Can you break free from hustle culture and stay ambitious?

How to let go of the grind, without losing sight of your dreams

I’ve been asking myself this question a lot lately. And judging by the wave of content probing the cult of reinvention, newness and more-ness this January, it seems I’m not alone.

I’ve watched so many people—close friends, former colleagues, coaching clients, strangers I follow on Instagram, even global leaders—follow a similar arc in their lives and careers. A bit like a three-part tragedy, it’s one that usually ends in death and destruction.

In a good way: a let’s burn this shit to the ground, turn your life upside down, and rise up from the ashes kind of way.

I’ve written about this before, but the journey tends to look like this:

Act 1: The hustle

You live to work. A huge amount of your self-worth and sense of purpose comes from your professional identity. Your job is all-consuming. From long hours to “toxic” bosses, you’re caught up in the rush and the drama of it all.

Act 2: Burnout

You get a sharp reality check (a health crisis, a personal crisis, or perhaps a global crisis) that throws you off the adrenaline-fuelled rollercoaster. Or perhaps it’s a gradual awakening/disintegrating. Either way, your perspective is irrevocably altered; you confront the demons.

Act 3: Healing

This is the burning-shit-to-the-ground bit. You quiet quit—or loud quit. You make a big decision. You start to rebuild your life, and yourself, on firmer foundations: values that ground you, interests that feed you, people and environments that light you up.

But what happens next?

The fourth act

Healing can take people in different directions.

Some may choose to deprioritise work, in the sense of a job, altogether. Perhaps you manage to find a sense of purpose and fulfilment elsewhere—working to pay the bills, but really coming alive through volunteering, a hobby, a passion project, homemaking, or raising a family. Or simply living. Because a perfectly valid “ambition” is to live a life of peace, ease and joy.

On the other hand, there are those of us who still need to be, if not defined by, then aligned with our work.

After a necessary rest and digest period, you start to get your mojo back. You realise, hey, I’m pretty proud of all of this experience I’ve got. I know my stuff, I want to share it, I want to be known for it—even if it’s alchemising it in a different way.

Your inner high achiever has awoken from its slumber.

Signs you’re in your fourth act

If, like me, you’re a reforming over-achiever who’s trying their best not to slip back into old habits, you might relate to the following:

• You’ve found something (or multiple things) you really love doing, which people want to pay you for…but you’re mindful of not letting it completely take over your life.

• You find it exciting to create things and connect with people on social media…but you also want to throw your phone in the sea and live in a forest.

• You’re aware that making the Forbes 30 Under 30 is just one (kind of silly) definition of “success” (and anyway, the moment has passed)…but you still daydream about what it would be like to be recognised and respected for your work—whether it’s a book deal, a TED talk, a magazine feature, a hit podcast, etc.

• You know that there’s more to life than work…but when you think about what your 90-year-old self would tell you to do, she’s got some notes on professional achievements.

• You harp on about all things “slow” (business, cooking, living, travelling, macramé-ing, etc.) to anyone who will listen…but when it comes down to it, you sometimes find rest…kind of boring?

It’s a dilemma. You’re fully aware of all the ways capitalism has shaped your beliefs and habits around work, warping your perspective and bending your priorities out of proportion. You don’t subscribe to always-on, always-productivising, hard-working, hard-selling hustle culture. You’re trying to retrain your brain from always gunning for instant results, to stepping back and enjoying the journey.

And yet…you still have ambition.

So once you’ve unlearned all the dodgy, broken ways of doing things, how do you work out your own way of doing things?

Entering my wilderness era

The work

I don’t have all, or even many, of the answers—I want this to be a conversation.

Maybe it’s my own slow “girlie” (god, I hate that word) echo chamber, but I’m seeing a lot of newsletters, Substacks and social posts from people who seem to be navigating a similar shift. So if that’s you, I’d love to hear from you in the comments:

• Over the course of your career, how has your relationship to work, achieving and ambition evolved?

• Where are you at with it right now?

• And are you managing to find ways to honour that ambition, without crashing and burning?

In the meantime, here’s my work-in-progress approach…

Permission to dream

During my “recovery” phase, I was only bothered about two things: earning enough money to live comfortably, and doing work that didn’t fill me with dread every Monday morning.

I scoffed at self-promotion and venture capital (even though it still paid my bills, lol). All the things I’d previously aspired to—lofty job titles, unicorn startups, six-figure salaries—no longer interested me.

And they still don’t. But as I laid out at the very beginning of Messy Work, I learned that it’s OK—admirable, even—to be seen trying. I’ve come to rediscover my enthusiasm, respect and excitement for anyone who’s bringing good ideas to life, which remains the basis of my work for brands.

And most importantly, I’ve given myself permission to dream again. I’ve started filling notepads and vision boards with long, meticulous accounts of my ideal day, photos of places I want to go, or people who fill me with envy.

I also do this work with clients navigating their own crossroads, and it’s always so fascinating to see what emerges when we tune out fear and cynicism, and ask ourselves: what’s the best thing that could happen?

Listening to intuition

Part of the work to own our ambition is determining what’s introjection and what’s intuition.

Through society, culture, media, religion, families and friends, we receive so many messages telling us what we should aspire to. And even when we do figure out what we truly want, we receive even more messages telling us how to get there—the online courses we should take, the strategies we should follow, the blueprints we should download.

I recently spent the day with a group of female business owners and leaders on a retreat to help us ditch the cookie-cutter strategies. We were there to talk sales and marketing, but instead of crunching numbers and learning “hacks”, we sat around on yoga mats, danced around a barn, journalled, picked tarot cards, and gathered up “energy”.

I had to leave my skepticism and discomfort at the door. And when I did, I received a different set of messages around what I needed to work towards. They didn’t come from staring at my laptop or scrolling through Instagram. They came from intuition—remembering what I already knew, and absorbing the wisdom of all the amazing women around me.

A lil video of me at the retreat!

The new metrics

It’s one thing allowing ourselves to dream and another making shit happen.

If we’re dreaming really big, it’s never going to be easy. Along the way, we might be tempted to give up, or drift off course if we get distracted by other people’s advice and judgments (which includes our own critical parts!).

Learning to define, acknowledge and appreciate our own progress is a good way to stay true to our path. I find this particularly useful as a high achiever, since one of my shadows is a tendency to always be running full pelt into the future, constantly chasing the next thing without pausing to actually take stock of my achievements (a weird paradox). At the same time, I’m resistant to attempting to quantify life’s many intangible measures of success and fulfilment.

So something I’ve been experimenting with is “tracking” my progress using my own “metrics”. I’m playing around with some different tools to help me log my growth and stay true to my intentions. For example, I created a big, anti-vanity metrics spreadsheet to help me keep my head screwed on when I’m posting stuff on Substack or social media. Rather than followers, likes and views, I write down things like:

• How I felt before, during and after I was writing the post

• The names of the people I connected with as a result of that post

• Lovely feedback or thought-provoking responses they left on the post

I stumbled across a similarly qualitative reflections log from when I was doing my coaching training, and it was amazing to look back on how far I’d come—how nervous I used to get before every session, how doubtful I was of my “performance” (something you really have to unlearn as a high-achieving coach!), compared to how I feel about my practice now.

Radical acceptance

One of my deepest convictions—which only grows deeper as I observe changes in my own life and witness the transformations of my clients—is that radical acceptance is the surest path to change.

I’ve been coached through the framework of Internal Family Systems therapy, which has taught me to really get to know my inner high achiever. And while I’m conscious of where she might lead me astray, I’ve also come to accept that she is and always will be a huge part of who I am.

So lately, I’ve been thinking: as much as I want to master the art of rest, perhaps that’s just not me.

I will always be a do-er, a worker, a striver. While I do need to be mindful of these traits and look after my health, it’s kind of how I create meaning. And whether it’s paying the bills, cleaning the house or working for myself, they tend to serve me pretty well.

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About me + Messy Work

If you’re new here, I’m Lucia—freelance copywriter, coach to recovering high achievers, wannabe Carrie Bradshaw (along with the rest of Substack), and vintage clothing obsessive (still working on the Fendi baguette).

Source: IFCHIC

This newsletter is dedicated to making sense of, moving past and really leaning into the messy work of life. Through personal essays, loose guides, and meticulously sourced pop culture references.

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