Surviving is a Step

We live in a world that rewards hustle and success. It’s plastered across advertisements such as TV, on billboards and on social media. If you are not aiming for the corner office or busting your ass at the gym or being the Pinterest Parent, well, then you’re failing. Always be grinding. Always be pushing. Never stop hustling, they say.

It exhausts me just to write that, let alone live it. The bar can seem set unattainably high. So if we know that, why do we continue to feel the pressure of giving it 110% each and every day?

Don’t get me wrong. Working toward your goals is important. Hard work does mean something. But does it have to mean everything?

While there are a select few who can live Peloton lives, there are many, many more of us who simply cannot, and we shouldn’t have to. And for the majority the immediate goal is surviving and not necessarily thriving.

So I want to talk a bit about surviving. That doesn’t necessarily mean struggling to put food on the table or a roof over our heads. Sometimes it is really just about making it through the day. Not every day has to feel like at 5 p.m. you have reached the top of Everest. Many days can feel like slogging through a swamp. And that’s OK. That’s reality.

And even those swamp-slogging days have merit and value if we purposefully ascribe those qualities to those 24-hour collection of moments. Instead of looking at this day as a failure, find meaning in what you did today. Did you do something that positively affected someone else? Did you overcome a challenge, no matter how trivial it might have felt in that instant? Did you put one of your talents to use in some way?

Taking the time to evaluate a day at its end is a great way to understand the value given and received during that “survival day”.  You will likely find it wasn’t wasted. You didn’t take a step back.

A survival day can mean as much, if not more, than a hustle day. The key is where you put your mindfulness.