You will need limits.
Year-beginning reflections on how we engage our ambitions.
Welcome to goal-setting season. In the weeklong blur between Christmas and New Year, as we all lose track of days of the week and spend most of our time in front of a screen, fueled only by leftover Christmas cookies, we must also sort out who we hope to be in 2026. Because of course, the fresh calendar brings fresh motivation that a conventional Monday or start of a month could never.
This is not about whether or not we should or shouldn’t be using the New Year reset. It’s been overdiscussed, and honestly, as an overly goal-oriented person, I’m doing it either way. It’s historically been my habit to make lists a mile long of radical transformation I expect to infuse into my body like a supervenom when the ball drops. Gratefully I’ve learned to chill out in the last five years, and my goals look a lot more like intentions now. The steps are smaller, more measured. So when I reach my respective Decembers, I may not look radically different, as once hoped, but I usually take some steps more in the direction I want to go.
On the whole, I’ve generally tried to dial back my goal-orientedness since college, because I found it to be destructive, and primarily fueling desires to achieve and to be recognized. Gross. In college, this relentlessness coupled with an unwillingness (or perhaps an ignorance?) to truly care for myself landed me in the ER with a severe iron deficiency. A transfusion later and I was fine, but I learned the hard way: rest is important.
Since then I’ve battled this out in a number of personal arenas. I emerged from college with delusional job aspirations that were corrected. I’ve failed, according to my personal metrics, many times over. I was rejected or ghosted by dream jobs and dreamy (ha, not really) boys. All of this adds up to a humbling I did not particularly ask for, but one that has grounded me in ways I needed. Like my IV refilling my veins in college, there has been a difficult but steady flow of you are worthy without this dripping into my soul through my twenties. And, bless it, I’m more gracious with myself and more rooted than I’ve ever been. I thank God alone.
But also, I’m restless.
I recently watched Mad Men for the first time (!!! let’s chat about it!), and I felt a pang of knowness in the final season, as Peggy was prodded about an opportunity and her ambitions:
Peggy: I can have my name on the door. Be my own boss.
Stan: That’s not a good reason.
Peggy: You think it’ll fail?
Stan: No, you have such a rare talent. Stop looking over your shoulder at what other people have.
Peggy: You don’t think I can do it.
Stan: I said the opposite. You’re just excited about being in charge… [this job] isn’t even what you do.
Peggy: You have no ambition.
Stan: I’m just very happy being good at my job. I’ve got nothing else to prove.
Peggy: Spoken like a failure.
It harkened back for me to a Substack I read this year that also struck me poignantly, which I sent to my husband, who affirmed “ouch,” as in, “she got you.” The article indicts something I never would have been able to articulate in myself: a goalless ambition, originally born out of a willingness to humble myself in the face of perceived failures and push back on the dark edges of my own desires.
“For ambition to be an engine and not a curse spoiling daily life, it is fundamental that it be attached to some defined goal. It shouldn’t be a vague desire to chase visions of greatness and glory, because this aimless striving can quickly turn into a form of escapism… Could it be, then, that what I am really looking for is validation disguised as a creative endeavour? Is my ambition a pursuit of creation, or a pursuit of validation?”
Not long before I read this, my writing was published in Magnolia Journal for the third time. It was a small piece (WHICH I AM IMMENSELY GRATEFUL FOR), but one my husband could tell I didn’t feel like celebrating. My heart swelled a little when I saw it on a newsstand, but any pride was dampened. It’s just a short piece. No big deal.
He asked, “what publication would make it feel like you’ve made it?”
I replied, “The New York Times. Vogue. The Atlantic.”
He laughed. “That’s it?” And he was right to poke at this. Because through most of my life, Magnolia Journal, having my name on a newsstand, would have been THE dream. Faced with real questions of tangible goals and dreams, I shrivel and opt for the out-of-reach. To remove the dark side of these drives, I thought. But instead, it’s made me, as the aforementioned Substack is aptly titled, ambitious without a cause.
For some time now, my heart and mind have been a twisted mess when it comes to this. I am a naturally driven person who is also seeking balance, but what, if anything, of ambition is beneficial? Particularly as a faith-based person trying to pursue spiritual wholeness alongside my natural gifts, I’m haunted by this simple quote from the 2024 film Conclave (fantastic, by the way):
“Ambition, the moth of holiness.”
Jedidiah Jenkins—a writer I will always happily recommend—recently wrote a concise and brilliant piece about the removal of friction from modern life, a la technology and the like. He gave the exhortation:
“Difficulty can be constructive. Torture is cruel. I keep realizing that one key maxim to remember in light of human progress is: keep the baby, chuck the bathwater. Figuring out what exactly the baby is… is a worthy cause of our generation.”
I echo this sentiment, that the great question for our generation is to determine what advancement is beneficial. When we can continue to invent ways to push past our limitations, inconveniences, and discomforts, what, if any, should be kept? And is there a value to them?
I think about this often in the beauty industry. The features we were naturally given are now up for debate, with various injections and full-on plastic surgery becoming increasingly accessible and mainstream. What was once taboo and reserved for the rich and famous is now primed for the masses—Nose job before-and-afters make for good content. So does sharing your injectables routine. Kris Jenner got the facelift of all facelifts and the internet ate it up. It’s something I personally don’t have an interest in, and I think on the whole is a net negative for women (I won’t get into that right now, but this is a great read). But I also don’t want to look haggard, of course. So for me, that means taking care of my skin via good products and the occasional facial.
“You have great skin,” an esthetician will tell me, “you could get rid of those acne scars if you want,” is often a follow-up, including a list of more intense procedures that promise to resurface my face. They’re right, I could. And that is the issue with the beauty industry, and a lot of our societal developments. There is always an option to make yourself more perfect, to remove the scars or bumps that make us human. The question I try to ask, and I wish we as a society would ask more often, is, should I?
This, too, is a form of goalless ambition—to indulge in all the treatments and advancements offered to us toward the foggy end of feeling acceptable and beautiful by a standard that by nature must keep changing so that we can continue to spend money on it. To be a full-hearted human in the year of our Lord 2026 and beyond, to be someone who cares about their soul and who we are becoming and how we are affected by our endless ambition for more, better… we must have limits.
We must contemplate at what point fixation on our appearance will consume us and stop short of it. We must find out what amount of money, what size of house, what kind of designer bag, is plenty, and hold the line. We must—I must—set gracious goals for what we actually hope to achieve with our God-given gifts in a way that will contribute positively to society and ourselves, and then leave the rest of the ladder behind. American culture is built on the ambition of more, and it may take many forms, but if we hope to maintain a semblance of unconsumed self, there must be limits, and especially in the areas that entice us the most.
Girl boss culture has been dead in name for some years (or at least the butt of Gen Z jokes, which is a kind of death), but the rise in *manifesting* seems to have replaced it. Believe hard enough, lock in, visualize your best self, and get that bag, girl! It comes to the surface a lot this time of year. And in some ways, this is good. A fresh page is a perfect moment to reflect on what we want to write. For me, I’m trying to find the balance of writing something realistic and gracious for myself, but also something that is, in fact, a goal. An end point. Without it, the slave driver in my head will take the words I didn’t write and build them into an aimless, limitless appetite to satisfy my own bottomless pride.
Perhaps I’m the only one in this tension. But I suspect there are others who find themselves afflicted by the disease of more, and maybe even others that have also tried so hard to remove themselves from it that they created a vacuum only to be filled by more hunger. I hope, for us, that we can set the exercise goal while also limiting how much we are willing to let the shape of our bodies dominate our thoughts and dictate our value. I hope we can care for ourselves in ways that are meaningful and beautiful while knowing it’s the least important thing about us. And I hope we can take up new hobbies, fail at them brilliantly, and intentionally never post a thing about it, or God forbid monetize it. And I hope we can know ourselves enough to give our ambitions room to run, room to grow us, while building a healthy fence.
I think that’s how I got on Substack in the first place.
Thanks for reading. Drop your 2026 goals and resolutions in the comments, and how you plan to get there.
Current obsessions:
I’m entertained by:
I already mentioned Mad Men. But let me say it again, MAD MEN.
The latest Knives Out installment, Wake Up Dead Man. It was a fun time, as always, but I was truly stunned by the depth of this film and appreciated its representation of faith.
The final season of Stranger Things! I could give you a haughty critique, but honestly, it’s still a fun time, and I can’t wait to see how it ends.
From the kitchen:
This cranberry brie appetizer.
I’ve been wanting to make this cookie recipe forever, and it did not disappoint!
Filling my soul:
After a long hiatus courtesy of home renovations, I am back on my hosting game and it’s been lovely. I hosted a girly favorite things Christmas party and seeing a bunch of women gathered in my hard-fought home was so surreal.
Analog activities (in addition to all the screentime…). Knitting! Baking! Puzzling! Special shoutout to this very cool and educational wine puzzle we did recently.
I’ve been thinking lately how far girl boss vibes carried me. If I was capable of channeling it again I totally would!
Loved this piece - so much wisdom and truth to absorb.