Hustle and Flow: Finding Inspiration and Keeping Motivated

One of the downsides to going to conferences is they pump me up with ideas and motivation, but without the self-drive to follow through my best intentions to Do Stuff tend to fall flat. 

I've realised somewhere along the line, I've lost my hustle. Yes, I go through brief periods of inspiration and productive work, creating content and seeking new knowledge. Then good old Lazy Sarah rolls back in and starts questioning the point, preferring to Netflix And Chill. I get thinking perhaps average isn't so bad. That mediocrity has itsmerits. 

Every successful person, every high-flying entrepreneur, every salesman of the year or employee of the month tends to have the same ethic: they're always working hard. They set goals and hustle to get to them. They're insatiably ambitious and they have a drive to achieve that frankly I'm jealous of. 

When I take a frank look at myself, I begin to wonder if I ever actually had any hustle. Life up until entering the workforce was pretty easy, I achieved academic success without much effort but after entering the Real World I quickly learned that unless you're a trust fund kid, not much gets handed to you. 

I have read some commentary lately that some people feel like sites such as Problogger "dupe" folk into believing they can get rich by blogging. I wonder if these armchair experts have ever actually read any articles or attended a blogging event, because all I've learned over the past few years is that success in the blogosphere comes only from a lot of hard work. You have to put in the time to earn the dime, if you will. 

I'm determined to find my hustle. If I never had it after all, perhaps I just need to develop it. Work on saying inspired as motivated - goodness knows there are plenty of bloggers and high achievers to look up to and learn from. 

How do you keep yourself on track with your goals? Do you ever feel like everything is just too much hard work?

Winning

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I re-learned something about myself yesterday. It was something I hadn't thought about since university, because that's how long it has been since I actually got graded on something.

I LOVE ACHIEVING.  I especially love being a HIGH ACHIEVER. There. I said it.

In school, I always got great marks. I tried to play it down a lot because being smart wasn't (and possibly still isn't) cool. But I was always secretly happy about it. In uni, I got grumpy at the subjects where I couldn't pull good grades - and learnt that if I wasn't genuinely interested in something, I would ignore it in favour of absorbing more about my other subjects.

I have just been through my second month-end in accounts receivable and when the results came out, I had jumped from placing dead-last in my team to 2nd! Incredibly, I achieved a score of 92% - which is really very good considering nobody wants to pay their bills at the moment.

I won't bore you with the ins and outs of what I do all day at the office or what that figure represents, but suffice to say, that 92% made me smile all day long. I got congratulations from my collegues and even a back-pat from the big boss. Sickening, isn't it?

Today the brilliance of achievement has faded somewhat, and I'm reminding myself that nobody likes a boaster. But if I have learned one thing about my self-esteem in the past few years, it's that I need to let myself recognise that I am pretty great - and enjoy the moment when I do good/great/amazing things.

Have you achieved anything lately? What has made you feel brilliant?