I remember hearing a well-known coach talk about building her business to a million dollars a year. Of course, I was ALL ears! How did she do it? I want to do that too!

While she shared her insider secrets, she often used the word hustle, like this: “you’ve got to hustle to make the money.” or “it takes hustle to grow your business.”

I immediately pictured high school volleyball practice doing shuffle squats across the court as my coach yelled “hustle hustle hustle!” I was doing meaningful work that prepared me to be agile on the court…but when my coach yelled hustle, what she was communicating was that we needed to go faster.

And that’s the problem-well one of them-with hustle culture. It’s not about the work, it’s about the speed of the work.

Defining the difference between hard work and hustle

In my true 5th grade teacher fashion (I used to teach 5th grade), let’s start by defining the terms.

the reality is that everyone has a unique association to the words hustle and hard work. So, when you say each of these words, what immediately comes to mind?

That’s your mental representation of this word. is it a picture? Mind movie? sound? experience? Some or even all of the above? Mine is a memory in the form of a mind movie-it’s silent, but I can feel the shuffle squats.

Now, here’s how I define these two terms:

Hard work

In physics, there’s a law that goes like this:

Force * Mass = Acceleration

And it can absolutely be used for business growth-it’s essentially the compound effect at work. When you apply yourself to a given outcome through regular, incremental steps, you will succeed.

Hard work is a deeply individual term-everyone has their own specific idea of how much, what type, or how long is “hard work” to them. My belief is that hard work is simply effort. And effort is force APPLIED toward something. We all put in effort and it’s required to run your business. No matter if it's strategy, time, money, or leveraging your network, effort must be applied in order to succeed.

Hard work = effort

now let’s talk hustle

Hustle

When I looked up the terms, hustle gave the idea of being forceful, pushy, or busy. That’s exactly what I thought it might mean!

So let’s think about this for a minute-have you ever been in a sales situation where someone was selling you something in a forceful or coercive way? (I’ve been to my share of MLM “parties,” so yes from me.) Have you ever felt bad and heard yourself saying “yes!” spilling out of your mouth when you actually wanted with every fiber of your being to say “NO”?

I believe that forceful, coercive, pushy element of “hustle culture” is one very simple thing:

We’re saying yes when we mean no. We’re crossing our own boundaries to get what we want.

Change my mind.

But before you do, take a second and think-when you’ve “hustled,” what personal boundaries have you crossed? Have you sat at your computer until you’ve had a headache? Deprived yourself of nutritious food because you’re “in the zone?” Or skipped out on breaks or moving your body because you just had so much to do?

Hydration, nutrition, sleep, and movement are essential human needs-if you find yourself regularly bulldozing past them, minimizing them, or getting frustrating with yourself for needing something, you’re in hustle mode and it’s not good.

We usually decide it’s time to “hustle” when we feel some kind of overwhelm. And we think the solution involves bypassing ourselves to get the results we want.

So, to recap:

social-squares-electric-coral-bright-orange-styled-stock-image030.jpg

Hard work is NOT hustling.
Hard work = effort
Hustling = boundary crossing

I personally believe that we go from effort to hustle when we choose to ignore or even bypass our personal needs in order to accomplish a goal. THAT's the difference.

So, are you ignoring your needs for rest, creativity, socializing?

Are you bypassing simple needs, like hydration, nutrition, and movement?

Are you working until you're in physical pain?

That's not hard work, that's hustle. And it's not sustainable.

So What do you do now?

How to recover from hustle mentality

It’s important to recognize that somewhere along the way, you’ve linked your identity to time or money, resulting in hustle.

So while slowing down is a natural solution to hustle, as you’re slowing down, begin looking into when you linking these things together, why you did, and what you were trying to accomplish.

You may enjoy reading some personal growth books-Check my book recommendations here and here.

You may recognize that you’ve got something bigger going on and you’d like help getting rid of that mental roadblock. I’d recommend setting up a discovery call with me to pinpoint the type of support you’d most benefit from.

book a discovery call

And for the one who likes time to review and assess all their options, here are my top 3 recommended programs for you: