The Macho Lie of the "Hard Work" Magic Pill

"Hard work always pays off, no matter what you do."
~ Dustin Lynch

I don't know who Dustin is, but I do know that I've heard that message from every part of my life - from school to work to entrepreneurship. We have all been told - and convinced - that hard work is our Magic Pill to the Big Rewards we are supposed to want: security, money, comfort. I have nothing against security, money or comfort. But I do want to include a few major things not mentioned: meaning, fulfillment, passion, self-definition, love, community...

However, being a good student of what-is, and someone who wanted to do well in order to get applause, I believed in the more narrowly-defined rewards. But I ended up with a problem, and I'm not the only one with the problem. Not by a long shot.

​The problem is: hard work is not actually The Big Bad Answer to Success. The hard work "solution" is myopic as hell, and certainly left me washed up on a personal shore I didn't expect to visit.

I used to work myself to death. Fourteen hour days, fitful sleep, worry-worry-worry, self-flagellation emotionally and physically. And no matter what I did - and I did it for years - big success eluded me completely.

At the not-so-very-tender age of 56 I suddenly heard my mind ask me a potent question: "Is this approach to your life working for you?"

The fact that I was asking the question while lying in the bedroom of a friend's house - a kind soul who offered me space in his house as a rescue a homeless existence in my car...well, that was its own answer, wasn't it.

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I had become an actor - hardly a financial juggernaut unless your name is Julia Roberts - from which I learned all about self-expression and honoring the gifts and insights brought about by emotional acknowledgment and emotional freedom. And then I found entrepreneurship, about which I knew nothing. As my life and my passionate, deep-end-first approach to life would have it, I dove head-first into trying different approaches to supporting myself.I went to workshops which cost a mint and only tried to sell me more workshops.

• I worked those 14 hour days I mentioned, and made a lot of progress with software and systems, but none with external money-gathering results.
• I drowned in the sea of my own creative mind, full of so many creative ideas and possible pathways I could walk because I - like so many others - am a multi-creative woman.

I gave myself no rest. I pushed myself mentally, emotionally and physically. I never let myself off the hook - allowed myself no excuses. "I must keep pushing!" I told myself, and so I did that. Relentlessly.

Until I went utterly and completely broke.

So much for hard work.

I had washed up on the beach of my home town with a question in my head that inevitably made me think of Dr. Phil. "So, Lori, how's that been workin' out for ya?"

Not.  That's my answer: Not! That has not been working for me. I decided that it was time to try its opposite: to not try so hard. To allow. Certainly my spiritual life had been talking of that since - well, the beginning of time, really, and certainly the beginning of my time in spirituality, decades earlier. So perhaps it was time to allow.

How the hell do I do that??? How do I move out of the mindset of mainstream America and into trying my own pathway? Good. freaking. question! But I know that opting out of our loyalty to this idea is nothing short of an internal Revolution.

Here is what I've learned now over the last 7 1/2 years:

• ​I love hard work - but I love it most, and I get the best results, when I love what I'm doing.
• Finding out what I love to do means that I have to somehow get past my no-holds-barred knee-jerk mental/emotional commitment to "will it make me a bunch of money???", and dare to take the time to communicate with myself honestly.
• My business is borne of me - it's not something I choose from practicality and then fit myself into - which means I get to do what I love because I will only build it of things I love to do
• The practice of breaking the "hard work" ideal is not simply a matter of working less; it is a practice of living all of my life in as much balance as I can activate: feminine/masculine, spirituality, rest, creativity, effort, vision, emotional intimacy, and questioning.
• The starting of a business is best undertaken with the knowledge that you don't know shit about starting a business - even if you studied something!
  
•  To be an entrepreneur is to commit to an entire life of personal and spiritual growth.
• My business started to come together when I started doing creative visualization - which means all of my efforts amounted to nothing until I found something that brought in the light/Spirit/high energy...which for all of my spiritual years I had not been able to engage on a daily basis.
• All that I am had to come into fruition before I could make this work.
• I'm impatient with myself, I worry, and I have a tendency to push too hard. So my work is to practice the opposite.
• It's working.

I read an article on LinkedIn yesterday. A man had a heart attack and he told his story with lovely openness and with an ending so powerful that people are clamoring to hire him to tell his story. His conclusion is that he will no longer spend all damn day on Zoom because life is "literally too short", he says. And he's right.

The hard work idea is not complete, not true, and only a part of what makes for a successful work and personal life.  So, here is my wrap-up for this particular exploration.​

"Hard work always pays off, no matter what you do."
~ Dustin Lynch
​​
"Bullshit, Dustin."
~ Lori Kirstein