Amina AlTai: Executive Coach

One year of The Ambition Trap 💚

I didn’t know when I sent this book into the world that you’d send it back to me in pieces… underlined, dog-eared, photographed on nightstands, quoted back in DMs at 11pm.

I didn’t know how many of you were already living inside the question this book asks.

What I know now is that ache you’ve been carrying is a signal that the version of success you inherited was never built for the human you actually are.

You’re allowed to redefine it.

A year in, here’s what I know more clearly than I did when I wrote it…you don’t need to earn your way out of the ambition trap. You just need to anchor your ambition in something other than fear. And that work isn’t a one-time decision; it’s a life long practice.

Thank you for carrying this book into the corners of your lives where it was needed most. That’s the part no author can do alone.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for letting this book find you.

Here’s to year two.

Your voice is the most underused asset you own.

It’s not your résumé, or your network. Not the seat you’ve spent a decade earning. Your voice — what you actually think, what you want, and what you have to say — is what moves rooms and changes careers.

And most of us have spent years managing it. Softening it. Making it easier to hear.

Voice is ambition with somewhere to go. When the way you speak finally matches the size of what you want, your whole career starts moving differently.

This June, and I are holding two days at Omega for the women ready to come home to their real voice. Coaching, body-based practices, journaling, and real dialogue, and you’ll leave with your own ambition statement.

Finding Your Courage · June 5–7 · Rhinebeck, NY

Link in bio if this is your season. Or comment COURAGE and I’ll send you the details.

The real reason you haven’t written your book has nothing to do with writing.

Okay, it might be part of it but it’s more than that.

Part of it might also be admitting you have something to say means you can’t go back to pretending you don’t. It’s owning your bigness, and that’s scary.

After publishing The Ambition Trap, I’ve had hundreds of these conversations. And almost every one starts the same way:

“I don’t know where to start.”

But that’s not actually true. They know exactly what they want to say. They just haven’t decided whether their voice is allowed to take up that much space.

So I’m opening up something different. A real conversation about what it actually takes to put your work into the world.

✨ The Author’s Table
📍 May 12th
🍽️ Lunch + open conversation

If you’ve been sitting on this for a while, come sit with us at the table.

Comment or DM me ‘AUTHORS TABLE’ for details. 🤍

Everyone I know is spiraling a little right now. In fact, if you’re not in an existential crisis, Idk if we can be friends. ;)

What I’m learning:
The voice that says “what’s the point?” isn’t our Wise Selves.

It’s protection.

A part of you trying to make something hard…easier to hold. I know mine is!

You don’t need to silence it but you don’t have to let it run the show either.

Not all ambition is neutral.

Some of it is driven by:
➡️ proving
➡️ performing
➡️ pushing past your own limits just to keep up

And some of it is rooted in something deeper:
✅ alignment
✅ self-trust
✅ collaboration and care

There’s painful ambition, and then there’s purposeful ambition.

One drains you while the other sustains you.

So here’s something to sit with today:
Where is your ambition coming from right now? In this season? Today?

If you read The Ambition Trap, you know that I believe ambition is cyclical. There are seasons for growth, for rest, and recovery. And so, in THIS season, where is your ambition?

Raise your hand if you’re ever struggled with perfectionism? I’m raising both of mine. 🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏽‍♀️

In my book, The Ambition Trap, this is connected to the “injustice” core wound. When we felt like our individuality was restrained in childhood, we become rigid and have an intolerance for imperfection. Sound familiar?

When the book launched, and with more eyeballs on my work, the perfectionism got LOUD. It didn’t feel safe to miss the mark. (Though this is a feeling that lives in my body from my formative years, real talk that women and people of color are not allowed to “fail” in the same ways. Check the data)

So what I have been practicing is…

1. talking to that young part that feels it has to be perfect and instead letting it feel free (which is all that part has ever wanted).

2. Letting myself be in a practice of recovering well versus being perfect.

My nervous system teacher, offered me a mantra which I took with me to ABC today. It was the reminder that we have been offered the stage or the mic not to prove ourselves worthy or perfect, but because we have something to share.

So, if like me, your perfectionist part can get loud and you’re still figuring out how to let your True Self take up space, let my mantra be yours.

“Nothing to prove, something to share.”

2025 was one for the ages. Words fall short. So here’s my fave moments. ❤️

I HAVE AMAZING NEWS! The Ambition Trap has been selected for this year! Thank you to our readers, to and to everyone who read, shared and immersed themselves in this book. It was really an offering from my SOUL so it means the world to be that it resonated with you all!

I never did this for the accolades, and I’m blown away to get one!

Just over here ugly crying for the foreseeable future! 😭😭😭

We did it

See what I did there?!

I wrote a book about not chasing ambition from a place of pain, and instead allowing it to flow from our purpose.

I wrote a book about how external achievements don’t make us more worthy, we’re born worthy.

AND I’m someone who is highly ambitious (which I define as a desire for more life), and had ambitious goals for the book.

I set the intention of hitting the USA Today Bestseller list for a few reasons.
-less 2% of published authors in the US are Arab/ Middle Eastern (let alone Arab women) and representation matters!
-I thought it would help my flywheel and get the book into the hands of more people. I thought it was an important signal.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m SO grateful for this signal as it’s on so many people’s visions boards and few of us get there. But I think it’s important to tell the truth about these external accolades.

It didn’t really move the flywheel.
It didn’t make my life materially different.

When I share that it hit the list, people are generally excited, but you know what they care more about, THE REFRAME ON AMBITION.

That’s what sticks.

The conferences and organizations I speak to care about how this work supports their people and how it transforms culture and unlocks possibility.

And that’s the real point.

I share all of this because sometimes we think the thing outside of ourselves is going to make the difference, change how we feel or our life in some way. But I don’t know that that’s true.

What I do know is creating really great work that actually transforms people’s pain is the real gold standard. That is where lives actually change.

So I’m over here, recommitting (again and again) to that work and reminding myself that being in service of your growth?

That’s the real bestseller list.

Let’s talk about executive presence.

For decades, it’s been shorthand for “look the part.”

And according to a decade of data from HBR, “the part” has meant things like tallness, slimness, youthfulness, and polish.

Translation: Eurocentric beauty standards, gender bias, and coded classism wrapped in corporate language.

We can do better.

And even the evolutions of the definition are so vague and opaque. What does “superior” really mean? Or Fitness/Vigor? I think I have an idea. 😒

Having worked with hundreds of leaders across geography, race, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, I can tell you this:

Real executive presence isn’t about fitting into someone else’s mold, it’s about standing fully in your own truth, vision, and power.

The new rules?
-Authenticity over polish
-Integrity over image
-Presence that liberatory not performative

How do you think we should redefine executive presence?