I was on Reddit a few weeks ago and saw this post from a 14-year-old teenager who was saying that he wants to focus on working hard and taking advantage of every minute he has available.
As a reply, all he got were comments probably from people who were older than him basically saying that they were feeling sorry for having this child influenced so much by the hustle culture.
And I agree. And I see it as well in grown-up adults, who believe they should work 12-14 hours every day and be obsessed with getting the best result possible out of every little effort made every single minute.
That’s not healthy at all.
I know a few entrepreneurs who are like that. They are making lots of money (millions) but they work so much and have so many problems that they don’t know anything outside work. Their life is their work.
At the same time, I see people who are not obsessed with working hard. Actually, they barely work and they are at the opposite pole compared to those who adopted the hustle culture.
They are waiting for some miracles to happen and they believe that’s the way.
I also know lots of people who are capable, skilled, smart, and passionate, but they are too passive when it comes to what they want. To quote a friend, they believe that ‘if it doesn’t happen, it means it’s not for me’.
Well, sure. But if you treat your entire life like that, nothing is under your control and you can become the victim of your own beliefs. Sometimes, you need to make it happen and that comes through hard work.
For me, these are two extremes that are unhealthy because they lack something important. You’ll see in a second what I’m talking about.
The problem with obsessively working hard
“You have to be relentless.”
“You have to grind every day, every second, every hour.”
Does this seem familiar to you?
It’s what I used to hear a few years ago a lot from many influencers I was following. It’s also what I saw in that Reddit post from a few weeks ago behind a teenager’s mindset.
If you work hard and you constantly force things to happen around you, you’re going to end up with lots of problems.
I know at first this makes little to no sense, but hear me out.
Imagine the space of a box. It’s not a big box, just a usual box, that you can grab with both your hands and move around the house.
This box is empty and whenever you do something, the space inside the box gets filled with something representative for your action.
Therefore, the more you do something, the more your box will be filled.
Now imagine your box is your life.
You set yourself to do something constantly and your box gets filled after one year. Is that your life? Is that all it is to your life?
You rushed to make sure you had your box full. But what happens after that?
Well, you have to make space for other things. But since you obsessively added things to your box, you didn’t learn how to remove some of them so you can constantly have space for new things. That’s the first problem.
The second problem is that you believe you are the only one who can add things to your box, so that’s how you treat it.
The unhealthy extremes: The hustle culture and the manifest culture
Just as there are people who want to keep adding stuff to their boxes, there are people who don’t anything to their boxes. Instead, they wait for their boxes to be filled by anyone and anything but them.
When you work too hard towards your dream, you don’t allow the things that are not under your control to come into your life.
When you manifest too hard towards your dream, you get stuck in the illusion that all you have to do is manifest and you’ll eventually achieve your dreams.
None of these approaches are healthy as they need to go together to help you advance toward your dream.
You need to focus on the things that are important to you and also help those that match your energy find you.
The importance of working hard and meditation
Working hard is important. Manifesting and meditating is important as well. But they help you build your life the way you want it when they work together.
Working hard is important because you have to put in the effort, in the physical world, to get something out of the physical world.
If you simply stay inside the house and meditate your future life 24/7, you’ll never get it. Your life will be a continuous meditation process that will never end.
And most people understand the importance of hard work. But not so many understand the importance of manifesting through meditation.
You can work as hard and as much as you want, but if it’s not in the right direction, you’ll end up frustrated because you won’t get the expected results.
That’s where the other part of the equation comes in.
You meditate so you can attract and manifest things in your life that will set you on the right path. You don’t know who they are and they will never become part of your life if you keep working like a madman, 24/7.
You need meditation to have access to the things that are not part of your physical world. You need meditation to guide your life towards the path that is yet unknown to you, the path that will provide you with the things you desire.
That’s what meditation is for and it’s a journey that has no physical aspect. It’s all energy and spirit. When you’re obsessed with working hard 24/7 in the physical world, you ignore anything that’s energetic or spiritual.
What happens when you combine working hard with manifesting?
You get to a state of flow where you focus on the things that are important to you.
You get to be emotionally balanced and your emotions are working with you, to create the life you desire.
You get to have time to enjoy life. Now that you can manifest things in your life (the things that you had to previously work for) you get to have more time for whatever else is important to you.
I wrote this article having in mind that type of person who is really knowledgeable but feels like they need to work every single second of their life. I was like that a few years ago.
Relax a bit and learn to manifest things in your life.
With love and optimism,
David