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