Let me guess–if I opened up your bujo/90 day planner/Evernote, you’ve got a list a mile long with all.the.things. You’re here to show up and you know you’ve got a mark to leave on this world. And if I could be in your earbud, I bet you’ve got a podcast playlist long enough to get you to China and back with all the motivation you need to keep your hustle game strong. You’ve mapped out this year and your ponytail is up and ready to do this thing. Not only are you completely excited about what’s coming down the pipeline, you can practically taste the fruit it will bring to your family. No list can intimidate you because you are ready to do the work, no matter what it takes. You’ll need to eat, sleep and breathe your goals.
You know you can do this: you know you are strong, capable, ready, and determined. Sure, you have some unhelpful thoughts that make their way onto your internal playlist but it doesn’t matter because you are here to work. You know how to work hard and you are resolute. You know how important it is to meet your goals because life is short and you didn’t come to waste time. Big dreams require sacrifices and you are ready for that. Your goals require you to work relentlessly and you’re revved up and ready to go. You know it will be blood, sweat, and tears but you know how to push through and your dreams are that good that you know it’s all going to be worth it. Life is for the taking if we’re only willing to push through our discomfort and pursue our vision. A quick glance at that long list tells you that you will have to push, push, push–likely some late nights and long weekends but that’s just what it takes to make things happen. You are ready to leave it all out on the field. So you’ve got your coffee, you’ve got your plans mapped out, and you’ve got your action items. You, my friend, are ready to hustle.
And, unfortunately, your body is ready to hurl. You must have picked up that nasty bug that was going around. And to make it so much worse, you know it’s only a matter of time before it spreads through your entire family. All five of them. Or six. This is bad. This is really bad because you were already working a super tight timeline to meet your goals and now you will be behind. You survive the stomach bug (eventually) but you are incredibly behind schedule and so you double down on your hustle because not today, Satan! You’re not going to be held down and so you have to make up for the hustle you missed. You are a woman on fire–you are slaying every single day. You work nights and weekends because you know your goals are worth it–that you are worth it. You’re not really sure how you feel about working after swim meets and recitals, but to be honest you don’t really have time to stop and think about it. You miss out on time with your loved ones but they know they are supporting your goals. And you look back at your vision board and goals and remember that these hard times are exactly what you planned for–you knew this year would take new levels of sacrifice so here you are.
And you are making progress! You feel like you might even make up for all the time you lost with the unexpected illness, the unplanned days the school closed and kids were home, the surprise weekend away. Until…all the sudden, you’re not making progress. You find yourself moving slow, missing deadlines, scrolling the ‘gram instead of smashing the goals. You lay in bed longer and longer each morning and if you’re honest, it’s because you’re completely full of dread. The little time you have around your family is often spent with you feeling critical and irritable. You realize you’re burnt out. You’ve been keeping an incredible pace of work and realize that you can’t keep up. The truth is that you really, really miss your people and quite frankly, your entire life.
You need more than willpower
You know rest is a good thing but you’re already behind. You want to listen to your body but you also don’t want to give into weakness. The girl that put her ponytail up in January is depending on you to push through and finish what she started. How can you tell when you need rest or when you’re just being lazy?! Time with your friends and family is what you need but you really don’t have the time. You agonize over how far away your deadlines now seem and end up getting through the days with just enough coffee and wine to make sure you get neither hustle nor rest. You feel completely discouraged and a little ashamed at your lack of fortitude. Your internal playlist is now almost completely negative self talk. Most of your thoughts revolve around how if you would just suck it up, push through, and get back to your hustle then your whole life would be different. The rest of the thoughts are full of guilt at how much you’ve missed with your family this year. And for what? All the plans you made earlier seem to pile up and become an impossible mountain of work. You feel totally discouraged because at this rate you’d need to work every single night, weekend, and holiday to make up the ground that you lost. You think about all the time away from your family and it all feels worthless. It’s stupid idea anyway, and some people’s dreams don’t work, right?
I think the whole idea of hustle implies that you have to set goals and be willing to do “whatever it takes” to meet your goal. It gives the sense of hurry, of rush–it’s kind of frenetic, really. I think the whole idea of hustle really comes down to a false conflict–it supposes that you have to work hard and sacrifice the things you love to meet a goal. It takes away your choice to make informed choices about what you say yes or no to because it always puts you at odds with yourself by taking away your ability to make decisions as they come up. I think we’d be much better served by taking the time to think through what we value in this life–what really matters to us at the end of our lives–and how we want that to influence our work. Your values should inform your vision, which should inform your goals. And if you are operating out of a value-driven mindset, there really is nothing to hustle towards–you’re just doing life. It might be a pretty full life but it shouldn’t be one that feels like you are constantly sacrificing.
If you do the work of defining your values before you set your vision and your goals, you’ll be able to be much more intentional about how you run your days. You can still work hard, you can still sacrifice–but it will be on your terms. A good indicator that you’re doing it right is that it shouldn’t feel like a hustle–it should feel like joy. You shouldn’t feel hurried because your days are planned and intentionally serving you at your best mental place. You can feel authentic determination–not the false kind that really hadn’t incorporated your life or all of your values. You can feel truly prepared and capable because you know you’ve taken an honest look at your values and how they inform how you’re willing to live to meet your goals. Honestly, it might mean that you change your goals and sometimes that feels like we are making them smaller. But if you can get away from having a siloed view of work and instead realize that you’re working towards an integrated life where everything meets your intentional goals, then really your goals just got much bigger. They stepped out of the tiny room of just work and now encompass almost everything you’ll do in a day, a year, a life. Your goals just became the whole story you tell on your deathbed–not just the part about work. Once you do that, you won’t have to be a victim to life but instead can be in the driver’s seat and set the direction.
Are your current goals based on your values? Do you even know what all of your values are? Take some time today to think through your values–when the stomach flu hits, how will you want to live? Decide that now. (In fact, skip this question if you currently have the stomach flu…).What values do you choose when you now have clarity of purpose? How will the steer you when you draw on them to serve yourself, your family, and your work during that time? Check out our values worksheet if you’re feeling stuck.