Tired of Chasing: How to Tell if You’re Ambitious or Just Activated

by | Oct 24, 2025 | Podcast: The Baggage Reclaim Sessions

Tags: Activation, ambition, burnout, efforting style of people pleasing, identity, life goals, listening to your body, people pleasing, persistence, personal bandwidth, playing roles in relationships, relationship potholes and blind spots, self-worth, tenacity, the five styles of people pleasing, trying to control the uncontrollable, unmet needs

In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I share my realisation from this summer that I’m tired of chasing. I explore how chasing can look like ambition, tenacity, and persistence (all socially sanctioned qualities we’re rewarded for), but is actually often driven by activation of old wounds and people-pleasing patterns masquerading as drive and determination. I dig into why some of us believe things must be hard to be worthwhile, how we over-identify with certain roles (like being an author or a particular type of worker or person), and the difference between being activated versus genuinely ambitious.

If you’ve ever felt caught on a hamster wheel of achieving without internalising any of it, struggled with the belief that things can’t be easy, or recognised yourself throwing efforts at something while losing sight of why you started, this episode offers both validation and a pathway to coming back to yourself.

IN THIS EPISODE…

  • Chasing often masquerades as ambition, tenacity, and persistence. Additionally, society praises us for these qualities even when we’re miserable as a result and might exploit ourselves to demonstrate them. Of course, the real question isn’t whether you’re ‘ambitious’, but why you’re pursuing something and how you’re approaching it. Hence, are you being triggered into proving your worth, or genuinely moving toward aligned desires?
  • Efforting as a dominant people-pleasing style breeds exhaustion. Believing making efforts gets you the thing while also proving you’re worthy creates a cycle a vicious cycle. You keep throwing more at situations even when they’re hurting you. This shows up as treating your body like a machine, feeling guilty for resting, and believing that if things come easily, something must be wrong or you’re not trying hard enough.
  • Over-identifying with roles narrows your perception of options. This makes it hard to pivot, listen to your body’s signals, or recognise other paths that might suit you better because you’re operating in a narrowed lane rather than the wider space actually available.
  • The belief that things must be hard to be worthwhile creates unnecessary suffering. Many of us equate struggle with value, believing, “It’s not love if it doesn’t hurt”, or that ease means you’re being lazy or scamming somehow. This fear of things being easeful keeps us chasing and makes us suspicious of calm, steadiness, and peace, the very things that would actually nourish us.
  • Often we’re chasing something we already have in other areas of life, or pursuing things to prove ourselves to people from our past rather than honouring who we are now and want to become.

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