and.stop the hustle

3 Jan

Written By and.

FFS consider life balance

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written by Debbie halls-Evans Chief Changemaker at and. (views all her own)

I am writing this as a semi-rant, and through frustration, I have read so many insincere clickbait posts and blogs, listened to podcasts telling people to get up at 4 am, there’s even a 5 am club (why?),do more, hustle, work harder, stay later in the office and as a 21st-century society, we have many people that see this and believe it’s the only way.

My personal belief is if you can do this and you are happy, healthy, and balanced, then go you. I celebrate your balance- yet I question whether it is all that it is. My scepticism is after coaching and consulting for nearly 10 years, I haven’t met anyone who does the hustle, burns the candles at both ends, works and works, lives like that and is actually happy with their life.

This fallacy and paradigm of “hustle” is toxic and creates poor behaviours, burnout, internal stress and more. Not being able to stop and realize that life is for living and living within the means of your real expectation and finding out your life balance. If COVID has taught us anything, it's being aware of what we can achieve through thinking (note thinking first) of what it is we really want.

As a parent of 5 children ranging from 22 -32 years old and grandparent 4 grandchildren being 52, I truly believe that we have a perspective worth sharing and I hope you do too. The example is ourselves, Dave and me.

Externally, we live idyllically, and it does bring us much joy- Easter Shian is our sanctuary, a remote farmhouse in the rural highlands of Scotland; we travel regularly and have a community within our workspace of enjoyment and balanced hours of work.

Internally, we continually work on mindset, our internal and external language, attitude, responses, intentionality, values, reciprocity and congruency, and this is quite exhausting at times! We have couples therapy and have done it for over a year, not because we have issues but to make sure we are both aware of how we can be better to each other and ourselves.

Life is a consistent reality check.

The reality of this balance now is:

We are 15 years into running the business, the time matters.
The first decade working 60+ hours per week, not having living expenses and even doubting ourselves at times.
Getting it wrong, believing in others rather than ourselves.
Not living to our values and being incongruent has caused the most upsetting challenges from losing all our savings to losing relationships.

We don’t have a perfect life; what we have learned and applied is we live a life of choice and intentionality with a chosen life balance. We have sadness and areas of our lives that we know we have to work on and may never fix to what we want them to be, be it a societal expectation of family or what an external indicator of success is.

We regularly check in with ourselves, and as a married working couple, we find this is a necessity to manage life balance.

our reality checks are:

Reality check there is no secret answer.
Reality check money does not make you happier if you’re not already happy.
Reality check money costs money.
Reality check working harder and longer does not make you more content or settled, it just keeps you away from balance.
Reality check work is work, not who or what you are.
Reality check humans have limited efficiency and need rest.
Reality check one size does not fit all. Your happiness is not necessarily someone else’s happiness.
Reality checks you know you best (even when you tell yourself you don’t).
Reality check life is not work-life balance; it is life balance.
Reality check: there is no right or wrong. It is what works for you.
Reality check of having no expectations of others, only yourself.
Reality check of telling yourself you don’t know anything and keep learning, understanding and stop assuming (so hard!).
Reality check you do not know what someone else is thinking.

The biggest reality check is you choose your outcomes through your responses.

Let’s get real about the hustle and more; in reality, life has its good days and bad days, indifferent days, meh days, joyful days, and even the maybe moments, nano moments within a day. What we choose TO SEE and NOTICE is what makes us recognise the real-life stuff.

Do any of these connect with you or have you experienced one or some of them?

Get worried about what the boss will say to the point of making yourself ill.
Not delivering something you said you would within a timescale and so concerned and worried you feel like you will lose your job/business /be cancelled.
Told a work lie about being able to do something and was too worried to ask for help.
Losing sleep over a contract or project and then it ends up okay and berating yourself.
Snap and argue with close family and friends when you are worried or upset about a work thing.
Making yourself ill with stress as you think about what others will think of you.
Dislike your colleagues because they don’t worry as much as you.
Compare yourself to someone else who is nothing like you, yet you expect yourself to be like them or better.

Reality check again – at some point, we have done one or more of these, and it’s not only time-consuming, it’s ineffective, personally exhausting and makes us doubt ourselves along the way- becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom and just not feeling good enough.

Keep it simple.

The quickest route to changing this is your language and being self-aware. We aren't that honest, and we go to defence attack mode quicker than we do the self-question of why am reacting like this...