Are you a hard worker? (Here’s why that might not be the best thing…)

“Wow-you’re just working 20 hours a week. That’s a nice set up for yourself!”

I could feel myself getting insulted before he even finished his sentence.

How dare he insinuate that I wasn’t working hard??!!

I doubt he has ever massaged anyone for more than 5 minutes, and yet here he is thinking that 20 hours of giving massages a week is a nice easy schedule!

This all went down when I was setting up my massage business in 2011, and getting outfitted with a credit card terminal. This was in the olden days, before you could just set yourself up online. Or, at least before I knew how to do that.

A young man had been sent to verify my place of business and ask me all sorts of questions to complete the set up, and to show me how to work my new machine.

While I’m sure he didn’t mean anything at all by his comment, I was lost in a sea of emotions.

I felt judged for “not doing enough” and like I was somehow taking the easy route in life. Which made me feel lazy and like I was cheating by not working a standard 40 hour week like everyone else.

But at the same time, I WAS working really hard, and to exhaustion most days. I wasn’t even counting all of the behind the scenes time I spent on admin work in those 20 hours, and, as my own boss, I certainly wasn’t taking it easy on myself.

It felt important that people could understand just how hard I was working.

And it surprised me to feel so insulted by being seen as having an easy schedule, but I wouldn’t understand why until many years later.

When I learned later on that there was a better way to work, a much lighter way, that was when I realized what I had been doing to myself.

I had a belief that work should be hard, and I had a real need to prove that I was a hard worker.

This belief came from the general hustle culture in our society, and also from my life as a professional ballet dancer.

It was ingrained in me as a virtue to work to exhaustion, sacrifice everything for my work, and to always be working towards being better.

This was why I felt so insulted…I was exhausted. The more I tried to prove how hard I was working, the more exhausted I got.

Thankfully I learned better ways to work, and I did the inner work to feel ok about it, but not before I experienced some MAJOR burnout.

Now I understand how to “let it be easy” without sacrificing the results, and I’d love to help you get there too.

Have you ever noticed the beliefs you have around work, or felt the need to prove you are working hard, keeping busy, doing all the things that are expected?

How about feeling the resulting burnout?

If you’re interested in learning how to re-wire your brain for ease, let’s schedule a call to get started.