In the land of hustle and grind, with Instagram entrepreneurs telling us “dreams don’t work until you do,” and “you can sleep when you’re dead,” it’s no wonder that a lot of us are drilling ourselves into the ground with work and we’re… well… burnt out.
TRUST ME, I did this for the first four and a half years of blogging & building my business. Did it help my brand grow rather quickly and keep me in the flow because I was doing what I love? Yes. It so did.
Did it also make my body pretty sick and eventually turn into a way of life that was not sustainable for me longterm if I wanted to be in a committed relationship, be present in my friends’/family’s lives, and overall have a healthy boundary between my life and my work? YEP. Very much.
I am not saying that working hard isn’t a key to success. I’m just telling you something I have learned from putting it to the test: working hard isn’t the ONLY key to success.
You can work “hard” for very few hours at a time and achieve amazing results, vs. working all the time, always being ON, hardly taking time for yourself, being available to everyone, and being a slave to your computer/business/employees/what have you.
And I want to be really clear: if you ENJOY working long hours and putting your absolute ALL into your work, there is nothing wrong with that. There is a method and a formula for every person out there, I truly believe that we are all so significantly different in beautiful ways, so just because this is my way doesn’t mean it has to be yours.
But if you’re yearning to free up your time, find a deeper flow, and overall find more efficiency in your workflow to do MORE with less, there is a lot to explore. 🙂
There are a few ways to go about it.
A few things that inspired me to change up my workflow to explore “working less” are as follows…
- Tim Ferriss’s “The 4-Hour Work Week” which is all about living more & working less. It’s about filling your time with what you love, becoming far more efficient with how you use your time, outsourcing, and beating the “game” of life rather than succumbing to the monotony of it all. He was the first really successful businessperson who I had read about working LESS and becoming vastly more successful at all once.
- Learning about my HUMAN DESIGN! When I had Jenna Zoe, Human Design chart reader on my podcast, she absolutely rocked my world with the info that she shared. I learned that I am a Reflector, which is a non-energy being. Projectors are another type of non-energy being, which I have since learned a lot of my closest friends & family are. Us non-energy beings typically do not thrive in a “hustle and grind” type of environment. We are not wired to work ourselves for super long hours at a time, instead we are wired to be in the FLOW for more like “spurts” and then do something else as the flow comes to a halt. THIS MADE ALL THE SENSE IN THE WORLD TO ME. Rather than pushing myself to fit into the societal norm of extremely hard work in order to see results, I was able to give myself the permission to cut back.
- The whole concept of MANIFESTING. Manifestation gets an interesting reputation among those who don’t know a whole lot about it. But once you dive deep into learning about it and find a method that works for you… it’s hard to hate on it. Manifesting is all about being in the flow, living as if you already HAVE what you desire (believing it to see it, or seeing it to believe it), the Law of Attraction, and so much more. The manifestation principles I believe in are such that you can only call in what you want if you are living in a vibration that matches what you want. So if you’re looking to call in financial abundance but you are stressed about money so you’re working yourself to the bone and not sleeping and feeling riddled with anxiety all the time… you won’t be calling in financial abundance with any sort of ease. Once I started to explore manifestation and the methods that work for me (like Law of Attraction for example!) I realized that there was beauty in the stillness. From stillness, so much more abundance could flow.
- Getting sick… this is probably not something that everyone can relate to, but getting sick with chronic Lyme disease & mold poisoning & co-infections and head to toe eczema and debilitating chronic fatigue has forced me to slow down. And once I did, I realized how ridiculously hard I had been pushing myself all along. This year I have spent significant time traveling, resting, doing healing treatments like water fasting & Panchakarma, taking SO MUCH TIME off of work and away from email… and opportunities and work are flowing like no other. Financially I am doing just as well as I was when I was pushing myself to the bone, without the stress. In fact in many ways I am doing better, and working massively less. And I know I could be doing even better financially if I slowed down MORE & dropped the fear of “doing even less.” Because I know from that place, I will tap even deeper into what I am meant to be doing.
The point is… life is meant to flow with ease. This might not be a popular opinion and I realize there are so many people out there struggling to make ends meet. I am not sharing this opinion to say that life is easy for me & money flows with ease for all & let’s all just kick back and not work.
I am sharing it because I want everyone out there to realize that things CAN be easy. We have to get out of the struggle mindset, the fear mindset, the “why them & not me” mentality, the “I’ll just do this for one more year & then follow my heart afterward” approach, etc. etc. If you are not abundantly happy doing what you’re doing, YOU have the power to change it.
My Journey //
You can still put your passion & your all into your work, while having a life outside of it. I can speak from experience, that when I finally released my fears & my why’s & my freak outs about taking a step back from it all, I realized that the LESS I work, the MORE opportunities flow to me.
For example a few years ago I was juggling my blog, my clothing line, my recipe app, my book that had just come out, COUNTLESS partnerships on my blog/Instagram that probably came out to about 5-6 a week, meaning photoshoots/video shoots/events galore, speaking engagements, you name it.
I had NO SPACE at that time to draw inward and ask myself if I was enjoying what I was doing. I was far too deep in it all to see that maybe having a clothing line was not for me, that it was no longer feeding my soul, that for the sheer amount of hours and emotions and stress that I was feeding into it, the monetary return was SO SLIM and it didn’t match up with the energy output coming from me.
When I finally let go of my fears & shut down the clothing line, the inspiration to start my podcast landed. It literally LANDED in my mind, and I found a way to make it happen. I had no experience in audio, or Garageband, or interviewing. But I asked around, bought some simple equipment off of Amazon, and the podcast quickly rose to the top of the health charts on iTunes… within the first month of starting it.
Because when you let go of fear & you do what you’re meant to be doing… abundance just flows. Success flows. When WE are in the flow, the rest can follow.
Now I find myself in another tricky space. I have been podcasting for two years (almost to the day), blogging for 5 and a half years, and still juggling many partnerships and commitments even though I have cut way, way back this year due to my health. I find myself waking up with no energy, my body getting sicker from Lyme, having zero motivation & excitement for things I usually love, and feeling pretty trapped by it all to be honest.
TRAPPED… even though this started as something that I love, and there is still a lot that I love about it. This is a brand I have built from the ground up and put my entire heart and soul into.
But I feel a shift, similar to when I left grad school on a whim to pursue my blog (that had hardly made a dime yet, by the way!) and when I shut down my clothing line to open myself up to what was to come (the podcast, but I didn’t know that yet!) and I feel that this new shift will come from really slowing down, walking away from certain commitments, and all around doing even LESS.
I feel it so strongly. And once I’ve started to release my fears around that in the last few weeks, preparing to take a big step away from it all soon so that I can heal, things have begun to really, really flow again.
Not only have ideas and inspiration and my intuition and channeling started to flow like wildfire, but also I have been approached to be on about 5 news segments in the last week alone, been approached by brands for several longterm partnerships that really align with what I am looking for, been in touch with some DREAM podcast guests, and more. And I actually have had to say “no” to pretty much all of it to stay in the alignment of taking a break and doing less.
Or, rather than, “no,” I have had to say: “not right now.”
And I have said “no, not right now” with the knowledge and trust that all of this will come back to me with ease when the time is right. And if it doesn’t, it is not meant to be.
So letting go & doing less is really accepting that the universe knows what it’s doing. We are exactly where we are meant to be.
There is so much trust and belief in something bigger that goes into it all. I have so much more to say, but just wanted to leave you with this little thought nugget for now. 🙂
I will be doing a podcast solo episode on this, so leave any q’s you may have below!!
AND… are so many free ways to learn about manifestation & tapping into a life of abundance… from podcasts, to Internet articles / blogs, to Instagram accounts, to minimal investments like books & small courses. If you are unhappy in your current job, I would recommend looking into some of these things. And if manifestation isn’t your jam, then looking into it from more of a business perspective like Tim Ferriss!
XOXOX