Note: This article was originally published on "The Anti Hustle Project".

When I first joined Instagram, I came across some ads about growing my social media following and building my list, directing me to "get 10,000 followers now!" The ads usually featured women with a trendy yet relatable vibe, and I’ll admit it – I clicked. Getting 10,000 followers was appealing on some level, and if other women in the helping field were doing it, maybe I could too. I even signed up for a free webinar on growing my list. As a result of that one click, IG started showing me more of those types of ads, some of which I’d pause upon, until before long those were all the ads I saw. And the result? It absolutely made me feel not enough. I felt more anxious and caught up in getting likes than I ever had.

After that initial click, I probably had 2-3 solid weeks of staying up late, sitting on my phone, liking and following account after account on IG. It’s not that I was spending more than an hour or so in a day. But when you run a business and have a rambunctious 3-year old, there aren’t many hours in a day to work with. When all of my “Nicole time” was taken up with trying to get more followers, it really did have an impact. I was ignoring my body (it wanted to move!) my heart (it wanted to connect) and my mind (it wanted to read). And each night I’d slide into bed a little more tired and a little more hopeless about the mountain in front of me.

The worst part was how anxious and unsatisfied I felt. This really threw me because I’ve done a lot of work on self-worth. I make a point of not exposing myself to advertisement and staying out of the comparison trap. I’ve moved away from spaces and people who make me feel insecure and moved toward those that embrace me in all of my humanness. It’s sometimes strange to say it out loud, but I really like who I am and the work that I’m doing. I absolutely still make mistakes and know I have a lot to learn, but at the core I’m pretty solid.

Of course, it was no real surprise that when I was constantly exposed to this messaging, it got harder to scroll on by. I got caught up. But it was so not like me to feel this way that I had to take a second look and really think about what I was doing.

I know for some industries, having a strong platform and following might be important. I was definitely feeling the pressure of getting thousands of followers, but did I need thousands of followers? Honestly, for me at that point, no. I have a full practice and a strong local community. So why was I feeling like what I was doing wasn’t enough? I blame hustle culture.

Hustle culture goes beyond simply reaching your target audience. It pushes us to always be doing more, striving for higher numbers, and never feel satisfied with where things are. It had me tying my self worth into the number of likes I got and that’s a losing game.

Hustle culture seems to operate out of a scarcity model. In other words, there’s this sense that there’s not enough to go around, and so if you’re going to be successful, you need to “hustle hard” to get it. This, from my perspective, encourages three problematic things:

1.   feeling like nothing you do is enough;
2.   acting overconfident; and
3.   using pressure sales

I’ve already talked about not feeling like I could do enough. It was a totally unsatisfying way of being. I was completely disconnected from gratitude, and I wasn’t doing the things that would actually nourish me on a deeper level. I had to give up the anticipation of one more follower and invest in the things that actually made me feel good, in a real way.

As for acting overconfident, I see this a lot in my field. New therapists can be all too eager to prove their worth and build their practices. They end up volunteering for complex cases and a broad range of issues that may not truthfully be in their scope. The more I work in this field, the more I realize the importance of knowing our own limitations. I may want to help and be keen to learn, but that’s not the same as having the relevant training and years of experience that more complex cases truly require. It’s not the same as having the time and energy to give to each person. I now know that I’m not always the best option for each client, and that’s part of recognizing my scope as a Psychologist. I don’t say this to be humble – I say it because I’ve learned.

As a helping professional in a position of power, it’s important to me not to use pressure sales or convince people that they need to work with me. I’m one option, but I’m not the only one, and I believe part of truly informed consent needs to involve being clear about what we’re offering and the limitations of it, rather than trying to overhype ourselves or act as if there aren’t similar services out there. I believe in being really cautious about the influence I’m having on people and being very mindful about my use of power. I'm here to provide a safe, confidential place for the people who want to work with me. I’m not here to tell people what the right path for them is.

The more I thought about it, the further away from hustle culture I wanted to get. I have some clients who are entrepreneurs and I’d never tell them to hustle hard. And as clients accessing my services, I’d certainly never want them to feel hustled. So why are we uplifting hustle culture as if it’s something to strive for?

I found an alternative that worked for me. I started with embracing slow growth and being satisfied with “good enough”. I also had to situate myself back in the abundance model – the belief that there are enough clients to go around for everyone. The abundance model helps remind us that we don't need to trample over our own boundaries or convince others that they need our services. Rather than hustling to compete and prove our worth, we can work to collaborate, build community, and do good work that speaks for itself.

I also had to surround myself with more people who feel the way I do to help remind myself of this. I surrounded myself with others who believe in a feminist approach to marketing, which I think is much more relational and community-minded. Natalia Amari reminded me of this and I owe her a debt for that.

Oh and did I gain 10,000 followers in this process of figuring all this out? No, I didn’t. But I’m less caught up in feeling like that has to happen now or I’m a total failure. I’ve re-embraced slow growth and I’ve started to feel more grounded in the work I’m putting out there as a therapist and writer. That feels like something to be proud of.

I know that so many parents are currently overwhelmed. I’ve talked to a lot of people who are suddenly finding themselves in a situation where they’re asking to be both a full-time worker and a full-time parent (sometimes single parent), and honestly, I just don’t know how this is possible. I’ve been so lucky that when the pandemic hit, my partner and I had what amounted to a 2-minute heart to heart on what we’d do about childcare. Me: “So…. You cool with going back to being the stay at home dad?” Him: “Oh yeah. That’s what I figured we’d do because it’s the only thing that makes sense.” And that was the end of that. She’s not at Kindergarten age yet so there’s no homework to be done, nothing special to keep up with. Not that it’s easy for him to do the parenting all day – but for us it’s at least it’s restricted to parenting, and not all these other tasks that other parents are trying to juggle. Most parents we know haven’t had it so easy. Usually they’re still working while also trying to figure out how to take care of the kiddos at the same time. And figuring out school expectations, and homework, and related technology.

I have a lot of compassion for the position this puts parents in because as as great as you might be at grade 3 math, you are not a math teacher. And on the off chance you are (oh hi!), you’re probably not your own kid’s math teacher, right? I learned this lesson very quickly when I took my daughter to gymnastics lessons this year. (So. Much. Fun. For me and for her). After a few weeks of official, totally fun lessons, I asked her if she wanted to do some of the skills at home one day, and she had an enthusiastic yes. This had me pretty excited because I love gymnastics and the idea of cartwheeling around together just seemed great. So we started to practice her forward rolls, and not 2 minutes in…. “THAT’S NOT HOW YOU DO IT MAMA!” She was frustrated enough to be stomping away. Apparently I was helping her “wrong” and that’s why her roll had gone sideways. No amount of explaining that I was doing it exactly the same way her teacher had done it (I watched) or that I’d done gymnastics for years before was helpful. I figured out that day that my job as her mama was to cheer her on from behind the glass wall (“you worked so hard! I’m proud of you!”) and not at all to try to give her feedback on how it could be better or teach her these particular skills. I’ll leave that up to the professionals. Who she does not stomp away from.

An update to this story. These days, we’re doing gymnastics videos from home. She still learns from the teacher, and I still watch with much cheering, very minimal interference. Once in awhile, I’ll ask her “do you want my help with this one?” and that’s been okay, but I offer it sparingly, because I still know that if I take on too much of the teacher role, it’ll be frustrating for both of us. I keep reminding myself that the point is for her to have fun, and as long as she’s not doing anything wildly dangerous, I really don’t need to step in. It’s not my job to make sure she has a perfect handstand. She’s 5. It doesn’t matter.

For those of you doing office-based work or work with clients, I know there can be a real tendency to work the whole day through without a break, continue working until the project is done, and be available to answer email or calls at all hours. With a lot of people working from home right now, the boundaries between work and home might feel even more blurry than usual, and it can be tough to turn “off” at the end of the work day. Some people are having a hard time separating from the work, and some people feel guilty when they do.

The idea of setting boundaries related to work can feel daunting, and sometimes people aren’t sure where to start, so I thought I’d share some ideas to help get you thinking about the types of ways you might begin to listen to your own needs. You’ll notice that I focused mostly on physical boundaries, and mostly on boundaries that I hope will be under your control, at least to some degree. I know every workplace is different (for example, not every job allows for an hour lunchbreak, or breaks at set times), so please adapt as you need to, with the spirit of the suggestion in mind.

If you do catch yourself thinking “I can’t do that at my work”, I do invite you to pause and make sure that you actually can’t. There are real barriers at work, and I completely understand that we all have to work within these limitations. Sometimes, it may the case that we’ve never thought to ask ourselves or the people in charge if it could be different. I often think back to when my dietician recommended that I have a small snack every few hours and I told her I couldn’t because I saw clients back-to-back. She asked me if I could talk to my boss about the client schedule to see if we could make it work, and of course, I had to laugh. I’m self-employed. So I know I’m particularly fortunate to be my own boss, and yet even I had trouble seeing what was possible, simply because there’s a way things had always been done.

• Transitioning from work to home may have been somewhat simpler pre-pandemic, when there was actually a different space to distinguish these arenas for most of us. If you’re currently working from home, here’s the first thing I suggest. Make sure you create a work space that is separate from your “life space”. It’s hard to relax with a good book and catch up with a friend if you’re in the exact same office chair you used to complete your admin work earlier. Likewise, it’s hard to get into work mode if you’re doing so from the exact spot at your breakfast table that you just finished your bowl of cereal. Obviously, not everyone has space in their homes to have an office. If you do have the space, I hope you’ve been taking the time to set it up in a way you like, or will take the invitation now. If you don’t, well here’s where we can get creative. You could use a different part of the room you’re in to help distinguish work from home. Or, you could turn your computer to a different side of the room, depending on whether you’re “at work” or “at home”. Maybe you have a work laptop provided to you that’s only for work and a personal one that’s only for fun.
• Once you’ve set up your workspace, you’ll want to set up a “transition to and from work” routine. Mine’s pretty simple. It mostly involves getting dressed in work clothes, turning on my scent diffuser, plugging all my devices in, getting some water, and closing the door to my office. Then I’m ready. At the end of the day, there’s a bit more to it. I close down the programs that I’ve been using, respond to any emails I need to, write down any “to do” items I want to remember for another day, then turn off my computer and clear my desk. Some days, I will sit at my chair and write some feelings from the day, taking time to be with any difficult emotions I may have witnessed. Some days I might walk with the feelings instead of write about them, especially now that the weather is better, taking the time to let them flow through my physically. The idea is to let yourself transition emotionally and mentally, along with moving to a new space physically.
• Once you’ve given yourself the time to be done with work, then it’s time to transition into being at home. That means not checking email or your work phone, and if thoughts about work arise, to let them keep floating by without getting caught up in them. The idea is simple: When you’re at home, let yourself be at home. I know it takes practice to do so, and some days are easier than others. Yet I always come back to believing it’s worth it. The 8pm email from your coworker or client can wait until tomorrow.
  

Some of these ideas are harder than to implement than others, and even that could be different for each person. I’m a big fan of picking one thing that seems like a small challenge but still doable, and giving it a go. You can always add more from there, when you’re ready.