Hustle … and stillness.

The first day of school this past August was a shock to our system. We were still jetlagged after returning to Singapore from the US, we were running late and the bus arrived early. Our goodbye was rushed, we missed the classic first-day-of-school picture and my son arrived at school harried, stressed and already feeling behind. This wasn’t a great way to start his senior year. Then Louis pushed the re-set button. The second morning he was organized and efficient, but the bus arrived early for the second time and my instinct was to again dash around like a crazy woman, yell at him to get out the door and toss his shoes through the bus door after him. Louis calmly sat on the couch, leaned over to put on his shoes, carefully tied each one and stood to properly strap on his backpack. “Umm, can you hurry?” I asked, as the panic rose and the bus driver stared at me through the open door. Louis was having none of it. “I’ve decided this year I am not going to let myself get worked up about things like this. The bus is early; I’m on time. The bus can wait. I want to have a peaceful day and it begins now.”

He was right. He was protecting his insides from the outside world. He has a very heavy academic load, volunteers for various clubs and often has to skip lunch or eat on the go. When his last class finishes, he races to drama practice, arrives home just before seven o’clock in time for the seventeen-minute family dinner, and then spends three hours on homework and studying. Somehow, even with his packed 16-hour days, he mostly has figured out how to block stress out.

This isn’t an advice column, but here’s some advice: if you want to be a valuable asset to your company, your family and your friends, work hard, but rest easy. This is the closest thing to a magic bullet the millennials will find to their constant queries about “adulting,” and it’s the winning combination employers, volunteer organizers, children and spouses will love about you. They will know they can count on you to work hard – really, really hard – but not be a stress case infecting those around with your own tension and strain.

But how do we do it? What does it look like to mix hard work with peace of mind? Louis’s mature approach made me look at my own life and examine whether I was showing up with this combination in my work, family and friendships, and how I might do a better job. What follows is some of what I’ve figured out.

Start with loving what we do. Louis loves multi-variable equations, the rules of traditional Spanish poetry and the family-like environment of a drama cast. His love for learning and engagement helps get him through his long days. I love being with women, creating warm atmospheres, assessing needs and finding solutions. If we hate what we face each day, we are dead in the water. If we want to have a high work ethic and give service with a smile, we need to fall in love with what we are doing or find something else to do.

Next up: Employ Hustle. Here’s how I describe my hustle:

Hustle is … saying yes to lots of opportunities, with confidence that later I’ll be able to figure out how to make it all happen. Anyway, much of what we plan to do never occurs. I can’t tell you how many people schedule phone calls, lunch dates, cabi shows, girls’ outings, workouts and travel with me – and then cancel or postpone. I say yes to all of them and then implement the ones that stick.

Hustle is … pre-planning. Most of the magic does not happen in execution – what people see in public – me “handling” it. That’s the easy part. The hard part usually happened long ago, as I sat in my pajamas laboring over my laptop: planning, confirming, thinking through additional options, securing details, confirming again, shifting and re-directing, until finally a well-thought-out plan is ready for me to execute.

Hustle is … chasing opportunity, instead of deciding for someone or for a situation all the ways she or it will fail. When I bump into non-hustle in another person – call it naysaying or fixed-mindset – I am taken aback; a closed mind literally shocks my system. I am wired to find solutions, and hearing a non-hustler say, “No … and here are all the reasons that will not work,” makes me crazy. Umm, let’s use our time together to figure out how this possibly could work or what else would work to get us to our goal. Of course, part of planning and strategizing is naming and considering possibilities for failure – but we’ll accomplish nothing if we call those possibilities “truth.”

Hustle is … the opposite of lazy. Clearly my body and my mind need regular times of rest and recovery. But I guard against being drawn into a sluggish, short-cut focused, lethargic life. Honestly, I have to push against slothfulness and hold myself to a high level of achievement, because I am a really accomplished relaxer. (Netflix binge, anyone?) But in the ongoing battle between my nature and my achievement intentions, I root for hustle.

Hustle is … playing the long game. Those who promote instant gratification are selling us a lie. Right now, I’ve got at least seven complicated plans in action – friendship plans, business plans, personal growth plans, health plans, family plans – and none of them will come to fruition this year. But I am working those plans like a fiend. When challenges arise on the path, as they always do, I do not give up on the plan. Instead, I regroup. When I’ve played the long game well and done the pre-planning work with care, the end result is so very sweet.

While hustle is an important skill to develop and even demand from ourselves, it’s only half the battle. Next, the trick to working hard and making it look easy is knowing how to keep all the hustle on the outside while protecting the inside stillness.

Protect the Still.

Mindfulness plays a big role in keeping my insides still. Sometimes, I narrate inside my head what is happening around me. Now I am presenting the collection. I am smiling at the woman who just entered the house. I am approaching the woman with the red top over her arm. I am loading up the car. I am driving to my next show. I am anticipating the friends I will see. I am searching for a parking space. This helps my racing mind relax and stop jumping to the next agenda item or strategizing too far ahead. Considering only what is in front of me helps the long days end well. I might sound a little crazy, talking myself through a stop sign, ordering an iced tea or walking to my car, but this is one way that works for me to maintain my stillness.

Including some margin helps, too. Accepting that things will shift also helps keep me calm. Recently, I was getting ready to leave for a show, with the racks and stacks of clothes already loaded to the ceiling of the rental car, when I discovered the car had a dead battery. With 45 minutes until show time and AAA ignoring calls, my margin was slim, but it was there. After phoning a friend who dropped everything but couldn’t get his hybrid car to jump my minivan, I watched oncoming traffic for a minute and then walked out and signaled to the first person with his window down. It was a visiting French businessman, talking on his phone. “Do you have five minutes to jump me?” I said. (Thankfully, he didn’t seem to understand the vernacular usage of that phrase.) Without a word, he pulled over and we got the cables hooked up. Bless the French. I made it to the show with five minutes to spare. (I was wearing some animal skin print trousers at the time. We now call them the “jump-me” pants.)

Don the apron. A friend told me that when her son took a job at Starbucks, he was handed his green apron and trained to consider the apron his shield. Throughout his day, as customers would complain or vent their stress on him, he’d let his apron serve as his shield against their harsh words and criticism. This picture was so powerful that I adopted it as my own, and now consider my work clothes my shield. A few years ago, I was training a new stylist at a show and we were in a hectic room filled with high-needs women. They were calling out questions, complaining about elements of their bodies or the clothes and creating heaps of discarded items around the room we couldn’t quite keep up with. I was sublimely floating in the mix. The gal looked at me and said, “Why is none of this sticking on you? I am having trouble breathing deeply!” I was wearing my shield. It all just bounced off of me.

My identity must be grounded. When I enter a crowded show, a social scene, an extended family gathering, or a tense professional or personal conversation, I need to know who and what I am. Before anything else, I’m firmly planted in my identity as a child of God. I usually don’t need to do more than briefly remind myself of that as my stress level rises. When insecurity, the need to please, fear of what others think of me, or that old stand-by message, you are not good enough for this, raise their ugly heads (and they come, Sisters, they still come at me), I whisper, “I am God’s child and I am loved just as I am.” That’s my re-set button.

Recently, I was on a busy sales trip, horribly jetlagged and feeling stretched a little thin. Things kept going wrong, like dead car batteries, a little fender-bender, more nights without sleep than I usually have to endure with jetlag, plus a misunderstanding with a friend, and I felt off my game. I was so foggy-headed I wasn’t sure I was giving my clients the attention and care I want to offer, and thought maybe I was coming up short of my own standards. But after a long day, I opened up this email from a generous and gracious friend:

Joy,

You are a super star. You must really love your job because you show up with a huge sincere smile, don’t eat all day, never complain (even when your car dies), work standing up for 5 hours straight, try and find wifi at local merchant for an hour before you head off to the next show – seriously, everyone should have your energy.

Turns out, despite my self-doubt, I was nailing it.

To all the students tired in the endless cycle of quiz-test-exam, to the millennials trying to distinguish yourselves from your peers, to the stay-at-home moms considering a return to the workforce, to the young parents trudging through long days with needy toddlers, to the disillusioned professionals hitting walls of frustration, to the married couples entering their sixth month of marriage counseling, to the recovering alcoholics who have made it one year and still find it hard to go without a drink, to the artists waiting to be discovered, to the pastors looking for sermon inspiration and the volunteers feeling weary in well-doing: Keep Still and Hustle On, my friends. I am rooting for you.

Do you want to receive posts like this in your inbox occasionally?  Subscribe! All the cool people are doing it!