In the current hustle culture, it is easy to get swept up in trying to prove how hard you’ve worked by suffering and sacrifice.

As if it’s wrong to create from more ease.

This idea of sacrificing one thing to get another is very ingrained into society and you may feel wrong or bad not living that way when you see many friends and family pushing, proving, and struggling. 

Perhaps you have the very common fear of not wanting to stand out.

You may think if you're happier and have more ease people will notice and resent you for it.

Perhaps people were envious, spiteful, or jealous in the past.

If so, those experiences likely caused you to expect more of the same.

You likely started to shrink and hide as a protective mechanism. Or you became overly defensive knowing that people were going to have an attitude towards you at some point so you better toughen up!

But, keep in mind those things happened to an old version of you.

You don't have to keep thinking and...

A few years ago I was spending time with a friend, and he mentioned he was becoming aware of some things as he was getting older.

He feels like everything becomes harder and more is expected of him; things just aren’t fun anymore.

I explained that he’s just very aware of the general way of how things go for most people and what they expect, but that he can choose to do things differently.

As we went about our day, I noticed that he would often smile and say hi to many people, so much so that I thought he knew most of them. Many of them smiled back, but most acted like they didn’t see him.

Towards the end of the night his face lit up, and he said hi to this lady, and she just walked on.

I asked him if he knew her, he said, nope I know very few of the people I say, "hello" too. I just told myself when I was little that I was going to smile. I see so many miserable looking people, and I don’t want to be like that!

What he said was so beautiful and...