Hustle they say! Do we really need to?
Today, while ordering some food online, since the food delivery was delayed, I was chatting with customer service. Meanwhile, I went through their policies and something mentioned there didn’t really feel right to me!
It said something like, ‘ One of our core values is to Hustle’. And since then I have been thinking about this work culture being promoted lately.
We all use social media, and it’s so full of everything and also the ‘motivational junk’ sometimes I like to call it, as sometimes it’s just overdone.
Posts go like Hustle like there is no tomorrow! Or Stay Humble, Hustle Hard, Never Stop the Hustle, and so on.
But, let’s pause for a moment and think. We as a global community have witnessed a pandemic, a devastating one, and every one of us lost someone we knew and have been affected in multiple ways.
Our daily lives took a forced break, the stock markets, the railways, even the goddamn airlines stopped all across, something we never imagined could happen.
Sounds like a cliché but Life is unpredictable.
While the world stopped during that time, we also spent time with our families, busy parents could give time to their children which, in regular circumstances, they might not have or even if they wanted to, they couldn’t due to watertight schedules.
The hustle and grind culture has become so ingrained and normalized that we fail to see what issues it brings with it. WE BECOME SO BUSY MAKING A LIVING THAT WE FAIL TO LIVE!
And the other problem with this modern-day work ethic is that it is so toxic to the mental health of individuals. Someone else is always doing more than you and you are always affected by the constant peer pressure that never ceases to exist.
According to a survey conducted by a popular magazine, people above the age of 25 didn’t like the HUSTLE CULTURE.
If most people do not prefer it, then why promote it?
In the pandemic, of course, the worst things happened and hit us in every way possible but it also gave us time to stop and reflect. To cherish the moments. The chances that some of us got, to rejuvenate our dying hobbies which walked towards the coffin gradually as we got more and more entangled in our work. That paint box, that gaming console, that long recipe of your grandma, all of them had their chances now.
As a freelancer, I believe in hard work, and in consistency, but there exists a fine line that separates hard work from constant hustling at the cost of mental well-being and genuine happiness that we achieve when we slow down once in a while.
In order to succeed, you need not suffocate yourself in the ever-expanding malignant clutches of the toxic capitalist work culture that is being marketed all over.
Maybe you just need to alter your definition of success!
Because, dear friend, Success and Happiness are a state of mind!
