Taking a stand against hustle culture

The problem with hustle culture is that there is no room for self-awareness.

Hustling doesn’t encourage us to ask: How is my nervous system responding?

Without that awareness, burnout is inevitable.

The idea that we must work nonstop and exert excessive effort, often for very little pay, is something that I’ve always struggled with as a person who requires a lot of rest, relative to the people around me. I’ve worked for years in nonprofit settings where I was routinely asked to do way too much work for way too little money. While I became a therapist because I believed in serving others and providing fair access to mental health care, I didn’t think I’d be asked to sacrifice my own needs in order to provide those things to others. I knew my time and energy wasn’t being respected in my workplaces and yet, it felt like I was trapped. Despite ever persistent little voice in my head saying something wasn’t right, as the years went on, this way of working seemed normal. Everyone around me was being treated similarly and putting up with it like nothing was wrong. Among colleagues, there always seemed to be a collective sense of resignation that this is the way things have to be and we can’t change it.

Fast forward to today, I’m 6 months into building my own practice. I assumed this endeavor would solve all of the issues I had with feeling overworked and underpaid but ironically, it hasn’t. Entrepreneurship comes with its own challenges and it’s surprisingly easy to slip into that old way of thinking that I must work tirelessly and overstep my own boundaries an effort to make money and reach success.

While I’m still very much figuring things out, I’m here to say, you don’t have to feel stuck in this cycle forever. There are ways you can maintain self-protection and prevent burnout without sacrificing your goals.

• What do you think? Do you agree?

• Do you buy into the idea of hustling and working nonstop in order to find fulfillment?

• If you agree that hustling isn’t the answer, what are you doing (if anything) to challenge this idea in your own life or on a systemic level?

Therapy or coaching are great places to start exploring your answers to these questions.

For those of you who are new to nervous system awareness, feel free to reach out to me to chat further about this idea and how it relates to burnout.