Why Hard Work Doesn't Solve Your Problems

In today's episode, I discuss misconceptions and limiting beliefs around hard work. If you've been working to exhaustion or you think that somehow working harder at anything is a magic bullet, this is definitely the episode for you!

Key topics:

✔️ It may not seem fair, but you can "hard work" yourself into staying broke.
✔️ The solution to all business problems is not to simply work harder and "make" things happen.
✔️ Strategic quitting / forming an exit strategy is not the same as mindlessly walking away from a business. 
✔️ Life is not meant to be difficult all the time.
✔️ Forget about "I will be happy as soon as..." Be happy now. 
✔️ Don't make it to the end of the line and realize you spent too much time being miserable. 


Need more? PM me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sara-causey

Transcript

Unknown Speaker : 0:00

Hello, hello and welcome to today's episode of the Causey Consulting podcast. I'm your host, Sara Causey and I'm also the owner of Causey Consulting, which you can find online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. You're flying solo with me today. And I want to talk about the misconceptions and limiting beliefs that we have around hard work. I'm going to read a series of statements to you. If you're at home or you're in your office, I want you to take out a slip of paper and a pin and make a checkmark every time you hear a statement that you historically have agreed with. Now, if you're in the car, obviously, please don't do that. But if you would just nod your head when you hear something that you agree with or that historically you've agreed with and try to keep track of how many times you had a head nod.So here we go.

Unknown Speaker : 0:56

In order to get what you want out of life. You have to work hard. There are no shortcuts to success. If you want it, you have to work hard for it. In order to succeed as an entrepreneur or a business owner, you have to work hard all the time. Frankly, it just comes with the territory. People who say things like it's important to work smarter, not harder, are probably just lazy. If someone's business failed, it's probably because they just didn't work hard enough at it. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. Hard work solves all problems. Don't be a quitter. You need to keep working hard in order to achieve what you want. If someone's business failed, or they weren't able to get a promotion at work that they really wanted, they must not have worked hard enough to get it. Hard work practically guarantees success. The harder you work, the more successful You'll be it's basically like a law of the universe. Look at your slip of paper and see how many checkmarks you have. Or if you were nodding as you were driving, think about how many times that you nodded your head in agreement with those statements. If you're in America or the Western world, I'm going to assume that you probably nodded your head or put down a checkmark fairly often, if not for every single statement that I just read off. It's ingrained in us from an early age. I heard so many of those statements growing up from parents, grandparents, teachers, college professors, friends, it was just so prevalent. It really was positioned like a law of the universe. If you want something, you have to work hard for it. And you have to work hard for it a lot all the time. And then as if by magic, if you really work hard, you're going to get rewarded, that the universe rewards hard work, and people who just do not give up on anything ever. I mean, another statement that we could add to this is that quitters never win and winners never quit, which, I'm sorry, but that's a load of BS. There is such a thing as strategically quitting. There is such a thing as looking at a flawed business model, or a relationship that makes you miserable and saying, the smartest thing I can do in this moment is walk away. So if you're sitting there with your hands and your ears like La la la, I don't want to hear this. The irony is, you're probably exactly the type of person who needs to hear this broadcast the most. I hate to burst your bubble, but no hard work does not automatically guarantee success. And in order to be a successful business owner or entrepreneur, you do not have to work yourself to the bone. You do not have to live on fumes and run the risk of having a serious physical or mental health event due to exhaustion. In fact, I would like to say, if you're working that hard if everything that you're doing feels like a massive, uphill battle, and you're just not getting traction, it's a sign that something is wrong. Exactly like pain in the body. If you step on a nail, it hurts. And that's your body's way of letting you know something is wrong, and it needs to be taken care of. The same thing is true with having to just constantly put in effort. If you're spending money and you're not getting an ROI on it, or you're putting forth a lot of effort and you're seeing no results at all. It's really a warning sign. It doesn't mean push harder, try harder, work harder. It means stop. Stop, dammit, stop. It's time to reevaluate your strategy and take a good hard look at what you're doing. When I juxtapose the way that I worked and the way that I ran my staffing business, back in 2016, and 2017, I worked all the time. And I was also miserable a lot. I can't say that I was miserable every single moment of every single day, but I was frequently unhappy. And I felt like Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill, only to have the boulder roll back down again every night. I felt like my business was an exercise in futility. And it was horrible. But yet, when I started this business in 2019, even in the early foundational stages, like I remember telling somebody, well, right now the business is not even a baby. It's not even an infancy-- it's more like a zygote business or a fetus business. I mean, it was still growing. It was still incubating. I hadn't completely gotten things put together yet. So even when it was a zygote business, and I was thinking about what I wanted to do and strategizing, I hadn't even gotten to the point yet where I wanted to do any beta testing, even then, it was so much easier. It was so much simpler than it ever was. It's it's funny because I had spent so many years and staffing and I had made so much money for other people. So logically, you would think that stepping out on my own and working hard, you know, rolling up my sleeves and really getting down to it and spending these long hours and just try try try all the time. You would think that that would have led to a highly profitable, lucrative business, and it didn't. Again, I know that if you Were indoctrinated as a child with this idea that every single thing has to be hard. And that it life is supposed to be hard work is a four letter word. I remember being told so many times, work is not a party. Work is not supposed to be fun. If work was fun if work was a party if work was enjoyable, then they wouldn't have to pay you to show up. They're paying you to be there to do a job. And no one gives a damn if you like it or not. Even just saying that out loud for the purposes of recording this podcast episode like I physically have a sour taste in my mouth even speaking those words out into the room because it's like well, that's awful. This is a discussion that I've had with numerous friends. I mean, my friends range in age from a wide gap. I have friends who are Fellow Gen Xers, some who are baby boomers, and even some thank God who are still alive that were from the greatest generation. And sometimes it can be challenging to shift out of those mindsets connected to everything's supposed to be difficult. life's hard and then you die. You have to work hard if if it was supposed to be fun, if it was supposed to be a party, they wouldn't have to pay you to be there. I would also challenge on the other side of the spectrum, this idea that well, if you love what you do, if you have a passion for the work that you're doing, you'll never work a day in your life. It'll just always feel easy. That's also a load of BS. There's going to be days when we have to do things that we do not particularly like. It's not about the whole environment, feeling like a party all the time. But neither is it about working hard and knuckling down and staying with it no matter what. There is a happy medium and there's a balance between work as a party and work is complete and utter hell. I mean, let's let's inject some common sense into the situation. I don't really like having to get receipts together and pull financial documents and and get things organized so that my bookkeeper and accountant can take care of the back office stuff. But I do it. It's important to me to make sure that I keep accurate p&l for the business and that I pay the IRS what I owe them and everybody's happy. It's not about doing p&l being a Party Central. It's just a necessity. But by the same token, I don't have a business where I do bookkeeping, and I look at p&l. for eight hours a day, my eyes would cross and I at some point would just want to gouge them out. That's not a topic that lights me up about life. So one of the key takeaways that I want you to leave this episode with is if it feels Like constant effort, if it feels difficult all the time. If you can take an honest appraisal of your days, and you realize that you spend most of your time feeling awful, or you feel like you're not getting anywhere, think of it like the reverse Midas touch. If instead of everything you touch turns into gold, it all turns to poop and you just feel lousy. That's a warning sign. Just like pain is a warning sign within the body. It's letting you know that you are off track or off course in some way. And if you need to shift gears and do something different, or if you hate your business, and you no longer want to be part of it, it's okay to shut it down. It's okay to do something different if it was drilled into you that quitters are just awful. And if you quit something, it's because you're lazy or you're unmotivated or there's something wrong with you. That's just simply a load of bull, you can strategically quit a business, you can form an exit strategy, you can sell it, there's a myriad of things that you can do that do not make you a bad or lazy person. Another takeaway is, we tend to put the cart before the horse, we tend to get into this mindset of I will feel better as soon as, or I will be happy as soon as and you can fill in the blank there with whatever makes sense to you. It might be, we'll all be happy. As soon as I get that promotion, I'll feel a lot better once I'm making more money. I'll sleep better at night once I can finally get some ads going that are really bringing in revenue. Think of yourself like a satellite that is broadcasting a signal out into the universe. Whether you like it or not, you actually are and if you're sitting around delaying your own happiness or Thinking that you don't have a right to be happy or that your peace and contentment is predicated on some external event happening to make you happy, you're screwed. It's like you're sitting there as a satellite broadcasting a signal that says, I'm unhappy. I'm not content. I don't like my life. I don't like my business. So universe bring me more things to feel that way about. So instead of delaying those feelings, you should feel those feelings now. If you want to feel happy, feel happy. If you want to feel content, feel content. If you want to feel successful, then feel successful and change that broadcast signal that your satellite is issuing to the world. Your energy signature goes with you on the things that you do. I had to learn that the hard way. I can remember phone calls that I had with clients and candidates ad campaigns that I ran promotional materials that I put together, and I put them together from such a space of despair, anger, resentment, torment, depression, that there's no way those things were ever going to succeed. So much communication is nonverbal. So if we go into a meeting, whether it's a face to face meeting, online zoom meeting, or even just a phone call, the person who's on the other end of that can pick up on your vibe. So if you're sitting there and you're mad at the world, or you're just seeing them as a giant money sign, and you only care about getting the deal closed so you can cash the check and go on. People will pick up on that that is not the broadcast signal that you want to have. You also don't want to inevitably delay the ability to feel happy or to feel peace because tomorrow is promised to no one. We do not know what the future holds for us. Moment by moment. And it would be really terrible to get to the end of your life, or into your twilight years and think I spent so much time being miserable. I kept waiting for this magic thing to happen to make me happy some external event that was gonna be the thing. And I realized now I wasted so much precious time waiting around. I don't want that for you. The third and final takeaway I'll leave you with is always be willing to challenge and question the beliefs that you have, especially if it's a long held belief that a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a friend, somebody back in childhood impart it to you. If it's no longer serving you in adulthood? Absolutely. Pull it out into the light of day and question it. Can you poke holes in it? Can you find evidence that it actually is is not true. I can tell you in my own life and the life of other successful entrepreneurs, I know they're not working 24/7/365, they're not in a funk every day. They're not miserable. They're making good money, and they're happy. So if you're looking for evidence that it's possible to not work yourself to the bone, and yet make good money and have a nice life, I can tell you, it is happening. It is real. If you've ever heard of the concept in physics called quantum entanglement, it is endlessly fascinating. If you haven't heard of it, after you finish this episode, provided that you're not driving, of course, Google, the term quantum entanglement, you will go down a rabbit hole that is so interesting, and so mind blowing about all the ways in which the universe works that we don't even completely understand and will probably never fully understand. Einstein who is one of the most brilliant minds ever thought that quantum entanglement was like science fiction. He sort of lampooned it by calling it spooky action at a distance. And yet, here we are. Quantum Entanglement has been proven, not only microscopically, but now to the naked eye. It isn't just spooky action at a distance from a sci fi novel. It's actual quantum physics. I think back to my own childhood, before smartphones and the internet, it's like, the idea of having a camera and the internet and a calculator. And all of these things packed into one device would have been unfathomable when I was a kid, and yet here we are, it's common. There are toddlers with cell phones now. Something that you might have believed something that you might have thought was impossible or implausible when you were younger, could be totally different now and it's really Time to have a mental reset and a mental refresh. If you've been telling yourself that you have to work hard and if you don't just push, push, push, push, push every day, you're lazy. Stop it. Take those old limiting beliefs that you learned from other people, reevaluate them. And if they're no longer serving you if they're not good for your physical or mental health, let them go. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you found it helpful, please share it. If you haven't already, subscribe to this podcast and take the time to leave a quick review for us on iTunes. Bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai