It was a Friday afternoon when I was told to go home and wait for further news by the management team of the magazine I’d worked at for a year. The news, in the end, was that I had been fired. I’d been working as a freelance writer for a few years, and the stress of the constant hustle had been exhausting. Monday mornings, I’d pitch editors with my ideas hoping they’d pick up enough stories to give me room to breathe financially that week as a solo mama paying a mortgage.
The job at the magazine didn’t pay well. It gave me credibility because it was a household name and a modicum of stability which helped to ease my financial stress. I relied on that job, and I loved the team I worked with, but it wasn’t enough to allow me to hit cruise control. I supplemented the income with as much writing work on the side as I could get.
I was spectacularly busy, and if you asked me I may even have said I was happy. I stuck to my story about how well I operated when my workload was piled high.
“Deadlines keep me focused,” I’d insist, with a pounding heart and a wild eye on the clock.
The whole story was more sinister
What I failed to mention was that I constantly felt stressed and that there no end in sight. I was drinking too much to take the edge off my days and my sleep was impacted because my nerves felt jangly. My brain was constantly running an ultramarathon day in and day out. I knew this wasn’t fun, and it certainly wasn’t sustainable, but I felt trapped by my life and like there was nothing I could do to change it.
I thought this was just what being an adult in the modern world felt like. Now I know that it not the case. This is what the symptoms of burnout look like and losing my job – which I’d hung so much of my identity on – was the killshot. I was cooked. I took myself off the hamster wheel before I was impaled on a rusty spoke. I realised, however, that if I didn’t want to just keep doing this over again, my view on a “successful life” needed to change.
The true measure of success
While money is a necessity for life, and a certain amount of it makes things easier, many people are not driven only by that need. Somewhere along the way our society has come to equate busyness with honour, productivity with goodness, and professional success with worthiness. Achievement has become our chalice, and we are sipping the success Kool-Aid from it.
This fervour for achievement isn’t confined just to our day jobs any longer either. It’s not enough to hustle at work, you need a side hustle too to show you’re really trying to make something of your life. It can create a perception that just doing your best every day is somehow beige and less worthy if you’re not constantly striving for more.
What are we really striving for?
More than eight out of 10 employees are at risk of burnout this year, according to the 2024 Global Talent Trends report published by Mercer, an HR consulting firm. The three major contributing issues cited were financial struggles, exhaustion and workload, and we must ask ourselves, is walking this constant tightrope how we want to live?
I decided no. I chose something else. My new definition of success became having time to work out regularly and fit in my therapy appointments. My new goals were to ensure I made space to do things that filled my love cup and restored my energy. My new KPIs were how well I slept that night, or how emotionally and mentally present I was when I was with my kids.
I decided hustle culture was dead to me, and balance, ease and peace were my priority. It took a lot of unlearning, reflection and many, many missteps, but now I know my happiness does not lie what on outdated societal idea of success is, but in creating a life that actually feels good to live. That is the true measure of success.
Danielle Colley, author of The Chocolate Bar Life, is a sought-after speaker, leadership workshop facilitator and coach. Her philosophy prizes the zing of career achievement without your work taking over your whole life. She says sayonara to burnout and hello to holistic success and sustainable ambition. Find out more at daniellecolley.com.au