The Hustle
Hustle. Because of who I am and how I engage in and relate to the world, this word has kind of haunted me. A couple years ago I took a class. The first day of class we had to go around and introduce ourselves. Everyone talked about what they do and how much they have accomplished. I felt a little invalidated. I have done a lot in my life, but it doesn't look like success in the world they were coming from.
On the last day of class, the teacher had us go around and say what we had gotten out of the class. For most people, the class had really changed their lives dramatically. When it came to my turn to talk I said, what I got of the class is this: "This is a classroom full of DOERS." I pointed to the teacher, "You attract doers to your class because you are a doer, and you are all learning how to just BE. I am a BE-ER. I can hang out with a tree for hours without having to DO anything but talk to the tree. I used to feel very judged by DOERS, but now I know that a whole room of people came to take a class on how to BE, and that means that who I naturally am is really valuable and needed in the world."
To be honest, just looking at the word "hustle" makes me feel tired. I hear it a lot in the entrepreneur world. They are all about the hustle. Embrace it! Use it to fuel yourself forward! But hustling is happening everywhere. At the restaurant I am sitting at right now, the servers are hustling to get their clients served and respond to their every need.
I understand hustle on a very basic level. If you are being chased by a bear, you have to hustle out of there. If you are growing your own food, and there is a drought, you’ve got to hustle to save your crops. Hustle. Life or death. Now people are hustling to make millions of dollars. For what? Survival? A dream come true? I'm pretty clear that no one needs millions of dollars to survive, let alone thrive in this world.
So in case I was misunderstanding this word, I looked up the definition of the verb “hustle”, and this is what I found: obtain by forceful action or persuasion. And then I realized why every time I hear that word, I want to run in another direction. Guess what? I’m not a hustler. I don’t work that way. Every time I try to “hustle” I end up just spinning my wheels. The truth is, it is in my very nature to PLAY through everything, not thinking about persuading, not in forced action, just being playful in life. Flirting with everything- the person working at the grocery store, a tree I am passing by, the ocean waves, a client I have the pleasure of giving a reading to. I couldn’t hustle if I tried, not successfully at least. But isn’t this the way to be a successful human being in the world? Hmmm...
Actually, to hustle your way to success is a picture on the planet Earth. It is so big and so prominent that it has become a truth, or a reality. Can you do what you love and not have to hustle? Um, sure, but in general, hustling is the number one way go to as far as what things look like from my perspective looking out onto the world.
This past week I decided to flip the script. What if being successful didn’t require revving up your third chakra like it was a race car ready to get there before everyone else? What if everyone in the world could be successful at their own speed? Who’s to say the hustlers and extreme doers in the world have to rule the market? And who’s to say if your nature is not to be spending the majority of your day doing doing doing that you don’t desire success and aren’t capable of being successful in a big way?
Did you know you can get what you want by shifting your own energy? You have to participate in the world and do things to get to where and what you want to achieve, AND you have a whole spiritual aspect of you too, an energy system you can work with to transform your life. You can shift the dynamic between you and what you want through shifting your vibration, getting your energy in movement, or simply grounding and getting safe enough to change your mindset and release old emotions that have been holding you back from committing to what you want.
If you are a hustler by nature, hustle on! But if you are not, you might choose a different route. Hustling isn’t just about career. You might be hustling for a relationship, hustling to create a dream, hustling to get have the “perfect” body or be at the weight you desire, or even hustling to be more spiritually aligned. We all have to participate in life to succeed, with good boundaries, goals, by being present and showing up for ourselves, and doing our work, but no one should have to give up who they are or time for themselves in the process.
What is more persuasive than you being authentically YOU?
The truth is, or from what I have observed and experienced, when you come into alignment with who you are and what you desire (which is a process that continues throughout your life because you are always growing and changing), there is time to just BE. You are not going to get to where you are going until you get there. So while you are waiting for everything to “click” into place, maybe have some fun! Do your work, but play play play too! It’s all going to happen, when you are ready. The finish line isn’t in the realm of time and space, because life isn’t actually a race. You can run as fast as you possibly can, and you still aren’t going to arrive until you get there.
Cleaning your energy is part of this process. Cleaning your energy caters to what is happening behind the scenes of your life. All the energy you encounter on your every day life journey. Learning how to ground everything you want into reality and being able to breathe in what is working and breathe out what isn’t working on a daily basis. These tools help you get refocused on you, no matter what is coming your way. Let the life around you move fast and slow and everywhere in between, as you remain focused and in movement towards your goals. You can be messy too, because that is where a lot of the learning and fun comes into play, but remember to come back to your center so you can be ready inside of you when you manifest what you desire. You can have it all without losing who you are!
Sometimes I think other animals are looking at us hustling because we just aren’t patient enough to play through our lives, and they are thinking, you guys are crazy! What if we were a world full of creators, rather than an entire animal species full of hustlers? If the Earth can pop up a sprout from a seed using just water and soil and pure energy, we can too. We didn’t create all of this technology and creature comforts to have to hustle to survive or thrive like most of the other animals in the
wild. Humans wanted to be special and different than other animals, so much so that we don’t even completely acknowledge that we are animals! Let’s stop prolonging what our ancestors started, and truly evolve out of tremendous effort!
Until the end of the year, I am going to start noticing all the spaces in my life where I am still hustling and not even noticing it. Where I am in effort and spinning my wheels, and start to surrender. I am going to add more play and practice BEING more in those spaces, because I know (since I am not a hustler), that if I am hustling anywhere in my life, those are the spaces in my life I am not succeeding in. That could be career, relationships, money, creativity, love, taking care the body, etc. etc. If you are not a hustler, or someone who is hustling but not exactly getting what you want that way, I invite you to join me! And if you want some help getting there, come get a reading or a healing or join one of my classes in the new year!
Myan
