Self-Trust is The Antidote to Hustle | Virtual Assistant for Photographers

In my years running a business, one of the biggest shifts I experienced was realizing that Self Trust is the Antidote to Hustle.

Let me explain.

Rewind a couple years. I was trying hard to get my business kickstarted, and I had just had a baby, AND it was during covid. (Rough times lol) All I knew how to do was: HUSTLE. I became a business owner in the era of hustle. All the conferences, all the education brands, all the free webinars!!! 🤪 - they taught hustle.

Work harder. Work faster. Sacrifice everything to make your business work (if you truly wanted it bad enough you would do it!) If anyone is feeling triggered right now, I’m sorry :P

So there I was, wanting to make my new Virtual Assistant for Photographers business successful, and I was SPINNING MY WHEELS. The burnout was strong. I remember sitting in the backyard, letting my young toddler run around with the sprinkler in the Summer, staring into the sky….how do I do this? How do I fix this? How do I balance motherhood and entrepreneurship? Why does this feel so fucking SHITTY?

Because if there’s one thing I know, its HUSTLE does not play nice with parenting. I knew I could hypothetically have the LIFE I wanted, while also running my business. But I couldn’t figure out how to do it without hustling my ass off. And I wasn’t willing to sacrifice quality family time to get there. Becoming a mother had offered me such clarity on what was important to me.

So I hired a coach. Someone I found on TikTok who talked about doing things the easy way in business. After having my ears ring for years listening to Hustle Culture, it was like a breath of fucking fresh air. I hired her, and dove into unlearning the things that were pushing me into the ground.

And through that step of outsourcing what I was struggling with, I came to realize…

self-trust is the antidote to hustle.

It’s hard to feel like you’re being productive when you aren’t slamming down your to-do list. A packed schedule. Never a dull moment. THAT feels like success. But then what?

Seriously…then what?

You miss out on your life. You wake up in several years feeling like crap. You show up to your business exhausted, confused, and not. having. a. good. time.

Success is making good $$ doing a job you love, while letting that job FACILITATE your life outside of work. And that, my friends, is accomplished through SELF FREAKING TRUST.

When you trust yourself to build up your clients, make good marketing decisions, outsource the most helpful things, and make your business successful…you operate differently. There is peace. There is confidence that comes from that trust.

You can take days off. You can relax as you climb to the top. It effects the energy you bring to the table. Frazzled, stressed, overwhelmed, and constantly feeling like a failure does NOT exactly attract high-level clients.

Elevated, calm, confident CEO vibes will attract people who are ready to trust you.

AND it will give you your life back. Self care is the cornerstone of surviving the stresses of running your own business. And I can promise you that you will put self-care to the side, if you are operating in hustle mode.

Here are some practical steps you can use to retrain your brain with self-trust:

• mantras: I know it feels silly but write down 1-2 mantras that remind you to trust yourself, and put them on a sticky note somewhere on your desk. Just do this for a couple weeks to cue your brain. you’ll start remembering on your own after that.

• surround yourself with people who trust themselves: you can tell when someone is confident and relaxed around their business. spend time talking with those business friends. and don’t dive into the self-doubt spiral.

• fake it ‘til you make it: don’t feel like you can trust yourself when making business decisions, just ask yourself what you would do if you DID operate fully out of self-trust. you’ll be surprised how much you already know internally. your gut instinct is a great asset.

So yeah, the antidote to hustle is self-trust. And it’s not something you gotta be perfect at all the time. We allllll have self-doubt, that’s the cost of admission for being an entrepreneur. But it’s how you deal with that self-doubt that will make all the difference in your longevity in business.

Keep on trusting yourself, you know what to do ❤️

-Jess