Love Your Life as a Performer

Ep 97: Redefining Ambition

Kelli Youngman

In this episode, we are exploring Redefining Ambition. Because once you realize that you no longer need to chase success or achievement for validation and happiness, your relationship with ambition will change. You ready? Let's do it.

For a full transcript, go to podcast.kelliyoungmanwellness.com.

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 In this episode, we are exploring Redefining Ambition. Because once you realize that you no longer need to chase success or achievement for validation and happiness, your relationship with ambition will change. You ready? Let's do it.

Hello, you are listening to The Love Your Life as a Performer podcast. I'm Kelli Youngman and I am the Life Coach for Performers. I help actors, singers, and dancers love themselves and their lives way more. So keep listening to learn how you can love your life, both on and off the stage.

Hello and welcome back to episode 97 of The Love Your Life as a Performer podcast. I'm still kind of like, what's the word? Noodling Thinking about what I want the new podcast title to be. Now that I'm sort of transitioning into a business that, yeah, serves. Humanity rather than only performers. And of course, I will continue serving performers and I don't know, we'll see. But yeah, still thinking about what the new podcast title will be.

Anyways, I have had a fantastic morning. You know what's wild is I genuinely fall asleep, so in love. With my husband, with myself, with my life, and I just wake up in that love for my husband, myself, and my life, and it's just this amazing ooey gooey cycle, and I just had. Like truly the most amazing intimacy. I'm sitting at my desk having coffee and was just actually chatting with someone in my dms about the Anything and Everything mastermind, and that's kind of what sparked this podcast today, which I'm so excited to talk about.

But what I'll say briefly is that if you're listening in real time, the next round starts July 1st. And I don't know, I'm in a season where I've still been sort of just navigating what it looks like to enroll a group, whether I'm doing that in a specific time period, whether I am letting people enroll up until the day that we begin, and at least for now, I am in a space of allowance. So I want to urge you and then continue to invite you to make the decision sooner rather than later.

And again, this is more for you than it is for me, because it is draining when you're in an open loop, an endless cycle of air quote, deciding about something. And what I know from the people that have said yes. And when they've made their payment and they begin working with me even before... 'cause right now it's the beginning of June and we start in about a month. Even when people have paid me in advance two, three months, whatever it is, the thing that shifts is the energy in them. Because they've committed to changing their life. So I just wanna say that out loud because, you know, part of what I coach on and what I help people move through is decision fatigue and like the paralysis of like, I don't know, should I or shouldn't I? And getting out of that loop and ending that cycle sooner, moving through that phase faster, gives you permission to then move on to using your mental bandwidth for other things.

And I do think, I know I say this all the time you guys, but I do think I'm gonna record a podcast about making decisions from desire over finances, because that's exactly what kind of came up in this conversation with someone that's considering joining the Mastermind. They're like, well, I have these financial commitments and you know, I don't know, I'm gonna be going on tour, and again, like our brain will give us all the reasons why we shouldn't do something. But if your brain or not even your brain, just your soul, your heart, your spirit is feeling called or intrigued to the work that I facilitate, I would love for you to just consider giving yourself permission to explore the nudge before shutting it down for financial reasons, I don't have the time. I don't have the resources. I don't have my schedule, right? Like if there's a lot of uncertainty in your life, I want you to think about the value of making a decision even in uncertainty. That's the only way you move through this cycle and break through to a space where you feel comfortable leading your life in uncertainty.

I've talked about this in the podcast episode, Layered Learning. If you haven't listened to that one yet, definitely do. But every experience, even your relationship to considering joining this Mastermind is a petri dish of life, where you get to learn something about you. So even if you never book the consult, even if you're just observing yourself, like watching yourself engage with a desire, like your relationship even to this can show you something crucial about your current belief system, your current patterns of thinking and what you're believing is possible for you.

So again, if the Mastermind is calling you, I would love to just encourage you to book a launch call, because I will take you through an entire process that will give you clarity about exactly what you personally will get out of it. And then you can make an informed decision about whether or not you wanna join us now and change your life now, or if you wanna wait, but like making a hypothetical decision, just solely based on your budget is a little soggy. I'm just gonna say it. I've said it before, you know, if I had waited for the finances to start planning my wedding, I would still be waiting. Sometimes you have to be willing to take the leap even before you're ready for the Universe to start showing you the path and opening up new possibilities. And that's literally my specialty.

Anyways. What I wanna talk about today is something really interesting. Because my clients are in a space that I totally relate to, in terms of being happier than they ever knew was possible. And this came up on our call yesterday inside of the Mastermind and one of my clients is just like in this phase of their life where they are making consistently around $15,000 a month. Last month they had their highest month ever. It was $20,000. They just got engaged in Italy. They had their highest earning month while away in Italy, half of the month getting engaged. How fun is that?

They are you know, in a space where they've healed a lot of relationships in their life, they came into the Mastermind and repaired situations with their parents. They established or reestablished a new connection with their dad. Everything is just like going fucking amazing. On top of the fact that they just landed a dream job doing social media managing and marketing for freaking Amazon. Okay. My client's killing it. And it was so fun because they were sort of exploring it in this space where they're like, I'm so freaking happy. But it's so weird because like my ambition is gone.

And I was thinking about this for myself for a few reasons, because I think I expressed maybe on one of the podcasts, or maybe I was saying it on my Instagram stories. If you guys aren't following me there at @kelliyoungmansingh, you can find me there. But I was sharing that over the weekend. I just felt kind of disconnected and not in a bad way. 'cause I'm not like, I don't know, maybe I was a little dissatisfied or a little like, I don't know, not quite myself. And I noticed myself having this thought loop of like, well, what's the point of life? Like, I'm gonna do all this work, so I can be happy, but I'm already happy?? Like, what's the objective here? I was like, why am I pushing to like achieve more, do more like what is the outcome? What am I actually trying to get when I'm having this beautiful moment. I was at the beach with my husband, my stepdaughter, and we were just like present and I was looking out at the ocean and I was like, this is it. Like I've created the time freedom that I want. I've created the space that I want. I've created the family I want. The love that I want. I have a business that I. Freaking love, like what is the point of life? Like I was in this really, I don't know if the word is esoteric or like... oh my gosh, what's the word I'm looking for? When you're kind of like existential. Existential. Oh my God. I think I'm saying that right. I was kind of like in this existential crisis, oh my God, that word sounds so weird right now that I'm just gonna let it be. And then it was so wild because then my client came to the call and was sort of like, yeah, I don't know.

And it was interesting because again, when I'm in a coaching space. Yes, I'm bringing my experience, I'm bringing my own thoughts. I'm bringing really more my own patterns of curiosity and how I explore my mind, right? I'm in a neutral space and I'm just like really diving into, if nothing exists and this is just someone's thought and this is a paradigm of their thinking, like what is the underlying structure of their thinking that's producing this experience for them.

And so what we discovered after asking my clients a few questions because again, there's nothing wrong with, I wanna say this really out loud. There's nothing good, bad, right or wrong about having a vision that is, you know, I just got engaged. I'm about to get married, we wanna buy a house. I wanna be a stay at home mom. Like there is absolutely nothing wrong with that dream. That is a beautiful dream that you can live into with complete expansiveness, certainty, trust, self-love, right? Like we can be milking that experience for as much space as possible and like really truly maximize the simplicity of that dream.

And that's what I was kind of exploring with my client first of like, yeah, you're absolutely allowed to want that, if that's what you want. Where my curiosity came in, it was like, well, why do you want that? And again, there's nothing good, bad, right or wrong here. So this was my way of just expanding my client's attachment to their current dream and just questioning it. And we left it in a space where my client was gonna explore it more and what we discovered was that for so long, the objective of my client's ambition, like I think a lot of us, many of us, is to reach the happiness, right?

It's like I'm ambitious because I wanna get over there to that goal, which is gonna allow me to feel happy and successful, and I'm gonna feel accomplished like, all, again, totally valid, normal human experience. But what we discovered was that when the objective of ambition is no longer happiness, right? You don't need the success to be happy. You don't need the job title to be happy. You don't need anything to make you feel complete because you recognize that you are; the relationship to ambition has to change.

And so again, I love getting to facilitate this work because it really just takes my mind and my curiosity to a deeper place. It's like, what does it look like to redefine ambition, where the objective is not happiness, it's not trying to get somewhere, but it's really about who do I get to be in the process? Like I was talking about this with Terry, even just this morning and I was saying like, it's so interesting, right? Because if the success is not about the money, it's not about the happiness, it's not about being fulfilled, right? Then what is it about? And for me, when I ask myself that question, it's about the impact. It's about the fun. It's about letting the goals be about how I get there rather than. What I'm getting, right?

Where in the past it was like, oh my God, I've got a struggle. I've gotta hustle. Like I've gotta make it on Broadway, like that's when I'll feel great. And I did that for a while. But what actually manifested my Broadway debut was when I started looking at how I was getting there. Not how in the sense of like air quote, figuring out the "right path." But looking at the quality of my experience, raising the baseline of my experience so that I was really focused on how it felt, who I was being. Right? Because we can push, push, push, push, push, but if we're still the version of us that's trying to get that thing, we're not being the person that has it. Right. If we're like seeking love and like, feeling like, oh my God, I, I need to find that love. We're not being the version of us that is in love, in love with life on the frequency of having love, knowing what that great love is like again, that's what attracted the love of my life to me weeks, after I ended my long-term relationship.

Okay. And so it is all about, again, Redefining Ambition, so that ambition is purely about the goals and the dreams. And where I landed, at least for now on this, for myself, I just wanna share my thoughts because again, maybe this is just going to expand how it lands for you. And, I was gonna record this just for my clients. I was like, let me record it for the podcast. But it's like, for me, it's knowing that my dreams are safe with me. One of my clients gave me that thought, like a few, maybe last round of The Paradigm. They were like, I realize my dreams are safe with me. Right? And that client became a first time mom while she was in The Paradigm, my other mastermind that I ran. It's like realizing that again, we don't have to just follow the air quote societal norm of like, you settle down, you get married, you have kids. Again, there's nothing wrong with that if that is purely what you want... and, who would you be if you knew that it wasn't this or that, but it's this and this.

So again, here are some of my thoughts that I was thinking about this morning when I realized, you know, I am in a season where my life is amazing and I also am going through the process of reevaluating my current goals and my dreams and my desires, and letting them feel so fucking good. Knowing that they are not a risk to my happiness, but they will only deepen my happiness and fulfillment in my life, which will contribute to me being a great mother to me, being a great wife, to me being an amazing human and contributor to society.

Okay. So yeah, to just continue, my thoughts have been like now that I'm married, my marriage is the foundation for me to fly. Now that I am air quote, "settled" and deepening my relationship with Terry and that I'm nurtured and loved and cared for, and that I am also like caring for my husband, we have this like really symbiotic relationship where we really know that we've got each other's backs. So for me, marriage is now where I have the most freedom to fly. And I am watching myself engage with my dreams just as like sort of fuck around and find out, like what if? Like what if I really did just let myself engage with all of my childhood dreams instead of writing them off as air quote, childhood dreams, right?

It's like if I am in this time space reality, existing as a human being. In this short amount of time, I wanna give myself access to every experience possible, in every aspect of my life: my sexuality, my professional life as a coach, my creative life as a performer. I'm like, well, what if? Why not write this Broadway musical that I've had in my mind? Why not Star on Broadway? Why not star on a movie? Why not tour across the country on a book tour for my New York Times bestselling book where I am changing people's mindsets and being a thought leader? Why not create a $50 million net worth where I get to give back millions of dollars to people who need it because I have the capacity to make money really easily.

Why not take my family on an amazing all expense paid trip? Why not like, have the most luxurious vacations? Because I have no stigma about, you know, having and being wealthy, because I see my wealth as an extension and a byproduct of the service I'm doing in the world. I feel that even now about every dollar I make. I love when my clients pay me, because it's a literal representation of someone else's dreams coming true, right? Like I love the work I do because I'm facilitating dreams coming true, and that's a good thing. I love that I make money and that it's easy for me, because when I make money easily, again, I stay in a space where I'm fully resourced and available to serve more people.

I was just, I don't know why I had this vision this morning about like going on an African safari. I've never been to Africa. I wanna take a trip to Australia. I have friends and clients all around the world. I would love to be there when they receive their prestigious awards and you know, be there to support them as they're getting recognized for their artistic and creative endeavors. I'd love to just be able to hop on a plane and fly to Germany or to London, wherever my clients are, to just see them and do VIP days with them, like as a gift, right? So the more people I serve, the more I can go and give back to my people.

I would love, well, I mean. I just know that I'm, I am already so excited to be a future mommy. Aw. And I know that I'm gonna be the most amazing mother because of the work that I've done and the mindset that I have and the possibilities that I entertain. I love that my kids are gonna get to see me being a really ambitious woman and not at the expense of my own happiness, but as a contributor to my happiness. Because when I am alive and purposeful, I feel like I'm experiencing and using up all of the value I have to give. Not because I need it to validate me, but because I just have it overflowing out of me. So why not?

Why not change some lives and show young women what it's like to just be so alive and so passionate, and so free to do whatever I want. So then the goal really becomes about who do I get to be in the process of my life? What experiences do I wanna allow myself to have? Because absolutely I'm not trying to get somewhere so that I can feel anything, but it really does get to be for the fun, for the impact, for the legacy, for the sheer exploration of finding out what my maximum capacity and potential is.

Because in order to create a $50 million net worth, in order to have multiple businesses that I love, that are fun, to be the kind of mom that I wanna be, right? None of that has to be at an expense or a cost. I said to Terry, I'm like, I'm not trying to fit my dreams into the life that I want. I am building my life around the dreams that I have. Right? I'm not trying to fit it in I'm, I'm literally looking at the pure creative space that's around me and saying, what if I engaged with all of it? What if I did let myself become an international bestselling author that changes lives with my work as a life coach. That impacts people with my art and my acting and my creativity. If I genuinely just take up as much space on this planet as possible, and I mean, I'm only 35. I've got lots of years and decades of creation to go. So from the foundation of knowing who the fuck I am and trusting myself, I also get to be surprised and delighted with what the universe presents to me that is going to be even better beyond my wildest dreams. Okay?

So I hope that gives you something juicy to resonate with or to think about, because again if the ambition is not for self-worth, it's not to earn your respect or your own love, right? We get to redefine what ambition means, and again, we don't have to choose between ambition and happiness because our ambition is not a threat or a danger to our happiness. Alright, that's what I got for you this week. I will meet back here for another episode. Bye.

Hey, I wanna invite you to get started. 'cause if this is blowing your mind, imagine the impact of when we actually work together. You get to love your life as an actor, singer, or dancer, even including auditions. And if that sounds amazing, come join us inside of Momentum, you get lifetime access to The Performers Plan coaching community and more. And I will be supporting you the entire way. Go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/momentum to join us now.