5 Biblical Ways to Break Free from Striving

Are You Caught in the Hustle Trap? Here’s How to Break Free from Striving and Thrive as a Christian Writer! 

If you feel like no matter how much you write, market, and hustle, it’s never enough—this episode is for you! The pressure to keep up with rapid book releases, growing your platform, and hitting financial goals can leave you drained, uninspired, and distant from God. But what if success isn’t found in striving, but in surrender? 

In this heart-to-heart episode, I share 5 powerful ways to break free from the hustle trap and step into God's plan for your writing career. You’ll learn: 

✅ How to recognize if you’re caught in a cycle of striving 

✅ The biblical truth about hustle vs. holy ambition 

✅ How to trust God as your ultimate provider 

✅ Why prioritizing rest is an act of faith 

✅ A game-changing mindset shift that will help you write with peace and purpose 

Scripture says in John 15:5: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

It’s time to stop hustling in your own strength and start abiding in His! 

🎧 Hit play now and let’s talk about how to write and thrive—without burnout. 

🔗 Get access to my FREE Christian writer’s resource library here: https://bit.ly/AccessResourceLibrary

📩 Share your struggles! Message me with the link in the show notes or email me—I’d love to hear your story. 

Transcript

Tell me if you can relate with this. You're pouring your heart and soul into your writing career, but no matter how much time and effort you put in, it feels like it's never enough.

You look around and see other authors launching book after book, hitting bestseller lists, growing their platforms, thriving and hitting their goals. And then you ask yourself; what am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

So you hustle harder.

You sign up for another book marketing course, push through late nights and whisper to yourself, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Or you can do it.

But all the positive self talk in the world doesn't seem to make any difference at all, and instead all you feel is drained, uninspired and distant from God.

Well, friend, if this is you right now, I know this episode is for you. Because today I'm sharing how to break free from striving and how God is leading me out of the Hustle trap and into trust and dependence on Him.

Turn up the volume or get comfortable and let's have a heart to heart about something I believe every Christian writer faces at some point in their journey. The Hustle Trap.

This is episode 13.

I'm Urcelia Teixeira, ex real estate agent turned award winning author of Christian fiction. It wasn't that long ago that I wrote my first novel on a bucket list whim, setting the course for a spiritual journey that transformed my life.

But the journey through self publishing hasn't been easy as I soon found myself obsessing over book sales rankings and getting to the top of the shelves, all the while trying to stay rooted in Christ and live out my purpose.

But God has graciously been teaching me how to navigate the spiritual pitfalls of the brutal book publishing industry and now I'm sharing them with you. Welcome to the Anointed Scribe podcast where each week I open my personal diary to share soul nourishing stories designed to inspire, uplift and equip you for your writing life.

If you're already a Christian author or one in the making trying to balance faith with business, you're in the right place. Because for such a time as this, you have been called to thrive as God's Anointed scribe.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hey, it's your author friend, Urcelia. Welcome back to another episode of Anointed Scribe Diary of a Christian Writer.

I'll just quickly say that I can't tell you how grateful I am that God kind of forced me out of my comfort zone and called me to create this podcast.

Every time I sit down to record, I'm just overcome with humility that God is using me to not only serve him, but to also serve you.

Sharing my struggles, my victories, and the lessons God has taught me along the way is such a privilege. And my hope is that through these conversations you'll find wisdom, encouragement, and a sense of community so that you don't have to walk this path alone or learn the hard way like I did.

So thank you for being here. Truly. If you're a regular listener, welcome back. And thank you for subscribing and being part of the Anointed Scribe Tribe. I appreciate you more than you know.

And if you're new here, I'm so glad you found this podcast. So welcome. This is a space where I aim to keep it real, faithful and focused on glorifying God through our writing and in our author business.

Now, if you haven't spotted the link to my free resource library yet, just scroll to either my show description or any of my episode's descriptions and click on it to get access to an entire Google folder of freebies and printables that I created to help you in your author business.

Okay, so I wanted to ask you something.

Have you ever felt like no matter how much you do, it's never enough? Like you're constantly chasing after something more book sales, a bigger audience, greater success.

But in the process, you end up feeling drained, exhausted, or maybe even a little lost?

Because I have.

And there's an actual word for it. It's called hustling or to hustle, or as the Bible refers to it, striving.

It's a merry go round to nowhere, at least not anywhere that's fulfilling, healthy, or lasting.

Merriam Webster defines this verb, hustle, as this to make strenuous efforts to obtain, especially money or business. Ah, light bulb.

And today I want to share my personal story of how I fell into this hustle trap. How I spent the last few years striving, pushing, and doing all the things to try and build my author career as fast as I could while still raising three kids and running a really busy household, only to realize I was wearing myself out and chasing the wrong things.

And more importantly, I want to tell you how God actually made me aware of it and that he taught me that it actually all boils down to three trust, dependence, and self worth.

You see, for most of 2023 and 2024, I thought that if, probably, maybe before that. But let's just boil it down to 23 and 24.

I thought that if I didn't hustle. I wouldn't achieve my goals.

I convinced myself somehow that if I was going to reach the financial goal, my family needed to pay the bills. At the end of the month, I had to push harder, work longer hours and write more books.

I fully believed that the only way to succeed as a writer was to hustle hard. That if I wasn't writing, marketing, networking or learning, I was falling behind.

And for a while there, that belief fueled me. That and coffee.

I was always chasing the next book, the next launch, the next milestone. Which kept moving, by the way.

But what I didn't realize that my hustle wasn't just about hard work?

I realized it had become an idol.

I was worshipping productivity.

I was chasing after my goals with such intensity that I was burning out. Literally, physically, creatively, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, I was burning out. I barely had time to sit at the feet of Jesus because I was so busy trying to make it happen.

And you know, you want to know what the sad part is?

All that hustling and striving actually made it worse. Because by the time September rolled around, I started feeling drained. Not just physically, but spiritually and creatively. I was doing all the right things, checking all the boxes, pushing harder every day.

Yet I was nowhere near hitting the goals I had set for myself.

It was as if no amount of effort was ever enough to move the needle.

And as I one day late in October last year found myself in full on flight mode, which incidentally is completely out of character for me, I cried out to God, wanting to know why he wasn't stepping up to the plate and helping me more, why he was leaving me to carry the load on my own.

And boy did God answer me. But it wasn't the answer I had anticipated or wanted to hear. Of course it wasn't right.

Because what God of course knew that I didn't in that moment was that I was busy doing more harm than good. Why on earth would God help me in my destruction, right?

But God did go on to show me grace and to teach me about my purpose, myself, and about Him. And I can truthfully say it was an eye opener. Literally.

See, God took me to this scripture in Jeremiah 2:25, which I'm going to read from the Good News translation because it says it best. And it says this, Israel, don't wear your feet out or let your throat become dry from chasing after other gods.

But you say, no, I can't turn back. I have loved foreign guards and will go after them.

Did you know this verse literally warns us against embracing a hustle culture. I mean, it hit me hard because that's exactly what I was doing.

I was exhausting myself, pushing through fatigue with countless cups of coffee, refusing to pause because I thought stopping would mean failure and giving up. Which is not me.

But the truth is, hustling in my own strength meant I wasn't trusting God to provide.

I placed my trust in myself and my ads and the marketing course I had just signed up to that turned out to be just another distraction.

Praise Jesus that I'm out from under Satan's spell and that I can see that I was caught in an evil trap the enemy so cunningly deceived me into Guys you see, in my experience, self publishing is like a snowball that picks up momentum, growing bigger and bigger as it rolls down the hill.

Because, let's face it, writing is very gratifying. And if you're like me, I find pleasure in seeing others happy. It's a great feeling to know your readers love your stories.

So why would you slow down? You would just keep going, right?

But here's the thing though. If you don't know how to control the speed of your snowball or guide it in the right direction, it will roll downhill pretty quickly and destroy everything in its path until it crashes into a See that visual? As authorpreneurs, we wear all the hats all the time.

And unfortunately, the business world has evolved at such a pace that if you don't keep up, you'll be left behind.

So it's no wonder that we have to fight so much harder than the indie authors did back in, say, 2010 or 2014 when ebooks and indie publishing started to take off.

Competition these days is brutal.

And therein lies the problem, because the world of online business and selling books has inadvertently created this indie author hustle culture where we're forced to keep up by churning out books faster than our bodies and brains can handle.

Social media has catapulted into the stratosphere, making it nearly impossible to keep up with the relentless pace of content creation.

Every day we're bombarded with posts from fellow authors showcasing their latest releases, milestone achievements, or six figure success stories. And if we're not careful, we start to believe that if we're not producing at the same level, we're falling behind, or we're failures.

The pressure to stay relevant, to keep our books in front of readers, to feed that ever hungry algorithms. It's exhausting.

It fosters a mindset where we equate speed with success where we feel guilty for slowing down and where rest is viewed as laziness rather than a necessary part of creativity.

It was as if I believed my success depended solely on my effort rather than God's guidance and grace.

I even felt guilty, as if stopping and resting was some kind of sin.

I was so addicted to working and the adrenaline rush that came from consuming too much coffee and filling every conceivable minute of the day that I didn't even know how to just be still for a few minutes.

I mean physically still.

My phone went everywhere with me when I was on school runs. I'd listen to podcasts and cram my brain full of even more knowledge on how to advertise or optimize my website for SEO or upscale my scale, my Facebook ads.

As if I had any more space left in my brain, which, as it was, never switched off.

It's no wonder my creative and spiritual wells were running dry.

I was slowly but surely snuffing out my creativity and spiritual well being, replacing them with idols. And here's the thing. I actually told myself that it's what God wanted because Scripture warns us not to be lazy, right?

And while Romans 12:11 does say work hard and do not be lazy, I forgot all about the second half of this verse that says, serve the Lord with a heart full of devotion.

Yes, I worked hard and I wasn't lazy. But was the way in which I worked serving the Lord, I was in fact working for, you guessed it, myself, Me, myself and I, not God.

And the enemy very cleverly tricked me into thinking it was for God because he is the master of deception. Satan, not God, is the master of deception. And yes, even uses scriptures to flip the script on you, on you to where you actually believe you're doing the right thing.

So, dear friend, if you find yourself in that same cycle, or perhaps you don't even know that you're caught in this trap, I've got your back, okay? Because truthfully, I've been there up until very recently and I'm still pushing through this area of healing, if I'm really honest.

So how do we step away from this cycle?

How do we embrace a slower, more intentional pace, balancing business and faith and family without feeling like we're being left behind?

Well, the answer is, of course, in the ultimate business manual, the Bible. But listen, back then, I wasn't even aware that I was in the hustle trap, that I was constantly striving after false idols.

So before we turn to the Bible to find out how we can be Freed from striving.

I feel like we need to first recognize the signs that tell us if we're in this trap or possibly on our way to it.

So I've put together five signs you can use to check yourself against to see if you might be caught in the hustle trap or on your way there. Are you ready?

Okay, so number one, your time with God is rushed or inconsistent.

This was the first sign I realized something was wrong.

You're squeezing in a quick devotional before diving into work instead of truly spending time in his presence. And I mean an hour early in the morning, just you spending quality time with God.

Number two, you feel guilty when you rest. Yeah, I felt this big time.

I felt guilty when I took a break. And if you feel guilty when you want to take a break or you want to take a week off and you hear that little voice whisper, you should be working, well, that's a sign, guys.

Number three, your self worth is tied to your productivity. You feel good when you're accomplishing things and bad when you're not Definite Red Flag 5, you compare yourself to others.

Constantly seeing other authors succeed makes you feel like you need to do more, be more, work harder, work faster. It's that comparison trap. See how all of these things actually go hand in hand?

Then there's number five, your physical health is suffering. Guys, I'm so overweight, it's not even funny.

My physical health suffered. I didn't feel like even going for a walk. I didn't make time to go for a walk. Frankly, I still am not. Okay, fine, the weather has a lot to do with it here in England, but still, when your physical health is suffering and you're exhausted and your mind is always racing and stress is affecting your sleep and your body and your relationships, guys, that's a sign.

That is a sign that you are in the hustle culture.

If you recognize yourself in any of these, just take a deep breath, then turn to the Lord in prayer and repent.

God is gracious and asking for forgiveness is all you need to do. And then I'm going to tell you in a little, in a bit what I needed to do to correct this.

But I had to ask myself first, who was I really doing this for? First, you have to start with the soul searching. You have to really get to the root of the issue.

So I had to ask myself, who was I really doing this for?

The truth is, I'm naturally very driven in all I do. I'm the type of person who can't start something and not finish it. And I don't easily throw in the towel with anything I take on.

I'll push and I'll tweak and I'll figure it out until it works.

And because this is my personality type, it was very easy for me to fall into the hustle trap. It's almost as if I had to prove to myself that I can do something.

But I'm left wondering why that is.

Why can't I take my foot off the gas?

For me, the answer eventually came because I don't like to disappoint people. I don't like to disappoint my readers, and I don't like to disappoint myself.

I think of myself as someone my friends and family know they can depend on. Perhaps there's also a small part of me that likes the independence and control, which in a spiritual realm translates to me not trusting God enough to put him in control.

Right?

Can you resonate with any of this, friend?

Use the message feature in the show notes and send me an email and let me know if.

If you've been caught in this hustle trap and what you do to break free from it.

And what was the constant. What. What was this constant need to do more, to do more actually doing to my faith?

Was I seeking God's will for my writing or was I striving in my own strength? These are all questions I needed to ask.

And you know what I thought about Mary and Martha in Luke 10?

Martha was busy trying to serve Jesus the best way she knew how. She actually thought she was doing the right thing.

But Mary chose to leave the dishes and the baking of the bread and sit at Jesus feet, soaking in his presence.

And Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the better portion.

And you know what? I suddenly saw myself in Martha, running around doing everything, doing, doing, doing that I thought was necessary, but missing the most important thing. And that's to have that relationship with Jesus, to stay connected to the vine.

Because then, frankly, I would have not had these idols that I went after. Right?

That was the moment I knew something had to change. Guys, I'm still growing in this. Don't get me wrong. I'm still learning to release my grip on hustle and lean into trust and dependence on God.

And sometimes it trips me up and I catch myself wanting to lean into strife again. And that's okay. It just means I'm human, right?

But I'm trying to work my way out of it. I'm trying to maintain my goals, but maintain my focus on God. I'm always trying to stay in tune with God, and so I've come up with these next five ways that I'm learning to break free from the hustle trap and find peace in God's plan that I'm praying will help you if you follow these two.

So step number one is stop striving and start abiding.

John 15:5 says, I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

We have to get up an hour earlier in the morning. Quiet your mind, remove any distractions, be still and just come before God in prayer.

Read your Bible, study it, abide by it. And I promise you, if you put him first, put first the kingdom of God, right? He will guide your steps in ways you can't even imagine.

But it starts with fully focusing on your relationship with Christ. Stop striving and start abiding.

Check your heart. What are you really striving after?

You have to check your heart posture. For me, it was not letting my readers down and also not giving up on what I started.

And if I'm really honest with myself, there was a fair share of wanting to prove that I'm good enough, that I belong in the world of authors.

But Proverbs 4:23 reminds us to guard our hearts, for everything we do flows from it. I had to realign my heart with God's purpose and focus on not letting him down above anyone else.

3. Prioritize rest as an act of faith.

Psalm 127:2 says, in vain you rise early and stay up late toiling for food to eat, for he grants sleep to those he loves. Man, that's a beautiful scripture, right?

I used to feel guilty resting even on the Sabbath, but now I see it as a sign of faith. Because if I rest, it means I trust God enough to stop striving and let him work on my behalf.

I literally step out of the office and God steps in.

Resting means that while I recharge my batteries, I hand over the reins and God can step in to do his work.

So take your Sabbath. Do not go into the office. Whether you do it on a Saturday or Sunday, it doesn't matter. But honor the Sabbath. God created the seventh day to rest for a reason.

Number four Seek God's strategy, not the world's blueprint.

The world says, do more, hustle harder. God says, trust me and I will lead you.

When I finally stopped following industry pressure and asked God what He wanted for my writing Everything shifted. In fact, it's still shifting. To be honest, his plan looked different, but it brought peace and purpose.

And knowing that I am in his will, doing what he needs me to do in this season right now, no money can buy.

So that's number four. Seek God's strategy, not the world's blueprint. And you know what? If you need to do that every day, then do it every day.

And finally, there's number five.

Serve first, then success will follow.

Jesus did not say, well accomplished, my busy and hustled servant.

He said, well done, my good and faithful servant.

Write this out and stick it on your faith wall. Because when you serve God and you serve your readers, and you serve your husband and you serve your family, success will follow.

As I come in for a landing, I want you to know that if you're caught in this hustle trap, there's no shame and no condemnation in it. I get it.

I've been there.

Just recognize it and repent. And take these steps that I'm introducing you to to turn away from it. Make the change, make the decision.

Make the choice to change.

But in the midst of this non stop grind, we have to ask ourselves, what are we really chasing?

Are we seeking validation, security, financial security, or recognition?

Or are we stewarding the gifts God has given us with patience, trust and obedience?

Because when we buy into the hustle culture, we risk losing the very thing that inspired us to write in the first place. The joy of creating, the fulfillment of storytelling, and most importantly, the ability to write from a place of faith rather than fear.

Friend, if any of this resonated with you today, God is inviting you to slow down, to trust him more, and to rest in his promises. I know it's hard, but make the decision.

I fully believe that it's choices we make, little choices we make as we go through the day. It's a process, and truthfully, I'm walking it to every day.

But as we grow in faith together, choosing to abide rather than strive, we will find peace, strength, and courage to be patient, faithful, and fully committed to serving our one true God.

Because for such a time as this, you have been called to thrive as God's anointed scribe.

Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Anointed Scribe podcast. I hope you're leaving feeling inspired, encouraged, and on fire to step boldly into your calling as a writer chosen and set apart to fulfill a unique purpose in God's plan.

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I look forward to our next episode together, and remember, for such a time as this, you have been called to thrive as God's Anointed Scribe. I'll see you next time.