I’ve frequently found myself on the edge of burnout over the past several years, and I’ve found a few potential culprits…

One–I am an ambitious, goal and results oriented person, who also happens to be impatient and have extremely high standards for myself and my life.

Two–I have a default scarcity mentality, and habit of pushing myself with fear tactics, and negative instead of positive reinforcement.

Three–every role model, guru, teacher, and virtual mentor whose business content I’ve consumed over the years has been male–which exacerbates One and Two, as men tend to be more likely to push themselves through beratement, with haste and aggression, and without regard to their feelings on the way to the actualization of their goals.

It is with this last and most recent revelation, that I’ve come to consider that perhaps I’ve been holding myself to an impossible standard that’s counter to my nature, and have been unfairly punishing myself, hating myself, and talking down on myself for not measuring up to the impossible–-

Go, go go.

Grind, grind, grind.

Hustle, hustle, hustle.

Treat yourself like a machine, and when feelings arise, or it looks like your mental or emotional health are taking a hit, shut up and don’t whine about it, put your head back down, and continue to…

Go, go go.

Grind, grind, grind.

Hustle, hustle, hustle.

After feeling myself breaking emotionally and mentally, seeing my happiness and peace decline drastically, and stress levels shoot up immensely, I have no choice but to acknowledge that I’m inflicting my own suffering by assuming that suffering and discipline go hand in hand.

I can’t operate this way for sustained periods of time.

But what if I don’t have to operate this way at all?

I can have discipline without force, negative self talk, self deprecation, self-inflicted and assumed to be deserved and necessary pain.

Discipline can be kind.

Discipline can be soft, it can be gentle.

Discipline can be enforced from a place of love, not lack.

We can excitedly run towards a compelling future instead of fearfully run away from a painful past.

I’ve been doing the latter, but now I want to focus on the former.

I want to focus in sight, word, and deed on what I want vs what I don’t.

I want to fuel myself with:

What excites me vs what repulses me.
What I’m excited to gain vs what I’m scared to lose.
What I look forward to have in abundance, not what I lack.
Love of my future self and life, not hatred for my current self and life.

There are 5 ways I’m planning on making this transition, and proving that peace and ambition can coexist.

Here they are, in case you want to give it a try too…

01 / Focus on what you want.

Last week, after a particularly stressful day in life and work, I had an emergency meeting with my friend over alfajores (an Argentenian dessert).

Noticing my exhaustion and exasperation, he asked me, “What do you want?”

I immediately responded…

“I don’t want to have to ever worry about money.”

“I don’t want to feel like I have so many things to do in my business.”

“I don’t want to work X number of hours a week.”

He stopped me.

He reminded me that he asked me what I want, and I responded with what I don’t want.

This is particularly interesting because I consider myself to be a positive person, but without even realizing it, I immediately went to the negative.

And people tend to do the same when they talk about what they want in a partner– they talk about what they don’t want instead of what they want.

This may at first seem like an indication of having boundaries and standards, and an admirable display of strength to enforce and uphold those boundaries and standards.

But really, I think it points to other things like:

lack of clarity
exasperation from not having gotten what you wanted thus far
lack of faith and confidence in your ability to attain it
dwindling enthusiasm for the pursuit of your desires

Maybe you need to first articulate what you don’t want to help you get to what you do, but just do that–use it as a tool to gain clarity, then reframe those negatives as their positive opposites and repeat that to yourself.

That’s far better than subconsciously focusing on negative outcomes and projecting that negativity onto your pursuits.

02 / Change your actions.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, do different things.

Sometimes, it really is that simple.

Spend more time doing things you want to do in relation to your goals, rather than things you don’t want to do.

For me, in my business, that would mean spending more time on making aesthetically pleasing things, free writing, ideation, setting a vision, planning, and the various other forms creativity can take.

Through this shift, I can change the idea of being a “working woman” to being a “creating woman,” which makes staying on track and moving forward a lot easier and a lot more pleasant.

“Creativity” is fun, has a positive connotation, and is something we’re used to wanting to do on our own, of our own volition.

“Work” on the other hand, has a negative connotation, and is something we’re used to feeling forced to do, where choice is taken away from us, along with the expectation of extracting any enjoyment from the process.

“Work” also implies a desired/required outcome, which adds pressure that “creativity” does not.

Do things that feel good, but also in a way that feels good.

If you can’t change what you’re doing to make it more enjoyable, change how you’re doing it, whether that means the pace or the medium.

For the more creative parts I enjoy in my business, I slow down, and take my time with those parts, relishing the enjoyment of the experience of creating.

The parts I don’t enjoy as much, if I can’t outsource them, I just work through them faster, am less meticulous, and let good enough be good enough.

Also, as a writer, I like hand writing in my journal with my Pilot G207 gel pens, while laying down, off of a clock, off of a schedule–writing this way doesn’t feel like work I have to do.

When I write in that way, writing isn’t something I want to hurry up and get through, it’s not a box I want to tick off for the day.

And it feels like I’m writing for me–not for someone else, and not for a certain outcome.

This is a different feeling than when I write by sitting down and typing at my computer.

03 / Reframe your work.

If you don’t like the picture you’re looking at, sometimes, all you need to do is change the frame.

When work feels like something you have to do, common advice is to switch from saying “I have to” to “I get to.”

Sounds nice in theory–focusing on the gratitude you should have for the opportunity to do work and earn something as a result, which not everyone has the privilege of.

But something about that feels fake and harder to believe.

It’s like you’re trying to force yourself to feel a new feeling that’s not there or real, or think a new thought that’s not there or real.

I, personally, prefer to take the path of least emotional resistance, since my whole goal is to stop feeling like I have to force myself to force things–even if that’s positive thinking.

I want to tell myself things I can already believe and get on board with right now.

So I like the idea of switching from “I have to” to “I want to.”

Conventional discipline will have you saying “I have to” which is focused on the dread of the task.

But I can say “I want to” out of focus on the excitement of the potential positive outcome of that task.

That way, “I want to” immediately rings true even if the task itself is not one that I particularly enjoy.

I may not want to do the task, but I do want the outcome of having done it.

04 / Create a vision.

I’ve been making vision boards before I even knew vision boards were a thing.

When I was a kid, I would go through magazines with my friends and we would cut out pictures and glue them together on posterboard.

Back in my day, we called it a “collage.”

We didn’t have a clue about visualizing, manifestation, or much else, but there was something in us that intuitively knew that it felt good to curate images that resonated with you.

It was fun.

Then, when I got a little bit older, the meaning behind “collage-making” settled in more for me, and the intention behind it became to create an image of the future I wanted to bring in for myself.

The great thing about a vision board, is that there is value in the one-time process of making it, and in the repeated action of seeing it regularly.

When you make it, it’s exciting, and every image you see that resonates with you will instill hope and trigger joy.

Then, every time you look at it again, you will reignite motivation, focus, and optimism.

Making a vision board is a great way to prove that you can have an exciting compelling vision and be fueled by what you’re running towards and not what you’re running away from.

05 / Switch your means of motivation.

I used to “pep talk” myself and try to motivate myself with lack.

It was all rooted in fear.

If you don’t do X, you’ll be broke.

If you don’t do X, you won’t get Y.

If you don’t do X, you’ll become Z.

But there is another way.

Speak of the good that will happen if you do something, instead of the bad that will happen if you don’t.

Choose faith-based motivation instead of fear-based motivation.

Let your self-talk praise what you are, instead of lament what you are not.

Focus on what you’re proud of yourself for doing vs what you’re disappointed in yourself for not doing.

Berating yourself with insults on how you’re lazy, not focused, and not disciplined may seem to be the default approach to self motivation, but it doesn’t mean it’s the only nor most effective approach.

You can tell yourself (if these things are true) you’re doing your best today with the energy you have, you’re getting better at sustaining your attention span, you’re getting more efficient at your work…

Even if you fall short of your output goals, you can give yourself credit for your inputs.

Maybe that will be just the thing you need to give you the energy to keep progressing towards materializing your outputs.