120. What Anti-Hustle Culture Looks Like for Christian Mompreneurs Who Refuse to Sacrifice Family for Business

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:00

Hey friend, you're listening to Harmonious Mompreneur, where faith, family and business come together. I'm your host, Phylicia Pough, a Christian wife, mom of two, and life and business system strategist for moms.

If you've ever felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day, or find yourself craving more time for yourself but feel guilty about it, you're in the right place. While many strive for balance, I believe it's harmony, an integrated flow that works.

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:27

For you, that truly sustains.

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:29

Each week I'll share insights from my personal journey and practical strategies to help you design systems that bring peace to your business and home life. So give your kids another snack, take a deep breath and let's dive into today's episode where we'll start creating your harmonious Mompreneur life.

Phylicia Pough: 00:00:48

Hey friend, hope you enjoyed the Client Experience series that just wrapped up. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just go ahead, check out the last four episodes.

But today I want to chat about hustle culture, anti hustle culture. And I think that this is an important discussion to have, especially as a Christian, as a mom entrepreneur who works from home.

I don't know about you, but when I was coming up, the idea and image of success was always attached to fast paced hustle and bustle, blood, sweat and tears, sacrificing a personal life for a career. And it was a lot. And I always thought that that is what success looked like. That is what I needed to be doing and what I should be aspiring to now.

In recent years, the narrative around this topic has been starting to turn. There's a lot of people, including myself and probably you, listening as well. We are unapologetically desiring a simpler way of life, right?

A way of life where the image of success looks different. Success now includes presence with family and building a life first business and not just climbing the corporate ladder or growing a business.

It's a way of life where the journey to success does not require unreasonable sacrifice. There will be some sacrifice, but it won't be unreasonable. It's an image now where it doesn't require choosing between career and family.

It's an image where both can coexist with peace and without hustle and without burnout. Okay, so let's just back up a little bit and let's just get on the same playing field in terms of what hustle actually is, what it looks like.

So when I looked up the word hustle, it was defined as to force someone to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specific direction to obtain by forceful action or persuasion does not sound pleasant at all. Hustle culture used to be, and sometimes still is glorified in the mainstream media. Think about the Devil Wears Prada.

I don't know if you've seen that movie, but the main character, I forget her name, but it was played by Anne Hathaway. She was chasing this idea of success, and her friends and her loved ones often got left behind. The show, scandal.

As much as I loved that show for other reasons, Olivia Pope, she was consumed by work, and work always came first.

There was another show on Netflix called Working Moms, which portrayed the challenges of four friends returning to work and continuing their careers after children. And they were always hustling.

And many times their relationships and marriages were falling apart or experiencing added challenges because of the Hustle. And to be honest, this is a loaded topic, because why do women feel like they have to hustle in the first place, right?

There's so much societal pressure on us to be the perfect mom and still work at the same capacity as men who are not the primary parent, which is absolutely unrealistic. And so I could go on and on about this show. There's a lot of messages and a lot of imagery that kind of supports this topic.

Um, I actually may do a full episode or series on it, but again, we're just seeing that there's so much in the mainstream media that kind of promoted this idea of hustle culture.

Now, on the flip side, the other side of hustle culture is this space where moms are sacrificing their dreams either for their children, for their husband's career, for whatever reason. There's this level of self abandonment. And the Hustle is for everyone else, not for themselves. And it's looked at as the right thing to do.

And so one of my favorite movies, well, at least when I was younger, Love and Basketball. There's this scene in Love and Basketball where Monica's mom, Monica was played by Sonali then, and her mom says something to her.

They were in the middle of a heated discussion, and her mom says something like, I sacrificed my dreams so you can live yours. And Monica replies, I never asked you to.

So it was such an emotional scene unpacking this strained mother daughter relationship, which was honestly triggered by this quiet hustle. How the mom had sacrificed her dreams. Right.

And so as I'm giving these examples, I hope that you are really starting to see hustle culture for what it really is. It's a system that convinces you that your Worth is tied to how much you produce, how much you sacrifice, how much you can endure without breaking.

And that is just so toxic right now. If you have found yourself caught in that trip, no shame at all, right?

Because I think sometimes we do have these goals, and we are ambitious women, and there can sometimes be this thin line between ambition and hustle, right?

But if you've caught yourself or if you found yourself in the tramp of hustle, please know this, that you were never meant to carry the weight of doing it alone, right? You were simply doing what the world told you success should look like. But now you get to choose differently, right?

The truth is that God never called us to hustle our way through life. So I'm on this journey of reading the Bible from start to finish. And as I'm reading, I have not seen anything that supports hustle culture.

Scripture calls us to work, yes, but to work diligently. It also calls us to rest and to trust God and to trust the season that you're in. So I'm going to give a few scriptures here.

So Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, to everything, there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven. So, yes, there is gonna be a season where you focus more on your family.

There is gonna be a season where maybe you're putting more energy into the business, but that does not mean that we are unreasonably sacrificing our priority, our family, for the sake of growing a business. Right. When I looked up the word diligent, right, Because I mentioned just previously that the scripture calls us to work diligently.

The word diligent means having or showing care in one's work or duties. Okay, so diligent work just does not mean, like strenuous hustle type of work. It means just showing care and being.

I was about to say diligent, but being very mindful of how you are doing your work. Proverbs 22 and 29, it says, seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings. He shall not stand before mean men.

So in this scripture, when you look up the origin of the word diligent, it means quick, prompt, skilled, ready. Nothing about hustling. Proverbs 12 and 24, it says, the hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under tribute.

And when you look up the origin of diligent in this scripture, it means sharp and strict decision. So if we are to be in alignment with God's word, then we ought to get rid of hustle culture and embrace anti hustle culture instead. So anti.

That prefix means opposed to or against. So what does being against hustle culture look like for us as Christian mompreneurs now? It's not laziness, because the Bible speaks against laziness.

Anti hustle looks like slower paced instead of hurriedly. It looks like strategic instead of forceful action. Right.

And it's building businesses that align with our values instead of businesses that basically require us to abandon our values. It's recognizing that obedience to what God has called us to is enough and that working diligently doesn't mean overworking ourselves into burnout.

Okay, so what else does anti hustle culture look like? It looks like. And it means taking action with wisdom. Right?

And also trusting that the seeds that you plant, again, diligently, that they will grow in due season. Because like I mentioned before, there's a season for everything. All right?

The world glorifies hustle, but the kingdom glorified stewardship, diligence, rest, and faithfulness. Okay, so I want to leave you with this. What would your business look like and your life as well?

What would it look like if you operated from a place of peace instead of pressure? What if you stopped hustling to find balance? And what if you embraced harmony instead?

If that is something that you are desiring to do, if you are looking to embrace harmony, if you are looking to break free from the hustle of it all and do it in a way that's in alignment with God's word, then I want to invite you to the Harmony no Hustle private podcast.

In this mini audio course, I break down a framework for you that will allow you to begin to create a sense of harmony in your business and in your life. The link for it will be in the show notes and show description.

Now, if today's episode spoke to you, DM me on Instagram and tell me, what part of hustle culture are you ready to lay down? I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for tuning in. With grace and gratitude, I will see you in the next episode. Hey, friend.

I'm so glad you tuned in today. Before you go, will you take a.

Phylicia Pough: 00:11:14

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