It’s time to say goodbye to hustle culture and start focusing on what actually works – discipline. I used to be the type of person who wanted to hustle, climb the corporate ladder, and achieve the highest level of corporate success. But the more I tried, the more I knew that hustle culture is not at all sustainable.

Hustle culture is based on a lack mindset. The anxiety around hustling makes you believe that there’s not enough to go around. It forces you to believe that if you’re not working yourself to the bone every day, you won’t get anything done. But that’s just not true. What you’re craving is not hustle, it’s discipline. 

This week’s episode is a repost of our most popular episode. In it, I will explain the difference between hustle culture and maintaining discipline. Discipline is a much more sustainable way of thinking and keeps you focused even when you’re not motivated. Discipline is crucial to achieving your long-term goals, and in this episode, I’m going to teach you how I became disciplined so that you can too.

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Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Transcript:

Erika: Hello, and welcome back to Chingona Revolution Podcast. This is my third attempt at recording this podcast. And you know what? This is it. Third time’s a charm. I don’t know why I kept stumbling, but Even if I mess up this time, we’re going to keep it because I teach my clients to show up imperfectly and that supports me or I guess it enforces me to show up imperfectly because I have to lead by example.

Right? So I’m actually super, super excited about this podcast episode because we’re talking about a really juicy topic, which is hustle versus discipline. So how is it that you could get things done without discipline? hustling. So if you’re listening to this podcast, chances are that you come from the Latino Latine community where hard work is one of our core values, right?

And it makes sense that it is a core value because if we look at history, our community has had to do very labor intensive work to get to where they are. I mean, if I even just look at my parents nowadays, they’re still working labor intensive jobs. And my parents immigrated, When they were fairly young when they were in their late teens to the States and were really only able to gain jobs that were labor intensive.

And the more they worked, the more they made, and the faster they got out of poverty. So it makes sense that the generations before us really looked at hustling as the way to success. But unfortunately, it’s also what we have been taught today. We’ve been taught that success is on the other side of blood, sweat, and tears, and nothing comes easy, and that we have to work really hard to get anything that we want.

And while that narrative has helped our community get to where we are now, it won’t necessarily help us get to where we want to go, right? So if we look at the hierarchy of needs, the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, If you’re familiar with it, the bottom is just like physical safety, right?

And clothing. And then as you move up, the needs begin to change. So our parents or whatever generation before you that was in survival mode, they relied on hustling to survive. If we want to become millionaires or we want to create massive impact, we are not going to get there through hustling because what got us to where we are won’t get us to where we want to go.

We have to change what we’re doing to reach new levels. And let’s go ahead and take a look at what hustle even means. So, hustle, according to the definition, is to force to move hurriedly or roughly in a specific direction. And in my opinion, hustling feels like you’re chasing. Hustling is in the energy of scarcity.

And at the core That is fear based. The fear that there is not enough to go around. The fear that you may not make it. The fear that you are unsafe. Hustling at work or hustling in your life is evidence that you feel like there’s not enough and you have to rush. towards a specific direction. And of course we don’t want to be there, right?

And there’s been a huge movement, like an anti hustle movement, which I absolutely love. I don’t think that we need to hustle, but I think that in this movement, we’ve also lost discipline. And I’m going to give you some examples. So let’s say that your goal is to be healthier or to lose weight, but you haven’t been to the gym and you’re upset.

Well, the math isn’t mathing, right? Like, if you’re not taking any action, of course nothing’s going to change. I think the narrative that we’ve tried to adopt now is, oh no, I don’t hustle. I don’t want to hustle. But then, we end up on the other end of the spectrum where we’re just not taking any action, and then we end up super anxious because of that.

Or let’s say that you’re single, and that you want to be in a relationship, but you’re not willing to go out and meet people or get on the apps. Like, come on y’all. Can we help the universe help us? Can we help the universe help us? I’ve also had clients who complain and they’re really upset that they’re not seeing the traction that they want to see But when I go to their page, they’re not even showing up.

They’re not even telling people that they’re open for business They’re not making offers. Well, yeah, of course Nothing’s gonna happen and the truth is that we cannot get upset for the result We didn’t achieve When we took no action to achieve that, right? So we can’t get upset for the results we didn’t get when we took no action.

And the truth is that we live in this world full of distractions. So it’s easy to justify our lack of action with not wanting to hustle because we’re just distracted. So what is discipline? Discipline is the quality of being able to behave and work in a controlled way. Nothing chasey about that, right?

Venus Williams went viral on a video recently that talked about how discipline is freedom. And she was on a panel and whenever the moderator asked why, Venus said, because When you have discipline, you get what you want. And when you don’t have discipline, you don’t get what you want. She then said, when you don’t have discipline, that’s when anxiety comes in.

And I think we can all attest to that. We all know that is very valid. When we say we’re going to do something and we do not do it and we’re lacking discipline, we feel very anxious. So in my opinion, self discipline is abundance. It is love based, even if it is hard in the moment. So I’m going to give you a perfect example.

This morning I got up. I did not feel like going to kickboxing, but I knew that if I went, I was going to feel better after. I knew it was going to set the tone for my day. So I made sure that I signed up and I went to kickboxing and I was so grateful that I did. And I feel like that was a form of self love.

And that was me practicing self discipline. And I think there’s been this narrative that if we’re too disciplined, then it doesn’t allow for like our feminine energy to come in, come in, or it doesn’t allow us to be flowy. But when you focus on self discipline and actually get things done, when you say that you’re going to do them, there is so much more room for creativity because you’re no longer thinking in your head, Oh man, I have to do that thing.

It’s just already done. A lot of you are out here waiting to feel motivated in order to start something or to take action. And while motivation is great, it is not sustainable. We are not going to feel motivated all the time. We may feel motivated at the beginning of starting a new project when it’s really exciting, but after we hit a few roadblocks, we will.

That motivation is going to be long gone. And what happens whenever we rely on motivation is that we can start something, but then we do not keep up with it. So I’ll tell you how I’ve seen this manifest over and over in former clients or just people that I’ve been connected with. If you leverage motivation to, let’s say, start an Instagram page or launch a podcast, you can successfully start one.

You can successfully launch the podcast or create the Instagram page. More often than not, what I see is, If there isn’t self discipline, if they’re not practicing self discipline in consistently posting on the Instagram page or releasing the podcast episodes, then it’s just started and then it’s inconsistent, right?

Because anybody could go start something. You could rely on motivation to go somewhere. But how many people stick with it? How many people practice discipline to continue to post, to continue to record podcast episodes, to continue even when it feels hard or even when you don’t feel like it. Do you think I felt like recording this podcast episode?

I am extremely. Busy this week, extremely overwhelmed. I have a speaking engagement tomorrow morning with an audience that I don’t normally speak to. I’m hiring, I’m restructuring my team.

So as much as motivation is great, we cannot rely on motivation. We need to rely on discipline. And there’s a difference again, between discipline and hustling.

And if you are not sure if you are hustling or if you are practicing discipline, Ask yourself, how do I feel? Does it feel like I’m in that chasey energy? Because if so, I’m hustling. And if it feels like, yup, this is difficult, but I know that in the end, this is going to be helpful for me, then that is discipline.

Okay. So I have a list of different tips for you to practice discipline and to get things done without hustling. So the first tip I have for you is ask yourself, Before making a decision on something, ask yourself, what does my future self need from me? So I’m gonna give you some scenarios. I talked about kickboxing earlier.

When I went to kickboxing this morning, I did not feel like going to kickboxing, but I knew that That my future self was going to be happy that I went because the endorphins were going to kick in. I was going to get a nice workout in. I was going to sweat. It was going to set the tone for my day. So my future self was going to be happy that I Did the workout class.

My future self is also happy that I’m sitting here recording this podcast episode now than if I would have delayed it, especially knowing I have a speaking engagement tomorrow that’s taking up a lot of brain power. So let’s say that I am, I don’t know, in my cycle, right? Let’s say that I’m in my winter phase of my cycle and I have just started my period and I am feeling exhausted.

And then I ask myself, what does my future self need from me? Do I need to sit down and force myself to write emails or should I rest right now? Well, maybe in that situation, my future self actually needs me to rest so that when I’m rested the next day, I could write emails. So I always outsource my decision making to what my future self needs from me.

Obviously, if you are sick, rest, right? Or we are not looking to get into hustle mentality. But what we are saying is, Is think about your future self because the you right now is making assumptions that you’re going to have so much more time in the future. And if you struggle with procrastination, listen to my episode podcast episode on procrastination, but always ask yourself, what does my future self need for me?

Erika: The second tip that I have for you is identify what you really need to do. I think sometimes what happens is we have such a long list of things that we quote unquote need to do and it becomes overwhelming because we’re trying to get everything done that’s on that list and half the stuff isn’t even necessary.

How can you simplify your tasks and just identify what it is that you need to do? And a question that I like to ask my clients and I ask myself is what is the one thing that I can do that’s going to make everything else easier? like, for example, I’ll tell you what’s on my list of things to do for today.

And I’ll tell you what’s actually necessary and what’s not. I’m just going to tell you everything that ideally would happen, right? So, three emails is what I need to write, or that’s on my to do list. Record this podcast episode. Pick my outfit for the event tomorrow, for the speaking engagement tomorrow.

But my closet’s also a mess. That’s also something that I’d really like to get done and it’s making me feel overwhelmed. I really am in need of laundry at this point because I’ve been so busy. I haven’t gotten to that. I also would really like to go dancing because that just like sounds fun for me. need to make a decision as to if I’m going to go to Austin, Texas in person or just do a virtual call with my money coach because we have a VIP day, which I’m super excited about.

I also need to decide if I want to be in LA for three weeks or a month in October, I still need to book the Airbnb. And I also need to decide where the heck I’m going to end up moving. A lot of things, right? A lot of things on my to do list. But if I was to identify what I really need to do, Well, this podcast episode is late at this point, and this needs to be sent over to Sarah, my podcast manager.

So that’s definitely something I need to do. Obviously, my speaking engagement is tomorrow, I have to make a decision on what I’m going to wear.those are the main things, but I think that the emails can wait. Booking my Airbnb can wait.

Making a decision can wait. Because right now, this podcast episode is due, and tomorrow I have a big speaking engagement that Again, it’s to an audience that I’m not used to serving. So I’m going to prioritize those things. And after then I could work on the emails. Then I could work on the other things that I need to do.

But sometimes we just distract ourselves. Again, go listen to the podcast episode on procrastination. If you find yourself procrastinating, because what actually happens is sometimes we want to avoid, um, A negative feeling, whether that’s a feeling of overwhelm or inadequacy, or if something feels difficult or challenging, we go do something else.

So yeah, maybe it would be much easier to, for me to go right now, start browsing Airbnbs for the month I’m going to spend in LA or the three weeks I’m going to spend in LA. But that doesn’t serve what I need to do right now. That is not practicing discipline. That is practicing distraction. So identify what actually needs to get done.

And if you are really stuck on this, then I recommend looking up this little matrix that is called, I believe it’s the Eisenhower matrix and just Google it. So what it’ll have you look at is it’ll have you categorize your, your to do list in the quadrants of, is it urgent? or not urgent. Is it important or not important?

And if it’s urgent and important, that’s something you do. If it’s not urgent, but it’s important, then you schedule it. If it’s urgent, but not important, you delegate it. And if it’s not urgent and not important, you delete that. You don’t even have that on your list of things to do. Okay? You are A, an individual that is in high demand and your time is the resource that is the most valuable because guess what?

Time is the one thing that we do not get back. And how you spend that matters more than how you spend your money. So be very mindful of how it is that you are spending your time. Another tip that I have for you is if you are afraid of hustling, check in with yourself. If you are like, you know what, Erica, I tend to be a workaholic.

I’ve learned hustling from my parents and I can’t stop doing it. I want you to check in with yourself and ask yourself, does this feel Like there’s not enough to go around. Does this feel fear based or is this love based? Am I taking this action because I feel like there’s not enough to go around? Or am I taking this action because I know that my future self would be really happy that I did it?

And the way that you check in with yourself is what are, what’s the narrative? What’s the story you’re telling yourself, but also how does your physical body feel? Because if you feel closed off or like your shoulders are being pressed down or like pressure on your chest, that’s probably a really hustly feeling.

So check in with your physical body as well. The next tip I have is, y’all, if you are resting, decide that you are resting, okay? Because rest is also productive and rest, believe it or not, also requires you to practice discipline. So if you are sitting on the couch or laying in bed, But you’re over here thinking and thinking about everything that needs to get done.

Make a decision in that moment. I’m either going to get up and do what I need to do or what I’ve been telling myself I need to do, or I’m going to make the decision that right now I’m resting and that’s all I’m going to do. The only thing you have to do there is make a decision. Decide. That’s it. And the last tip that I have for you is do things that will keep you accountable.

Register for the class, partner up with somebody who has a similar goal than you and keep each other accountable. So my kickboxing class, which I talked about earlier, I register for those classes the night before. And if I don’t show up, do you know what happens? I’m charged 15 and they take away my points because I use class pass.

So once I’ve registered, I’m going because I am not in that. I mean, I feel abundant, You’re not going to charge me 15 for something that for not going to a class. Are you kidding me? Like already not going to the class is a punishment, but then to be charged for that, like, no, thank you. That could be, that could pay for my Pete’s coffee when I’m done with class or at the beginning of class.

So today I went to a nine 15 class. So I went to Pete’s before, and I actually wrote this podcast episode at the Pete’s coffee before I went to my class and after class, I felt so amazing. And the truth is that when we’re not practicing self discipline and when we aren’t enforcing discipline, that is when we stop trusting ourselves.

Discipline is connected to self trust, because when you say you’re going to do something and you do it, you know that you can trust yourself. And I think a lot of you have lost that connection with yourself, and you no longer feel like you can trust yourself, and you’ve started to now look at yourself from this identity of, Oh, I’m just, you know, not I’m just not a motivated person or I just can’t do that.

And that’s not helping you whatsoever. So no, we do not want you to go into hustle mode, but we do want you to be disciplined because the more disciplined you are, the more self trust you create. And the more self trust you create, then you’re able to create the life that you actually want. It’s a lot easier to make decisions when you trust yourself.

It’s a lot easier to listen to your intuition when you trust yourself. It’s like, imagine if you had a friend who told you that they were going to show up. Like, let’s say, let’s just keep using the workout example because that one’s easy. Let’s say that you’re like texting a friend and you’re like, Hey, let’s go to the 8am class tomorrow.

And the friend’s like, yeah. And the friend says, yeah, let’s go. So you show up at 8am and your friend just stopped showing up. Eventually you’re just going to stop texting your friend, right? But this is happening with ourselves too. We keep hitting snooze on the alarm button, and then we’re like, Oh, you know what?

Yeah, I’m just not going to show up anymore. And that is the identity that we’re creating for ourselves. And it’s not serving us. So again, we do not want you to be in hustle mode. We don’t want you to be in this fear based mentality, but we do want you. To do the things that you’re telling yourself you’re going, okay, let’s quickly recap.

Hustle is to force or move towards a specific direction. It is chasey energy. It’s coming from scarcity and at the core it is fear based. Discipline is the quality of being able to behave and work in a controlled way. Venus Williams says, discipline is freedom because when you have discipline, you get what you want.

When you don’t have discipline, that’s when anxiety comes in. So self discipline at the core is abundance. It is a love based practice, even if it’s hard in that moment to take that action. There is a false narrative that if we are disciplined, then we can’t be in our feminine energy or flowy, or we can’t be creative, that we’re not leaving enough space for creativity, but when you focus on being disciplined, there is so much more room for creativity because you’re not worried or anxious about the things that have not gotten done.

And to quickly recap my tips, the first one is ask yourself, what does my future self need from me? Whenever you’re making a decision on what to do, the next tip is identify what really needs to get done. Prioritize. The next tip is if you’re afraid of hustling, check in with the feeling that you have. Is it a fear based feeling or is it love based?

Next tip is when you’re resting, decide you are resting. And the last tip that I have for you is do things that are going to help keep you accountable. Register for the class ahead of time, join some type of buddy system and hold each other accountable. And I think the last thing that I’ll say is.

Discipline is one of the qualities that we’re really going to practice inside of magnetic mastermind. Even though this is about attracting things to you. When I think about magnetic marketing, it’s about taking the correct action and disciplined action. That’s going to bring opportunities your way. And remember magnetism and being magnetic means that you aren’t chasing, but you are attracting and we don’t attract by just sitting in our rooms, hoping, right?

We get clear on what we want, we know we’re worthy of having what we want, and then we take the action that’s going to help us get it. Remember, we have to help the universe help us. We can’t just sit there and sit in hope.

Alright everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, and I will see you all next week. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Make sure to visit the erika cruz.com. That’s Erica with a K, or you can subscribe to the show so you’ll never miss an episode. You can help this podcast grow by supporting me with an Apple Podcast rate and review.

If you took anything away from this episode, I invite you to take a screenshot and share it on social media so that your favorite badass Latinas can also check it out. Be sure to tag me at TheEricaCruz, that’s Erica with a K because you know I want to see it. If you’re ready to join the revolution and be a part of the Courage Driven Latina community, visit couragedrivenlatina.com to get more information and join the waitlist. Thanks again and I’ll see you next week.