I Disowned Hustle Culture, maybe you should too

I think I accidentally spent a lot of my twenties living in ‘hustle culture’ land.

You know what I'm talking about. The women on social media flashing their six figures and their courses, their issues with their new higher tax bracket and the ‘hey, looking for a new accountant, again!’ posts. For me, this was it. This was who I wanted to be. The most badass boss-woman-business-creator there ever was.

Apart from, I was wrong.

This wasn't me. It never will be.

Stepping away from social media for a long while made me realise the things that actually bring me joy are growing flowers, sitting with my boys, planning for the future with Matt and just trying to enjoy the ordinary.

I don't feel like I need to be seen now to be successful.

I'm lucky. I have incredible clients, consistent work and a full-time job that I created entirely off my own back. But when did that stop being enough? And who exactly is pushing us to do more, offer more, earn more, be more?

Who are these people clapping for the mothers who are awake until 5am trying to work so they can hustle harder?

If it's a matter of finance, sure. Sometimes we work because we quite literally have to. But often? I think it's a matter of ego. Of wanting to be seen doing it. Of the machine we've somehow all ended up feeding.

And that's something I've slowly removed myself from. Not because I don't care about my business anymore. I just want to give my energy to the people I love, and I want to give my energy to my clients in the right way. I don't want everybody else getting the scraps of me because I've spent all of myself trying to prove online that I'm successful.

I think somewhere along the way, being successful and looking successful became two completely different jobs.

There's almost a uniform for successful creative women online now. The booked out announcements. The airport laptop. The ‘just signed my biggest ever client’ story. The income screenshots. Hiring your first VA. Launching the course. Then launching the course that teaches other people how to launch their course.

And none of those things are bad. That's important, because I'm not sitting here rolling my eyes at women making loads of money or growing incredible businesses.

I love seeing women do well.

I just think we've created this really weird visual language around success where sometimes it feels like we're not just doing the thing anymore; we're constantly having to prove that we're doing the thing. And I absolutely bought into it, and I see incredibly talented women buying into it every single day. Instead of working on their business, they are working on a plan on how to demonstrate to ‘viewers’ that their business is successful.

Once I stopped being online so much, my business didn't suddenly stop existing. My clients were still there. People still wanted to work with me. I was still making money doing something I had created for myself. Nobody was watching and it was still real.

I think that's when I started questioning how much of my ambition was actually ambition, and how much of it was ego.

I don't want to spend my life trying to look like I'm living a successful one.

I still want to do incredible work. I want to earn good money. I want to be proud of what I've built and probably, occasionally, be a little bit smug when something really cool happens. I'm not pretending I've suddenly become completely detached from ambition or ego. I'm human.

I just don't want any of those things badly enough to miss the ordinary stuff anymore.