I can’t handle achievement addicts anymore.
It’s taken me 20+ years of professional experience, illness and the failure of a business to learn it, but I have finally realized once and for all that life is for living.
Not for constantly being neurotic about achieving the next thing, relentless self-help reading and feeling inadequate, working a thousand hours, never sleeping or having hobbies, beating ourselves up for whatever we think we “should” be doing because that’s what the other guy told us would make us valuable.
Living.
Living in the moment, and sometimes that moment can be full of absolutely nothing. Silence. Quiet. Emptiness.
Too many of us are defining our self-worth by how many hours we work or what stages we’re speaking on or which clients we can list on our resume. Our careers are not the sum total of our identities, and it bothers me that especially in the digital world, we glamorize the world of entrepreneurship even though it exacts a heavy price on many. We tell people to hustle harder to be a better man. We hold up workaholics as people to emulate, even as the behavior claims people’s well-being, or worse yet, their lives.
What the hell are we doing to ourselves?
Let me make this as clear as I can.
Working endlessly doesn’t make you a better, more worthy person. Neither does your resume or the book you wrote (or didn’t) or the speech you just gave or the client you landed.
None of that even registers on the scales that measure your character. Your capacity for empathy and compassion. Your humanity and generosity. Your humor, how well you love others, how well you allow yourself to be loved.
It’s okay to put down the sixteenth business book you’ve been trying to read. It’s okay to take a lunch break, be home in time for dinner, take your vacation days and enjoy not working during each and every one.
Go play that round of golf. Watch your favorite movie on the sofa. Go for a walk with your dog and your kid. Sleep in. Stay up late. Say yes to the last minute road trip.
Do the things that contribute to a full heart and a quiet mind.
Keep the job you love now and find ways to make it more worthwhile to you. You don’t have to chase promotions and bigger titles.
You don’t have to win the rat race. In fact, you don’t even have to compete. You are not lacking in ambition or moxie if you don’t want to spend your hours doing what “they” do to get ahead.
Be true to your wants and needs, not always your woulds and shoulds. Actually, especially not those. They’re usually the things that sink you.
It’s okay to stop hustling. Now. Right this very minute. Just. Stop.
It’s been life changing for me to reshape this perspective, but it sadly took some pretty huge and scary things to force me into it (thanks, Universe).
My only mild regret is that I didn’t embrace it sooner, but I needed to go through the difficult things I did in order to learn it once and for all, and they say every experience has a few lessons in it.
But I’m incredibly thankful I figured it out with a good bit of life yet ahead of me.
You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a motivational speaker shouting at you about the grind, the hustle, the endless effort you have to put in to be at the top.
That all assumes that the top is where you’re headed in the first place. There are plenty of other worthy, valuable, interesting places to be (that come with a lot less stress, burnout, risk and personal sacrifice).
It’s okay.
You can stop now.
Come on over here, and let’s have a sip of something lovely on the porch in the sunshine.
There’s some life happening around us. I’d like to participate.
You?
One of the nice things about my work situation is that I’m non-exempt. Not “allowed” to put in overtime. Not permitted to work over 40 hours a week. When the company switched me to that status, at first I thought it was a demotion of sorts, but it’s been a blessing in disguise since I have a boss who is a stickler for rules and never tries to fudge an extra few hours out of me. In an IT department, that’s as good as getting extra vacation time (that people never use).
It is kind of a blessing. Sadly, the professional world often looks down on those kinds of roles, which is really stupid. Glad it’s helped you find your balance and boundaries. Increasingly critical, in fact.
AMEN is about all I can say right now.
I’m a BIG fan of working hard, but I’ve never been a fan of “the hustle.”
There is more to life than constantly “being busy” and too many people wear it like a badge of honor.
We are all motivated by different things and yet every day I watch as people forget this and jump on a roller coaster that they feel they need to be on because someone they read told them to.
The “badge of honor” thing for working umpteen hour weeks drives me crazy. Actually, it’s only ever driven me close to that in reality, but same point applies. 🙂 The extremes always get the microphone and that’s what people interpret as truth, somewhere to belong, someone to emulate. I love my work, but I also love the rest of the things that make up my life and want time to enjoy them. I’m kind of glad I had the reality checks I did to make sure I recognized that.
I agree 100%. I take time to enjoy my success and my family. What are these hustlers planning? To wait till they’re old to enjoy life. Hell, they could get got by a bus tomorrow.
They could. Or drop dead of a heart attack. The problem is that it’s really hard to read the label of the jar you’re in. You never think it’s you, until it is. And by then it’s even more difficult to change course. I know it makes some people happy, and I respect very much that my way is no more truth than theirs. But I can’t fathom it, and my totally unfounded opinion is that it’s just not worth it.
Great arlcite, thank you again for writing.
YES! YES!! YES!!!
I work hard, but when I’m burned out, I make mistakes. I get really nervous about speakers who push the hustle. Because for those of us who are already self-motivated perfectionists, that can be interpreted as a work-until-you’re-on-the-brink-of-death message.
I’ve been working really hard this week and have some good wins I can point to. It’s a beautiful day and I was looking for a sign to figure out whether I should take the afternoon off and play. Thanks for being my sanity signal. I’m going to get a pedicure and tour an art museum.
YAY! I’m so glad. It really is all about balance. Those of us who are driven by nature don’t need to be yelled at to do MORE MORE MORE because it’s just how we’re wired, anyway. Those that aren’t? Well, I don’t think any dose of motivational speaking is going to change that for them. But the truth really does usually lie somewhere in the middle, in varying shades for most of us. But I’m personally really thankful that I found MY medium because man, the “hustle” was going to eat me alive.
Holy hell yes. I am so “here” right now, giving myself permission to shut down projects and my consulting business to pursure FT again.
I’ve said it often lately – success and self worth are far too intrinsicaly tied to each other.
Amen for this kick ass reminder. Thank you!
You’ll definitely want to read my post on Monday.
Oooh, foreshadowing FTW! I’m on it.
As an active hustle-advocate, I STILL fully support this message.
Why?
Because, you’re spot on. Life is meant to be lived. It’s meant to live fully and that doesn’t mean sitting on a computer working 24-7-365. It means experiencing different things and having those experiences with people who care about you and you care about them.
The issue with the emergence of many hustlers is that they don’t know why they’re hustling. For me, I hustle hard so I can play harder. I hustle so I can help people in my family and do work in my community without a financial burden. Everyone has their reasons for hustling, some just don’t clearly define it and instead work their life away.
As someone who just got back from a 2 week hiatus in Bali which was long overdue, I wish I read this 3 years ago. Great post Amber!
I think I also have a very negative taste in my mouth with the term “hustle”, as it implies doing whatever it takes, to extreme degrees. And if more so-called hustlers also shared how awesome it was to do nothing for two weeks in Bali, maybe we wouldn’t perpetuate the unrealistic standards that projects. My daughter, at eight, is already subjected to “the harder you work, the more you get” mentality. IN THIRD GRADE. She feels guilty for going to her riding lessons because she has hours of homework to do. We’re doing this to ourselves, and only we can fix it.
Amber, you rock.
I am so pleased that you are in a great place, with renewed sense of self and a hard-earned values-based approach to life. I would gladly take a spot on the porch beside you and pour the lemonade. I went through a similar burnout just as social media was taking off, and I watched from the sidelines while other people made and lost fortunes. But getting back into the field on my own terms and at my own pace has been a wonderful experience, and I hope you will feel as welcomed home as I have. You deserve it! 🙂
Thank you so much for the kind words, Catherine. Burnout doesn’t pick seasons or fads, and that’s the thing. If you’re in the “all or nothing” mindset, it’s likely to get you eventually. I see so many people around me in varying stages of that burnout and it makes me sad. I paid very expensive prices to find my footing but I wouldn’t trade it back for anything.
Good stuff dear…. been reflecting on this often of late… usually at 10pm or 5:30am as I stare at yet another email 😉
There is a simple beauty to a simpler life… even if one can’t afford to buy everything, take every trip, speak at every event make every listical… etc.
Glad to see you’ve seen the light… looking forward to watching you chase it.
Thank you for saying this! I think the ‘hustle’ attitude that so many are championing is causing more harm that good. It means that we can never feel healthy about stopping because someone out there is ‘hustling’ more than we are. It becomes of perpetual cycle of endless work activities when we actually can feel worse and worse about ourselves.
What we need is permission to stop, to turn off, to cuddle with our kids, to walk our dog (and ride our horses), to have conversations with friends and family about interesting things, to paint and draw, to write and create. To swing in a hammock on a cool evening and listen to the sounds of our world.
As someone who is just now really trying to emerge into the crowded space, this was a delightful read. I also find myself working all hours to put things together, glued to my device to try and get all the networking in that I can, and stressing out over how I’m going to make a name for myself. The whole time fighting the mentality that if I’m not using up every bit of time to hustle, I must not want it badly enough. That’s a pretty damaging feeling. Thanks for sharing a piece of your mind with us, Amber. 🙂
The people I love and the people I admire and want to be around? It makes absolutely no difference what they do for a “living.” I love the ones who love living.
Love this, Amber. If we don’t exercise grace towards ourselves it will difficult for us to do likewise to others.
Bless,
Amber – you do a great job here of articulating the TRUE cost of entrepreneurship. In the three businesses I’ve owned, two with business partners, I’ve had all those experiences and then some.
But sometimes the journey IS the point. Sometimes the path, though painful, is exactly what we needed when we needed it, even though we didn’t know it at the time.
Thank you for so openly sharing your experience and reminding us to hold ourselves to our OWN standards, not the standards of others so we can enjoy the OTHER journeys our life has in store for us as well.
Wishing you well on ALL your journeys!