Host: At the Grammys this year, musician and producer Pharrell Williams told the audience, "Never stop grinding and never stop working. Stop doing anything else but working." And we're used to hearing that ambition is a good thing, that you should never be satisfied. But in life after ambition, a good enough memoir writer and broadcaster, Amil Niaz, challenges us to look at our lives and accomplishments in a whole new way. Amil joins us in studio. How are you doing?

Guest: I'm good. How are you?

Host: I'm doing well. Congratulations on the memoir.

Guest: Thank you.

Host: From one millennial to another, I have to ask, how did the promise and the responsibilities of the millennial generation sort of shaped the ideas of ambition?

Guest: Well, I mean, I'm so glad you brought up the Pharrell quote. I remember him saying that and me just thinking, "No, no, this is exactly what I don't want to hear anymore." I mean, it's messages like that that I think, you know, you may recall having heard a lot as a kid: "Work hard, you know, sacrifice anything in your life in order to achieve your dream, even though only a handful of us are ever going to get that dream." But "never stop grinding, never stop hustling, never stop working." And that's what I grew up with. That was the idea was that no matter your circumstance, no matter if you grew up in poverty, no matter if you were an immigrant, you know, no matter whatever life handed you, if you were willing to work really hard, sacrifice everything, hustle, grind, then you could have the American dream, you know, you could have it. The house. You could have a family. You could have two cars. You could have a cottage. You could go on vacations every year. I'm 43. I don't know how many of those things you have. I don't have many. I mean, I have a wonderful family and I have a great life, but I didn't get it following those steps. Right. And so I think that idea of ambition, as we were promised and very much interlaced with this idea of meritocracy that we were promised, I think has really exploded in our generation's lifetime. You know, we've lived through multiple financial crises. 9/11, I think, really culturally shifted how we looked at a lot of different things. So, yeah, I think the millennial dream went bust a long time ago.

Host: Well, let's talk a little bit about sort of I want to take it back to when with your family, we talk about the promise, but I want to talk about a little bit more of the realities being specific from an immigrant family. How did how did some of that make it difficult, you know, in terms of, I would call it the inside where you're at home versus what you were facing in the reality of your classroom, school, work and all of that stuff that you document in your memoir.

Guest: Yeah, I mean, I'm first generation to this country. So my family came from Pakistan. They didn't speak the language. They had very, very little money to their name when they came to this country. You know, a couple of my uncles were here, so they had just the most bare bones of support. They left everything behind to come and have a better life. And that also meant that they were really spending most of their time trying to get set up right, trying to get a place to live, trying to get jobs, trying to figure out this very, very different bureaucratic system. They didn't really have that same energy to spend on helping us figure it out. Right. Like the kids of immigrants often are just thrown to the wolves. And so we're many times not speaking the language either. But we, you know, kids, kids are not as welcoming as you would think to outsiders. As much as we want to believe otherwise, you know? So I remember just feeling very lost, very confused and not really knowing where to turn to for guidance and for help. My parents were busy figuring it out for themselves, and I, as the eldest daughter, was was kind of also the one to figure it out for my siblings. So I felt a lot of pressure. Sometimes I would have to help my parents navigate paperwork, of course, right? Yes. Citizenship tests. I was helping them study. I was teaching them English while I was trying to learn it myself. And so when you're already taking on all of that stuff, it's really hard to then try and concentrate on your studies or yourself and figure out what is it that I really want, because I'm so busy trying to make sure that this vision that my parents had doesn't crumble once we're in this new country.

Host: Alright. Early in the book you write, "Ambition becomes a funny thing when it is blunted by inequality or used against you. It takes on a jagged shape, one that seems designed to maim anyone still hoping to grasp it. Yet for years, I still tried to grab on, inching my way up and across different companies, I took strategic pay cuts and job titles that included a lot more work with no extra salary, in the hope that ambition would somehow set me free. Let's talk about the workplace. How is the workplace on the way up the ladder, not aligned with what you were experiencing in life?"

Guest: Yeah. You know, I mean, I, I studied journalism in the hopes that...

Host: You didn't pick an easy.

Guest: No, I did not. It was not the wisest. I mean, could could I have predicted that the entire industry would essentially collapse in on itself? No. I also picked it because it was sort of adjacent to my dream. Right. It was the like, kind of parental approved version of what I really wanted to do, which was right. Right. And I was in Vancouver. It was a very, very difficult time to be trying to find the kind of work that I was looking for. I could not get a job to save my life in the industry. I moved to Toronto and I finally did find something, and I was so excited. And I took that. That idea 'work really hard, put your head down, don't make a lot of noise, and just do a good job and you will climb up the ladder.' Unfortunately, that's not the reality for a lot of, I think, women, young women, women of colour, there are invisible barriers and we've started to talk about it as a society. You know, people had expectations of how much I could accomplish, and there was a sort of an invisible ceiling that where I just couldn't progress beyond it.

Host: I want to talk about something that must have been very hard to detail. In your book. You describe a horrific assault and then also developing an addiction. How did those instances derail what you were ultimately aiming for?

Guest: Yeah. You know, it was one of those moments in life where you I really felt I was like split into two. There was the version of me that had no idea that, you know, something that terrible could happen to a person. And then there's the version of me that has lived through it, and I have to decide if I'm going to come out the other side and how. And at the time, the only thing, the only constant, the only stable thing in my life that I could turn to was work. And so I just felt it was so important that I find a way to navigate something so tragic and and awful and life changing, while still doing a great job at work. I was terrified to let what had happened to me affect my career. I put it in the book because I think a lot of people go through that. A lot of people have these these tragedies. Someone I know, her husband just died and I'm all I could think about was, "What is she going to do about work?" You know, "Can she afford to take time off in, in this environment?" Like, it's it's so sad. And I think you saw it in the pandemic. It was a life or death situation for so many people. And yet the biggest conversation a lot of us were having was about work. Could we keep our jobs? Could we keep going? Like, how do we keep making widgets? Even though many of us are afraid for our whole families?

Host: As you bring up the pandemic, I want to talk about what you were writing during that time. Tell me a little bit about how, during that pandemic, talking about the pain points, how that kind of work gave you purpose.

Guest: In that moment in the pandemic. Pregnant with my second, having a toddler at home, my husband and I had just moved back from London. We didn't have jobs or or we were looking for jobs, and I was trying to work and parent and and take care of my like my mom was in the house as well and do it all in this super tiny space. And I felt like I was like my brain was on fire. And I did the only thing I knew how to do, really, in a time like this. And I wrote and I and I was out there first on just on social media, sharing what other parents were sharing. And editors started reaching out and saying, "You know, this is very relatable. Will you write this for us?" And so that it really became this, like cry for help. That resonated with a lot of people and that it did spawn. Ultimately, my column in The Cut, which continues now called The Hard Part, and it's spawned a lot of other viral pieces about just like what we were all going through as parents, as working parents, as new moms, because, you know, parenthood was so different. If you just had a baby in the pandemic, you couldn't really relate to anyone else because you weren't going to like drop-ins. You weren't maybe even going to the park, right? You couldn't meet up with other people. You had no support system. And so, you know, I was going through that myself. And yes, I found a community of people. I found my voice, I think, in many ways. And it did it did create a kind of the book in itself, because that was where I finally figured out, like, this is what I have to do, this is what I want to do. And I finally, there's nothing to lose. Let's go for it.

Host: Let's talk about it in our last couple of minutes that we have here. In your book's epilogue, you write, "So many times in my life I tried to run away from myself to be someone better. I pushed away the past and denied so many parts of myself to try and attract a type of success that I was told was the only one worth pursuing. I let poverty shape my desires. I let violence threaten my career. I let other people's idea of motherhood change my focus. Once I learned to embrace every single part of me, I found a story worth telling." Your story subtitle is A Good Enough Memoir. How is Good Enough? A New Idea of ambition?

Guest: You know, I think truthfully, for a long time it was something that I felt was very external, like, "Are you good enough to be here? Are you good enough to be a mom?" And it was something that was being defined for you. And now I choose it as something I define for myself. I am good enough to be here. I am good enough as a mother because I love my kids and they're fed and they're happy and they're loved. And I think that that can be very empowering. You know, a lot of times this idea of mediocrity, it's it's shunned upon. And I think if we reframe it as contentment and satisfaction and like I said, redefine 'good enough' for yourself. It can be very freeing. I feel the happiest I've ever felt the most satisfied in my career that I've ever felt, saying no and walking away when I feel like something's not right and and defining good for myself.

Host: That was beautiful. We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Congratulations on the book.

Guest: Thank you. Thanks for having me.