Life & Wisdom Quote by Anne Wilson Schaef

Ambition gets a clever reframing here: the problem is not ascent, its the obsession with ascent. Anne Wilson Schaef, a writer steeped in the self-help and recovery movements that interrogated American hunger for status, is quietly puncturing the era's gospel of hustle. "Getting to the top isn't bad" grants the audience its craving without scolding it. Then she pulls the rug: its "probably best done as an afterthought". The punchline is psychological, not moralistic. When the top is the plan, everything else gets instrumentalized: relationships become networking, work becomes performance, identity becomes a brand. When it arrives as a byproduct, it can signal mastery, usefulness, or integrity rather than compulsion.

The subtext is about control. Making the summit an "afterthought" suggests a different center of gravity: process over outcome, vocation over validation. It also hints at an old recovery insight: fixation is a form of bondage, even when its socially rewarded. Schaef isn't arguing for passivity; she's warning that the anxious mind turns achievement into a treadmill that never lets you stand still long enough to live inside what you've built.

The line works because it uses understatement to smuggle in critique. "Probably" softens the prescription, inviting self-recognition instead of defensiveness. "Afterthought" is the barb: it demotes the culturally sacred goal to something almost incidental. In a society that treats striving as character, Schaef proposes a heresy that sounds strangely relieving: do the work, follow the thread, and let the trophies chase you.