Rewriting the narrative of success
Unlearning hard work and finding self-love
Follow me back 15 years in time. The time is 5:55 am. I am standing on the pool deck taking deep breaths and looking down on the light blue water. I swing my arms and get ready to jump in. My teammates are standing next to me ready to start another two-hour swim practice.
Every morning in high school and college, I woke up to work hard. Our morning practices started at 6 am and lasted two hours. After morning practice, we went to class and returned to the pool for another workout in the afternoon.
We practiced 5 hours every day (except Sundays). We were dedicated and motivated. We wanted to swim faster, get stronger, and reach the next level of our swim careers. Our coaches expected a lot from us. But we expected more from ourselves.
“If you stop getting better, you stop being good at all.” This was a motto my coaches instilled in me. This was a motto I instilled in myself.
“If you stop getting better, you stop being good at all.” They were heavy words that drove me to push a little harder. Do a little more. The mentality left me with many medals. But it also left me with many scars.
In my second year of college, I hit a turning point. I’d been swimming with tear-filled goggles for a while, and I knew that something was very wrong with my shoulder. When I finally went to the doctor, they confirmed my worst fears, and told me that I had two choices: have surgery or quit.
To me, though, this wasn’t a choice. Quitting wasn’t an option. I was determined to keep going. To keep pushing. So I had my first shoulder surgery. Afterward, my motivation to return to the sport I loved was stronger than the excruciating pain. I started rehabbing and rebuilding. I kept pushing to get back in the water. But the pain didn’t stop. It just moved. Before I knew it, my other shoulder needed surgery, too.
After three years and six surgeries, I reluctantly had to accept my new reality: my body had been through too much, and there was no coming back. I left college and my swimming career in pain and defeat, but also determined to become successful at something else.
New area, same mentality.
As I entered the workplace after my swimming career, I felt like there was a new opportunity for me to pour my heart and soul into something meaningful. I loved design, and I wanted to build a career there. I took my hard-working mentality from the pool to the office. I remember reading articles about how swimmers make the best employees because we “always finish the job, know time management, and always work really hard.” I focused on learning all the skills. I worked long hours and found ways to climb the career ladder.
In swimming, 1/100 of a second is the difference between first and second place. There is always a next level. Always something to improve. But interestingly enough, I’ve found that it’s not that different in the world of corporate success, either. We may not be chasing seconds and medals, but we’re still chasing titles and recognition. We still compare ourselves to our peers, and believe the algorithms that tell us that if we “stop posting, we stop being relevant (or good at all).”
As a designer, I’ve pushed myself to keep creating even when I knew that my brain and eyes needed rest after endless hours in front of the screen. I’ve tried to keep up with the pace of the marketing and design world. I’ve pushed myself in order to prove my worth. Along the way, the love I felt for designing started to fade. Creativity started to lose its magic. And everything started to feel like a task to be completed, rather than an experience to be enjoyed.
Unlearning hard work and finding self-love
Swimming and my design career have both taught me a lot: how to set goals, how to be disciplined, and how to work as a team. But what neither of them ever taught me was how to take care of myself.
Success did not teach me to listen to my body.
It did not teach me to stop when it hurt.
And it didn’t teach me to love myself, despite my performance.
Up until now, my sense of worthiness and identity have been rooted in external conditions rather than internal care. When I succeeded, I told myself I was a good and worthy person. When I failed — when I didn’t finish first or when my body broke down — my internal story was the opposite. External conditions defined me.
It’s a common mindset in a culture focused on achievement and growth at all costs. I recently read this article by Alec Stubbsis, a philosopher and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), and his reflection on how performance-focused culture leads to burnout struck a very resonant chord.
“The problem is, as achievement-subjects, not only do we burn ourselves out, but the meaning and value of our lives is always deferred. Once we have our dream job, the perfect home, a perfectly optimized life — once we are productive enough, efficient enough, successful enough — only then will we arrive at meaning.”
This observation captured everything I’ve been feeling. When our sense of self is connected to what we “do” instead of who we are, happiness is always somewhere else.
From fear to flourishing
If you stop getting better…then what are you?
I often look back at swimming and my design career and wonder if there was a gentler, kinder way to achieve progress. A way that would have brought me more (or maybe a different kind of) success, less pain, and more JOY.
Could I have used love instead of fear as a motivator? Could I have been more forgiving to myself and my body? Could I have been flourishing emotionally while also growing my skills? Is it too late to repair the damage, or can I still figure out how to make things right?
I don’t know the answers to any of these for sure, but I’m going to try to find out by diving into something new. After a life of pushing myself too hard in the pool and at work, I’ve decided to intentionally focus on resting and rebuilding. I am giving myself space to just be, dream, to wonder, and to explore the power of creativity through abundance, not depletion. I want this new “non-job” to look something like this:
Tasks will include:
- Unlearning old patterns of hard work.
- Being of service to communities, not companies.
- Creating just for the sake of creating.
- Working on projects that nurture me and help the world.
- Connecting and collaborating with people who give me energy.
- Dreaming and imagining a better future — for myself and for others.
- Taking days off when my body tells me to.
- Listening to my intuition.
- Letting go of logic and leaning into magic.
- Just. Being.
This requires:
- More breaks. Fewer tasks.
- More sunlight. Less blue light.
- More time working with my hands. Less time spent in my head.
How I’ll measure “success:”
- Feeling rested instead of depleted
- Discovering new things that energize me
- Connecting with inspiring people
- Visiting places that nurture my curiosity
Waking up to live more fully
Rest is a privilege that many cannot afford in a world that centers profits over people. But rest should not be a privilege. Trisha Hersey tells us that “resting is human right” in her book Rest is Resistance: A manifesto. Her book and her Rest Cards served as a guiding light as I try to let go of a lifetime of prioritizing determination and grit and make space for joy and flourishing.
I’m going to find out what it feels like to be present for what’s happening now. To listen to my heart and my body instead of my social conditioning. And I hope that, in the future, instead of waking up to work hard, I can wake up to live more fully.
