Hustle + Rest: The Balance of Being a Productive Human

Art Direction and Photograph by: Catie Menke. Model: Bajani Anise.

Copy by: Regina Lawrence
Model: Bajani Anise
Creative Direction by: Catie Menke

I spent most of my life trying to do more. Doing more meant being more. Being more made me more valuable. Therefore, doing more = more value. And I derived all my value from the do, the go, the hustle, the move.

But what was more devastating now, when I look back on it with fresh eyes, is that for me, like a lot of women, doing more led to having more stress and anxiety.

And I began to equate my ability to be a successful woman with having to be in a constant state of stress and anxiety. I really thought to make something of myself and to have success in this world I had to be stressed out. And if I wasn’t stressed or anxious I wasn’t doing quite enough.

From where I am sitting now in my life, it makes me laugh but I also know that if I didn’t live the life I lived before, I wouldn’t be where I am now. We have been so conditioned with this way of thinking.

We have been so conditioned to think that without being in the constant state of motion, we won’t have success, wealth or make anything of ourselves.

But what I have realized over the past couple years, as I transitioned from Corporate America attorney life to working for myself as a business coach, we actually are able to be very successful, very profitable and have a massive amount of peace and joy in our lives.

The only way to really start to change this dynamic is to implement changes in our day to day life.

And sometimes the smallest changes yield the biggest rewards for our sanity.

There is a place for hard work. There are seasons of hard work in our lives and careers.

I still work very hard and spend a lot of time working in my business. But for the seasons of hard work and, sometimes, stressful or anxious moments, there has to be a counter balance of providing ourselves with rest, rejuvenation and fun.

The way we begin to shift the dynamic, like most things in life, has to start inside of ourselves. We have to start to implement changes in our lives first before we can see the outcome in the rest of our lives.

So where do we start within ourselves? It all begins with creating what I like to call the “White Space”.

The white space is my favorite space to talk about. This space is the place where we get to find peace and bring it into our life. Very simply, white space is the time that you carve out in your schedule for you and only you. White space is a non-negotiable for you if you are going to find some peace in your day to day life.

I believe that we should be finding time for ourselves every single day. This daily ritual helps us to reduce the changes of burnout. For me, white space = a version of self-care.

First, let’s squash a popular belief about self-care. We don’t need to carve out hours and hours of self-care to rejuvenate ourselves.

Sure, if there are days or weekends that you can unplug and create space… that’s beautiful and those opportunities should be taken advantage of. But for most people, on a daily basis, creating lots of time and space for ourselves feels like something we can’t actually do.

That is exactly why I want you to know that even a small window of 5-10 minutes a day can help to start to give you the space you need.

First, take an audit of your daily life. Are you creating space every single day for you? Are you creating space once or more than once in your day? Are you feeling depleted like you need some more space? The honest audit of your life tells you where you are at right now and where you want to go.

For the person who is creating no space for yourself, step 1 is carving our some sacred time for you. If you have children and / or have to get up and go to work early, I recommending starting with 5-10 minutes daily. What you do with that time is up to you. It has to be something that fills your cup and allows you to check in with yourself. I recommend putting your phone aside and doing things like reading a book, journaling, sitting in meditation, doing some morning movement, or even simply sitting in peace and quiet with your morning coffee and just breathing to prepare for your day.

If you are a person who has started to create some space for yourself but are still feeling depleted, ask yourself where you can add a little more space or what other activities you can be doing for you. For me, my mornings are sacred. I drink coffee, I read, I write in my journal, I meditate. And then at a point later in the day I workout, go for a long walk, or both. I need a mix of stillness and movement to help me. Both serve as whitespace for me at this point.

Another question to ask yourself if you are feeling depleted is, “What are the things taking away my energy that do not fill me up? And why?” I like to do an audit of my life and emotions. I like to look at everything on my plate and see if I can outsource anything that is robbing me of joy, taking away my energy or that I just simply don’t like to do. If you are an entrepreneur like me, sometimes you can outsource those things. When I work in a corporate setting, I couldn’t really outsource stuff. But I would allocate certain things to my assistant. Other things that I knew I had to do but didn’t love to do were time blocked on certain days of the week. If I allocated time on Wednesday to do the thing I didn’t enjoy, I would surround it with things that I loved. I’d make sure I had good white space time in the morning. I’d pick up my favorite coffee and scone from a coffee shop I loved on my way in. I set the tone with my favorite music or podcast. Any little thing to make me feel better and help the process really helped me.

In all of this, just be intentional. Be intentional about what you want. How you want to feel. And what you want your life to look like. And then actively create the space and minutes to do that.

Contributors Gallery