It was recently pointed out to me that I constantly associate work with an instant monetary reward. Can you blame me? It's how we are conditioned from our early years. Your parent saying "No, I'm not buying you more clothes.. No, I'm not paying for you to go to the movies with your friends. Get a job, learn work ethic and the value of money, and earn it for yourself."
These are great lessons. I'm proud to say that I got a job the earliest you can legally get one in Australia, I put in the hours, saved all my money. Went travelling with my own money, bought my clothes with my own money, moved out and paid my rent with my own money. But fast forward a few years. I'm an adult trying to break the 9-5 cycle (or 7:00am-11:00pm), living in a new country, and trying to gain satisfaction from not only earning my own money but running my own business. Associating the hours you put in with the money you get out can be a hard lesson to unlearn. The hours that you put in are not going to correspond with an hourly wage anymore. They say time is money. But, when you're supposedly paying yourself, but also paying to get things rolling, and the sales aren't exactly there yet.. it can be challenging, and it seems easier to just get a job and get paid.
Smiling through a 14 hour work day lol :)
To add to this, adjusting from the hourly rate in Australia, to the hourly rate in America is a huge mental struggle. At the moment I'm working 55+ hour weeks at my paying jobs. A full time job and a part time job, and I'm getting paid as if I was working 2 or 3 shifts a week in Australia. It's hard NOT to think about the fact I'm basically working a full time job for nothing. (In my mind). It's extremely challenging to adjust to your time being monetarily worth so little and the fact you need more than one job to get by with the high cost of living in Hawaii. The prices back home in Sydney are pretty much on par with the prices here and the pay is less than half. Hats off to everyone in America!! A conversation over dinner of me complaining to my boyfriend about this change in work life balance/pay check is how this blog post even came about.
When my boyfriend pointed it out to me that I need to break that cycle, he said "You have to detach from the attitude that the hours you put in equals money. Learn to hustle for nothing." And at first I thought, ...what the?! Why on earth would I hustle for nothing, the whole point of hustling is to get something!! But I see now that he was right. My boyfriend has been through it, he's started his own business and learned so many lessons from it. He understands that you have to adjust to putting in work because you care and putting in hours because it means something to you and doing it even when there's no money coming in because that's how you will be successful. Business can be slow and the amount of effort and heart you put into it, the better it will be in the long term.
The same can be said of Steemit and Dtube. I often see users posting on the platform about how you can't do it just for the money, it can't be your end goal, it can't be the only reason why you put in the effort. I think it's true! I'm starting to focus my content more on the lessons and insights I learn from my own experience and share them so that other people that maybe gain something from it. And it's making my happy! Which is definitely worth something.
Today I was running errands to set up my online store. All I did was spend money to be honest! Haha, but every step is adding to my store getting up and running sooner. It's all for a longer term goal. It's all a hustle. And at the moment, it's all seemingly for a very little reward. (One that can be seen in my bank account anyway.) But I've realised that the more I'm doing it, the more I like it, and the more I'm actually gaining so much more. A new attitude, less laziness, more satisfaction, more strength, and courage too. Hustling for 'nothing' is character building, it makes you resilient, and that's so much more rewarding in the long run. I'm the happiest now I've been in my life and I'm sure that is not for nothing.
See you in my next post!
Olivia x
