Hard Work is Overrated, Privilege Too

It’s time to rethink how important actually is to work hard and/or have the privilege to be successful. Is it true as to how we believe it is?

Self-help books are pretty popular, we may have one within our bookshelf or in our Kindle library. Because it’s so popular, it turns into a culture and has the probability to become toxic. How? more about this later on.

One pattern that repeats within the self-help realm is hard work or we also have a cooler way to say it, hustle. It becomes mandatory, a commandment for us to obey in order to become someone like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, you name it.

Want to be successful? The key is hard work, hustle. If you fail at something? most likely the major factor is because you are not working hard enough, not hustling enough. There’s a high chance that we got hardwired to this concept. Almost everything is being connected to hard work.

Take a break during the weekend? Oh, you are merely being lazy. Taking a paid leave? Oh, someone might get one step ahead of you because of that. It might be right but sounds wrong at the same time.

It affects the way how you see yourself as well as others. You are getting afraid to even have a proper lunch without thinking about work or even worse, doing the work. You are getting really stress-out if you are not doing something “productive”. Until it reaches a peak point when you have self-realization that no matter how hard you work, you still cannot achieve what you think is achievable by working hard in the first place. What comes next?

You start to think that hard work to be successful is basically a sweet lie. You start to observe others that seem to be “success” according to your own standard or standard being set by the society and find the factors that they have and you don’t.

Chances are, you start to give up on your dream and blame it on something being called “privilege”. Something that the successful person has that you don’t. You start to become cynical towards the “successful” terms themselves.

“No wonder this person is success, it’s because he is good looking! look at me, oh my God, my face!”

“Ah, he’s born in a rich family, while I was born in this hell-hole. That’s why he’s successful!”

“She’s really talented! no matter how hard I try, I will never be as successful as she is cause I don’t have the talent that she has,”

You begin to think that success is already pre-determined when someone was born. You start to blame yourself, your parents, others, anyone, and/or anything that you think potentially become the “curse” of your “failure”. The world is just against you in any way, you are set to fail.

Some people might be stuck at that point and refuse to look the other way around. They basically just give up already with pretty much everything. This often leads to suicide. To make it even “better”, some parts of our society think that suicide is just a cowardly action committed by weak-minded people. All of this becomes a complicated chain of events that seems so hard to be changed. But you can change your perspective on this matter, to save yourself first (if you haven’t) and then others.

At this point, let’s take a step back and think about all of this over again. Let’s take one step at a time on how to save ourselves from being over-hustling and leads to self-harm act. What should we do? here are several things that you might want to put in mind.

1. Life is not a competition with others, but yourself

Everyone wants to become successful, no exception. Legitimately almost anyone will also work hard to achieve that, no doubt. That’s something that we should acknowledge in the first place. Every human being wants to achieve their own definition of success, including you.

It’s never a competition to be successful, and it will never be. No one is your rival or enemy to achieve your success. Stop belittling yourself by comparing your progress nor timeline with someone else. They go their way, you go yours. It’s never the same track, to begin with.

We need to admit that every success story is unique on its own. There are so many famous examples of unique success stories that you already know about, thus, I don’t have to re-tell it again here. If you already have this mindset, then, it’s good! let’s move along to the next point.

2. Success is not about hard work alone or privilege, but both

Yes, you read it right. Then, does it mean if you don’t have the privilege you are doomed? The short answer is yes. But don’t be sad just now. Because what you considered as “privilege” might be wrong and you must change that quick! how? you can move along to point three for that.

If you rely on working hard only to be successful, the chances to achieve it are, not really that high. If you somehow have one or two from the list of things that many consider as “privilege” but you don’t work hard, you are on your way to break the so-called privilege itself at some point during your life.

Someone who works hard and use their privilege as best as they can, that’s what really pave their path towards success. Like a two-handed specialist warrior, you should have both to unlock your true potential.

3. Everyone has their own privilege

Really? yes, it is. It’s all about how you see it and how are you going to do about it. Let’s take an example that many consider unfortunate.

Many consider being poor or struggling financially is unfortunate, but few might call it a privilege. How come? I think I will just use my story as an example here.

I grew up in a relatively moderate family in terms of financial status. Until at some point, things going south and my parent went bankrupt, their business just failed, and to make it even worse, they refuse to start any business ever again, even until today. How I even survive? that’s a whole different story to be told, but I will just give a glimpse about it here.

This fact hit me pretty hard, even until today I feel this is painful, a bitter pill to be swallowed. For so long I feel this is the unfortunate part of my life story. Until I realize, it’s actually a privilege for me and I continue to tell myself it is.

My privilege is to go through the hardship, dire situations, and desperate times that not everyone has the chance to experience at a young age. It forces me to work very early compared to other friends of mine. I decided to start to work at 17, as a life insurance sales agent. I will never ever considered working that early if my situation is not as dire as it was. I can pay my high school tuition for 1,5 years straight because of that. I was lucky as well, because my cousin is just happened to be a well-experienced life insurance agent, and because of that I got the chance to become his junior. This is also a privilege that not everyone has.

I was often complaining about it from time to time but I keep going. While my friends having fun, I am grinding myself to pitch life insurance from one house to another, calling hundreds of people that most of them give me rejection and even sarcastically mock me. Then I slowly realize along the way, if I didn’t go through that, I will never become who I am today. That’s what makes me who I am, for better or worse, that’s my privilege.

I believe that you also have your own unique privilege. Remember that privilege is not just always about the many consider as good things but most of the time it’s actually the one that we considered as “bad luck”. Use that as your own advantage that not everyone has the chance to have it as you do.

4. Anything that “too much” is not good, be aware of your limit

There’s nothing wrong with working hard. But working hard too much? that’s not good. You are not sure where is your limit? I believe you know it, but sometimes you just refused to admit it due to the hustle culture overload.

It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to watch Youtube, Netflix, or whatever you want to watch or do. As long as you are not spending too much time doing it and you are not harming others with it in any way. When it’s being considered too much? when you spend most of your day just doing that and basically nothing else and then repeat it over and over again.

And one more thing,

5. It’s okay to be “ordinary”

By the end of the day, if you are not as successful as you wish or not meeting your own expectation, it doesn’t mean that you are a failure. It’s okay to fail at some point and remember to keep going. Due to how this world works, we are really afraid to be labeled as “ordinary” people.

If others think that you are an “ordinary” person, that’s okay, too. It doesn't mean you have failed. Their opinion doesn’t sum up who you are. Keep going, keep working hard but know your limit too. Use your own privilege as best as you can. Life is a journey that is too good to be spent on living up fulfilling other’s expectations.

That’s what I think about hard work and privilege, that’s why I called it overrated. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comment section!