When I was a kid, my parents owned an orange Dodge Ram pickup truck. I remember taking trips to visit my grandparents’ farm in Pennsylvania. My brother and I sitting on the bench seat in between my parents. This was before smartphones, GPS, or the Internet. Back in the day, you needed an actual paper map if you wanted to know how to navigate where you were going on the road. One time in the truck, I don’t think my dad was really sure where we were going as we sped down the Ohio Turnpike, well over the speed limit. I remember my mom asking where we were, to which my dad replied, “We are totally lost, but we are making great time!”
The highway of life can be cleared out, no traffic as far as the eye can see, you can cruise 20 miles per hour over the speed limit and “make great time”—but you can be headed in the completely wrong direction! This is what I think of every time I hear the talking heads and guru’s today telling wanna-be entrepreneurs to “hustle harder” or put your head down and “grind it out!” While there is definitely something to be said about taking imperfect action, if you aren’t sure about where you’re going, you can end up even more lost, a whole lot faster.
Over analysis can render us paralyzed while we wait for the perfect opportunity, the perfect timing, the right amount of money saved up in the bank, etc. and ultimately we look back in a week, a month, a year, a lifetime and realize we are in the same exact place we were before—unmoved—and ultimately regretting the fact we never took action.
So what do we do?
Cyclical action needs to take place, and this mean, we constantly take action and then take time to step back and take stock of the situation and evaluate. The process, while necessary, is a little dangerous because if we are not confident in ourselves or our efforts, it can have us second guessing whether we should continue down our current path. So in order to not self-sabotage or self-destruct our efforts, the key is have an honest conversation with ourselves to identify where our passion lies.
In my book, Man on Fire: Lessons From a Perpetual Burnout on Creating Alignment for Success, I outline my own path of self-discovery while identifying my passions in life. For many entrepreneurs, you can find yourself in a place of abundance where you have too many opportunities, not a lack thereof. Discovering and identifying where you are and where you want to be is paramount in establishing the focus of our efforts. Only once this has been accomplished is it time to truly #hustle and #grind
Most entrepreneurs will agree that successful endeavors are very hard to achieve without passion because it takes a lot of work, a lot of hours, and tons of focus. Without that passion, you can’t sustain the level of effort required to overcome all the challenges you will be presented with along the way.
So, should we stop hustling harder? Maybe. It’s only after we’ve identified our true passion and direction that we should hit the throttle and hustle harder to achieve our vision, goals, and dreams.
__
Photo credit: Getty Images