Synopsis
Executive coach, Amina AlTai’s journey from high achieving entrepreneur to near medical collapse highlights the hidden cost of relentless ambition. After severe burnout left her close to organ failure, she reframed her approach to success. AlTai now distinguishes between “painful” ambition driven by inadequacy and “purposeful” ambition rooted in wellbeing. She encourages self awareness, celebrating wins, honoring personal energy and taking restorative pauses to pursue achievement without compromising health.
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iStock Executive coach Amina AlTai distinguishes between “painful” ambition driven by inadequacy and “purposeful” ambition grounded in wellbeing.
A growing number of professionals are confronting an uncomfortable truth about modern work culture: achievement often comes at the cost of health. A recent report by CNBC Make It highlights this dilemma through the journey of Amina AlTai, a leadership coach who now helps high performers rebuild their relationship with ambition after nearly losing her life to overwork.
AlTai’s story offers a powerful starting point for a wider question many professionals quietly carry: How do you stay driven without driving yourself into the ground?
A Wake Up Call Hidden Behind Success Long before she became a celebrated executive coach, Amina AlTai was the kind of achiever any workplace would admire. Speaking to CNBC Make It, she shared how, as the daughter of immigrants, she grew up believing that relentless effort was the surest path to security and respect. Her marketing agency, launched in her twenties, looked like a textbook success story.
But behind the milestones and momentum, something was breaking down.
AlTai told CNBC Make It that she was pushing herself so hard that her body began to deteriorate. A phone call from her doctor warned that she was days away from multiple organ failure due to severe anemia. Even then, she went to her client meeting before heading to the hospital.
She was later diagnosed with celiac disease and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, both aggravated by exhaustion. In her book The Ambition Trap, she reflects that her “painful relationship to succ
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