link in the show notes. We meet you on Zoom for 60 minutes to understand your unique challenges and make sure coaching is the right vehicle to get you what you want, to get you the results that you crave.
Nina: Yeah, these consultations can be really powerful and they're free. So schedule a call with us. We'll talk through kind of where you are right now, what you want to create, and how coaching can help you bridge the gap.
Kelle: Awesome, okay. We hope we see you on a consult. So until next time.
Nina: Yeah, that's all for today. Thanks for being here.
Kelle: Yeah, thanks for being here.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
Kelle: Yes, we’ll come to your email box every Tuesday and Thursday.
Nina: You can ask us questions, get clarity, and get coached.
Kelle: We offer monthly free email coaching when you’re on our list and you’re the first to know about trainings, events, and other free coaching opportunities.
Nina: Just go to KelleAndNina.com to sign up.
Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit KelleAndNina.com for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
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