Let’s play a game. Has this ever been you?.

👉🏻 felt guilty or anxious for taking a day (or week or month) off writing?

👉🏻 felt ashamed or worries what people would think if I had to push back a deadline?

👉🏻 pushed your body or brain to the limit because of a word count goal?

👉🏻 stopped writing because you “fell behind”?

👉🏻 wrote out an entire scheduled timeline, fell behind, then hated yourself for failing?

👉🏻 berated yourself for not reaching your publishing goals?

👉🏻 wished you could write faster, do more, BE more?

If you said yes to any of the above—don’t worry, you’re not alone.

We’ve all experienced this before. That nagging belief that compared to everyone else, we’re lightyears behind. That if we just pushed ourselves harder, worked faster, were better then we would finally reach our goals.

But those beliefs? Those come from hustle-culture narratives, from the idea that we have to produce x-amount in order to be valued, loved, and important.

(And spoiler alert: it’s all bullshit.)

According to Dr. Olga Molina, hustle culture is “working excessively without regard for one’s self-care needs and relationships in order to reach professional success.”

So what does that look like when we apply this to our writing life? Well, we have an intense focus on productivity, money, ambition and the concept of “success” with little regard for rest or any sense of work-life balance. It’s acting as if in order to reach our wildest dreams we have to sacrifice taking care of ourselves and our relationships. And that’s just not true.

But these beliefs are ingrained in us. In Western Society, specifically in the United States where capitalism is the economic system, there is a HUGE emphasis on producing as much as possible in order to make as much money as possible, which means it also naturally values profit, motivation and competition.

Because our society and economic system are specifically built on this belief to make as much money as possible and to do so much more than other people, it becomes naturally conditioned in us that our value comes from making money and competing with others.

Yikes, right?

Because when we then look at the way that impacts our beliefs, we see ourselves upholding those values in our writing too—Like when we say and hear, “creating art is only worth your time and effort if you make money from it” or “you’re in constant competition with other writers” or “your time equals money.”

Even if you’re not writing to make money, it’s more than likely you will still be feeling a lot of these pressures because of the competition and expectation to produce as much as possible. When our economic system is so entrenched in this behavior, we begin to treat ourselves in the same exact way—acting like our brains and bodies are factories made to creatively churn out books as fast as possible.

Not only does that take a negative toll on our mindset but ironically, it also directly impacts our productivity too! When we build our writing practice around these hustle-culture expectations and fail to meet them (as many of us inevitably do), we feel pressure, guilt, and shame. All of these emotions create procrastination, perfectionism, doubt, imposter syndrome, and a toxic inner-critic. These inner narratives stem from beliefs we formed around hustle culture.

So, what would our lives look like if we stopped hustling? How would our relationship to creativity change if we started anti-hustling?

Anti-hustling is recentering the narrative around your unique individual needs, instead of around your ability to produce or earn.

These are the tenants of anti-hustle culture:

✨ Your worth is not tied to your output. You are already valuable and worthy of love.

✨ Success is not determined by someone else’s standard. You get to decide what that standard means for you and what it looks like.

✨ Your brain and your body deserve rest. You don’t have to earn rest, your brain and your body need it. You are allowed to take it. You don’t have to work a certain amount before you allow yourself the space and time to rest.

Anti-hustle is rooted in valuing yourself over society’s expectations of you.

We reject all those narratives that conditioned us into overworking, stressing about timelines, denying ourselves rest and believing we don’t hold any value until we’ve accomplished our goals. We stop shaming ourselves and instead we choose to anoint ourselves to be the brilliant deserving creatures that we already are. We give ourselves permission for whatever that looks like.

But, it’s not easy to completely undo the conditioning that you’ve been fed your entire life. It takes time, it takes effort, and it takes conscious reframing and rewiring. This work is hard, it takes time and it’s never ending. But by doing the work, you start to give yourself back the power. Because when you do start to slip into old patterns, you can recognize it.

Here are five steps to help you as you rebuild these beliefs:

👉🏻 Bring awareness to what beliefs we hold without shaming ourselves for these beliefs.

👉🏻 Try on the new narrative, figuring out what it looks like and start to reframe.

👉🏻 Allow yourself shame-free rest: start small.

👉🏻 Adapt your goals and expectations.

👉🏻 Continue to check in with ourselves.

If you’re feeling resistance during these steps, the key is to not shame yourself for it.

That’s normal. What you’re doing is scary, and it takes massive faith, trust, and self-love to do this work. It takes being gentle with yourself and acknowledging the fear and feelings that come up. A misconception about anti-hustle culture is that if you aren’t ambitious, you won’t accomplish as much or won’t make money.

But anti-hustling doesn’t mean letting go of your dreams; it means you’re able to accomplish your dreams from a much healthier place and keep dreaming without burning out.

I can tell you from personal experience, by the time I let go of all the external pressures that I had to achieve x amount of things in order to be viewed as a “good person,” all those ambitions and dreams became much more accomplishable.

And I want the same for you. You deserve it.

xo,