Breaking Free from Hustle Culture
Today we’re going to talk about how to break free from hustle culture. I’m going to share four tips that all build upon each other. We’ll talk about how breaking free from hustle culture will help you connect to your feminine energy, no matter what gender you are.
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Today I have four tips for you for breaking free from hustle culture and this isn’t a linear process. But I put these tips in this order on purpose because I feel like they all build upon each other. Firstly I do want to share why I’m talking about this.
Why I’m talking about Hustle Culture
We live in a system that really perpetuates hustle culture. It’s the system that we’ve labeled as the patriarchy. I don’t really like this word, depending on who you say “the patriarchy”, to it’s like “blaming men for problems.”
The bigger picture is that the patriarchy and the system that we have isn’t helpful for anyone. And everyone is suffering from this disconnection from their inner divine feminine energy.
Because of the patriarchy, everyone has this disconnection from a healthy relationship with their masculine energy. Which could be a different post.
The way our culture is, we don’t really give ourselves space to sit and connect. We’re here hustling doing all these things, to reach our goals, to reach our dreams…but that’s not the best strategy.
With these tips, you’ll still be able to reach after what you want and desire in this life. You might even change what it is that you desire.
The thing about hustle culture is sometimes we’re moving towards something so fast that we don’t actually want. It’s just this thing that we think we “should” want. Or we think we “should” do. Or that our parents or society put onto us.
All these tips are going to help us break free from that.
Tip #1 Gratitude (but it’s not how you think)
Hear me out for a second, because I know that you’ve heard to practice gratitude like a million times. I know it’s a tip that’s exhausted, but I want to talk about how we practice gratitude.
Typically when people practice gratitude, we’re sitting and thinking about things that we’re grateful for having. “I’m grateful for this glass of water, grateful for my phone, grateful for internet…”
And it’s very surface level. But if we can go deeper, that’s where the magic is.
I think gratitude practiced with more depth creates this inner environment of you feeling safe. And that’s going to lead into our next tip. But let’s talk about the how to bring more depth into a gratitude practice.
The first way is to express gratitude for people that you have in your life.
Think of specific people that you’re friends with. People you have relationships with. Authors you’ve read a book from…really sit and think about that and write that down. You can even contact that person. You can write them a letter and express it to them.
I’m currently getting obsessed with the idea of relationships and that I just see relationships everywhere. Relationships are a part of what makes us human. We don’t exist on this earth alone. We can’t. We can’t exist here alone because we need all our needs met by someone else the second we are born. We’re social creatures.
Part of practicing gratitude for the people that you have in your life is it touches on your social nature. It touches that love that exists within social structure. You’re purposely making yourself feel grateful for how you are connected to others. And I think that’s a helpful thing to remind your brain, body, and soul about. Then, you can start to feel safe to break away from your long ass to-do list. And whatever else hustle culture has created for you.
Another way to bring more depth to gratitude is something I found in a book called Burnout. (by Emily and Amelia Nagowski). They talk about writing gratitude about specific events in your life.
Here’s how I’d recommend you make that simple. At night before bed, write down or record a voice note and talk about one event from your day. Something that’s suggested in this book is:
- Go through all the details of what happened
- Who was involved
- What was said?
- How did this event made you feel?
- What was the outcome of this event?
Relationships are EVERYTHING
Again, I think this gratitude tip is tied back our social nature and relationships. We don’t exist here on earth alone. Doing a practice like this reminds us of our connection to other people. And the more we feel connected to other people, the more we feel whole.
And this relationship topic is something that you’re going to see in future content of mine. I’m currently like just obsessing how everything is relationships. Little tangent here, everything is a relationship. If you are someone who paints, there’s a relationship between you and your paintings. There’s a relationship between you and how you create those paintings. If you sell the paintings, there’s a relationship between you and your business.
There’s a relationship between you and your body, between you and your mind. It’s just everywhere. It’s everywhere. Not only with other humans, and yes, that is a big one as well. We know who we are more are more deeply, the more we relate to other people. They mirror things back to us, especially in the closest of the closest relationships.
We first learn about who we are from our parents. From there, we learn about who we are from maybe our siblings. Then our best friends and then our lovers and boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends, themfriends… All of these people, they’re mirrors and they’re reflecting back to us who we are.
I’m really resisting the urge to go off on a long tangent about this. So.. I’ll just say to that prioritizing relationships will help with breaking free from hustle culture.
Tip #2 Break free from hustle culture by RESTING more
I put gratitude first is because gratitude creates some safety for you to then be able invite in rest. We need to rest more! And rest isn’t only sleeping.
Rest is also taking time to really be with each moment. Let’s say you go on a lunch break today. Rest would be really being with your plate of food without scrolling on your phone. To really take a moment to pause, and take in your environment, take in the food…
Other forms of rest include meditations, breath work– one of my favorite ways to rest is doing yoga nidra. If you’ve never heard of yoga nidra before, it’s kind of like a guided nap. You lay down and the person facilitating is guiding your awareness to different parts of your body one by one.
Sound baths are also a great way to rest–you can find tons on youtube for free. If you can go to one in person that’s even better. (Here’s my fave yoga nidra AND sound bath on youtube)
One last form of rest I’ll cover is honoring your body. I think honoring your body is a form of rest because our bodies move slower than the mind. Especially when we’re conditioned to live in hustle culture.
There’s this “go, go, go, go” from as soon as we wake up in the morning. Even when our bodies are tired and not fully feeling awake yet.
With this topic of honoring your body, there’s a balance here that’s going to be different for everyone. Because sometimes that push to do the action and to do the goal is good for us. But there are other times where we need to slow that down. And that’s going to be different for everyone. So I’m not going to tell you how to rest and honor your body. You know how you need to rest. You know what your body needs.
Tips #3: PLAY!!
So those first two tips were all about safety. I put those tips first is because it’ll really feed this next and third tip. Which is something I think is forgotten about a lot. And it’s which play.
Play more, make more time to play, to do things that you enjoy just for the sake of doing them.I was just on a call where someone was talking about learning an instrument. And it was not to become a composer one day or to become a master of it one day. But to learn an instrument simply to rest in the music. I think that is so beautiful.
With how we can tie play into breaking free from hustle culture, there’s a lot here. A big part of it is connecting with our inner child. Connecting with: “What are the things that you really loved and enjoyed doing when you were a kid?”
And seeing if there’s any way that you can make any space to do that in your adult life. Even if it’s just once a week.
This is going to be especially helpful for people who desire more confidence or self-expression. In my experience with coaching clients, usually it’s part of our inner child that wasn’t given space to be free. So as an adult, you get to kind of go back in time and give yourself that childhood freedom.
Play can help you break free from hustle culture because it invites a sense of rest. Like our previous tip, because we’re just enjoying our experience.
And then in that, creativity can be born. And we can go to the next step I want to share with you.
Tip #4 for Breaking free from Hustle Culture…
The first 3 tips create openness in your mind, body, and soul/spirit. And now, you get to make your OWN rules!
This is creating your own idea of what success is for you. Creating your own path of what you want to do. I think this is essential for breaking free from hustle culture. There’s a lot here, because it might take some time to sit down and assess. Why am I going after this?
I’ll just give an example:
- Why am I in medical school?
- Do I really love and enjoy this?
- Is this really how I want to be of service to people?
- Am I just trying to please my parents because they think that the only way I can succeed in life is if I’m a doctor,a lawyer, or a… I forgot what the third one is that’s like the most common 😂 But is it that or do you really love it?
Like I said earlier, there’s no linear process to this. But if you give yourself the time and space to practice gratitude— and I really stress the time because over time of doing any practice again and again... you’ll experience more depth and you’ll experience more benefits.
The benefit of Practice, Practice, Practice
If you practice the gratitude, rest, and play… I think that it can really open up a knowing of who you really are. That’s important when we’re talking about your precious time because you’re in this human body once.
If you’re in this body once, careening towards our death… why spend time doing things that aren’t leading to the life that you want? (sidenote: this question is so complex…sometimes it’s hard to admit we’re comfy where we’re at or that we’re even doing this 🤷🏻♀️)
THIS is why it’s so liberating to break free from hustle culture. And the whole concept of breaking free from hustle culture will help you connect with your divine feminine energy. It’s especially liberating if you’re someone that identifies with qualities we usually label as feminine…
And I want to be very careful when I say this because I’m not a proponent of like,” females should
be like this and males should be like that.” No– this does not have anything to do with gender. It’s just this labeling of certain qualities that because we live in a patriarchy aren’t usually given space to be celebrated.
They’re usually shamed.
They’re usually stomped down in the name of being productive. In the name of making more profit than last year. Not the healthiest way to go about things.
If you are someone who wants to break free from hustle culture, I hope that these tips helped you.
If you’re a woman or a non-binary being who wants a practice to help yourself slow down, to help yourself connect with your body, I have a course that is called Heart Magick. It’s actually a breast massage and embodiment course and one of the benefits is breaking free from hustle culture. Find out more by tapping this link.
I would also love to know, no matter who’s reading, which of these tips were your favorite? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for being here! -Cilia
Hey! I'm Cilia
Sex, Love, and Relationship coach for women who want to experience more pleasure and connection in self love & relationships
I help women ground, feel, & express freely through mindfulness, compassion, and sacred ritual so that they can feel confident, fulfilled, and HAWT!