Tag: rest

Is Hustle culture worth it?

prettylittleleilaLeave a comment

When I was born, my mother was forced to stop working for a year because she gave birth. It was quite hard time for women to be working, they were allowed to work, but there were still subject to sexism if they gave birth, they were unlikely to be promoted, and company boards were all male.

So, as women, we had to work twice as hard as men to be seen as half as good. It’s ingrained in me to work hard, because at some point I’m going to give birth, be moody during PMS, cry because I’m angry, wear an outfit that is sexualised by colleagues, so my work has to work that much harder to have value.

And yes, the world has changed quite a lot since my mother quit working to give birth, and yes sexism is not as prevalent, and sure there are companies led by women, but still, all of us believe in hustle culture.

We always have to be working hard. Once you’re done working on your day job, what is your side hustle? Work work work work work (Rihanna said it best). And if you don’t, you won’t succeed, you won’t afford the life you want, or be able to keep up with the school moms (formerly called the Joneses).

But is it healthy?

Not only have we seen an increase in non-communicable diseases since the advent of hustle culture, but we’ve seen an exponential increase in stress-related illnesses, both physical and mental. But for all us millennials out there (especially the elder millennials), we cannot shake this. We have to work hard always. We will even work when we’re on sick leave. We’ll send emails from our kids sports’ matches.

And even for those of you out there who don’t take your day job as seriously, no doubt you have some side hustle that you are trying to get going so that you can quit that day job that you don’t take so seriously. So you aren’t actually resting (even if you aren’t a work nerd like us).

True rest is doing things that don’t require your brain to work in overdrive (dictionary definition of hustle).

If you’ve trained for a race, you will know that in your last week before your race, you have to taper your training, rest your body to allow it to recover so that it has optimal energy to perform in your race. And it’s the same for life.

You have to spend some time slowing down, smelling the roses, enjoying life for fun’s sake. YOLO is not about living a chaotic life that moves from moment to moment, always being busy, or engaging in risky behaviour.

Knowing that you only have one life to live should be about making sure you live it right, that you are able to enjoy it. So give yourself moments of calm, time for reflection, meditation, enjoyment.

It’s ok to not always be hustling.

We need to make time for mental, and physical recovery. And slowing down doesn’t mean poor performance, it means, conserving energy and building up stores for optimal performance later on.

Rest and recovery and not hustling hard er’ry day doesn’t mean underperforming, it means giving your body time to heal, and recover to be able to do better tomorrow. So that you can perform at your best.

Our bodies need nutritious eating, water, sufficient sleep, to operate optimally, and this improves your mental health too. Part of that should be making time for things like meditation, and spending time outdoors in nature, getting enough sunshine, connecting with others, and just doing things you enjoy.

What are you going to do to give your mind and body the rest it needs?

Hustle hard, Rest harder

prettylittleleilaLeave a comment

We live in a culture of always being hustling, of rest being for the weak, of being busy as the sign of a fulfilled life. And every year, we make New Years resolutions or SMART goals for everything that we are going to achieve, we have bucket lists and 30 before 30 lists, all focused on achieving things.

Text saying Stay Humble Hustle Hard

Don’t get me wrong, self-improvement, and living a goal-oriented and purposeful life is good. Wanting success and having that desire driving you forward can be good for you. Provided that you are doing it for the right reasons.

Living in a capitalist society has taught us that we always have to be working and that rest is for the underperformers. And that is where the problem with a goal-oriented life lies. Not having the goals or living with purpose or wanting success, but when hustling and being driven start impacting your life in negative ways. We should be wanting all these things because we want them, and not at the expense of our physical and mental health.

I usually start out my year with goals in all the different areas of my life, and I always start the year hopeful and full of optimism, and as the year draws on, I get further and further from achieving those goals. And I blame the busyness which I have traditionally imposed on myself.

Woman in yoga pose

What I have been learning is the value of resting and being mindful. And while mindfulness has been a buzz word for a while now, there is so much information and research backing the value in mindfulness. It has been shown that there are definitive changes in our brains as a result of being more mindful. And just as other mental illness impact the brain function, mindfulness can counter this.

Mindfulness doesn’t have to be a big activity, such as an hour long meditation. It can be slowing down as you make your coffee or tea, and only thinking about what you’re doing, as you put the coffee in the cup, add the sugar, add the milk, and so forth. It can be putting on your favourite song and dancing for 1 minute. Spending 30 minutes colouring in when you have more time. Having your morning coffee outside in the garden. All it requires is for you to be in the present moment.

And as you spend more time in mindfulness, you will slowly start to see the impact, like when you get angry, as you experience the fire filling up your belly, and your jaw tightening, you will have more time to process the anger and decide how you want to express it. And that is just one of the benefits, being able to be present with emotions, and feel them and express them instead of reacting to them.

Heart and brain doing yoga, with text stating Balance your life

Being mindful has been shown to work wonders for anxiety and depression because instead of focusing on the past or the future (or both, in my case), you focus on the present moment, and what you can achieve now, and in that way, you are able to break down your goals, and what you want to achieve, into more manageable tasks, and feel less overwhelmed, and more in control of your time, your emotions and yourself.

While it may be counterintuitive when talking about goalsetting, let’s make one of our goals for this year to be more mindful.