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Do We Really Need to Eat. Sleep. Hustle. Repeat.?
We have been told that to be successful, we must hustle and keep going. But more of us are now discovering that this belief or way of life doesn’t fit into where we are headed.
When we are in a situation that causes us stress, discomfort or dis-ease, we were mostly taught to suck it up. There is a prize to be had for all our hard work and even suffering.
And prizes appear everywhere as a way to often seduce us and get our attention. Isn’t that why we created advertising and marketing? In the series Mad Men, advertising executive Don Draper shared, “What you call love was invented by guys like me … to sell Nylons.”
Last week, one of my university alumni associations offered a sweepstakes to join; I could win Bluetooth headphones! I literally laughed out loud wondering why they were not simply promoting the value of becoming a member of the alumni community. There were probably many meetings and approvals that took place to create this campaign. But I chose not to join.
To Hustle is to Work Harder than Anyone Else
There are many of us who go to unfulfilling jobs every day. But we need to eat and pay our bills. When we stop to reflect on what we actually need, we may find out that we need a lot less than what we thought. But these are questions we are taught to hide. Because for many of us, having a career means that we are proving something to everyone around us about how worthy we are.
But what if we simply stopped judging or critiquing and got in touch with ourselves? There are people in our world who work 2-3 jobs to simply get by and hustling has a very different meaning to them. They don’t have time to have a career.
Maybe that’s why it’s so challenging to find people in key frontline roles as they begin to question everything and make different choices?
I am hearing “soul-crushing” as a term being used more and more by people about the price they pay for that paycheck. But isn’t the opportunity to see work as a value exchange where everyone benefits? Why is there such a high price to pay? Maybe we no longer need careers? Maybe there is no reason to burn ourselves out and put our health at risk?
The Trek Ahead
And no, this is not true of everyone everywhere. There are billions of different stories and experiences out in our world. But the question is what story do we want to write for ourselves and future generations. It comes down to the choices we make and how we treat ourselves.
There is nothing more important in life than our health and whatever happens in the mind impacts every aspect of it. It’s important that we consume healthy food grown in healthy soil and it’s just as key as we feed our soul with healthy beliefs and values.
We often applaud hard work and hustling but isn’t just as valuable to know when to walk away from whatever does not resonate with us and makes us ill?
Knowing what matters most makes it easier for each of us to navigate our path. We have each been gifted with the ability to choose what to walk away from and what to walk toward; one step at a time on this trek of ours.
Related: The Future is Human