Hustle + Grind
hus·tle
/ˈhəsəl/
verb
force (someone) to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction.
- obtain by forceful action or persuasion.
grind
/ɡrīnd/
verb
- reduce (something) to small particles or powder by crushing it.
- rub or cause to rub together gratingly.
Pause here. Read those definitions a couple of times. Let the words you’re reading really land with you. Absorb what they’re communicating. Notice how you feel.
Makes you reconsider that “TGIF – The Grind Includes Fridays” wall hanging you just slipped into your shopping red cart at Target, doesn’t it?
Force. Hurriedly. Unceremoniously.
Reduce. Crush. Gratingly.
By a show of hands that I obviously can’t see – how many of you read that and think to yourselves – “That! Yes! That is EXACTLY how I want to feel! I feel SO SEEN by those words!” ?
It feels safe to assume that there are no invisible hands raised.
Why then, dear one, are you abiding by the rules of a game you do not want to play?
I’ve not yet met a human who did not at some point buy into the promises of Hustle Culture. We are trained to keep cramming more into our days, keep out-performing the us of yesterday, keep going past all signs from your body that you need to stop. Mind over matter, right? You can do anything if you just keep grinding for it. By definition – if you keep getting crushed for it.
Hustle and Grind as an ethos for living our lives, once we study what it is really emphasizing, pretty quickly reveals itself as unsustainable and detrimental to our wellbeing. Designing your life with the intention to actualize all of your wildest dreams, should not ask you to run yourself into the ground and sacrifice rest, time spent nourishing yourself, or demand that you keep driving past empty. What would happen if you kept cruisin’ past E in your car? You’d break down. This is not even an impressive metaphor. It’s an analogous promise of what happens to US if we keep buying into Hustle and Grind as a way to live – let alone as a way to be great.
Wellbeing as a standard operating principle seems pretty widely accepted and integrated, especially across the millennial population, right? That wall hanging at Target is nestled next to a T-Shirt that says “Heavily Meditated” in that We love projecting woke-ness and spirituality and mindfulness. How then, do so many of us – awakened as we obviously are with our woo-woo accoutrement, still fall into the trap? There is a lot of overlap between these two modus operandi. Hustling and being mindful if we’re still working with definitions, sound more like roads that run parallel – never to touch – than an intersection. Don’t blame yourself for buying what Hustle is selling – it’s a tantalizing and seductive thing to believe in because your visions and dreams are important to you and you are worthy of experiencing the deepest desires of your heart. When you’re slammed with confirmation for the Grind bias, it’s hard to ground in the belief that you can choose an alternative path towards yourself.
Hey script? We’re here to SHIFT ya, baby. Forcing. Crushing. Reducing. Hurrying. Grating. Being unceremonious –
No. Absolutely no.
Allowing. Creating. Collaborating. Connecting. Honoring. Respecting. Resting. Restoring. Enlivening. Supporting. Rejuvenating.
Yes. Full body yes.
