How to Release Hustle Culture and Create Sustainable Wellness – Episode 367

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Episode Summary:

Are you weary from constantly striving, juggling endless responsibilities, and living at a pace that leaves you burned out and exhausted? You’re not alone. In this episode of Your Hope-Filled Perspective, I’m joined by Dr. Portia Preston, a public health expert, two-time TEDx speaker, and author of Hustle, Flow, or Let It Go? Her compassionate, shame-free approach to wellness helps us release hustle culture and create sustainable wellness so we can live with greater balance, peace, and joy.

 

Quotables from the episode:

  • If you’ve ever wondered how to create sustainable wellness in a world that glorifies busyness and burnout, today’s conversation will be a breath of fresh air. Dr. Portia Preston—author, researcher, and founder of Empowered to Exhale—joins me on Your Hope-Filled Perspective to share practical wisdom from her new book, Hustle, Flow, or Let It Go? Together, we’ll explore how to overcome burnout, release hustle culture, and create a shame-free, sustainable wellness lifestyle that restores balance and peace.
  • It actually started when I was younger, growing up. I’m very aware of my environment around me. And so, even as a little girl, I was paying attention to my family. And, you know, when people were passing away, what were they dealing with? And a lot of the times, it was these preventable illnesses. And so, it came from a heart of genuinely wanting to help people. And at first, I thought that was by being a doctor. And some years later, I fell into public health. And I really realized that I could help people in a different way.
  • And I started to just think about what is it about culture and society and our environments that shapes how we experience illness, our health behaviors, our outcomes. And so, all of that curiosity that I probably started having around 19 is honestly why I am where I am today.
  • What led me to focus on wellness in the way that we’re speaking about it today was my own health journey. There was a time where I didn’t think the stress affected your health because, as far as I knew, I was a brain just walking around on sticks. I wasn’t connected to my body at all. And it wasn’t until I got diagnosed with kidney disease that I started to realize there’s another way that I’m going to have to figure out because the standard way isn’t working. If I pushed myself to exercise too hard, I would end up in a ball for days.
  • So, it was a combination of my lived experience as well as my training in public health that ultimately led me to create a research area where I focused initially on secondary traumatic stress and burnout. And then I thought, I need to study something that’s a little bit more happy. So, I thought about wellness. And the inclusive wellness is really about looking at wellness, the lens of someone’s identity and lived experience.
  • We all have personal lives that contribute to the burnout that we’re experiencing. It’s always nice when you feel like you have some community in your struggles. And I really believe it’s the lesson that this is ever evolving. I’ve always questioned the idea of burnout that is something that is in the context of work because I’m thinking, well, what about all these other parts of our lives? I’m realizing, this reflects a culture that makes it all about the individual. So, there’s something that you’re doing or not doing. We do tend to think of burnout specifically associated with our jobs or our vocations.
  • The first thing I’m realizing now is that burnout is a term that was created in the 70s in the context of helping professionals. And so, you’re talking about a certain context and time, a certain place and time.
  • And they’re observing these phenomena. And they go, hey, these three dimensions are what we are seeing. And we are going to call this burnout. But it’s 50 years later. And we are now applying that same concept to a world that is rapidly changing.
  • I’ve come across some literature that really questions, what are the foundations of this? And is it time for us to look at this in a different way? And it’s very awkward to say, yes, please crumble my research like a house of cards. I would love to start over. But I truly, genuinely am committed to helping people describe for themselves, you be the author of that.
  • What does burnout look like for you in your relationship? For some people, it’s this feeling of, “I have to make sure that everyone else is happy at all times because that is safety for me.” No one’s telling you to do that. But if you look at trauma literature, oh, it makes a lot of sense. But there’s also being in a relationship where, you know, it’s at its end. And then you’re both just really trying to hang on. And that can wear at you as well. Or perhaps someone has a health issue or a financial issue.
  • I think it’s more accurately described as a blender. And you get to tell me, what’s in your smoothie today. I don’t want to discredit that work absolutely does contribute to the phenomenon that we’re experiencing.
  • I just want us to do exactly what you said, which is invite this integration of all aspects of our lives.
  • This chronic stress is when I lose connection with myself. That’s really the best way I know. Where am I in relation to myself and the things that I value most? If I am being irritable in my relationships, something’s off. Because these are people that I love.
  • If you had asked me a decade ago about my experience with burnout, I would have pointed directly to my career. And always feeling like it was on me to provide because who else would do it? But it’s only been in recent years when I’ve found that burnout extends to all facets of my life.
  • But you have to be in a space where you allow yourself to think about taking a term off your shelf and saying, what does wellness mean for me? It is all of these things that I keep working so hard to get because I believe that if I just meet that ideal, I will be okay.
  • Or is wellness being able to meet myself right here and be with myself and meet my needs. And that’s the road that I had to travel. Interpersonally, I have found some keys that will let me know you’re starting to head down that way. And relationally, for me, it can look like not having as much compassion as I usually have. Being irritable. Or people asking me to pray, and my first thought is, “I don’t want to.” To me, that feels like one more burden somebody else is asking me to carry. And I don’t want to be that way, but I’ve learned to identify those cues that it’s time to go back and look at the whole person and see, okay, what is contributing to this so that I don’t end up in a worse situation. And it has taken its toll on my health as it has done for you.
  • I will tell you the answer for me, and I don’t think that you’re going to like it, and I don’t think your listeners are going to like it. Surrender isn’t about what you can do. You are irritable because you’re actually trying really hard. We’re not irritable for kicks. We’re not doing it for fun. We’re doing it because everything that we’re trying isn’t working, and we can’t do one more thing.
  • **We have this idea of I just need to go to God, and I just need to give it to God. And I like to think of it more so as being on the boat in the rocky waters. You’re not going to go outside and calm that boat down. You’re not going to calm the waters down. All you can do sometimes is sit there in the valley, maybe underneath the valley, and know that God is with you. And that is what I think is important for me to honor from a spiritual perspective. The times that I feel the least spiritual, I am actually deeply connected to God.
  • And if I can take my effort and my perfection out of it, there actually is nothing for me to do because God isn’t looking at this situation in the same way that I am. He might be saying, yeah, let it burn. We’re doing something here. And so true because really, God doesn’t need us to do anything for him.
  • The Mary Martha conundrum. And he would rather we sit in his presence. That takes a lot of trust though, right? But here’s what I want to offer. I want to offer to you that my brain says it too. My brain is trapped in my thoughts and it is exhausting. And if I don’t allow that to be, the resistance is just going to get 10 times harder.
  • The thing for us is that no one else can see that except for us. And so we spend a lot of time shaming ourselves for it and saying, “just push through.” And so that scripture that you gave was perfect because what is God calling us to do in that moment? Rest in his presence.
  • *Portia, how can our to-do list cause us to lose sight of who we are? I actually love the way that you asked that because I heard the answer as you said it. The to-do list narrows our perspective. It’s asking us to show up as the person who does these things. So immediately we are taken out of connection with our reality and our capacity. And we’ve been conditioned to say, well, that’s the way that it should be. So, if what I have today doesn’t measure up to that, then I’m the problem. And I’m not saying the list is bad.
  • I think that we’re called to surrender. And so maybe what we have is an idea list. And then we give it to God to let us know what actually is going to happen. I will tell you that today it has been a really tough week for me. And if you had looked at my to-do list today, the only thing it had on it was this podcast. And I’m thinking, man, I know I’ve been through it because I am the queen of having a 20-step to-do list with a 200-page appendix. But I am at that point where it’s like, if this is the thing that you can do today, that would be enough. That would be a miracle.
  • I think the to-do list, I would welcome us to treat it as neutral. It just is. If you’re great when you finish it, that means you’re bad when you don’t. And then that works through our thoughts to embed this message that your identity, your worth, your value is based on your productivity.
  • Because you live in an individualist culture, which is programmed to produce that. I’ve actually really needed community. And I’ve needed to accept, I don’t know how this is going to get done.
  • If I knew all of the details, I would probably run away. What I’m trying to say is that the to-do list doesn’t reflect the reality of what we’re actually going to need in terms of support or adjustment, and what is not going to get done. There is a saying that says that we are human beings, not human doings.
  • *It’s really important for me to maintain a very neutral tone when it comes to narratives that we’re questioning. Because it’s very easy to trigger resistance and shame when you upend people’s entire world in a podcast. I invite us to sit with is this idea that there are times where doing is really important. If the person who works for the electricity company doesn’t do, I can’t see. But it doesn’t mean that doing is your identity. And I think that’s the difference.
  • **So maybe if we can think of being as the anchor that we return to, and maybe it is the portal that carries us into the doing. We don’t do so that we can be. We’re here to be. And then we do. But not all the time. And it’s not who we are. The thing that has helped me the most is recognizing that our Lord and Savior, Jesus, had three years to complete his earthly ministry. Whatever it was that his father had for him to do. Which was great work. Greater work than anything I will ever do. He accomplished so much. And yet he never ran anywhere. We don’t ever hear Jesus say, when I can finish this list of healing and feeding and producing and preaching, then I can take my rest. In fact, we see him take time to rest.
  • You were born with worth. That it was a part of you. And it’s not something that can be taken away from you. We all have the same worth. That’s really important. Because if we can find one person who’s a little bit more worthy or less worthy, that’s what we use to neglect our own, to diminish our own worth. And it becomes about comparison. If we all are equally worthy, we are worthy of care.
  • We’ve been conditioned to put everyone else first. And we think if I dare do anything for myself, then I’m like a horrible person. Everyone in my life generally likes it when I’m taking care of myself. But it feels like rebellion.
  • What I realized as a Black woman is that I will get celebrated for the things that I achieve. I will never be celebrated for resting. The rebellion is to give to yourself what the world will not. And it’s not because people are terrible. It’s because society does a lot of the work when it comes to shaping how we see each other in the world.
  • When God has something for you to do, it waits for you. And a lot of other things burn away. The way that I’m helping myself is I have people who I know I can go to that have similar struggles. And I literally say, okay, well, you’re up at this time and you’re up at that time. And I am not going to be alone until this gets done because I don’t want to resort to shame.
  • So it’s always meeting myself where I am and understanding that sometimes it might take me a few days to get there. But the things that I know I can do that really help me: making sure that I get some sunshine or some light, allowing myself to feel my emotions rather than suppressing them, especially the sad ones that I was taught were bad to have, accepting that I don’t function the way that everybody else does. I have to be very flexible with myself and very adaptive.
  • My self-care is a lot of being willing to explore what things look like for my neurodivergent mind. Accepting that I won’t always get it right. Accepting that I won’t always accept it. I think that is the biggest part right now for me. So it’s a lot of cognitive stuff. I’m really great at some things right now.
  • **When I’m taking care of myself first? That’s going to help a lot of people. But only if I take care of myself first. What happens so often, especially when we get to that place that we’re calling burnout, is there is so much shame. And we can tend to retreat and we can tend to push other people away. We don’t want them to see our imperfection. We know comparison is a very real thing. And as much as we know that we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to others, we worry that others are comparing themselves to us and judging us for what we’re not doing or not accomplishing. When in reality, I found that people don’t really think about us nearly as much as we think they’re thinking about us. That is true. And it’s also true that sometimes a person that has such a strong opinion about you doesn’t know you at all. If I don’t even know all of me, how could you possibly know all of me? But I might feel it like the heat of a thousand suns and I might very much want you to like me.
  • So think of it as you’re in the shoe store, you’re trying on shoes. And someone says, yes, I’m going to put you in that five inch platform heel today. Now go run a marathon. That’s not going to work very well. And that’s what some of my, and I don’t want to say my, because when I say they’re just thoughts, it helps me.
  • So maybe I need to allow myself to thaw a bit and maybe I need someone to help me remember who I am. I think the answer is remembering that we are not repairmen and we do not have a manual. My audience knows that I talk about this a lot, but it’s important that we don’t believe every thought we have. Exactly. Because the thoughts are not us. We are aware of the thought. And it sounds like us because it’s narrated in our voice, but we just have incredible production inside of our heads with surround sound. It’s very convincing.
  • The first thing I want to say is this is not easy. And I share something in the book that’s called the SANE Framework. It’s four steps. I call it my sanity saver. The S, just slow down and reflect. And the things that you know that have worked for you in the past may not work for you right now, and that’s okay.
  • But think about what’s available to you, right? Just be present. The next one, Acknowledge your reality. Sometimes our brain, in wanting to survive, walks in on the worst-case scenario. But even if that happens, God is there with us, right? What is available to you right now? It doesn’t have to be everything that we think has to be done or even that people are telling us must be done.
  • The next one, Navigate with Intention. Think about your values and what matters most to you. And what are the very small first steps that you can take?
  • And then the last part, Evaluate and Adapt. Remember that you’re always going to have to adjust. And remember, that’s what the to-do list doesn’t tell us. We know the to-do list is lying to us about how much we can do or how.
  • If I can remember those steps, I can slow down, accept what’s actually real for me right now, be intentional, and then I can always adapt.
  • I hear you. I see you. And I still see you as worthy because it was never about what you were able to do that you can’t right now. And with or without the things that you need, you still are enough. What I always tell people, you are worthy, period. And when you were sharing the steps that you’re going through, the things that you’re doing to take care of your overall wellness, make sure that you’re eating, that getting the sunlight, the acknowledging the emotions, all those things that you mentioned, which are so valuable.
  • I just want to encourage the listener that when you’re starting out and you feel caught in this hustle, start by doing one of them. And as you do one, then you’ll get that motivation to then proceed with another step and incorporate another piece of wellness. The problem is when we think, “okay, I’m going to change everything and I’m going to start today.” And we take on this new and large to-do list. And that’s not the goal here. I think the first thing that I would tell them to do is to not think about doing it all. Just to realize how much we feel like we have to do. It is really okay for you to fall apart. I don’t care who you are. Right? And the first thing I did this morning was talk to somebody that I felt safe with and say, I can’t do anything. And just being there and having them accept that and let that be okay.
  • I hope that you find other people that can pour that into you. Whether it’s by listening to this podcast or connecting with a friend. Identify the things that can help thaw you when you feel frozen inside. And if you don’t know someone or can’t find someone who’s available in the moment, that’s where I’m so reassured that scripture tells us that God bends his ear towards us to listen to whatever is on our heart. Know that God is right there with you.
  • You are worthy and that can never be taken from you. I look at the sun in the sky as the reminder of our worth. Even if it is cloudy, the sun is still there. So think of everything that’s happening and everything that you feel is the clouds. It’s very real. But on the other side of that, your worth is completely intact. You are worthy, period.
  • God never designed us to go full speed all the time. And recognizing the rhythm of the seasons frees us to honor time of work and time of rest.

 

Scripture References:

  • Isaiah 30:15 (NLT) “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength.’”
  • Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NRSV) “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”

 

Recommended Resources: (If there are affiliate links in this post, meaning, if you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you)).

 

What if wellness isn’t about doing more, but about living differently? This conversation shows how to release hustle culture and create sustainable wellness. Share on X There is a difference between doing and being. This episode explores how to release hustle culture and create sustainable wellness rooted in balance and peace. Share on X

 

Social Media Links for Host and Co-Host:

Connect with Dr. Portia Preston:

Website / Instagram

For more hope, stay connected with Dr. Bengtson at:

Order Book Sacred Scars / Order book The Hem of His Garment / Order book Today is Going to be a Good Day / Order Book Breaking Anxiety’s Grip / Order Book Hope Prevails  / Order Book Hope Prevails Bible Study /  Website  /  Blog  /  Facebook / Twitter (@DrMBengtson)  /  LinkedIn  /  Instagram / Pinterest / YouTube / Podcast on Apple

 

About Dr. Portia Preston:

Dr. Portia Preston, authorDr. Portia Preston is a public health expert, two-time TEDx speaker, and founder of Empowered to Exhale. She holds degrees from Stanford, the University of Michigan, and UCLA, and currently serves as a faculty member at California State University, Fullerton. Through her groundbreaking work, Dr. Preston helps individuals and organizations create a culture of sustainable wellness and performance. Her new book, Hustle, Flow, or Let It Go?, offers a compassionate, shame-free roadmap to releasing hustle culture and embracing wellness that truly honors our unique realities.

 

 

 

 

Hosted By: Dr. Michelle Bengtson
Audio Technical Support: Ashton Bengtson

 

Are you weary from constantly striving, juggling endless responsibilities, and living at a pace that leaves you burned out and exhausted? Find a better way to live when constant striving leaves you exhausted. Learn how to release hustle culture and create sustainable wellness with simple, grace-filled shifts that restore balance and peace. Get practical insight that helps you care for your whole self.

 

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