What do you believe?

I often feel guilty for doing things that make me happy and for living in a way where I frequently put my health (mental, physical, and emotional) before my work.

There is a toxic culture around work in this country where if you are not always hustling, if you're not always thinking about how to do better, if you're not always the first person in and the last person out then you are not giving it your best effort. What's worse is that the vast majority of employers only seem willing to hire you if you can convince them you will work harder than anyone else they've ever hired. Not only is this unhealthy, but it's actually based on a complete fallacy. Workers who have clear work/life boundaries are happier, healthier, and more productive.

I realized last night as I was falling asleep that by being exposed to this culture in the workplace I have created false beliefs about myself. I have allowed this toxic culture to convince me that I am lazy, that I'm not smart enough, that I'm not ambitious enough, and that I'm too selfish to succeed. I'm deciding today that anyone who has ever made me feel that way couldn't be more wrong.

This isn't to say I've been mistreated by employers. What it means is that there is a pervasive idea of what being "busy" is and also what being "productive" really boils down to that most employers have bought into without realizing it. Busy-ness does not equal productivity. We've heard this before but I feel like many of us are still missing the message. How much of your job is real work that impacts the actual functioning of the company you work for and how much of it is just "keeping busy"? How many of the 40 (arbitrarily determined) full-time hours that you spend at your job actually turn out your best work?

Nevertheless, besides the entrepreneurs who grind themselves into the dirt to "hustle" and make their vision a reality and those who hew to more creative professions which tend to be less structured, most of us are chained to a 40-hour job so that we can receive benefits like health insurance. (Tell me again why we have to trade our days for such a basic right to live on this planet? Don't get me started on how absurd this concept is.) And in reality, our employers by holding us to this requirement, are usually receiving cut-rate effort for their investment. How many of us authentically give our best efforts for even 60% of our at-work hours? Not to throw everyone under the bus and ruin it for anyone, but I think we all know no one is working the hardest they can on any given Friday afternoon.

Recently people seem to be catching on, at least in the tech industry, and we hear about more companies putting the wellbeing of their employees first. However, it's still a work in progress. I've worked for a boss who had all the employees in the building line up at the punch clock at the end of the day to make absolutely sure that no one worked overtime and that was certainly a mixed message. On the one hand, it was nice to know that when the work day was over it was really over until we punched in the next morning. There was very little work stress during non-work hours. On the other hand, what kind of company so loathes to pay its employees for even a minute of overtime that they send the Operations Manager to herd everyone out at the end of the day?

I also know of employers who tell their employees that they don't care about what hours they work but these employers then make side-comments to employees about their hours even if they're meeting, or exceeding, their 40 hours - as though putting in as many hours as someone else is what's actually rewarded. Some people have terrible work/life boundaries and that should not be rewarded or be held by an employer as something for other employees to strive for. Additionally, what may be healthy for one employee is not what's going to be healthy for all of them. Some people can put in 50- or 60-hour weeks and still find balance, but their coworkers can't be held to the same benchmark and have a healthy workplace environment. I'm not saying we should flip the table and start over or that 40-hour work weeks should be abolished and we should take a page out of France's book, but I do believe that employees can do better and be more productive if they know that they can treat their lives outside of work just as seriously as they treat the work week without feeling somehow less-than. I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I can take my own well-being seriously and still kick-butt at my job.

Employer/employee relations aside, what I really want to say is that we all have beliefs about ourselves (work-related or otherwise) that are counterproductive and maybe even completely false. Take a second to ask yourself about some of the negative beliefs you hold about yourself. Do you believe you're bad with money, or that you can't lose weight, or that you don't deserve love? Now ask yourself where you got that belief from. I'm betting it comes from snarky comments from people who may even be your closest loved ones. What I'm really betting is that all those negative things you believe about yourself are not things you chose to believe about yourself on your own. They didn't come from within, they came from other people putting you down or you created this "truth" about yourself to explain away an insecurity you hold because other people have made you feel less than wonderful.

I believe that we can all use a good hard look at the things we believe about ourselves, because once we see the things that aren't helping us we can help ourselves be better, stronger, healthier, happier, and more powerful together.