Rewriting the Rules of Female Ambition
The path from prescribed potential to authenticity in a world of expectations.
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
- Wild Geese | Mary Oliver
Heart racing, a familiar panic grips my chest. In my dream, I missed a maths lesson, and my mind spiralled into the certainty that I would fail my A Levels. As consciousness floods back, I remember with a feeling of deep idiocy: I'm twenty-five, and exams are a relic of my past. Yet here I am, years later, still haunted by the spectre of academic failure.
This nocturnal visitation feels like a step backwards, a ghostly echo of everything I've been trying to escape. For years, I had pursued conventional success — excelling in academics and landing a job in London's bustling education tech scene — but beneath the veneer of achievement, a different dream was taking root. In a move that surprised many, I traded spreadsheets for blank pages. I embarked on a journey across Asia, determined to pursue my passion for writing full-time. What I didn't anticipate was the depth of the mental rewiring ahead. The trauma of societal expectations had burrowed deep, programming me to equate worth with conventional career milestones. As I stepped off the well-worn path, I realised just how tightly those invisible strings had been pulling.
The problem is that as an ambitious woman, I’ve often had to navigate a complex landscape of expectations when it comes to success.
I’ve discovered that the fear of ‘wasted potential’ and imposter syndrome can be unbearable. It can stifle our pursuit of unconventional paths and make us feel pressure to excel in prestigious fields that don’t necessarily align with our passions. For women from marginalised or less privileged backgrounds, this pressure intensifies, creating a suffocating expectation to leverage every talent as a means of survival and validation in a system stacked against them.
We are fed a narrative that pursuing curiosity over perceived talent is naive. Society values honing in on innate talent due to its perceived stability, yet there is strong evidence that various aspects of cognitive functioning can change and improve throughout life. Even in adulthood, our brains remain plastic and adaptable.
Carol Dweck's theory of success, for instance, argues that individuals possess either a fixed mindset, believing their abilities are static, or a growth mindset, which embraces the idea that abilities can be developed through effort and learning. Unsurprisingly, the growth mindset has been shown to lead to greater success and personal development with greater resilience and motivation. By adopting a growth mindset we shift from being driven by competition to creativity. So with the right mindset, our passions can become our talents.
A growth mindset encouraged by the pursuit of passion and curiosity allows us to become the definers of our own success.
For years, I confused talent with passion and mistook proficiency for purpose. My natural aptitude for academic writing and research became both a compass and a cage, pointing insistently towards the well-trodden paths of academia or corporate success. The thought of veering off these predetermined routes felt not just daunting, but almost sacrilegious. After all, how could I possibly squander years of honing skills that society deemed valuable? Yet, beneath the veneer of achievement, a quiet dissatisfaction gnawed at me. I found myself caught in a paralysing internal conflict — terrified of wasting my potential, yet equally afraid of wasting my life in pursuits that left me feeling hollow.
The more I thought about my predicament, the clearer it became that the fears I had harboured were not my own. What did it even mean to live up to my potential? Where had I gotten the idea that my success was tied to what other people expected of me?
I found an immense amount of inner power in relinquishing the concept of potential and stepping into authenticity instead. The answers I sought were inside me rather than in an idealised self that was not my own creation.
Choosing to embrace uncertainty and the unknown was terrifying but I decided to trust in the path of most resistance being where I’d find the most growth and value.
This mindset change has transformed my life. Once I started accepting that the conventional framework I had been taught did not satisfy me, I began dedicating my free time to writing. Tasks now channel energy into me, rather than drain it. I hadn’t expected this new direction to release so many blockers in other areas of my life: my relationships have improved and I have found greater peace of mind.
Giving up the nine-to-five working lifestyle was powerful for my inner feminine self, as it was an inherent rejection of a masculine, linear framework that did not serve me. I feel unbelievably grateful for this, as I am aware that this choice was a privilege that not everyone possesses. Not all of women have the chance to escape these environments, which can be obstructive to the cyclical and fluctuating biological states that we experience. By ignoring these structures and carving out my own time based on feminine intuition and fluidity, I inadvertently opened up channels to my emotions and inner wisdom.
None of this has gone without moments of self-doubt. Embracing my new direction has been like learning to walk again - exhilarating, but often wobbly and uncertain. I am navigating the delicate balance between practicality and heart-led pursuits, seeking to integrate my love for storytelling and education in a way that’s meaningful and sustainable.
I’m proud of myself for starting and excited to see where this journey will take me. Last weekend marked a milestone: my debut spoken word performance at a small festival. As I stood before the audience, vulnerable yet empowered, I felt the first real affirmation that I was on the right path. I was very literally, speaking my truth, and in doing so I've found a different kind of success — one measured not in accolades or paychecks, but in the quiet satisfaction of authenticity.
Let us find empowerment through authenticity. Let us actively reject the notion that it is our duty to capitalise on our talents so we can fulfil a prescribed potential. There is more strength in choosing our own path, especially if it encourages others to live their truth. In a world that is systematically rigged to largely benefit one gender, the only way forward is authenticity. Rather than merely adapting to existing systems, we can create new paths that honour our true selves and inspire others to do the same.
“But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own”
- The Journey | Mary Oliver