We’ve all seen the effect that diet culture has had on our society. It’s that nagging thought in the back of your mind that if you were simply 2 sizes smaller, all of your dreams would come true. If you could drop 10 more pounds, you’d be happier.
And just like diet culture, hustle culture has helped to continue the same toxic narrative. If I had a bigger bank account, if I work continual 16 hour days, if I just spam my Instagram feed… I’ll be able to hit that next goal. While diet and hustle culture look tempting, neither are healthy for the long term.
In this episode, Kristen is talking about how to achieve your goals without the frenzied chihuahua energy that comes with these toxic sisters. Buckle up and take note while we uncover:
- How these toxic cultures steal your present joy
- Motivating yourself from a place of Self Loathing vs Self Love
- What to do when negative emotions affect your decision making
- Consistency is the standard for sustainable growth
- The common denominator in your success and your failure is You
Believe it or not, succumbing to hustle culture is a choice. You can choose to tie your self-worth to a scarcity mindset, or you can choose to love yourself how you are right now. Stay consistent, trust the process, and believe in yourself. Neither the size of your pants nor the size of your bank account determines your value as a person.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question
Connect with Kristen:
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Transcript for Episode #75: Hustle Culture VS Diet Culture
Kristen Boss (00:00): Welcome to Purposeful Social Selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industry. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller, who is tired of feeling inauthentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business. In today’s social media landscape. In this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you the new way.
Kristen Boss (00:48): Hey bosses, welcome to another week of the podcast. I hope you all are having a fabulous last quarter of the year. Hope all of you parents out there are surviving the day after Halloween when your kids are hyped up on sugar, a special shout out today to all you teachers out there. Now that I have a son who is in school, he’s in kindergarten, I just had a very mom moment today. I had a parent-teacher conference and, you know, I just looked at her and she just had fear in her eyes from Monday the day after Halloween. So a very special shout out to you teachers that are listening. I am so thankful for you. You do such a labor of love for our youth and for our children. So thank you. So if you’re listening to this and there’s a teacher in your life, go out of your way to just give them an extra measure of gratitude, maybe a Starbucks card just telling them, Hey, thank you.
Kristen Boss (01:42): Thank you for shaping our youth. So I want to talk about, we are coming up on the holidays here. We’re coming up on a big time of year and we’re coming up on, I think some of the most critical weeks leading up to how your 20,22, how the new year is going to start for you. And I’m actually going to say, and this is partly why I did the 90 Day Goal Getter challenge inside the Academy. And my students are having such transformation around their thinking and they are having so much awareness around what’s. What’s been showing up in their business for a long time that they didn’t know was there, you know, you think you might have awareness, but you really, you probably don’t unless you have a coaching tool or a coach, like it’s very hard to find awareness on your own.
Kristen Boss (02:37): It is a learned behavior to learn, to become emotionally, self-aware becoming self-aware with your thoughts and the stories you tell yourself, it is hard and gritty work. I was just telling an academy student that your brain is like a toddler running around with a knife. It is always unsupervised unless you to direct your brain on purpose. And honestly, that can feel very exhausting and very tiresome. And so my students notice this when they get into the work of really managing their mind and learning to take out the garbage that’s in there every single day. And they’re learning in the beginning, just how tiresome managing your mind and supervising your mind is. And I, I remember, and we’re going to go into our topic here in just a second, but I just want to offer you some encouragement because if you’re listening, you are, you do care about personal development care about self-development.
Kristen Boss (03:37): So I just want to tell you the necessary growing pains that come with that. And part of that, I think a normal emotion is fatigue. When you’re starting to notice all your thoughts and maybe even some judgment, when you realize just how many negative thoughts you have on a given day. And I just want to invite you to not sit with judgment and make it a problem that you’re a human who has negative thoughts, welcome to the human experience. It is your brain’s natural design to default to what is negative, because if it can find what’s going wrong, then it can protect you from any threats. So this is literally how your brain was designed to go. So you learning to become somebody who creates awareness around those subconscious negative thoughts and learning to direct your brain on purpose really feels like tremendous amounts of effort.
Kristen Boss (04:26): In the beginning. I remember in the beginning, when I first was decided to work on my mindset, I remember I went about it the wrong way, and it was just like, I’m just going to think positive. And I thought the only way I could get results in my life was through positive thinking, good vibes. And so anytime I had a bad day, I thought it was impossible to get results, or I was doing it wrong. And there was no allowance for being a human. And it wasn’t until I learned to create an allowance for being a human and understanding that the brain needs direction. And you can’t just stand in front of a mirror every day with affirmations. And I think this is another podcast episode of like why your affirmations aren’t working. Because I think that’s a very popular thing in this industry is, you know, I’m going to sit in front of a mirror.
Kristen Boss (05:12): I’m going to practice my affirmations, but you’re not noticing anything changing in your life from doing that formation. So it just feels like you’re, you know, repeating words to yourself every day and it’s not sinking in. And there’s actually a science as to why those affirmations aren’t working. And so my students in the academy, they actually learn the tools that are necessary to manage their mind so that they can take out the garbage so that they can get into the necessary daily action that is required to grow a business. And we think, and I see a lot of people just thinking, I just need the right strategy and strategy. There is a place for strategy. I’m not going to sit here and say, there’s no such thing as strategy. There is. But 80% of your results are not from strategy. It is from your mindset.
Kristen Boss (06:03): The other 20%, I’m going to even say less than that, like 10% is from, you know, strategy. But most of this is mindset because honestly, even if you were to be incredibly disciplined, if you had the best strategy in the world, but you were not a disciplined person who showed up consistently and daily and learn to work on a bad day, learn to work when motivation was not existent, you would have results. You would have extraordinary results. And so I just want to offer like, the people that are most successful in the world are not the people that figured out some secret strategy that you don’t have access to. Again, I love to pour this into my students and I want to pour it into you. Like you have everything you need to have success. You just have a brain that gets in the way of that.
Kristen Boss (06:49): And you, haven’t learned to direct your brain in a way that works for you to create lasting results. So that’s, that’s what I teach in the academy. And that’s, you know huge transformations that happen for my students in there. And what’s so interesting is the by-product people joined to grow their business, you know, become more self-aware. But the by-product of it is people are noticing like their marriage has changed. Someone just shared this in my Instagram. And I, I, I’m trying not to cry sharing this because it’s so impactful and meaningful, but the tools she’s learning in the academy is helping her sobriety journey. And that is so powerful. That is so wonderful. And it’s so fascinating. I’m a certified life coach. And I definitely say like, I’m a business coach. I’m a mindset coach. This is what I do, you know, marketing and mindset, but what’s so fascinating is my students are out there.
Kristen Boss (07:40): And they’re saying like, I work with the life and business coach. I didn’t, I don’t market myself as a life coach, but my students are actually doing that because they’re noticing the changes that is happening in their personal life. They’re saying like, I can’t believe I spent $2,000 and it feels like I’m getting the most extraordinary coaching and therapy of my life that also gets to benefit my business. So listen, it’s not too late for you to join. You can join today and you can still do be a part of this Goal Getter challenge. Like you don’t need the full 90 days for you to decide to become a consistent person. You can start today, stop waiting for Monday, stop waiting for the first of the month, stop waiting for the first of the year. Stop waiting for things to, you know, slow down and get better.
Kristen Boss (08:23): Like today, today’s your day. I don’t often do like a real strong call to action in the beginning of a podcast episode, but I felt it was appropriate today. I just want to invite you into that. We’re also going to have another three day event coming at the end of the year. We’re going to be doing sustainable success 2.0 so many of you loved it last year. We’re elevating it. I’m making it better. There’s more I’m adding. So it’s going to be a phenomenal experience. We’re going to announce it here on the podcast. Emails are going to go out. Don’t worry. We’re going to make you have plenty of time to register and get your teams in there, but it’s going to be an extraordinary experience to wrap up the year and really get you focused and centered on starting your new year off.
Kristen Boss (09:03): Right? Okay. All that said, let’s talk about the topic for the podcast today. I’m really excited about this topic because I make a lot of references in several of the podcast episodes, but I haven’t done an episode just about how hustle culture and diet culture are almost identical to each other. There are some nuances that separate them, but they’re, they’re pretty similar. I’m going to call them sisters and they’re both extremely toxic and detrimental to everyone. But I feel like women are the biggest victims of hustle, culture, and diet culture. And I’m going to draw the parallels and help you see that. And you know, my mastermind members, they joke, they say, you know, after their three-day event with me, they’re like, Kristen, I feel so once you taught us some of these things, I’m woke, I can’t unsee what you have brought to light that I couldn’t put a finger on in this industry.
Kristen Boss (10:03): I couldn’t figure out why that something was off here. And so all my girls are walking around saying like, we’re woke, we can’t unsee this. So after this episode, you’re going to be woke to some of the lies that you’ve been believing and some of the narratives around hustle and diet culture that you’ve been perpetually buying into. And we’re going to, I’m going to draw some attention to some patterns and habits and belief that have been in both diet and hustle culture that you’re probably gonna identify with and be like a whole dang. This is totally me. Okay. And I also want to share, like, I’m always sharing from my experience in my own growth. I’m never just talking at you from a place of like, this is what you should do. I’m always, I’m just a couple of steps ahead of you. And this is work I have been doing for years that I’m finally able to really share from a place of authority and a place where I feel like the world is ready to hear this, which is what my book is going to be about.
Kristen Boss (10:58): It’s releasing in the spring. We’re going to have pre-orders soon. Okay. So let’s talk about hustle culture and diet culture. So diet culture, and I’m so excited that there are so many Instagram accounts that are exploding because they are really going head to head against diet culture and the harm that it’s causing people because the truth is it causes harm. And so does hustle culture. There is no equation where diet culture serves you. There is no equation where hustle culture serves you. You would have, you would believe that they serve you because they both promise very lucrative results. They both promise that you’re going to get everything. You need, everything you want. You know, diet culture says, you know, the smaller you are the better, and it’s all about shrinking yourself as much as possible, no matter what it takes to get there. It’s this message that you aren’t good or lovable, or, you know, attractive enough exactly as you are.
Kristen Boss (12:03): There’s the ideal body that people strive for. And it looks it’s different for each person. But the idea is smaller is better. Toner is better. The smaller pant size, smaller measurements. The scale is your bully. The scale calls all the shots, right? That’s diet culture, hustle. Culture is more, is better. Bigger is better, bigger bank account, more followers, more, you know, more email subscribers, more money, more power, more influence it’s. And with hustle culture, it’s not a skill that bullies you often, it’s your bank account often, it’s your lifestyle. It’s like, you know, if I just made more money, it would be better. It’s the idea. Both cultures sell to you that the destination is better than where you currently are. The idea that there let’s just put, you know, in quotes the word there is better. There being when I’m thinner when I’m this size all finally like what I see in the mirror, I’ll finally feel confident.
Kristen Boss (13:17): Then I can go and buy the nice pair of jeans. You know, and hustle culture is, you know when you have the money in your bank account, life will be easier. Life will be better. All your problems will go away. And people don’t say like, all your problems will go away, but it’s, that is the energy behind the message. Like there is so much better and where you are right now is a terrible place to be. And both cultures create shame on some level that you aren’t good enough and where you are right now is definitely, you definitely can’t stay here. And so what happens is it creates this urgency of, I have to get out of where I am as quickly as possible, this idea that I have to be fixed. And the only way to fix myself is hustle culture says more money and financial freedom.
Kristen Boss (14:11): And we get lost in that, like the car, the house, the lifestyle, and then diet culture is like the pants size and the physical body and how you look and, and trying to measure up to an arbitrary standard. That culture is saying, this is the measure of beauty, right? We have the same thing with hustle culture. Like this is the measure of success. This is what success looks like, but it’s a very incomplete picture. So let me give you an example. Success says like, it’s the house, it’s the car, it’s the income. It’s the lifestyle. It’s financial freedom, it’s choices, right? It says those things, but it doesn’t say, this is what your relationships will feel like. This is how you will, this is fulfillment and purpose and joy, and your ability to give back and be, and contribute to society and causes like that is not what is talked about.
Kristen Boss (15:11): Most of the focus is on the exterior will exterior material, things that that will fix the things. And it’s the same with like diet culture, diet culture is like smaller. As better. When you get the size, then you can wear this pants or look this way, or then you can feel confident. Then you can have like, dear Lord, like the hot girl summer, I actually think is a really toxic narrative. It’s like, you know, time to whip yourself at the gym and restrict your calories and remove food groups and, you know, so that you can look a certain way in a certain season and a certain swimsuit to measure up to society’s standard of how you should look. And it’s not like we’re sitting around with that narrative of like, yes, I’m totally choosing to, you know, whip myself and beat myself and restrict myself to death to measure up to society’s standards.
Kristen Boss (16:07): You’re not thinking that you’re thinking like, I just want to be healthy. You’re telling yourself, like, have a very sneaky narrative. I don’t think you even realize that you’re telling yourself, like, I’ll be worthy of love when I’m smaller, but that’s certainly how you’re acting. And it’s the same way with hustle. Like I’ll finally be successful and I’ll make something of myself when there’s more money in the bank account. And the problem is, is it strips all gratitude and contentment away from the now. And it makes love and acceptance inaccessible for you until you reach a destination. So it will never feel like enough. And I just remember, and I’m, I’m undoing a lifetime of the diet culture narrative in my own brain. This is my work. And, you know, I don’t think I’ll ever arrive because I’m human, but I’m certainly creating a lot more awareness around it.
Kristen Boss (17:02): And I just realized that I had such conditional love for myself. Like I only saw myself as attractive at a certain size or at a certain weight. And I would remove love for myself. And the only idea, the only way to solve for that is to diet and lose the weight. So I could feel better about me. And this is the same thing with hustle culture. The only way I’ll feel better about me is if more money comes in or if I’m in a different house or if I’m not working this job anymore, or if I am not in debt like we make, it’s so interesting. I think debt and weight have a lot of similarities too. Like I’m wrong for having debt? I’m irresponsible wrong with me. I’ve made poor choices. Like, and there are certain narratives, like, listen, I used to subscribe to Dave Ramsey hardcore, but it created such a shameful narrative around debt that it had me paralyzed in life.
Kristen Boss (18:02): I’m not saying that there are not lessons to be learned from him, but there was almost like this scarcity narrative that came from that now, did it teach us some stewardship? That was very helpful. Yes. But did it serve me as a business owner? No. If anything was more detrimental, right? So there’s like this narrative about debt. Like no debt means you’re a good person and that you’re a good steward and you know how to manage your money when that might not actually be the case at all. Like some people have to go into debt to pay medical bills, to care for a family member. And that doesn’t mean you’re wrong for that. And it’s the same thing with like weight, like being at the ideal weight means that your better on some level, like you have the discipline, you have the self-control you take care of, oh, that’s the narrative.
Kristen Boss (18:49): It’s like, you take care of yourself. You’re at the ideal weight. You’re good. You take care of yourself. And if you aren’t at the quote ideal weight, if you were quote overweight, which by the way, the BMI index is actually not accurate at all. So please don’t measure yourself by that. It’s an outdated method and you can read more on that, but almost we’ve assigned morality to the size of our bodies. Like I’m a good person because I’m smaller. I’m a good person because I’m not in debt. I’m a good person. So like, I just think there’s this scary little narrative where we assign morality to our money management or weight management. Have you ever thought about that? Like I’ve been thinking about that. So what’s interesting is that both narratives create this scarcity and urgency to get out of it as quickly as possible.
Kristen Boss (19:44): And what’s interesting is most people have conditioned themselves to care for their health. Only when it becomes a problem, instead of caring for their health out of a place of self-love. Most people move into a diet out of a place of self-loathing like I have to fix this. I can’t be here. I look terrible. I feel awful. And because we don’t like feeling that way about ourselves, we look for the exit and to get out of this place as quickly as possible. This is why the diet industry is a billion, billion, billion, billion dollar industry, because everybody, no one wants to sit with the feeling of self-loathing because they haven’t learned to love themselves exactly where they are and go on a health journey as a, out of a place of deep love for themselves. They actually move into the diet journey out of a place of self-loathing of like, I have to fix myself.
Kristen Boss (20:42): And it’s the same way with hustle. They move into hustle from a place of like, I can’t be here of like this deep unhappiness with their life. And like, once I get there and hit all my goals, then I can be happy. And they, and it creates a ton of scarcity in their life, which is why they’re desperate for the sales and desperate for growing their paycheck as quickly as possible. And it doesn’t matter the method or the how it’s the same thing with diet culture. It’s like, I just want to get to that weight. I don’t care how I get there as long as I get there. And so we choose these really extreme methods. Like I’m going to cut all the carbs, all the sugar. I just remember two years ago, like whole 30 was the thing. Maybe it was three years ago and everyone was like doing the whole 30.
Kristen Boss (21:33): And it was like, I couldn’t bat my eyes without somebody I knew doing whole 30. And it wasn’t very few people I talked to, did it from a place of like, I’m healing, my body, I’m healing. My gut. I’m working on some things. I’m doing this from a deep place of self-love. Most of them were like, I just got to get this weight off. And like, I know this’ll do it. And people would lose the weight. But then what happens is they end up gaining it back because they didn’t go about the weight loss sustainably. And as a lifestyle, it was just like, how can I get there as quickly as possible without thinking like, is it actually sustainable that I become somebody who never touches bread or sugar ever again in my life? Is that actually sustainable? Is that the life you want? Like, yeah, you can do it for 90 days, but what happens a year from now?
Kristen Boss (22:24): Are you thinking about the version of you two years from now? When you think about the life you want, I want you to picture it. And this is, this is the harm that comes with diet culture. It’s, you’re going to get to that certain size, but what is the quality of your life at that size when you’ve done it through a diet? Are you going, are you avoiding dinner out with friends? Because you’re afraid of the narrative of like, what’s going to come up with food around the table where you’re paralyzed around what food you should eat. Are you completely consumed 24 7 in your mind about what goes in your mouth and if it’s fitting your macros, and if it’s, if the calorie restrictions are there, or if you have to run to the gym to offset what you just ate, like, I want you to picture the quality of your life in the pursuit of the result and diet culture does not take into account the quality of your life.
Kristen Boss (23:17): It just is like, this is the result. And this is how you get there as quickly as possible instead of like, how do I integrate this as a lifestyle and make these choices that I keep with me for life? How can this become who I am and how can this be something out of a deep place of love? Because here’s what happens when you want to get, you know, get there as quickly as possible, because you don’t want to experience the self-loathing because you, haven’t learned to love at the exact size you are now. And I want you to constantly, as I’m talking about diet culture, I want you to constantly draw parallels with like your bank account in your lifestyle. Okay. I’m going to sit with a, with a diet for a minute, and then we’ll go back to hustle. So when you don’t want to deal with that, self-loathing you look for the quick fix, right?
Kristen Boss (24:04): You look for, how can I get there as quickly as possible. You look for the diet pill approach and the, the idea that you’re buying into as fast as better. I just have to get there as quickly as possible. And you end up solving at the behavior level. Like I just need to change what I put in my mouth, restrict all these things, take all these things out of my house, but you actually never do the work at the identity level of like, how do I choose to think about myself? How do I choose to love myself? What, what is the healthiest and most, whole version of myself? What does that person think about my food choices? And what’s so interesting is you can make food choices, like both versions, like the one that’s doing the lifestyle and the sustainable, that person could be choosing vegetables, but from a deep place of like, I love this.
Kristen Boss (24:49): I feel so good when I eat this, I feel like this is such kindness to my body. And I love how I’m feeling versus the person who’s eating vegetables saying like, from a place of deep self-loathing mean like, no, you don’t get carbs. You’re going to sit here and eat steamed broccoli. And you’re going to like it because you can’t have this and it’s bad food. Like the narratives are different. The choices might look similar. Both are choosing vegetables, but the inner narrative is completely different. And that’s exactly the same with hustle and on all drawback to that in a second. So what happens is like they end up modifying behavior without truly working on the identity and the story. And so they get there and they get the results, but because they didn’t figure out how to integrate it sustainably, they ended up like kind of relaxing and then letting like unhealthy behaviors because they never solved for it.
Kristen Boss (25:38): The identity level kind of sneak back up and then they gained the weight back. This is why statistically I don’t have the exact percentage with me, but I think it’s like 90% of people who do a diet, gain it back within a year. And it’s because they’re not doing things sustainably at an identity level. They’re just modifying behaviors. And it’s very, short-term thinking they’re not learning to think about food in their body differently. They’re just like, how do I get there as quickly as possible? And so the result is that they’re constantly gaining and losing the same 15 pounds over and over again like no real progress is being made. And actually, it does damage to the body and damage to the metabolism. I’m not a health professional. I’ve just been listening and absorbing enough knowledge to be able to relay that much to you.
Kristen Boss (26:21): And then it creates this yo-yo mentality. And what happens is, is they learn to only decide to alter their lifestyle when it becomes a problem. When, like when they gain the weight back, then all of a sudden the narrative is back self-loathing I can’t be here. And then they do the quick fix. They lose the weight and then the weight sneaks back on. Why, why does the weight sneak back on? Because they’re used to having a negative emotion, driving their behavior, the negative emotion of self-loathing they’ve conditioned themselves to only make healthy choices, not even healthy choices to make obligatory behavior modifications when they’re in a place of like, I don’t like my body. So wouldn’t it make sense that like they get to their weight loss and they’re like, I feel great. And because the narrative isn’t there of like, our body is horrible and you can’t be here, they start making maybe not the best choices.
Kristen Boss (27:22): And they start bingeing and indulging on things. They deprived themselves of almost like diet burnout. They go and disappear. They’re like, I’m just going to eat 10 cupcakes because I deprived myself and I deserve, and I worked so hard to be here. And then they end up getting it all back and then the narrative comes back like, oh, now it’s a problem. Now we gotta do this. And it becomes this vicious cycle. Diet culture is always a cycle. And it’s always, usually the story of gaining and losing the same 15 pounds over and over and over again. And I also see people that’s when we like, think we haven’t found the right diet yet, or the right strategy, we become strategy junkies. And that’s when people jump from whole 30 to paleo, to keto, to, you know you know, to nuMe, to WeightWatchers, whatever it is, they just keep intermittent fasting.
Kristen Boss (28:08): And they just keep bouncing around thinking if I just find the right strategy, instead of noticing like I’m the common denominator and maybe the strategy is the answer. Maybe it’s how I think about myself. Maybe it’s, you know, the story I keep entering into that with this diet culture mentality, they keep buying the diet thinking that’s the answer, instead of realizing, wait, this, solving this at an identity level and the story I tell myself, that is the answer diet culture, truly glorifies the end result. It’s always about who you are at the end of it and why that’s better than who you are now. Think about that. That culture is always saying like when you’re smaller, better. And we just, when we buy into that, we believe that we become so obsessed with the end result, that we don’t care about the choices we make to get there.
Kristen Boss (29:02): Even if they’re damaging to our health, as long as we get there. Right? So I’m going to draw all this back to hustle when you’re not believing that your life is wonderful and beautiful, and you can desire more for your life, but not from a place of like that. You can’t love your life that you have right now. That’s when hustle really gets its claws into you is when you are constantly looking at everything in your life and why you wish it was different and better. And it creates such a deep Discontentment. It’s no longer a desire for like a striving for better. And like I’m aiming for more. It becomes this obsession for my life can only be good when I’m there and you can’t see how it’s good now. And you end up trying to escape your reality through your work. And then you throw yourself into hustle and overworking and thinking.
Kristen Boss (30:04): I just have to put my head down long enough to get the result. And again, same with diet. Like I don’t care how I get there as long as I get there. And it’s this obsession with the end result, without really thinking and thinking about the, who you are becoming, the identity, the process, and the journey and sustainable habits. You have to ask yourself hustles, like you got to work, you know, eight o’clock at night to 2:00 AM, wake up in the morning and do it all over again. Or whatever it is, hustle is like, you have to work all the time and there’s no other answer for you to get the results you want. And you’ve just got to put your head down and grind. That is the story. Put your head down and grind, remove all other distractions. There is no, just like there’s no balance in, in diet culture.
Kristen Boss (30:54): Like it’s all or nothing, no carbs. And there’s no room for balance and diet culture. There’s also no room for balance and hustle, culture, hustle, culture, you know, carbs and sugar are like rest and napping and playing and hobbies and family time. And God forbid, Netflix, listen, I don’t know who keeps telling you that Netflix is getting in the way of your results, but it’s a downright lie. I still watch shows while growing my business. Now, now is, are there seasons where your time might be so scheduled out that you might have to sacrifice Netflix for a short period of time? Yeah, but is that the truth for everybody? Is that the universal law of the only way you get results, it’s not. And I used to not watch TV and think I was better than everybody else because I didn’t watch TV. That’s hustle culture.
Kristen Boss (31:50): Like I’m not, I don’t watch any TV. That’s also diet culture. I don’t eat any sugar ever. I don’t eat any carbs ever. And it’s like this air of superiority, I’m better than you. Cause I have more self-discipline I know it sounds ugly, but I know it because I used to think, I used to think it, like, I’m not calling you out without calling my own self out on like what I used to be guilty of. Right? So hustle is like grind. Get it done. It’s extremely, short-term thinking without thinking about the long-term results, you want to know how I know that. I tell you guys this a lot, but I’m not sure if you actually believe me on how many people message me that they are days, moments, weeks away from walking away from multimillion dollar businesses because their life is in because they are so tired and so exhausted.
Kristen Boss (32:44): And so much damage was done in pursuit of the end goal, because nothing was sustainable. And they bought into the lie. If you just put your head down and grind and sacrifice everything, it’s going to be better when you get there, don’t worry. It’s worth it. Yeah. You might have the bank account, but if your family’s broken, what if your marriage is hurting? I don’t know about you, but I want the bank account and the marriage and the family. I want it all. That is what success to me is it is how my life feels. It is the quality of my life. You know, my coach said this to me and it was so profound and she makes tons of money. She’ll make $10 million this year. And she said to me, she’s like, Kristen, I don’t want the money. If I can’t have peace, like what is the money without peace?
Kristen Boss (33:34): And when everything is destroyed, because you did the short-term results, you, you did the grind for so long and you look up and it’s just a mess around you. I promise you all the feelings you thought money would bring you. It won’t be there when you can’t bring that for you. Just like talk to somebody who has in your mind, the ideal body and ask her, do you totally love yourself? Do you have any negative thoughts about your body? Are you there? Have you arrived? Do you just love yourself so much? She’d probably tell you. Nope. Still have the same thoughts. You know how I know that because I’ve been 20 pounds smaller than I am now. And I remember not thinking it was enough. I remember not thinking I was happy or pretty or skinny enough or measured the standard enough. Your bank account is no different.
Kristen Boss (34:21): You can get there and, and you can have money dysmorphia, just like there’s body dysmorphia, money, dysmorphia, success, dysmorphia. It’s not enough. If you keep buying it a diet culture, you’re never be small enough. If you keep buying into hustle culture, you’ll never have enough. This is the truth. Maybe people don’t want to hear this, but you know what? I’m really tired of watching people destroy their lives because they’ve been told that this is, this is the only way. And that’s hustle. This is, this is like, I truly believe this is my work in the world. I feel so strongly about this. I feel so blessed that my husband still chose me and loved me after my deepest years of like the deep, dark hustle and grind. When I was destroying my body, destroying my sense of self, because that’s what I thought it took.
Kristen Boss (35:10): Right? And so just like with hustle, just like with diet culture and hustle culture, just like you bounce from diet to diet and hustle culture. You keep bouncing from strategy to strategy. You keep waiting for like, there is some magic strategy that I have to find. Somebody else has figured it out. I just, and I see you all, like you bounce from thing to thing and it keeps like devastating your results. You know, you, you start with a method and then you start to lose belief. And then somebody in your company hits momentum on their team and they come and they, they, you know, corporate brings them on for a company-wide call and they share what worked for them. And then I see everybody abandoned their process, abandoned their belief, abandoned what they were working on. And they, and they jumped on the bandwagon. The strategy.
Kristen Boss (36:01): That must be the answer. And that’s not the answer. The answer is that person picked a strategy and stuck with it. They stayed consistent. They stayed gritty. They probably worked on their mindset. But the moment you think the answer is a magic strategy, then you actually believe that the answer isn’t you, you don’t believe that you’re capable of the results you think I have to find the strategy. That’s going to give me the results. So you’re constantly going to be looking for this magical strategy. That’s going to solve all your problems. Just like the diet, just like the diet. I mean, some people never lose the weight because they keep bouncing from one diet to the next, to the next. And they keep thinking it’s the diet. But remember when I said, you have to make yourself the common denominator you have to evaluate. What if it’s actually me?
Kristen Boss (36:56): If you’ve tried every strategy out there and you are not getting the results, I’m going to tell you right now, that is evidence. It’s not the strategy. And it’s you. Tough love. I know, but listen, I had to come. I had this come to Jesus moment with myself. Wasn’t in business. It was actually, it was actually in relationships in my twenties. I just kept going from one unhealthy relationship to the next, like really toxic. And I was like, gosh, these men out there what’s going on. Men are so toxic, whatever. And I finally had to realize, wait, hold on.
Kristen Boss (37:30): What is, what is the most common denominator here? I’m still taking me with me. What if it’s actually me? What’s my part in this, where I keep choosing these people. And when I finally understood that I was the common denominator and I had things to heal at the identity level, and I had things to work on. Everything changed, everything changed. And then I found my husband. It was so different when I finally just owned up sort of everybody else being toxic. I had to realize maybe there’s a part of me. That’s toxic. That keeps attracting this, that keeps choosing this. What has to be healed in me instead of me blaming everybody else for my relationship drama. It’s time to own up to how I’ve created my own relationship, drama. Same for you and your business. It is time for you to own how you are the common denominator for your current results.
Kristen Boss (38:24): And that is going to be painful to own. And some of you are too busy blaming everyone else. I don’t have results because my team isn’t showing up. I don’t have these results because my team, yada, yada, yada, my upline, yada yada, yada, my coach, yada yada, yada, this program, yada yada, you’re just abdicating responsibility to everything outside of you so that you don’t feel the weight of being responsible for your own choices and therefore your own results. You don’t think it was painful for me to realize, oh, the toxic person that keeps choosing toxic people like, yeah, that was painful to see in myself. Cause it was so much easier to believe that the problem was with the world and that men were just toxic. It was just so easy to be there. And it’s really so easy to be there with your business thinking.
Kristen Boss (39:20): I just haven’t found the right strategy. I’m with the wrong company. It’s the comp plan. It’s my downline. It’s the lack of training it’s oh, my favorite. No, one’s given me a system. It’s if I had a system, then I would be successful. Let me tell you something. I have watched people jump, ship thinking, oh, look over. There is a better system and I’m guaranteed success. But what the problem is is they still brought them with them. They still brought their crappy habits and crappy thoughts with them. And you can have the best comp plan, the best company, the best opportunity ground floor. But if you don’t start owning, what’s going on in your business, your results are going to be no different. Do you hear that? Lets you change things about you. You can change. You can swap from company to company, to company, to company, change your niche a million times, change your coaching package, change your offer because I know there’s other people that network marketers on this podcast, you can change all the things, but if you don’t change you, your results won’t change.
Kristen Boss (40:27): It’s the same thing. With diet culture, you can bounce from diet to diet, to diet, to diet, to diet. But unless you start getting deep in the narrative of why you’re reaching for certain foods, the emotional story, the identity story you have for yourself, you’re going to keep losing and gaining the same 15 pounds over and over and over again. You’re going to be the diet or you’re going to be the person that’s like, oh this week I’m on the Mediterranean diet this week. I’m on the gluten-free diet this week. I’m paleo, right? It’s the same for hustle culture. This becomes trying this method this week. I’m trying this method, okay, what’s that successful person doing? And how do I need to do that?
Kristen Boss (41:06): So much of both cultures is driven by a negative emotion or negative narrative. Remember diet culture is you need to be smaller in order to be more and hustle. Culture is you need to do more and have more in order to be more. But it’s the answer that more is better, more weight you a better, more money you make the better. And this is why both narratives are so destructive and we buy into it all the time. Why? Because we see someone, we see someone with that lifestyle, man, it looks so good. Especially man, especially in network marketing because you’re taught to market a lifestyle you’re taught like, look at this glorious, glamorous life that comes with financial freedom. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that per se, but it’s just, are we being honest? Are we being honest in our marketing, right?
Kristen Boss (42:16): You don’t have, you don’t have diet culture saying like, Hey, you’re going to be smaller, but you also might have like crippling body dysmorphia. You might like start to have narratives about foods that don’t serve you. You’re going to have a lot of food drama. You’re probably not going to want to go out. Holidays are going to be ruined for you. You might end up like wanting to get on the treadmill. Every time you eat sugar, like hustle culture. Doesn’t give a disclaimer either. And it should I talk about, I’m going to be talking about this in my book. Talk about the warning label that should come with hustle because goodness, there, there should be one. So listen, if you’re asking like, okay, so what do I do from here? Like I see it Kristen I see the toxicity. I see how I bought into these things.
Kristen Boss (42:55): So what now? And it’s hard work right now. Someone said to me the other day, they’re like, you know, I’ve gained 20 pounds and she was trying to shift her narrative and she’s like, she kept comforting herself with the thought like I’m going to lose it and I’ll, it’ll be better. And I was like, actually I think you need to get out of making yourself only feel better if you lose the weight. And I just said, can you love yourself now? What if the weight doesn’t change? Can you bring yourself to loving yourself? And I remember for me, I had to do that work too. And I was so afraid that if I loved myself as I was, it meant staying here, staying in a way that I wasn’t happy at like, oh my gosh, if I love myself here, then I’m going to stay here.
Kristen Boss (43:39): And that sounds terrible. It’s so counterintuitive. And it’s the same for your life. Like it’s like, can you love your life exactly as it is right now in pursuit of going after the life you desire, can you do that? Or are you going to continue to use scarcity to fuel you in your business? Scarcity and urgency scarcity is like, there’s not enough. We’re not able to meet ends. We can’t, I can’t go on like this. It can’t stay like this. And I have to get out of this as quickly as possible. Is that going to be your fuel or can you learn to look around and truly love your life and see it for what it is? Find the gratitude because that’s the only way you’re going to be able to do this sustainably. That’s the only way you’re going to be able to do this at an identity level and play the long game.
Kristen Boss (44:31): You cannot play the long game when you’re beating yourself up to make as much money in as quick time as possible. Because listen, I’ve coached hundreds and thousands of people. And the story is the same. Like you might be thinking, no, no, no. Kristen I’m like crushing that. Listen, I know what the threshold is. On average, the threshold for hustle culture before massive burnout, deep resentment, and your body actually giving up on you. That looks like adrenal fatigue, auto-immune issues, insomnia, weight, gain. That all happens. Just so you know, if you don’t learn to care for yourself, if you don’t learn to do things sustainably and learn to rest and incorporate boundaries, if you don’t learn to work with purpose, intention, and focus, that is what is waiting for you at about the two year mark. That is what I was waiting for you. And so many people come to me at that point and they have such resentment for their business and they they’re like, I have no desire to work.
Kristen Boss (45:31): I don’t want to work. I don’t want to be a part of my business. I don’t want this anymore. And, but here’s the good part is they learned to fall in love with it again, only when we undo all these narratives and that’s, you know, honestly, that’s probably a good chunk of my mastermind that come in. They’re all learning to fall in love with their business. Again, they’re all learning to work differently. They’re undoing the hustle mentality and it takes unlearning just like unlearning diet culture and learning to love yourself and care for your body in a completely different way. And they have to do that too. It’s like deprogramming, this conditioning that has been handed to you by society has been handed to you by culture. It’s been handed to you by corporate America has been handed to you by men and you could just decide to lay it down and not buy into it anymore.
Kristen Boss (46:20): And it’s going to be work. It’s like you don’t just decide to unsubscribe from the hustle and you never struggle with it. Again, you’re going to have to be learning over and over and over again. It is a hard lesson, but man, it is the best lesson. Just like looking in the mirror and loving yourself. Exactly. As you are not only loving the skinny version of you, not only loving the version of you that fit in that pant size of those genes that are tucked way back in your closet, right? It’s going to take some work, but it is the best work you do. You have to look and say, how do I love me right now? And if I’m not working with scarcity and urgency and shame, then how do I work with purpose? That is the story. My book is going to be called pivot to purpose, leaving the toxic hustle culture behind.
Kristen Boss (47:09): And it’s all about this. It’s all about helping you understand how you got kind of, you know, brought into hustle culture and what actually happens in your brain neuroscience-wise with hustle culture and why it’s so hard to leave it, but it is worth it friends. So can we all just agree together that we’re going to unsubscribe from both of these cultures, that we’re going to be anti-diet and anti-hustle culture, and that we’re going to be pro purpose, pro intention, pro focus, pro self-love, pro gratitude, pro contentment? Can we, can we get there to get today friends? I hope you do. We’ll catch you next week.
Kristen Boss (47:57): That wraps up today’s episode. Hey, if you loved today’s show, I would love for you to take a minute and give a rating with a review. If you desire to elevate the social selling industry, that means we need more people listening to this message so that they can know it can be done a different way. And if you’re ready to join me, it’s time for you to step into the Social Selling Academy, where I give you all the tools, training and support to help you realize your goals. In the Academy you get weekly live coaching so that you are never lost or stuck in confusion. Whether you are new in the business or been in the industry for a while, this is the premier coaching program for the modern network marketer. Go to www.thesocialsellingacademy.com to learn more.
