Real Hustlers Vs Wishful Thinkers- Are You Really Working Towards Your Life Purpose Or Just Faking It To Look Good

I would like to begin this post with a Whatsapp conversation I had with an old friend recently. 

As you can figure out, I blocked the person’s name and profile image because my purpose in writing this article is not to ridicule this person but to share a very common problem with our generation.

Thanks to influencers like Gary Vaynerchuck and Elon Musk, hustle has become the new sexy. 

Taking about how hard you work and how pumped up you are about your goals is part of brand building. 

While many of us do really put in the hustle, day in and day out, there are many others that just blab and brag with zero intention to succeed in life. 

Just like in High School there used to be a whole lot of peer pressure to be in a relationship in the absence of which you were a loser, the same has now become apparant in terms of life purpose.

But just like High School, many are bluffing and it is so easy to detect their bullshit. I called out on this person’s BS with just one word-

HOW?

Tell me one person in this entire planet who does NOT want money, power and fame? 

But the people who have discovered their life purpose, they will NEVER say that all they want is power and fame. When speaking about goals, they will tell you something big like ‘launching a human mission to planet Mars’ or something modest like ‘spending time with my loved ones and traveling to a certain country’.

Both are good answers. How big or how small you want your life purpose to be, that depends only upon you. No one can judge that for you and those who judge are wasting your time, so never listen to them.

Having a lot or little money, power and fame will help you fulfill that purpose of your life. For instance,

• Having fame might make you credible in the eyes of scholars who might want to join you in your Mars mission.
• Having money would free your mind from financial responsibilities and the compulsion to spend time away from home. 

No matter what, money, power and fame are NOT the end, they are only the means to an end, and this is where many people go all wrong about it.

Think of it like this. 

You are at a train station. All excited about world travel.

I say “wow, you really seem to be into world travel”.

You confidently nod and brag about your travel goals.

I ask “so, what train are you taking?”

and you go blank.

You think for a while an respond “I don’t know yet. I’m 30 years old and I’m still thinking. But I’m at the station so that’s a big thing”.

Do you now see how lame it is?

This is for all those people out there who claim to be hustling, please figure out what your hustle is about first, then talk about it.

I’m not against people who talk about their hustle, I do that, I share my journey as well as the success and failures with people in my networks. 

That’s not because I intend to brag about my work but simply because people like to be part of your journey, even when there are failures. Austin Kleon, one of my favorite authors in the world has a whole book about it titled ‘Show Your Work’ in which he encourages readers that instead of showing the world your half eaten muffin or cold coffee, share snippets about your creative endevours and side hustle.

Most importantly, making huge claims about huslte without showing your hustle or not even knowing what your hustle is about, is just making a fool of yourself.

This person, who himself started talking about his goals, later said that he knows what his action steps are, he just doesn’t want to share yet. 

This simply is code for “I don’t know what my action steps are because I was just bragging and hoping you don’t call out on me BS and now that you did, I’m just going to lie and change the conversation”.

If you don’t want to share them, please don’t start the subject, no one asked you.

Another person just last week said to me “I want to be the CEO of some company one day”. 

I loved the vision. Super excited I asked “so what are you doing to reach that position?”

The response “umm, I don’t know”.

I further asked “Do you have a degree in business? Do you have an interest in dealing with large projects? Do you know what area of business is your expertise in? Do you know what company can benefit from having you in the C suite? Do you have long enough history with the company where you would like to be one day?”

Shockingly enough, the answer to all those questions was a huge NO!

This just makes me sad. 

How can people fool themselves into believing that will achieve a certain thing WITHOUT actually working towards it???

I love the idea of being a pilot someday and flying an aircraft. But that’s not happening unless I focus a good amount of my time and energy into studying towards it and doing practical flights. That’s still a focused example.

Money, power and fame are things that can be achieved in a million different ways. Unless you know which one of those million ways is yours, please don’t try to scam others into believing how genius you are. 

You sure might be, but at least know what cities exist on the map before you brag about being a world traveller.

That’s the difference between a real hustler and a wishful thinker.