DOES THE GRIND EVER STOP?

THE GRIND NEVER STOPS! SECURE THE BAG! LET’S GET THIS BREAD! RISE AND GRIND! SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK! I’D RATHER BE TIRED THAN BROKE! 

I can bet i’m not the only one who wakes up to this phrases screaming in red, capital and underlined all over. While they may be intended to inspire and motivate, which they often do, I find these to be euphemisms for the burnout, exhaustion, overworking and toxicity that underlies the hustle culture. 

The Hustle Culture is a trend where work comes before everything else in life.It encourages a fast paced environment that feeds off long working hours and putting your all into working hard is deemed to be the only way to earn respect from others and even yourself. How i see the narrative is that you can achieve anything if you grind hard enough and give up everything and everyone in this pursuit of material possession.

The hustle culture and all it stands for is our generation’s rebranding of the rat race. The rat race is the modern way of living where people are caught up in a fierce competition for wealth and power. Let me try and put the rat race into perspective for you. Picture two rats in a room racing to get a piece of cheese at the corner of the room by trying to outrun each other. In the process the rats end up spending more energy than the reward is even worth. That’s precisely how the rat race works as humans embark in and endless, futile pursuit and competition against one another.

So what if i do not want to rise and grind everyday? Do i need to work on myself if i do not enthusiastically jump out of bed at 4am whistling Dj Khaled’s ‘All i do is win’?Speaking of 4am, I just recalled this motivational speaker who once came to our high school. You need to bear in mind that I wasn’t as gangster as those of you who would sit at the back of the hall and sleep through the sessions or skive the session altogether. I was an ardent learner ready to be inspired  to change the world with my notebook and pen in hand. This speaker’s catchphrase was , “What wakes you up in the morning?Purpose or your alarm?” I am everything but a liar and if we are being honest, none of the above has managed to wake me up successfully to date. The alarm has come close after a minimum of five snoozes. My purpose has definitely kept me awake many a nights but waking me up, i am still a work in progress.

Before you bundle me up with the #idontdreamoflabour#bancapitalism bandwagon i want to acknowledge that i have no position of privilege warranting me to assert this with my full chest. I strongly believe in going after our wildest dreams and becoming the best we could ever be.

Here are my two cents though. Consider the idea that overworking at the expense of your mental health, your social life and even physical health is not equivalent to productivity. What attracts us to the hustle culture is the results we think it will breed. Once you are in the rat race you will soon realise that life quickly becomes an endless loop where you run so much only to find yourself coming back to the same position. After all the glorification of overworking and neglecting other areas of your life, you soon realise that getting the badge of honour for being the busiest does not bring the fulfilment you believed you would achieve.

In debunking the complexities of our own existence, we came to a conclusion that individuals can never be linear. There are numerous factors that come to play to mould us into who we are. It then goes without saying that success would equally not be linear and only linked to the material wealth we manage to amass in our lifetime. Our relationships with ourselves first then with those around us are key. Our psychological, mental and physical health counts and contributes to our success. 

To get yourself out of the rat race, I implore you to disparage the idea that there is a race to begin with. Success for each of us looks different. Not all of us would enjoy and thrive in the busy city life with the insane work hours to clock in . Working a day job and about three side hustles on coffee and three hours of sleep is not a price some people are willing to pay. Some people would be at their best in the countryside in big ranches, around their families and a community of people they care about. It’s okay if waking up to your dream job that you actually love isn’t as glamorous as they make it look on Instagram. It’s okay if you sleep in and take a day off from a project you love but is draining you. It’s in fact wiser to retreat and come back stronger than to keep pushing amidst the fatigue. Lastly, consider that the reason you feel like you are not doing enough is not because you are not making progress, but you can’t help but compare. This is your constant reminder that what you see on social media is highly curated and lacks context attached to it. Don’t let the haze interfere with your steady effort.

Step aside from the race, identify what you need to be doing to better yourself and your craft, attend to other aspects of your life and watch yourself thrive.