Episode 222
Title: From Hustle to Burnout to Feeling Lost in your 30’s 40’s
Host: Dr. Nicole Rivera
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Transcription:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrated View Radio.
So this is totally a random inspiration for this podcast.
But I live at the beach,
and we were on our golf cart the other day cruising around,
and there was an individual.
He looks like he was it, maybe in his mid to late twenties,
and he was dressed in a full suit. And I think it was a,
you know, seven thirty PM, still light out.
And he pulled up to the beach,
and he was walking in his suit with a box of food,
and clearly, he was gonna go enjoy the sunset and and eat his dinner on the beach.
And it made me think about the phases of,
of life, of entrepreneurship,
of hustle, of success,
of being career-driven.
And I know that this is very, very much relatable to my entrepreneurs,
but even individuals that chose the corporate ladder.
And, you know, you get out school in your twenties,
and you're excited to wear that suit.
You're excited to look the part.
You're excited to apply everything you've learned and you're willing,
you're more than willing to hustle
and do what needs to be done to impress the people that you work
for and work your way up the ladder.
And even as an entrepreneur, you're you're just like,
I am so stoked. I finally have my degree or I have my business plan.
I have my vision, and no one is standing in the way of this.
And I am gonna bring it to life. I am gonna work hard.
I'm gonna do what I need to do because I have something that is gonna impact the world.
And so we are those people.
We're those people that are hustling until seven PM,
seven thirty PM. We're grabbing our dinner,
eating it out of a box. We're fine to be wearing that suit
as we meet up with our friends after work or we,
you know, meet up with them to grab a bite of dinner.
And so we wear this hustle and this busyness like a badge of honor.
And we're so hungry for success,
not always humble, but hungry.
And we just put our heads down and do what we need to do.
And then we hit our thirties. And Honestly,
the hustle starts to lose its allure.
We feel like we've been hustling for a while,
and we're not severally a hundred percent where we wanna be.
Some of us are pretty far from where we wanna be.
We start just feel a little lost, a little confused.
We still are making an effort to look the part.
But we don't really feel the part.
We don't feel the confidence.
And part of it is because we've been hustling,
and we're not nearly making the progress that we hoped for.
So the hunger is dissipating,
and we're just starting to rethink things.
We were no longer wearing that suit out or those fancy clothes,
that work attire out at night because we're too tired.
We're just so busy. And now we've been
so busy for so long that we're too tired to meet up with people at seven,
seven thirty, or eight PM.
When we're finally wrapping up our work day
because it's been the years of compounding that our bodies are like,
you're done. And,
of course, that level of burnout,
that level of fatigue is what gets us really rethinking Is this what it's all about?
Is this what it is? Because this doesn't seem sustainable.
But the beauty of it is If we can leverage that downtime
if we can leverage that hardship,
I should say. Of looking back and saying,
I came in hot. I was so hungry,
hustling my butt off, doing what I need to do,
and happy to do it. And then I did it for this long,
and I don't necessarily feel like I am where I wanna be.
If anything, I'm busier than I ever was,
and I don't feel like there's a fair exchange for how much I'm putting in.
If we can look at that,
take the time to say,
what are the benefits? What are the drawbacks?
What is what is the lesson that need to be learned?
What is the wisdom that I need to gain from this experience?
And ask ourselves the deeper question of who am I?
Who am I meant to be? What do I truly truly value?
Do I value working so hard to solve a problem for humanity?
Or do I wanna solve a problem for humanity and have a purpose?
But I also wanna prioritize myself.
And my family, and my friends,
and my relationships, and I also wanna travel.
And I want to I wanna enjoy life.
And if we can sit there and be really honest with ourselves
and start to reflect on the things that are most valuable,
which honestly is our time and our energy and our relationships.
No matter if you're it's a romantic relationship,
if it's a relationship with your friends,
old friends, new friends, or even your your family.
You know, if we can figure out how we can prioritize our own self-growth,
prioritize our time, our energy,
and our relationships, then you can get into your later thirties
or even your forties with a massive amount of clarity
while leveraging the wisdom that you've gained from the years prior.
And obviously, if you are in your twenties listening to this,
speed up the process. Do it quicker
because This is just what I've seen because I've been friends with so many entrepreneurs.
And I've been friends with many people that were very hungry and driven in the corporate world.
This trajectory is, is just very,
very familiar, is you know,
we hit the ground running in our twenties.
We do it. We do it. We keep doing it,
and it's not until our thirties that we're like,
what am I doing? It's usually in the mid to late thirties
or forties where we we start to really prioritize what's important.
And we start to understand the value of our time and energy opposed to just the value on money.
I think that a lot of us come out of school
or even just dive into entrepreneurship
because we have a family of entrepreneurs And we're very driven by the money,
and we're very driven by the luxuries that the money provide.
You realize quickly that you buy the thing,
you know, you maybe maybe you make enough that you buy the really nice car.
You buy the Ferrari. And then six months later,
you don't really care. You know,
you buy the the Chanel bag.
You buy the fancy shoes.
You go on a fifty thousand-dollar vacation.
And then you don't care, and then it's over.
And you realize that those are not the things that make you feel happy,
that make you feel joy, that make you have massive gratitude for your life.
They're nice luxuries, and I think that it's important for people to experience those,
especially if that's something you're interested in.
But it that is definitely not what creates success.
And from my experience so far,
it is not what creates happy people.
So taking the lesson and the wisdom,
it's it's being able to create your new experience
because you are the creator. Don't ever forget that.
You are a hundred percent the creator of your reality.
And you have the ability to create whatever you wanna create.
But if you are an entrepreneur, you probably know that there is a loss for a game.
There is a death for a birth.
So sometimes it's a matter of losing our own old identity of the hungry hustler.
And being able to re-identify with this new more balanced person that prioritizes their time
and energy.
They classify their time and energy
as their most precious asset
and that they want to make sure that they are the best wife
or the best husband or the best parent before being the best CEO or the best company founder.
And being able to then intentionally use your amazing diligent,
disciplined work ethic to create that.
But create it in a way smarter way than you have in the past.
Because you've already learned at this point that it's not about the hard
work the hustle putting her head down tons of sacrifice.
It's not bad at all, and that's why there
have so many books by business gurus that it's honestly not even business gurus.
It's the business gurus that took the old-school wisdom from people like the Rockefeller.
People like the Rothschilds,
individual, like powerhouse families that have created legacies and generational wealth,
not that we all agree or in alignment with those legacies.
But overall, they are individuals that focused on Thinking to create success or growing wealth,
think and Grow Rich is one of the most famous books out there.
And so many business books of this day
and age are iterations of that same wisdom and knowledge and concepts.
But anybody that you talk to, you talk to any entrepreneur
and they say the key to success is taking a pause,
being able to zoom out and think.
Think about what's going well, what's going wrong,
think strategically, give yourself enough time and space to be creative,
to have a bigger vision than anybody else in your company,
a bigger vision than anybody else in your industry.
And don't be afraid to take risks.
But make sure that you are able to weigh out the pros and cons,
the benefits and the drawbacks of those risks.
And so It allows us,
all of the things that we go through in our twenties and thirties,
allow us to be bold, they allow us to be brave.
They also allow us to get very well acquainted with
what works and what doesn't work and what serves us and what doesn't serve us.
And then That is what propels us into being more comfortable
with this idea that it is about pausing.
It is about working less so that you can be more strategic
and more of a visionary because that those are the comp that that they're that's literally
what they call they're called.
When you read books by Jim Collins,
who has done massive research on the top companies in the
world that have persevered in all economies
and have left a legacy.
He calls them visionary companies.
And that is because their vision was always bigger and bolder than anybody else.
And the only reason they achieved
that is because they had people at the top that focused on thinking pausing
and spending a ton of time on creating strategic vision.
So for you entrepreneurs that are listening,
I hope that this inspires you.
The last thing that I do wanna say is that if you are someone who created a business
and you are you don't feel like that business model serves you anymore,
but you feel like What am I gonna do?
Am I gonna start all over? Like, am I gonna throw this in the garbage?
Like, I can't throw away what I worked for.
I I really invite you to not be in fear of that,
because personally for myself,
I created a great business, and I really loved my business,
but I knew that their my business was serving me,
but it was also holding me back.
And it took many years before I was able to say that the discomfort was bigger than the comfort,
meaning that the discomfort that I felt from where I was being held back was bigger than
the comfort that I felt with the positives in the business.
And I knew that if I wanted to get to the two-point o version of myself as an individual,
And I wanted to also create the two-point o version of my life that I was more of a priority.
My family was more of a priority.
And I had more freedoms that I looked for,
location freedom being one, time freedom being two,
that I needed to make a bold change.
And that didn't mean abandoning everything I created.
It was more about transitioning. And yes,
there is discomfort that comes with that.
Yes. There is loss. But there is gain.
And it's not immediate. It's it's about knowing that there is gonna be loss to be a game,
and it's about being prepared mentally and emotionally,
and even financially. To weather the storm,
but to know that everything you're doing is extremely intentional to create a
life that is more in alignment with who you've become.
Because ten years into entrepreneurship,
let alone twenty years or more you change,
you change as a person tremendously.
The industry changes,
the economy changes. Like, so there's so many reasons to pivot or transition,
but really at the end of the day, it's easier for us to pivot or transition when it's sternal.
Oh, the economy. Oh, a pandemic.
But we're more reluctant to change when it's based on us,
but it's based on our own personal transition.
But if you can't show up as your best.
And if you're just chronically stressed out, chronically burnt out,
your business isn't serving you and you're not serving your business.
And you're just gonna be continually be beaten
down because your business is gonna continue to just have many highs
and lows from finances to culture,
to turnover, to operations, etcetera.
If you can wake up every day so excited about the business that you have,
the biz that you get to create and be a visionary for,
that's where the magic is gonna happen.
So don't be scared of bold pivots.
Know that course, there's gonna be a loss to be a gain.
But if that gain is more in alignment with who you are as a person,
the gain is going to be so much bigger than you can ever imagine.
