It's still not easy for me to admit it, but that night I used my pain to feed my professional ambition. In a previous job, burnout nearly killed me, and I vowed to never let ambition swallow me again. There's a fine line between the motivation needed to build a successful career and the uncontrolled ambition that ends in burnout. As I unpacked this predicament in therapy, I began to wonder: How did ambition become such a force in our world? In the ancient world, ambition was seen as a curse.

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Persons: I'd, It's, I've, Cicero, Seneca, William Casey King, Virtue, shrewdly, King, don't, They're, wasn't, he'd, Coke, Ambition, —, I'm, Gabor Maté, Mark L, There's, unethically, India's Organizations: Oxford, New York Times, Guardian Locations: hustling, India, New Delhi