At the end of the day, really the only people who remember that you spent the majority of your time at work are your friends and family and pets.
The way you spend your days is everything because the way you spend your days is the way you spend your life.
Welcome back to yourself.
My name is Sheer and I'm so happy you are here.
Today we are talking about hustle culture, why it's toxic and how we can shift it into a healthy hustle for ourselves.
What exactly is hustle culture and why is it so toxic?
The definition of hustle culture is promoting and rewarding long working hours at the expense of your personal needs.
So really we just need to ask ourselves who benefits from this toxic hustle culture, especially if you're working for someone else.
You also benefit from this hustle culture one way or another or you wouldn't be taking part of it.
Maybe you're making a lot of money, maybe it's a great distraction from other things going on in your life.
But hustle culture as a whole is promoting and rewarding these long working hours at the expense of your own needs
and ignoring your body's cues to rest, slow down and maybe change something.
Hustle culture can manifest in multiple places including workplace and the gym or anywhere else that you romanticize pushing forward
by ignoring your body's cues to slow down, rest, recharge or process something that's going on.
So the biggest reason we should slow down and the importance of slowing down comes down to Joe Dispenza's research
on how stress can affect your gene expression and how living in a stressful situation for extended periods of time can cause disease.
And disease is truly just disease.
You being in stressful situations and you keeping yourself in stressful situations and in survival mode for extended periods of time can make you sick.
No organism on earth was ever meant to stay in survival mode for an extended period of time.
Survival mode in itself is a very helpful situation because it helps get you out of dangerous situations.
But when you stay in that survival mode where your heart is always beating very fast, your breaths are always shallow and your blood is always pumping,
that is not the optimal state of living.
And living in this activated state for extended periods of time can cause diseases, illnesses and originally survival mode was created
so that we could run away from tigers and big threats like that, that are life or death.
But at this point our bodies get that same reaction when we are in the workplace,
especially if you are somebody that has more of an anxious personality, you can be hypersensitive to situations that are not necessarily dangerous
but your body receives them as such.
Like if somebody says, hey we need to talk or if your boss schedules a meeting on your calendar with no context.
Your body can go into survival mode and you can feel your heart beating faster and your palms sweating and your breaths get shallow
and it is on you to get yourself out of that activated state to get back into a calm state,
not only for your mental clarity and a better experience for the day but also for your physical health.
So if you are always go, go, go and you never prioritize rest, your body just continues to be on and activated.
And that is not necessarily your fault because as a society hustling extremely hard and working late hours and staying late at work
or working on the weekends or pushing through an injury to keep working out or working out while you're sick,
these things can be romanticized and rewarded. This manifests in ways like a shout out at the meeting where the big boss is giving shout outs to the people that worked extremely long hours
or worked on the weekends when they didn't have to or when you see someone at the gym and they asked you how you're feeling
and if you rested while you were sick and you said, no, I worked out through my whole sickness and they say something like, wow, that's really impressive, that shows a lot of discipline.
While it does, it also shows that you may not have listened to your body's cues, especially being sick and going to the gym, your body needs to rest
because if you are sick and you do go to the gym, your body uses all of its resources to get through the workout instead of using its resources to heal your sickness.
Again, this is not your fault because we are not even taught to rest. We are taught to work until we burn out and we're not even taught how to avoid burnout
and you can avoid burnout by listening to your body's cues and taking breaks and slowing down.
So let's think about what it would look like for you to listen to your body's cues and slow down and take breaks when you need to because it's different for everybody.
I know for me, I can start making some mistakes at work, like some silly little mistakes that I wouldn't normally make or I can ask questions that I know I know the answer to, but I just can't think of that answer at that time.
That's when I know that I need a break and these breaks can also last anywhere from like a short break during the day, maybe you want to take like an early lunch or a long lunch or even leave early or if you can, you can take a day off.
So this takes me into the no think zone. When you are very stressed, when you're very activated, like let's say over a five out of ten on the stress scale, your brain can enter the no think zone where you cannot come up with new solutions.
You are in that survival mode. You are heavy in that survival mode. So this is when it's really important to have a self care bank, maybe like a list of things that you like to do to take care of yourself so that when you do enter that no think zone when you're extremely stressed, you don't have to think of something to do.
You just go to your bank and you choose something from a list that you've created of things you know you enjoy.
So this can be something like going for a walk, watching TV, creating some art, anything that you can do for yourself, anything that you enjoy doing that is for nobody but yourself, anything that recharges you.
And if your hustle muscle is so, so strong that you cannot stop moving and being productive and doing things, if you must do something, do something that is just for you.
Even if it's productive, even if you want to start like a side hustle that's just for you, whatever you do when you are feeling that burnout from your main hustle, if you can't take a break and rest on a real level and you need to keep moving and keep going, then at least keep moving and keep going for you, something that benefits you directly.
At the end of the day, really the only people who remember that you spent the majority of your time at work are your friends and family and pets.
These are the people in your life that will have wished that they got more of your time because your time is your most valuable resource.
So the way you spend your time is everything.
The way you spend your days is everything because the way you spend your days is the way you spend your life. And that's why it's important to work at a job that you enjoy.
Spend time with people that you enjoy being around and that fill you up.
Spend time working on projects that recharge you.
Spend time relaxing somehow so that you can recharge yourself in whatever way it feels best for you.
So how do we start hustling in a healthy way? How do we start the healthy hustle?
It's all about listing out your priorities and values and finding a balance that works for you because obviously we have to make money to live on earth, right?
So your job can be a priority, but if you don't like it, maybe another priority is searching for a new job.
Your friends are a priority, your family. Anyone that fills your bucket and makes you feel good when you are around them, they can be a priority.
Your pets, they can be a priority. Spending time by yourself can also be a priority.
Spending time getting creative can also be a priority.
So make a list of all of your priorities, everything that is important to you, and then experiment with some ways to balance it out.
There's not going to be a perfect schedule and it can change over time.
It's all about what feels best for you and if you do end up burning out, that's okay. You just recharge and try again.
And with that, thank you for listening to Back to Yourself.
Reach out to me on Instagram or TikTok at BackToYourselfPod.
Let me know what you thought of this episode and what you'd like to see in the next one.
Now go do something fun for yourself today. Bye!