What Are You REALLY Working For?

I want to talk about something that scares us while we're trying to make our dreams happen and very often scares us to the point where we abandon any action that would actually bring us closer to our dreams. The thing that I'm talking about here is comparing ourselves with the work rate of other people. There's something that I'm seeing more and more especially on social media now, and even from the gurus who are passing down wisdom to budding entrepreneurs, people who are trying to set out on their dreams and make things happen that they know would maybe create a better quality of life for them if they could just follow through with them, or things that would bring them closer to doing what they love. And the trend that I've seen is a kind of Look how hard I'm working. Look how many hours a day I'm working. Look how much I'm doing. You're not doing enough. And when I see that, I'm always concerned that the people watching will feel like what they're doing is never enough. I know that I consider myself to be a hard worker at times. I'm not always a hard worker. Sometimes I slack. Some days I'm pretty useless. Other days I work really hard. It depends. But I do know that going on social media and watching how hard my role models seem to work can actually be demoralizing more than it is motivating. That's because I feel like sometimes I can't keep up. When someone is Talking about how they're working all hours of the day, they're constantly getting home at midnight. They're creating this image that is almost like this superhero image where you're like, well, I can't possibly do that. So now what happens is, even if we were initially excited about driving towards our goal, if we compare ourselves to someone else and say, well, I don't have the stamina to do what they're doing, or I don't have that many hours in the day, or I don't have that much energy. We are going to defeat ourselves in our own mind before we've even started. And that is a real shame because actually a couple of hours a day on your dream will bring you closer. Now, maybe it will require more than that over time. But that's still better than not doing anything. And I think many of us, because we think we can't be the ideal version of what we want, because we think we can't, you know, I always remember Will Smith in an interview where he said, you know, this is Will Smith, the actor, by the way. He said, you will not outwork me. You can have more talent, you can have more skill, you can be better looking, you can have this, you could have that, but you will not outwork me. If I get on a treadmill next to somebody else, one of two things are going to happen. Either you're getting off first or I'm gonna die. That's it. You will not outwork me. And that in a way is inspiring, but at the same time it can be quite demoralizing because if we sometimes think, well, I just don't know if I could work that hard. We stopped doing even the basic things that could move us closer to our dreams. I've come to see it as a kind of work shaming. mindset that we have with other people, where we've started through social media and through the conversations we have to shame people about the number of hours they're working and they're not doing enough. Entrepreneurs do it especially, you know, people who set up businesses love to talk about how many hours a week they work and how what time they get home. And, you know, they love to talk about it because it's somehow a bragging thing. But you have to, the bottom line is this, you have to decide what it is you're working for. I know that when I started out, I wasn't working for the sake of working all the time. One of my big, you know, one was I wanted to do what I love, which was work with people. I knew I wanted that. But I also knew that I wanted to work to create freedom for myself. I wanted to work so that at some point, I didn't have to work. till midnight every night so that I didn't have to work seven days a week so that I could, in the middle of the week, just decide, you know what? I want to take a couple of days for me, or I want to do something spontaneous. I want to take a trip. I worked so that I had freedom, not so that I could then brag about how hard I was working all the time. That. That wasn't the mission to me. But sometimes you'll hear people talk about it as if that is the mission, you know, I'm. I'm. working and working and working and working. And you think, well, if you're already successful and you're still bragging about how many hours you're working a day, that might be they might have a different goal to you. Someone else might be trying to make themselves a legend. Someone else might be trying to leave a legacy. Other people might be working so that they can go on holiday more, so that they can be free and independent and not have anyone tell them where, you know, when they have to show up somewhere. so you have to know why you're doing it and not compare yourself to other people and make yourself smaller than them or be freaked out or intimidated by what you perceive to be the work rate of somebody else. So that's it. Do spend a couple of hours a day on your goal, your dream, whatever is going to take you closer and compare yourself to the you from yesterday. If you do more than you did yesterday, great. If you're being more productive now than you were last week, more efficient, getting more done, great. That's where the comparison should be. But not trying to compete with the work rate of everyone else in the world, because we'll always lose that battle, especially when it comes to social media, because people can make up stories about how hard they work anyway. We never really see the real picture.