I can’t handle achievement addicts anymore.
It’s taken me 20+ years of professional experience, illness and the failure of a business to learn it, but I have finally realized once and for all that life is for living.
Not for constantly being neurotic about achieving the next thing, relentless self-help reading and feeling inadequate, working a thousand hours, never sleeping or having hobbies, beating ourselves up for whatever we think we “should” be doing because that’s what the other guy told us would make us valuable.
Living.
Living in the moment, and sometimes that moment can be full of absolutely nothing. Silence. Quiet. Emptiness.
Too many of us are defining our self-worth by how many hours we work or what stages we’re speaking on or which clients we can list on our resume. Our careers are not the sum total of our identities, and it bothers me that especially in the digital world, we glamorize the world of entrepreneurship even though it exacts a heavy price on many. We tell people to hustle harder to be a better man. We hold up workaholics as people to emulate, even as the behavior claims people’s well-being, or worse yet, their lives.
What the hell are we doing to ourselves?
Let me make this as clear as I can.
Working endlessly doesn’t make you a better, more worthy person. Neither does your resume or the book you wrote (or didn’t) or the speech you just gave or the client you landed.
None of that even registers on the scales that measure your character. Your capacity for empathy and compassion. Your humanity and generosity. Your humor, how well you love others, how well you allow yourself to be loved.
It’s okay to put down the sixteenth business book you’ve been trying to read. It’s okay to take a lunch break, be home in time for dinner, take your vacation days and enjoy not working during each and every one.
Go play that round of golf. Watch your favorite movie on the sofa. Go for a walk with your dog and your kid. Sleep in. Stay up late. Say yes to the last minute road trip.
Do the things that contribute to a full heart and a quiet mind.
Keep the job you love now and find ways to make it more worthwhile to you. You don’t have to chase promotions and bigger titles.
You don’t have to win the rat race. In fact, you don’t even have to compete. You are not lacking in ambition or moxie if you don’t want to spend your hours doing what “they” do to get ahead.
Be true to your wants and needs, not always your woulds and shoulds. Actually, especially not those. They’re usually the things that sink you.
It’s okay to stop hustling. Now. Right this very minute. Just. Stop.
It’s been life changing for me to reshape this perspective, but it sadly took some pretty huge and scary things to force me into it (thanks, Universe).
My only mild regret is that I didn’t embrace it sooner, but I needed to go through the difficult things I did in order to learn it once and for all, and they say every experience has a few lessons in it.
But I’m incredibly thankful I figured it out with a good bit of life yet ahead of me.
You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a motivational speaker shouting at you about the grind, the hustle, the endless effort you have to put in to be at the top.
That all assumes that the top is where you’re headed in the first place. There are plenty of other worthy, valuable, interesting places to be (that come with a lot less stress, burnout, risk and personal sacrifice).
It’s okay.
You can stop now.
Come on over here, and let’s have a sip of something lovely on the porch in the sunshine.
There’s some life happening around us. I’d like to participate.
You?
