When Snoop Dogg said, “This is for the G’s and this is for the hustlers- this is for the hustla’s now back to the G’s,” he obviously was referring to white suburban women. Because “She got that girl boss hustle.”
Many women are questioning the concept of working hard and working harder to be successful. Is the hustle real? It’s kind of toxic to tell someone they need to be hustling in order to succeed while implying that their lack of success is due to lack of hard work. But it’s equally toxic to tell people to “slow down” and ignore responsibilities.
So this is a two part thing.
First let’s delve into the history of what it means to hustle and what hustle culture is, and then let’s talk about mental health and success.
What is Hustle? And Hustle Culture?
Real hustlin, as in what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a mother f*cking hustla betta ax somebody, that is like the Tricky Song, and the idea of suburban blond housewives embracing that as their online biz, like they are so far off I can’t call it cultural appropriation. But it is. I seriously doubt someone woke up and found the meaning of their life to be best described as “hustle.” We stole that word. We crackerfied it. And now it’s salty and dry.
I mean it wasn’t reserved for only black people. Anyone can hustle. It’s just black people took that word, flipped it, reversed it, and made it iconic and cool and what we white folk call, a “buzz word.”
So let me be clear… The concept of hustlin is an everybody thing. The word being super uber cool to use? Now, we appropriated that. Because it is a cool word to use.
But generally speaking…
By the time I, personally, had the maturity to hear the word, ‘hustle,’ it was a gangsta thing. Snoop Dogg made it cool. It meant to trick people into giving you money so that you can feed your family, as in, if they won’t let you be successful because you’re black, then just take it.
“Life is what you make it, Ima make it, no matter what it takes, we gonna take it.” Nas
You have to look at it from both dynamics. The concrete concept was to trick people into taking their money…
And in many uses of the term, it also referred to other illegal happenings like slangin, pimpin, etc.
But the dynamic behind it was a collective response to the systemic racism black people endured in American culture. It’s a do whatever it takes to feed your family and get yours mentality that ensued, and whether you agree with it or not, it empowered black people.
I honestly think white people appropriated the wrong word. If I had a say in it, we’d be using the term ballin’.
Ballin’ means to be at your A Game. To be good at what you do.
I personally prefer it because its success is not dictated by money. It can be. You can be ballin because you got all the dough. But you can be ballin because you are the best.
Either way….
The real definition of hustlin isn’t about goal digging…
This is hustling…
You are just trying to make rent nevermind the other expenses let’s just get through this rent, and you spend all day out trying to make that money to make that bill, between asking people to help, trying to collect on debts owed to you, trying to give people rides for $20, trying to sell stuff you actually need, maybe steal someone’s tv and try to get $50 for it from the pawn shop, whatever, that’s hustlin.’ If you ain’t doing that, you ain’t hustlin.
I used to buy pirated movies from a woman who treated it like a business, and used all her profits to pay bills and feed her kids.
I have several friends who do people’s hair from their kitchens and living rooms. They don’t have a registered business with the secretary of state. They didn’t go to beauty school. None of the money they make is reinvested into their business. They aren’t scaling it. They don’t have a name for it let alone a logo. They are just making money to make ends meet.
That’s hustlin.
In time, I think what happened was a lot of black women decided to own a business beyond a side hustle, and they referred to it as their hustle or side hustle. And then it’s the same ole story where girl meets girl and falls in love with her black girl magic and then appropriates the magic like we did rock n roll.
In time, white business coaches started to use that term alongside similar terms to vibe the girl boss, the slay the day, type A personalities, etc.
But now the ‘hustle culture’ has it to mean the exact opposite of what it was. Instead of being about the dealing with a lack of climb, it’s about climbing.
It’s implying that people on the top worked their way there.
<in my whitest voice possible> as if.
But really, the hustle culture IS a hustle, so they weren’t wrong.
These women are tricking us into giving them our money.
So they are hustla’s.
I think what happened was once the term ‘hustle’ got enough street cred to be a buzz term, some women were trying to incorporate it into their monetization strategies and with that, it became a ‘swoon-worthy’ SEO term.
But without the actual street cred, without a history of listening to gangsta’ rap, without being a marginalized group, they (we) misunderstood the term.
To them, filtered through the perspective of privilege, hustle would equate the same concept boomers have been drilling into Gen X’ers and beyond … that
- Practice Makes Perfect
- Hard work pays off
- Nothing worth having comes easy
This is a very privileged concept.
Like we know that a lot of people can work harder than everyone else and not see success. A lot of that is really because success is in today’s world is highly dependent on who you know and how popular you are. Anyone who has difficulty establishing a higher role in the social hierarchy, for any reason, including race, struggles to simply just work hard and all your dreams will come true! Let’s not even get into pay gaps.
From it, a whole philosophy and near religion has taken place as many people put a lot of faith into it.
They work hard. They get tired. They push themselves promising it will be worth it. They get more tired. They keep pushing. Some find success. Others don’t and just break. But the act of pushing oneself without any real evidence of success is what makes this whole thing Faith Based.
I do think that the reason a lot of business ‘coaches’ focus on the type A stuff is because they identify as coaches no different than football coaches. People who believe it’s about the hard work. People who use the term hustle to mean run faster.
Coach Duane Bemis M.Ed. says that the Road to Success comes from hard work, determination and personal sacrifice. It’s almost a corny cookie cutter of what every coach says.
Winners never look for the easy way out. They simply look at the impossible, and say to themselves to set their heart upon this lofty dream and chase after it with their whole heart. The road to success is narrow, and many will miss it because the road to failure is broad and easy. Plant your feet firmly upon the rock of your desire to become the best.
Coach Duane Bemis M.Ed.
It’s really based on the paradigm that there are winners and there are losers, and coaches are the key to helping people be winners.
That served a great purpose in the boomer days. Boomers wanted to win the race. They needed someone to help guide them into it.
But they discovered that didn’t make them happy like they thought it would.
They discovered…
The idea of the hustle is a hustle.
They discovered the government cut their social security, and after all that hard work is nothing but more hard work until they die. Only those who were smart enough to invest into retirement, and enough at that, are able to afford to retire.
So many in ALL the generations went to high school, worked hard, they got the good grades, they took the hard classes, they volunteered, they did sports, they did something Key Club or Journalism. They followed the textbook version of hard work. And many could not get the scholarship despite all that hard work. And worse, some of the people who got scholarships didn’t work that hard.
Then a few went off to college. Worked hard. Partied harder. Got the good grades. Got the degree. Got the masters. Got the doctorate. And couldn’t find a job that paid the minimum payment for their student loans.
Hard work does not bring success to the person working hard. It does bring success to the person they are working for.
There. I said it. It’s been said.
The truth is, there’s work that needs to be done. Hustlin harder doesn’t change that. Hustlin harder just makes you capable of doing the work of 2 people instead of one, which is more affordable. It’s a buy one get one free labor deal.
The idea of owning your own business makes that deal available to yourself. You work twice as hard so that you don’t have to pay someone else to do the work you didn’t do.
Doing this does not necessarily bring you success.
It can help toward success by saving you some money.
But there are many people who have their own ways of outsourcing labor and letting that make money for them.
Do you see Donald Trump hustlin hard? Yeah he’s at his hotel right now as we speak working the front desk impressed with his level of customer service. Ha ha. No he pays people to do that for him. And he makes money every year paying people to do that for him.
Meanwhile, Bill Gates is quickly trying to resolve your technical difficulty using his Window’s app. Right now. He’s frantically googling how to fix something for you. Don’t believe me? Right. He automated quite a bit of that. Or he paid someone to come up with that idea who then paid someone to automate it so that they can save money from having to pay hundreds of SKILLED people to answer an 800 number all day.
To sell that you have to be working too hard to be successful, that’s hustlin. If they didn’t take your money to tell you that, then they are just lying.
Hustle Hustled Itself
Plot Twist… not only did we get hustled by the word hustle, the word hustle hustled itself.
Like the idea of hustle originally meant to do whatever it takes to take care of yours.
Now it means to go beyond that, to do more than what is necessary so you can get more than what you need.
With that, after all those years of working harder to achieve our dreams, we are now in the position where we are overworked. Dreams or no dreams, we’re too tired to really enjoy it.
The word hustle hustled itself.
Work Smarter, not Harder…
I remember this episode of Ducktales, yes. Ducktales. Where Scrooge shows us his fictional story on how he obtained his fictional wealth, and his story was based on the precedent of “Work smarter, not harder.” And he was such a smart ass about it, conquering difficult tasks with some quick thinking and cartoon logic.
As a child, I felt that meant things like automating tasks, outsourcing with strategy, having a strategy, things like that. Very concrete things.
Like instead of doing something that takes you one hour to do, build a machine that can produce 50 of the things in an hour. That’s working smarter.
Actually, if you think about it, in the animal kingdom, and how the food chain works… what usually happens it the species higher up in the chain is slightly more evolved and “intelligent” than those underneath it. Tigers outwit the zebra, who outwit grass. And humans can survive tigers despite the tiger being stronger and more agile with claws and sharp teeth because humans have figured ways to build shelter, guns, and learned how to stay away from tigers.
Either way…
With age, I have come to the realization that it can also be more big picture. That working smarter means having the wisdom to know when to work, and when not to work. That working smarter means going after what you really actually want, not something you think that will take you there. That if you want happiness, then take time to be happy. That if you want to spend more time with your family, then spend more time with your family. That working hard isn’t going to achieve those things as much as achieving those things.
I think we just lost sight of WHY WE WORK.
We think we are working to achieve the things that are free.
We forget we are working to have shelter, have food, and for some, have dignity. Going up Maslow’s Pyramid here..
When we get into “self actualization” stuff, then it’s not a matter of working, but more of a matter of not working. Or in some cases, of doing what you want to do as opposed to what you have to do.
Basically, hard work is what covers the types of needs that must be met, like food, shelter, safety, but also friendships and relationships (those are hard work) as well as social status… But beyond that into personal growth, it’s less about the work or the quantity of work, and more about thoughts and fine-tuning. It’s still ‘work,’ but it’s not hard work.
Basic Needs – food, shelter, safety, relationships, social status, esteem… That’s hustlin.
Self actualization – morality, creativity, problem solving, acceptance – It’s not hustlin. It’s 100 ballin.
Then there’s a “transcendence” that crowns over the pyramid, and it’s very spiritual. It’s about caring for others and achieving happiness and peace.
I’ll take Self-Compassion over the Toxic Hustle Standard
I may have had some fun writing about vanilla hustlin, but in all honesty, I can’t knock it.
I personally have a long story about being in the military, and then upping my game by becoming a mom, of 3, back to back, pushing myself and learning the hard way that the body does have boundaries and limits, and you can break it by pushing too hard.
“Push passed the pain. Pain is weakness exiting your body. The only thing stopping you is your mind. …”
Oy. I did that. I have absolutely no desire to repeat that mistake.
It’s just not my cup of tea. If it works for you, then go about it. But if it isn’t working for you, then maybe try a different strategy.
I suggest Self Compassion. It teaches you to do the responsibility stuff as an act of kindness toward yourself, and that may entail working hard this week, but it also teaches you to do the self care, the taking of breaks, the finding passion and inspiration, and better, the self talk to be confident without arrogance, to have esteem without flaunting, and to know you’re worthy without having to prove yourself.
They have coaches too 🙂 But not coachy coaches. More like therapy friends. And many of the hustlin biz coaches are starting to drift toward self compassion.
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