America glorifies the #hustle. We’ve got an entire city that never sleeps. We don’t take our paid vacations; we work over the holidays; we eat at our desks.
While the #hustle is real, the question we’re all dying to know is, it is effective?
Kristina Mänd Lakhiani, the co-founder of Mindvalley, a wellness education platform that serves 2.5 Million active users a month, says, without hesitation, no.
“We have this fantasy that hustling is the thing that brings you success,” Mänd Lakhiani says. “So what a lot of entrepreneurs do from not knowing better is they put themselves in the hamster’s wheel.”
Chances are if you’ve been on the hamster wheel, you’ve also wanted to get off the hamster wheel-like, immediately.
That’s because the hamster wheel is exhausting.
Everyone—no matter how much momentum they’re starting with—eventually burns out on the hamster wheel. And then, says the Harvard Business Review, becomes a more cynical person. #relatable
So if hustling doesn’t work, what does?
“[Entrepreneurship] requires some space to do nothing, to think nothing, to catch that elusive inspiration,” Mänd-Lakhiani says. “If you think of business as a creative process, then you realize you cannot be in a rush, you have to have space.”
Okay, but wait.
How do you create spaciousness in your life when you’re literally busy #allthetime?
For starters, you can start delegating things to others.
Hustlers tend to want to do everything there is to do, all by themselves. In theory, this seems like a good idea—after all, you’re saving money and maximizing the amount of control you have at every level of operation—but it keeps you from having the space you need to thrive as a creative.
“I’m very good at cleaning my house,” Mänd-Lakhiani says, “But I would never do that because [if I hire someone else to do it] I’ll have much more time in my day.”
Ask yourself, can someone else do this task? If the answer is yes, let them, if you have the option to.
When we see entrepreneurship as a creative process, spaciousness becomes integral to that process rather than threatening to that process. It flips the value-system of #hustling on its head so that “busyness” is no longer something to strive for and spaciousness is no longer something to be guilty for.
So what are you waiting for? Own your inner creative and choose to make some space for yourself today.
- 3:02 Mänd-Lakhiani on her “absolutely magical” experience of motherhood
- 9:55 Why entrepreneurship is actually a creative process
- 16:06 The art of delegating
- 17:12 How Mind Valley developed into the company it is today
- 25:13 Why you should never judge yourself for the thoughts and feelings you’re having
- 28:08 What your judgments about other people have to say about you
- 31:08 Mänd-Lakhiani’s favorite resources for self-development
*Article was written by Raya Schroeder
