Driver vs Passenger Princess

The world is hell bent on keeping you driving. Keep pushing things forward, keep grinding, keep hustling.

Rise and grind.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

No rest for the weary.

Dream big, hustle harder.

While you’re sleeping, someone else is working.

But the mind does not work this way. If you just grind endlessly, eventually you’ll grind your soul to dust.

There doesn’t need to be a finish line, some point where everything you’ve worked toward has been achieved and you can live in perfect harmony like some hipster-Buddha. But there does need to be an ability to embrace imperfection, to say: that's good enough. I worked hard for this, so I can relax and enjoy it for a bit.

Otherwise there is only the incessant, endless grind…and that’s no way to live.

I am personally a very ambitious person at baseline. Entrepreneurship, home ownership, world travel, community building, tearing it up on the volleyball court at 36 years old…these things don’t just happen. I’ve had to bust my ass to get here, and it’s been very rewarding in it’s own right.

But it’s also been fucking exhausting, and it can be very difficult to find the off switch at times. Quite literally, it has felt like I no longer know how to rest.

But lately I’ve been allowing myself here and there to enjoy the role of the ‘passenger princess’…and by extension, to give myself permission to rest.

This might seem childishly simple to some, but I’ve had enough conversations with close friends to know that I’m not alone in this feeling. I also know that this prescription can be easy on paper, but difficult to execute for high achiever types.

I wish I could give more concrete advice here, but all I can say that I’ve done is to let go of the reigns and go with the flow a bit more:

• Let someone else plan/cook the meal.
• Attend an event planned by someone else.
• Find the people who are generous to you with their time/resources; those are the ones you should be generous to in turn.

I’ve settled into a tenuous peace as of late with this approach. I think it’s likely that myself and many others are suffering from some amount of adrenal fatigue.

It feels like I’ve been red-lining my brain on productivity(and caffeine) for longer than I can remember. Winding down after this decade long sprint has proven to be quite difficult: the brain is always looking for new things to accomplish, new problems to solve, new checklists to clear.

I’m very much still in the early stages of this shift, but taking even a small step back has done wonders for my ability to see my own situation with some amount of clarity. I’ll follow up in a month or so and see if there are any new insights.

Till then,

Brandon