Anxious and overwhelmed entrepreneurs how do we escape hustle culture

[Music]

john eldritch an american sociologist

once said that it’s the thoughts and

intents of the heart that shapes a

person’s life

for us entrepreneurs to be an aspiring

young founders

who wants to achieve a life of greatness

so what

then is the intent and thoughts that we

need to think about to be able to

achieve our dream life

we live in an overhyped culture where

people put so much premium on what we do

and what we don’t do upon meeting you

for the first time a lot of friends

would say

what do you do and if you happen to go

to a great school

to a great startup and or you have your

own site business business

ever since you’re young they would be

like oh my gosh like that is super super

cool

so with people valuing the grade and

were you doing more

it devalues the small and demanding

often times that are just as valuable

people expect you to work longer hours

put in more

hard work for you to achieve more but

what it makes you

if you’re not careful is an anxious

overwhelmed and exhausted entrepreneur

the world today is not what it used to

when products used to launch

in two months now it only takes two

weeks people like us are no longer

staying in our workplace

just for five years we’re staying in

less than one

year and trying to find something better

so in this age where we constantly crave

for this

drug of success but it never satisfy

you are highly productive probably but

you’re also highly anxious

you’re highly passionate about certain

things but you’re burning out trust as

fast

i grew up with two older sisters who are

pretty

accomplished and famous and when

we came home from school we came from

that asian family that value so much

on our grades i would always be scared

of showing my school grades to my

parents

because somehow in the back of my mind i

knew that

their love is conditional upon my

performance

so post college growing up it’s

becoming something that’s ingrained in

me where what my parents

think of me or what i think people think

of me

and their love for me is dependent upon

my achievements and performance

so by the age of 16 i started my own ngo

by the time i was 18 this

ngo i got to represent it in the united

nations in new york

by the time i was 21 i started my own

social enterprise called liberty society

by the age i was 22 just in one year’s

time we almost got invested

by a big 500 startup company in the

world’s eyes it may seem like i’ve got

it all

at such a young age but again this

so-called drug of success that puts you

in a rat race almost

you feel like you have to achieve by a

certain age you feel like if you only

get this you’ll feel satisfied

it was an illusion i wasn’t

though career-wise i was professionally

at an all-time high

emotionally i was at a career all-time

low as well

it wasn’t until december of 2020 where

my startup

almost closed that i had to rethink what

success means for myself

and for me to be able to escape the

sessile culture and the traps that it

presents to me

so my hope is when i share these three

pointers it will help you find your

journey

so let’s unfill together the matter of

the heart here

number one redefining what matters we

have such narrow feel

of what success is that it’s all about

winning internally and it’s all about

you

but a bigger definition of success that

i’ve learned is that it also matters

that you put value in the people around

you

for me although i was at a career high

and emotionally at a very low

pace it’s because when i was achieving

all these great things i had no one to

celebrate it with

i felt very lonely being on top is a

lonely place

especially too because you’ve sacrificed

so much relationship

on your way there so that when you’re

already there

you realize this is not satisfying

to what you imagine it would be and you

have no one to celebrate it with

if only i had that margin for people but

how could i i always

came back home leaving myself exhausted

because i didn’t put enough margin in my

life

my cup runned over if only i had been

more disciplined

with myself creating that rhythm people

always talk about balance

but oftentimes it’s rhythm you need to

set certain disciplines in your life for

you to be able to meet people

go out there put a cap on work and stop

work before you go to bed

and it’s these types of things that i

realize matters most because life is so

much more than my work

at the end of the day i don’t want to

win this

success if i’m losing my soul if i don’t

even know who i am anymore because i

don’t have friends

and community to encourage me and to

remind me of who i am apart from my work

oftentimes we pursue careers so much

because we mistake it with our calling

my second point is separate career

versus calling

a lot of people think that calling is

like a lighting in the sky that when

you’re walking down the street

then you would get it that aha moment

that makes you feel

this is what life is all about that

often times for us young entrepreneurs

we’re taught

you have to give your all you got to

sacrifice your enjoyment you got to

sacrifice relationships

you got to sacrifice sleep for you to

get there

but what we often feel they realize is

that calling

cannot be achieved in one day we have to

sleep our calling is also to rest our

calling is also to our family

you know what your career changes you’re

calling dustin

what you do changes especially this

pattern make but you probably are losing

your meaning

but you gotta separate your worth from

who you

from what you do who are you apart from

your work

because because when your career changes

and what you do changes

who you are remains the same i know

myself apart from my work

i am a sister i’m a daughter i love

running

i am highly ambitious about creating

social justice and

impact and i love good old copy

these things don’t change even when my

career changes

so it’s very important that you know who

you are apart

from your career i experienced this idea

personally when i didn’t graduate from

college

dropped out from college my junior year

came back home and for a year i thought

wow my life is such a waste i couldn’t

secure any job without a degree so for

one year i was only interning

without any compensation but you know

what because i gave

my best in that season of life my

calling was to faithfulness in that

season and the people who i have around

me

those clients those bosses those

partners that i

get to meet from my old work became my

current clients

because they trust me and they see what

i do even

with what the little that i have so

that’s the second part

our calling is to faithfulness in who we

have and what we have in front of us

but of course there are hiccups along

the way and my third point

is how do we redefine failure if you’re

not careful with this

or you don’t know how to redefine

failure

a lot of entrepreneurs ended up taking

their own life when their business

closes because that’s all they work

for for the five years or the 10 years

of their life

and then when an investor failed to see

the worth our customers feel to see the

worth of their product

because their products are so closely

tied to their identity

they feel like their life is worthless

so how do we escape this mentality of

you are

overwhelmed by the problems that is

presented to you

again with my own story of having closed

my startup last year

there’s this liberating truth that my

mentor gave me

hey it’s okay not to be the first

time founder that made it to manage a

startup that

become an ipo or hey it’s okay if you

start a field for the first time

what founders don’t publicize a lot of

the time is the fact that startups

fail and they fail without the public

knowing them

there’s this assumption that because

everything seems to be doing well

that everything is actually going well

underneath it

my mentor also told me tom when you fail

i was at all i was at a problem in my

startup and then i asked her

what do i do when i felt like i messed

up she told

me tom feel forward i was like what do

you mean

failing forward means that you’re able

to take the lessons that you have

taken from the problem that you have and

use it to propel you forward

the first feeling that i had when my

startup almost closed is

what will my friend think of me this

feeling of shame became so strong

but i had to learn to tone down the

voice of

shame instead use the problem and the

lessons that i had

to propel me forward to not let me from

just mulling

in my mistakes but taking it reflecting

it and using it for me to feel

forward secondly my mentor also told me

hey fail fast unless you become to

normalize this problem of failure

it will be very very hard for you and

very slow for you to move on

so you gotta normalize it so that you’re

able to feel fast

you know that it’s okay to fail and

you’re gonna feel again and again

so you just gotta feel fast and move on

so these become the building blocks of

my view on failure

life is all about learning journey it’s

not about for me to try to collect

trophies

of accolades and accomplishment but it’s

about me

learning along the journey for it is not

a rat race that we are in your pace and

my

pace may be different i’m not telling

you to join me and

create a startup on when you’re 23.

you have your own journey you have your

own story your own personality that only

you can fulfill in this world

but the kind of people that will be

around you

to make that happen tying it all

together

when you know what matters most when you

know the pace that you should go it’s

not always the same with the pace other

people

around you are going and number three

when you’re able to redefine

failure and see what success really is

for you to continue growing

then i think you’ll be able to escape

the hassle culture

of becoming an anxious overwhelmed and

exhausted

entrepreneur or adults adam grant

quotes this feeling embarrassed by your

old work

isn’t a sign of incompetence it’s a mark

of growth

being critical of your past performance

means you’ve raised your standard

refine your taste or improve your

judgment it’s a path to producing

something better in the future

you know what the world doesn’t need

more overworked

and overwhelmed leaders for you who are

leaders to be

the world needs thoughtful compassionate

leaders who are full of self-security

compassion and conviction you can be a

leader who tell

others that their meaning is apart from

their work you can allow

the rest have family time and for them

to find their worth

in who they are as a person you can

raise a better generation

who understand in the bigger values of

things that your

worth is more than just what you’re

accomplishing but your worth

is based on these values of doing

justice loving your neighbor

creating the world a better place not

simply from

achieving but also from showing that

you’re able to escape

this hassle culture and rest and do

things differently

no it’s not in this rat race that we are

fighting and biting each other’s neck

for we are in the marathon

all of us we have different pace but

we’re all

going to the same goal that is to create

this world a better place