People are going to judge.
Let them.
People are going to gossip.
Let them.
People are going to hate.
Let them.
DON’T, however, let them steal your center.
For when you let them steal your center, you lose your clarity.
And it’s when you’ve lost your clarity that you begin judging, gossiping and hating all the same.
Heaviness doesn’t get lighter with time—it gets heavier.
You might try to trick your mind into ignoring, suppressing, or avoiding its heaviness—but that doesn’t change it’s weight. It only increases the time you’re holding it for.
Which, counterproductively, makes it heavier.
This all might sound relatively straightforward, but what about what weighs on your mind?
Hard conversations might be avoided, but they carry on within your mind—until they’re finally had.
Trauma might be suppressed, but only to the pit of your stomach—until it’s finally given the attention it needs.
You might cleverly distract your mind from facing your toughest problems, but as soon as you’re no longer distracted, there they are.
Want to lighten your load? Face the heaviness. Have the hard conversation. Confront the trauma. Face the tough problems.
It takes a lot of energy to carry around heavy shit.
But, when you face it, while it might be heavy upfront, you can finally free yourself from the increased heaviness that comes with time.
For good.
What you say to me about others says a lot about what you say about me to others.
My friend’s Instagram got hacked.
She had 27k followers.
Then, get this, the hackers messaged her on WhatsApp asking for a ransom.
There are people out there who actually do this.
This is simply to say:
Pretend like all of your accounts just got hacked and you lost everything you’ve built.
You lost all of your connections and you had no way of communicating with anyone on social media.
If you really want to feel that reality, delete all social media apps on your phone for the next week.
See how it feels.
Then, imagine you finally got them back after a ton of back-and-forth and pain-in-the-butt customer service interactions.
What steps would you take to prevent that from ever happening again?
Do that now.
What do all of the greats have in common?
They didn’t become great by accident—they became great on purpose.
From this point forward, don’t be accidental.
Be on purpose.
Hustle without mental health is self-hate.
Did that feel too aggressive?
If it did, then I’m speaking to you.
Because anyone who argues in favor of hustle at the expense of mental health is arguing for what exactly?
And how exactly does any of that help with hustle?
It doesn’t.
More importantly, it doesn’t help anyone or anything that’s involved with that person’s life—least of all, the person themselves.
And by ignoring this—yes, they’re choosing to commit an act of self-hate. Because self-love doesn’t ignore signs/calls for help.
Take care of yourself, first. Spend time inspecting the state of your mental wellbeing. Listen to what your body is telling you—and respond.
Hustle can wait. Your mental health can’t.
A million seconds is 11 days.
A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years.
Sure, a billion dollars is cool and all…
But, how cool is a billion seconds??
…WAY cooler.
Here’s the deal: most people trade their billion seconds for as much money as they can possibly collect—which rarely ever amounts to anything near a billion dollars.
Here’s what’s ironic: billionaires—the people who actually manage to collect that much—would trade back their billion dollars for a billion seconds in a heartbeat.
No hesitation.
The bottom line: Only trade time for money if you have to—out of necessity. Otherwise, spend your time doing what you love—there’s no better way to spend your time.
And that’s where the real billionaires are found.