Hello hello, and welcome to Episode 27 of Life On the Brink!
Today’s episode is a little different as it’s partially a bit of a story time about myself, and also because we’re talking about something a little bit more abstract. Specifically, about working and resting, and the way we view our own lives. As always, I’m looking to simply enjoy my life, and to, hopefully, in turn, help you embrace and enjoy your own unique life.
If you recall, Episode 20 was about success and specifically about goal setting. In that episode I shared my personal reflections on how goals can and have helped enrich my life without the overwhelming pressure that sometimes comes with them. Today’s episode is in the same vein, as we’re talking about “hustle culture,” that is, our generation’s obsession with constant work. I’m also sharing my own personal journey into, and departure from, this frame of mind, and what I’ve learned along the way. In the end, I hope that we are able to see our work for what it is: work, and to see our lives and ourselves not as an extension of that work, as we are so often told, but as something entirely different and meant to be enjoyed and loved.
Now, before I go any further, I want to acknowledge the fact that it is a privilege to even talk about work in this way, and I understand that there are people who do not have the time or resources or faculty to think about work in a different way. I’m very fortunate, and I thank the Lord every day for those blessings.
My hope in talking about work and rest today is to help shed some light on the very real systems and thought patterns that have come into our culture, especially in the last decade or so, and to combat them with a different way of thinking in order to hopefully lift the unnecessary burdens that we so often put on our shoulders. My aim is simply to share my personal experience and ongoing journey so that maybe I can help someone else enjoy their own life a little bit more. So here we go…
What’s in my teacup? This ginger lemon green tea from The Fruit Farm.
What Is Hustle Culture?
Historically, the word “hustle” has meant either to move something roughly and quickly, or is a negative term for swindling someone (plus it’s also a dance). In recent years, however, “hustling” has taken on a new meaning; it now connotes a kind of work ethic, often in entrepreneurial or urban workplaces.
To “hustle” is to be working as hard as you possibly can, but not in a swindling way, in an admirable way. You can even have a “side hustle,”, which is work you do outside of your day job. Hustling is this generation’s way of saying “working hard,” but there’s an attitude underneath the surface that is, in my opinion, detrimental.
I have a memory from my first year of school. My dad visited my kindergarten class as one of the parents volunteering for Career Day. He told us about working on F-16’s and put on the huge safety earmuffs that he wore on the flight line, and we ate all of that up. To my fellow classmates, my dad was a mechanic in the Air Force, but I knew, even at 5 or 6 years old, that my dad was so much more than that. Even when he wasn’t working he was still my dad, still so important to me. His worth in my eyes went so far beyond the requirements of the U.S. military, and I would venture a guess that the loved ones in your life are worth so much more than whatever their job title might be.
Why then, is it so hard to detach our own self worth from the work we do?
Do you remember when you were in elementary school, and from that very young age were asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” We thought nothing of it then, brainstorming all the different occupations you could try once you grew up and got a college education. This was our norm, but think about the fact that from that very young age, you learn to define yourself by your job or career, what you will do in your future rather than who you will be.
What’s more, our recent generation has taken on even more work as part of daily life, our normal routine. You’re not doing it right unless you’re tired and overworked. Take this LINK self help book by known Shark Daymond John, for instance; just reading it sounds exhausting:
The following is an excerpt by Anne Helen Petersen, a BuzzFeed News Reporter, in an article she wrote in 2019. The piece was really about millennials and burnout, how our generation is encountering a different kind of burnout. The entire article is fascinating, but I wanted to zero in on this passage:
Why can’t I get this mundane stuff done? Because I’m burned out. Why am I
burned out? Because I’ve internalized the idea that I should be working all the
time. Why have I internalized that idea? Because everything and everyone in my
life has reinforced it — explicitly and implicitly — since I was young. Life has always
been hard, but many millennials are unequipped to deal with the particular ways
in which it’s become hard for us.
So what now? Should I meditate more, negotiate for more time off, delegate tasks
within my relationship, perform acts of self-care, and institute timers on my social
media? How, in other words, can I optimize myself to get those mundane tasks
done and theoretically cure my burnout? As millennials have aged into our thirties,
hat’s the question we keep asking — and keep failing to adequately answer.
But maybe that’s because it’s the wrong question altogether.
Any of that sound familiar? I can’t be the only one who even looks at leisure activities as things to be checked off a list. Here’s another brilliant passage, this one from Bryan E. Robinson Ph.D. in an article for Psychology Today. He was defining toil and overworking as a sense of glamour:
The toil glamour of the hustle culture extols overworking and burnout and signals
you're a hard, dedicated employee, and 45% of the workforce brag about being
modern-day members. They bathe in the same glamorous light that advertisers
poured over the cigarette and liquor ads of the 1930s. In movies and commercials
back then, it was considered sexy to smoke and drink until they realized it caused
cancer and stroke.
Because today’s culture can be so saturated in this “toil glamour,” it can be hard to see life any other way. Everything must be optimized, always striving, always working toward the “big thing”, or more often, the “next big thing.” Plus, with the help of social media, we can now project that image of ourselves to others, perpetuating that cycle. With all this going on, it’s easy to tie our own worth, our life’s purpose, to whatever job, cause, or passion project we throw ourselves into, but can I tell you a secret?
That’s a lie.
You don’t have to “Outperform, Outwork, and Outhustle” in order to have a “Successful and Rewarding Life” (no offense to Daymond). You are a unique, beautifully created being and there is no one in the world like you. So, it stands to reason that your story would (and should!) look different than any other story on earth. Your life is precious, and if all your time is spent trying to achieve some purpose or goal, to always be doing rather than living, how might you spend that time differently if you knew you were already enough?
To help put this all in perspective, I’m going to share a bit about my own history and some of the things I’ve learned along the way.
My life as the Queen Hustler
(now, I still love to be effective, so I’ve organized this into bullets, sort of a “things that contributed to my hustle mindset” list since the story can be a little long. I’d recommend listening to the full podcast for details)
-I’m the oldest child of 4. I feel like right off the bat made me a bit of a leader and maybe had something to do with my perfectionism.
-I was homeschooled through most of my education, and I really didn’t like the way some people treated the education of girls. I felt that I was expected to grow up, get married, have children, and homeschool them. (These were never endorsed or pushed by my parents, by the way). I found myself rebelling against this in my mind; I wanted to do all the things, especially since it wasn’t necessarily expected of me.
-I come from an immigrant family. My abuelo got his first job selling papers at age 6, and even though my circumstances are much different from his, there’s definitely a sense of pride in working, in doing what you have to do. I love this about my family, but it went a little too far in my brain, I think.
-I’m a millennial, and as the articles cited above have explained, our generation is prone to becoming workaholics.
-I’m an Enneagram 3, which is basically perfect for the hustle culture model. Feeling “productive” is like a drug. Separating who I am from what I do was a very very difficult task for me, and is still ongoing.
-I’m a musician, and studied it in academia. Music is not a “sensible” career, and often takes a lot out of you. I felt like an underdog in every sense, and absolutely loved it. “The grind” was the norm, and fellow students would talk about their fatigue, their lack of rest or even health, as a badge of honor. It’s also rare to seek one particular job in music, it’s just one gig that will lead to the next gig and the next and the next.
-I’m a woman, there’s a level there where I feel the need to outperform in order to be taken seriously.
The Big Shift: hustling to resting
If all of that sounds a little exhausting, it’s because it was. I found myself feeling overwhelmed whenever I thought about my future, and any kind of failure felt like a strike against my whole person, my own worth. It’s been a bit of a journey over the past 3 years, I’d say, of moving away from that “hustling” mindset, and I can’t recommend it ENOUGH.
-Firstly, I took a break after graduation. I thought I’d go to grad school (or move to L.A.? grind forever?) but I needed a break; I was truly burnt out. And WOW it felt good not to have a million things to do and looming deadlines around every corner. I was still trying to hustle, between joining bands and getting gigs here and there, setting up my website and online professional profiles (trying to be as busy as possible like a good musician), but at least I could breathe.
-Naturally, I had a bit of a crisis here and there, since I didn’t have a clear path in front of me. It was hard to judge what was “worth” putting my time and energy into. My mom was super helpful during this time and kept reassuring me that I am, in fact, more than a musician (a revelation to me)
And here’s the big one:
-This pandemic brought a whole new set of challenges throughout the past year, and those of us who might have felt like their work defined them, no longer had any work to do. I had to learn who I was beyond any gigs, jobs, or social circles. I had to be ok just being myself, existing on earth and being enough.
So what’s the point of all this? What am I getting at here? I’m saying that
YOU ARE ENOUGH.
On this earth, already, before you do one more single thing. When you wake up in the morning, you’re enough. When you go to bed and haven’t gotten a single thing done, you’re enough. Beyond anything you will ever do or accomplish or reach, you are beautifully and wonderfully made and you don’t have to “outperform, outwork, and outhustle your way to a more successful and rewarding life.”
Hopefully as you give yourself time to realize what you actually like doing in life (maybe discovering through this podcast!), what you truly enjoy, you can feel free to embrace those things.
Do you enjoy travelling?
Do you love time alone?
Do you have children, or want to have children?
Do you enjoy quiet mornings with a cup of tea?
Do you like long walks in the woods?
Are you passionate about something?
Then embrace them, my friend. Making money or renown is not the only worthy cause.
And for those of you who really don’t have any answers to those questions, maybe you’re in between things and don’t know what you want to embrace: that’s ok. Keep offering love and patience to yourself and, I am confident, you’ll find many things that you want to cultivate and enjoy.
Your life is precious and unique, and only you can live it, so let it be your own.
As a bonus, here's a little extra inspiration in case you want to look into this idea a little more:
**really great if you’re a creative type**
This Week’s Little Joy: Christopher Kimball's Milk Street Radio. It's a radio show, but also a podcast all about cooking. It's not a knew show, but only recently have I realized what a gem it is, I'm learning so many cool things that I can use in the kitchen, and it's so fun to listen to!
What I’m Listening To: Look For the Good by Jason Mraz. This album is perfect for the start of summer, whether you're on a break from school or just need a little chill in your vibe, this is a very happy, explicitly uplifting, (basically) ska album by one of the best singer/songwriters in the business, in my opinion.
Thank you so much for listening! Feel free to comment below with your thoughts or follow Life On the Brink on your podcast app!
As always, friends, have a lovely week.