The word ‘success’ historically made me feel a bit uneasy. When I used to hear or say the word out loud I’d have this visual connotation of material objects that would flash to my mind: a really expensive watch, someone holding a briefcase, a slick suit and really swanky office buildings. Essentially, anything related to corporate ‘work’. Interestingly, when you type ‘success’ into google the two below descriptions appear:
- “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”
- “the attainment of fame, wealth, or social status.”
Even more interesting, when you take a peep and browse google images the majority of the image feature clip arts made up of white men carrying brief cases, some even running up stairs that seem to depict some kind of ‘heaven’ (some may argue an escape route from corporate world but I’m not an art critic so I’ll leave that for another day)
For a long time I believed that the clip arts were a visual manifestation of future of success, I genuinely believed that to be a respected and accomplished person I needed to work my fucking arse off day and night. I’m a bit embarrassed to say this now but I aspired to have material objects that would one day act as my museum of achievements. I often had thoughts that went a bit like this: ‘I’ll be successful when… I own the massive house in London, when… my business is turning over 7 figures, when… I can buy a holiday home in the bahamas and drink pina coladas for breakfast”.
That all changed when I started finding clumps of my own hair in the shower and started having stress related heart palpitations. Like many of us the pandemic blurred my lines between 9-5 and I found myself working 8am-10pm sometimes later and without coming up for air because, really, there was nothing else to do. I became addicted to the adrenaline of working on multiple projects, I subconsciously attached my own worth and validation to being ‘needed’ aka ‘booked and busy’. I became so dissociated from my own self that I allowed myself to become really, really sick.
It was until a Doctor told me I needed to slow down that I realized the damage I had done. I walked home from the hospital feeling numb, disappointed and so confused. How had this happened? (I knew, but I couldn’t quite face that I’d done it to myself) I spent the rest of the day feeling so angry at myself. I realised that for the last 6 months I had been an anxious, emotional, easily triggered, irritated, tired and lifeless little soul. I had poured all my energy in to my work and appearing ‘together’ for my clients that there was no more juice left in the tank and my poor body had taken a battering.
So I decided to step back, I cut my work load down by a significant amount, and paused or cancelled upcoming projects that I couldn’t fulfill in the state I was in. I spent the month of August working enough to cover my bills and cost of living and spent the rest of the time doing the things that bring me back to me. I had genuinely become so disillusioned by the destination of a clip art ladder that I forgot to even take a moment to enjoy the process, let alone evaluate what wasn’t working.
The trouble with burn out (and I do believe burn out to be a problematic concept in our modern society) is that it’s become a bit of a buzzword. A badge of honour some might say. Nowadays it’s really not uncommon to hear people say ‘I’m feeling burned out’ and not feel alarmed because it’s become such a common theme throughout our work life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we’re being more open and honest about our physical and mental health but we shouldn’t be normalising exhaustion and poor health in the name of ‘success’.
The problem is, we live in a hamster wheel of announcement culture where we’re constantly inundated by updates from others sharing their accomplishments, promotions, pay rises, new houses, new partners, screen shots of long haul flights with a countdown timer, and everything else that accelerates the speed in which we get to the top of that imaginary clip art ladder. So we keep pushing, and pushing until we reach clip art ‘success’.
I’ll be honest I’ve had to work through some deep conditioning, I still have those pangs of guilt and thoughts, ‘I need to be doing more’. It’s taken me a long time to understand that rest is productive and my friends, family, partner and business get the best of me when I’m well rested.
Success for me is happiness. It’s starting work at 11am because I went to my favourite gym class, it’s clocking off at 6pm to play netball with my mates, it’s meeting friends for lunch on a Wednesday afternoon because why not? It’s impromptu Fridays off, It’s spending my weekends with the people I love rather than chained to my desk, it’s creativity for fun and not monetisation, it’s taking time for myself without feeling like a lazy slob. We get so brainwashed in to believing that we’ve ‘made it’ when we’ve got the objects to show it, the accolades to announce and yes, those things are still great to aspire to. I’m not saying we need to bin our shoes and head for the hills and start living off of organic tomatoes and sleeping in hammocks. What I am saying is that we need to make space for those things and work towards them at a rate that works for us and not against us.
We need to evaluate if those things are even important to us in the first place, or if we aspire to them because we’re told we should. My advice to anyone working towards any dream is this: nothing is worth sacrificing your mental or physical health for, time is the most valuable commodity.
Connect with Daisy https://www.theselfhood.com/
