About me
Is This You?
You think you need to choose between your goals and your well-being?
You think about your dream life, seeing all the goals you want to achieve, but you're exhausted because hustle culture convinced you the only way to achieve anything is to work every second.
Do you think you have to choose between stressing yourself out and abandoning your goals?
Taking a break doesn’t feel like it?
Maybe you don’t know what your balance is.
The Gentle Art of Ambition is for anyone who wants to manage stress, avoid burnout, and support their goals and well-being. Here we create intentional balance that works for you.
Content Pillars
Intentional Balance
Here, we work on creating a balance that works for you; realise that balance comes in seasons, gentle ambition, systems, taking breaks that work for you, boundaries you set with yourself, intentional routines, mindfulness, etc.
This section will help you create the balance you need. Not getting rid of your ambition, but combining it with not neglecting your needs.
Stress Management & Burnout
This is an important part; we work on stress management, understanding stress, its types, burnout, relieving it, and working on our nervous system, which goes hand in hand.
Living Well
In this part of the content pillar, we work on making your life more enjoyable; it ties in with all the others. We talk about Cosiness, hobbies, self-care, sleep, and romanticising your life. And tying this in with finding your balance and managing your stress.
I also share personal lessons here.
What To Expect When I Subscribe?
Since I am chronically ill, I always do my best to post as many times as I can. Since I can’t always post twice a week, I've created a solution that works for me and still gives you information.
Twice a month, an essay about intentional balance.
Twice a month, an essay on burnout and stress management.
Once or twice a month, an essay about Living Well
Plus, in your welcome email, you have a little one-page download called ‘The Small Balance Menu’
About The Writer
Hello, I am Lena!
I created this publication in November 2025 under a different name, with no idea. This year, The Gentle Art of Ambition was born and found a home in my heart and on Substack.
Since I've always wanted to build a business and become an author, I finally pushed the excuses aside in 2022 and worked hard.
A little bit about my background, since I love to show why I am talking about the things I do, and for you to see I am not someone randomly writing something on the internet, but I lived and worked through it.
I grew up in a toxic, abusive household, with a chronic illness, and was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). Chronic stress made more of my body act up, anxiety a constant friend in my life, and I had five to ten panic attacks every month.
Believe me when I say stress can ruin you.
I started working on it, and I even got my panic attacks down to sometimes zero panic attacks a month. Even when I am still working on my CPTSD, you can’t tell how long that will last.
From February 2022 to around May 2024, I overworked myself, wrote nine books from idea to holding it in my hand, and pushed myself straight into burnout. Summer was close, so when my Reversed Seasonal Depression entered this…the horror was complete.
I know how important balance and stress management are, even when you have goals. Since I am currently building my business, I learned balance comes in seasons. But it never should be absent from your life.
Hustle culture taught you that you can only achieve anything by neglecting yourself; I am here to tell you: Burning out will set you back further than finding a balance that works for you.
In 2023, I trained to be a meditation coach, which means a lot to me, since I always go all in when I am interested in something. This year I built on that with self-care training, including a coaching session on somatic healing, which opened my eyes to even more. Learning and growing always means so much to me.
I am happy to have you here in our community where we don’t choose between success and caring for ourselves.