The difference between hustle and hard work

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:

• 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.

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

$-The Momentum Challenge

this self-lead 5 day challenge helps you identify and break through limiting beliefs as simply as possible so you can build momentum and accomplish your goals.

$$-Magnetic Minds

Self-study success program helping you create goals and success habits, clear your blocks and magnetically manifest what you want.

$$$-Blindspot Breakthrough

Over the course of 4 1:1 sessions together, we are going to pinpoint and rewire your biggest blocks. I will use NLP techniques to release these blocks in your unconscious mind so success begins to feel effortless to you .

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Ready to binge read?

Making impossible goals easy | My 2020 lessons part 1

I recently shared my process for closing out a year in my business-one of the pieces of that process is writing down all the things I learned this year.

After I did this, I felt incredibly grateful for these huge, soul-shifting lessons and wanted to share them with you. So here I am, sharing my real, unfiltered lessons from one of the most stretching years I’ve ever lived:

I’m in the middle of moving from one software platform to another and in the process, I spent some time reviewing and saving my content.

Some 2020 numbers that surprised me…big time.

I knew I had gone into MASSIVE creation mode this year…MASSIVE. but it hadn’t fully clicked until I added these numbers up:

8 programs. EIGHT. Guys. EIGHT PROGRAMS IN ONE YEAR.

See the programs here

5 completely unique free content events-webinars, 3-5 day workshops, hours and hours of content and value, completely free.

and this was the ringer for me: nearly 200 pages of unique email content just this year

I haven’t even capture how many pages I’ve written in the form of instagram content, but I full believe it’s probably close to 300 pages.

300 pages.

Not including infographics, stories, and more that I personally designed, sales pages I wrote and designed and more.

and yet, if you asked me if I believed I could write a book…I would have said no. Why? I don’t know if I could talk about one thing, build it out, AND still be interesting for 200ish pages. And if I did, gosh, it would take years of grueling labor, forcing myself to write, writers block, etc.

Lesson #1: Make impossible goals feel easy by reframing them.

But I wrote nearly 300 pages of unique content. I wrote it easily. I still have LOADS more to say on the topic of mindset being the absolute KEY to our success. And yet…it was easy.

What if that’s the way it was meant to be? Choosing the path of least resistance? finding our Personal strategy for massive creativity? And letting it all come easily?

If I learned anything in 2020, it’s that reframing something can make all the difference in my motivation.

Can I write a 300 page book? maybe. Do I want to? no. That sounds the opposite of fun to me, are you kidding?

Can I write 1 email and be passionate and excited about it? yes. for 100% sure.

And one yes led to the next…and the next.

What if we stopped building our goals up into some unattainable mountaintop experience and learned to reframe them into the next steps that truly motivate us?

What if we committed to 1-2 pages of passionate writing instead of a book? What if we committed ourselves to believing in our own offers wholeheartedly for 1 full day instead of until we hit our money goals? (that’s a long time to believe…and most of us don’t have that much stamina…if we’re being honest.)

What if we believed in ourselves the whole time we took action toward our goals?

And what if, at the end of it…we saw that all the stress, freaking out, and self-doubt didn’t need to happen in order for us to achieve our goals-we added that on by choice.

What if in 2021, you decide you’re worthy of the goals you desire and you decide to take them step by step? What would change for you?

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If you’re ready to learn how to write goals differently in 2021, join Fresh Start, where I’ll walk you through 6 techniques I use to create a strong, aligned foundation for each year, and then I’ll show you how I set goals using NLP. Comes with a workbook and 2 modules