TED Talks Daily
TED Talks Daily Book Club: Intentional Ambition: Redefining Your Work for Greater Joy, Freedom, and Fulfillment | Rha Goddess
24 Aug 2025
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Happy Sunday. Today, we're bringing you a new episode of our very own book club series, where each month we check out new books from TED speakers that will spark your curiosity all year long.
A few weeks ago, I sat down with Ra Goddess, author of the new book, Intentional Ambition, Redefining Your Work for Greater Joy, Freedom, and Fulfillment. We got together virtually in front of a live audience of TED members to speak about how work culture has fundamentally changed and what we can do to recenter joy and mental well-being in our life and, yes, in our work.
Ra is a social impact strategist and career coach with over 30 years of experience empowering changemakers, creatives, leaders, and social entrepreneurs. Her mission is to help people find their true mission and purpose in life and to revolutionize the way we live, work, and play.
In our conversation, she lays out three stages to renegotiate your relationship to work in order to discover and align with your true ambitions. Let's get to it. Ra, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much, Elise, for having me. It's so wonderful to be here.
Well, let's just start with, given the fact that everything is going on in the world and can feel so tumultuous, it seems like it's a great moment to just reassess our relationships with work. So let's start by talking about work culture itself. How would you describe the current state of work? Influx.
Influx.
And I would say massively in flux. And I think part of the inspiration for writing the book was really recognizing that over the last five years, we have all gone through a pretty profound and unprecedented experience on a global scale. And we are different. We are not the same.
And there is a way in which I think all of us are trying to really discern what is the relationship I wanna have with my work? What is the way I wanna work? And as we are sort of bumping up against all of the converging aspects of our culture with technology, with organizational restructuring, like all of the things that are happening,
Within our corporate institutions, as well as within our mom and pop shops for our entrepreneurs out there, I think this question is front and center. Like, you know, where am I and where do I want to be when it comes to my work and the way that I work?
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