Chasing a success somebody else defined is running a race in a jersey with their name on the back.

Borrowed ambition is hard to detect because it feels exactly like ambition. The goals arrive fully formed from a parent, a field, a group of people you want to belong to, and you can run hard at them for years before noticing you never chose the destination. Winning that race delivers someone else’s satisfaction, which does not transfer.

Take one big goal you are carrying and ask where it came from originally. If you cannot find the moment you chose it, that is worth sitting with. Keeping it is fine; keeping it deliberately is the part that changes things.