“I can’t switch off. It’s cost me my marriage & it’s costing me my happiness. I wish I could stop working, but I’m constantly checking my phone. As soon as I wake up I feel like I’m bombarded with messages and have to get back to them.”
This was almost 2 years ago, but I remember the call with James like it was yesterday. His eyes constantly darting around the screen to check his notifications…his dilated pupils showing how anxious he was…the way James sank what was obviously his fourth or fifth coffee of the day.
When we speak over Zoom, we often lose the human connection of a conversation, yet I felt every ounce of James’ emotional state despite the fact we were separated by thousands of miles. The guy emitted pure fear & it was obvious in every facet of his being.
What James proceeded to tell me over the next 45 minutes was how he was constantly terrified of running out. Running out of time. Running out of money. Running out of opportunities… the list goes on.
He was working from the moment he woke to the moment he slept. He hadn’t had proper time off in years. He was constantly pulled into distractions he hated: social media, porn, and pointless errands that could wait.
What perplexed him though was how he was always busy, yet got very little done. The last 3 years of hustle gave him very little to show for.
I outlined a program for him, and detailed what he needed. James nodded along, slowly believing he could change. After all, he created his business for freedom, not to exchange a 40 hour work week for an 80 hour one. And definitely not to permanently feel on the edge of a panic attack.
Here’s the kicker though: he didn’t sign up with me because he said he didn’t have the time. I don’t know where this guy is now but his Instagram has been deactivated. Same with his business website. I hope he figured things out, but somehow I don’t think he did.
Here’s what he didn’t understand. He viewed his mental state as a symptom of his lack of success. In reality, his mental state was the cause of his mediocre results.
This mental state isn’t a byproduct of your lack of success, it’s the very reason you aren’t where you want to be.
Today, I want to share exactly how you can avoid the same fate — no matter how entrenched you are in that constant struggle.
Learning from the Masters: How Einstein and Microsoft Got More Done with Less
NASA ran a study on productivity a few years back. It showed that employees who napped during the day produced 35% more work per day than those who didn’t.
Albert Einstein revolutionised our understanding of the world and took 2 hours a day to walk, play the violin, nap, and to spend time with his family.
Microsoft Japan ran a study that showed those who had a 4 day work week got 40% more done than those who worked 5 days.
Downtime doesn’t detract from your goal, it frees your mind to think expansively and recharges your creative battery.
You are not a machine. You do not work on an assembly line creating widgets. You create something that adds quality to other people’s lives.
Why Relaxation is Key to Creativity
Every function in the human body works in tandem with its opposites. We breathe in, and we breathe out. Our hearts contract, and they relax. We sleep, and we wake. We are born and then we die. The seasons change, the tide flows in and out, even the universe itself expands and contracts. Flux is the nature of growth, consistency the opposite of nature. Why would your creative act be any different?
The school system, 9–5’s and the industrial revolution have convinced you that you are meant to be metronomically, relentlessly productive. In truth, you are meant to create harmoniously, not unwaveringly.
What ruins endurance athletes is endless junk miles: running at race pace during training. They’re going too quickly to develop their aerobic base, and too slowly to develop their speed. Athletes grow at rest, not during intensity. It’s the relationship between stress and recovery that allows you to grow.
The Importance of Boundaries: Why Your Work Day Needs an End
Your work day should have an end and a beginning. Your weeks should have days of inaction. Your years should have frequent breaks. You don’t create when you’re tense and locked up. You create when you’re expansive and open.
Psychologist Amos Tversky said “you waste years by not being able to waste hours.” If you don’t make the time to take a walk with your wife, head to the coffee shop and read, go to a gig, or take a week off skiing, you may get a short term boost, but you’re long term losing..
This sounds like what you want, right? Balance, time with your family, time to train, intentionally using your energy… Being 100% on, then 100% off…
“But I don’t have the time right now,” I hear you implore.
And that’s exactly the problem.
Fear and Scarcity: The Emotional Drivers of the Hustle Culture
Scarcity — the lack of what you need — is the story that drives this frenetic lifestyle. The constant fear of running out. Running out of money. Running out of time. Running out of love. Running out of safety. The story that dominates scarcity is “there is not enough…”
Maybe you learned it from your spouse, or your parents, or your favourite “motivational” podcast, but scarcity produces fear. It results in “I’ve got to take what’s mine because there isn’t enough to go around.”
The dominant emotion is fear. Fear is what came off James in the story above, and fear is what you build into your entire life if you don’t eradicate it. Your mental state isn’t just a reflection of your life, your life is a reflection of your mental state too.
If you want to move beyond this constant hustle and grind, you’ve got to remove your limitations. And if you’re honest, is your limitation your ability or the mental state you bring to your growth?
Abundance Mindset: How Shifting Your Perspective Can Transform Your Work and Life
The opposite of scarcity is abundance. “There is enough” permeates this mentality. When you create from abundance, you can contribute, rather than extract. You can become a craftsman, rather than an empire builder.
The dominant emotion, as cheesy as it sounds, is love. Every social media post, every product, every customer service interaction becomes an opportunity to give a gift.
And when you give without expectation of reciprocation, you usually get what you want.
Moving Beyond Scarcity: Techniques to Reprogram Your Nervous System
Most address their scarcity mentality top-down. They try conscious strategies like time-blocking and pomodoro techniques. These are great tools, but you can’t change foundational problems with surface level techniques. Scarcity is rooted in the nervous system and limbic brain. To rid scarcity, you must work at depth.
For the business owner, the nervous system is in one of 3 states:
Engage, create and play
Hustle and grind
Play dead and retreat
Scarcity is at home in the hustle and grind state, but if left for too long, the belief there isn’t enough can bed itself into a play dead and retreat state. To move into creative engagement, you need to teach your body it is physiologically safe. This means breathwork, heat and cold work, relaxation processes, sleep hygiene, and the like. I’ve found that 10 minutes a day is enough to help my clients achieve this.
Scarcity also lives in our stories, and therefore in the limbic brain — the part of the brain that thinks in stories. If you learned in your childhood there was never enough, and that your parents were always scared of running out, that becomes your narrative, your truth, and your default setting.
To overcome our stories, we must recognise them, become aware of them, and then systematically disprove them through action and compassion. (See my recent article on willpower for more help on disproving narratives). You can do this through a combination of journaling, conversation, meditation, and behavioural change.
Conclusion: Why Overcoming the Hustle Mentality is Essential for Success and Happiness
If you want help overcoming your hustle and grind mentality, shoot me a DM on Instagram and I can explain through messages a strategy to help you.
Here are the key points from today’s article:
The anxiety of a hustle and grind mentality can cost you everything
Hustle and grind mentalities come from a place of scarcity
Scarcity is the belief there isn’t enough to go around
The opposite of scarcity is abundance — that there is enough for all
Surface level attacks won’t cut through to the limbic and brainstem roots of an embedded scarcity mindset.
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