Sara Sweat, MA – Founder, Monarch
I used to believe that hard work could fix anything. I’m from the Midwest. A hard work ethic is basically hard wired into us from birth.
I grew up hearing things like “all you need is a little elbow grease”, “put some muscle into it”, and “suck it up, Sweat”. My father, a lover of the land and a farmer at heart, said “there is a manure hauling job in everything we do.” What he meant – besides to literally muck the stalls and haul the manure from our barn – was that everything worth doing has something in it that’s hard. If you can do the hard thing, without complaint, you can do anything.
I have found this to be consistently true in life – especially early on. Want to get in to a good school? You’re going to have to study hard. Want that promotion at work? You’ll have to put in hours others don’t. Everything good in life comes at a cost. Being willing to pay it is very often the difference between success and failure.
And, I was willing to pay – even when it cost me more than I had.
When Functioning Becomes Your Default
Working beyond my capacity was something I learned how to do early.
When the unwelcome visitor of addiction made it’s way into my family, I was only fourteen years old. My mother, overcome with grief at the traumatic loss of my father, found a small measure of comfort in gallon sized jugs of Smirnoff vodka.
Within a year of my father’s passing, I could predict my mother’s night like a meteorologist tracking a storm.
With the first couple of drinks, she’d relax. Jovial, silly – less steady on her feet & looser with her lips – but manageable. By drink three, the anger would start to surface. I learned to retreat from her path to avoid a siege of sharp criticisms and cruel remarks. But, drink four? Drink four was the turning point.
From that point on, she’d be inconsolable. Weeping, shouting, begging for answers. I learned what to say to calm her down, what to do to comfort her fears, to bear the brunt and at least try to protect my little brother.
Every night – for years – we’d run this secret gauntlet in our home. And, then wake up the next morning & pretend like nothing was unusual at all.
Trying to control the chaos on nights like those was like trying to stop an ocean wave. Blocking the water with my body didn’t keep the waves from coming. But, if it allowed everyone to stay on their feet, it felt like right the thing to do. So, I functioned – because no one else could.
But, the cost was even higher than I understood. Riding the waves taught me how to do hard things so well, I forgot how to do anything else.
Surviving Your Life
Stories like mine are not uncommon among high achievers. Our ability to navigate the chaos around us has many practical applications.
I mean, if you can talk your parent of a ledge every night – you can certainly survive an 80-hour work week. You can juggle impossible demands. You can achieve under the kind of pressure that would break most people.
And, when you learn early on that your value comes from how much you can handle, how well you can perform, and how little support you need to achieve — you build a life on those assumptions. You become excellent at doing hard things.
And, I did. I closed record breaking deals, racked up dozens of awards, led teams, and built performance cultures that made achievement easy. All the while, laboring under the delusion that my hard won skills and ability to push harder, achieve more, and keep going —would eventually lead me to the life I truly wanted.
You know the life. That mythical existence where we can finally exhale. Where everything comes easily and we can just…be. Where fun and enjoyment and excitement fill even our hardest days. We all want that life. We long for it.
But, like a pressure cooker on the kitchen counter, trauma survivors keep turning up the heat – trying to force the life of our dreams into existence. We think we have to earn our right to the release value – waiting for something outside of us to give way – so we can finally let out all that steam and release.
The only problem – is that’s not how life works. Your survival skills are an asset. They are extraordinary at keeping you alive. But they’re a disaster at helping you live.
You can’t hustle your way to happy.
The Achiever’s Dilemma
As high-performing trauma survivors, we’re conditioned to believe that:
- Rest is earned, not needed
- Stress is just a signal that we’re doing it right
- If we’re not breaking, we’re not working hard enough
- Our worth is measured by our output
- Taking a break is the same as giving up
So, we run on adrenaline, achievement, and a desperate need to prevent the chaos from catching up. But, like the faithful leadership book by the same title says “what got you here, won’t get you there.”
Survival holds no roadmap for where you want to go. You can’t achieve your way into ease. And, the hard things you’ve mastered thus far – don’t lead to the soft life you’re ready to live.
The true pace of success is different from everything you’ve already known. It requires you to go beyond what kept you safe and functioning and into an entirely separate set of skills.
Like the monarch butterfly after which my company is named, you can keep hustling on the ground – living out the routines of the caterpillar you used to be. You can work until you burn yourself out and let achievement cost you everything you have. You can keep doing hard things for the rest of your life.
Or you can learn to use your wings – and fly.
What Flying Actually Requires
Our wings are created by the hard things we survived – the events that transformed us into the achievers we became. They are beautiful battle scars, evidence of our resilience, and not a guarantee.
Not every caterpillar survives the transformation. Some, don’t even start. But, you’ve already done the hard part – so what comes next is easier than you think.
You’ve just got to do it differently.
- You can’t cling to who you were — The lessons of survival saved you. They’re how you earned you your wings. But, survival can’t teach you how to fly. It’s time to gather the lessons of your life, claim your new identity, and chart a course for who you will become.
- You can’t do it alone — Nothing great was ever accomplished in isolation. Surviving hard things, breaking cycles, achieving with excellence – these are often lonely pursuits. So, we learn how to find your community and build the support that helps you do more, together, than you’ve ever done – alone.
- You can’t make it hard — The path to sustainable success is an easy one. During their famed migration, monarchs don’t hustle their way across the continent. They’d never make it all the way. They ride the thermals. They learn to float. They understand that the journey requires endurance, yes—but also ease.
You’ve already seen what you can accomplish in survival mode. Imagine how much more you could do if you actually lived.
What Comes After Hustle
Here’s what I’ve learned working with hundreds of top performers over the course of my career. Making the shift from hustle to happy doesn’t reduce what you can achieve. It actually increases your impact.
But the greatest gift of this transformation isn’t about what you can do. It’s that it expands your capacity to receive.
All those things you once fought so hard to earn, start to land right in your lap.
The success you always wanted moves closer and the journey to it doesn’t stress you out along the way.
You begin enjoying your feelings instead of managing them. Supporting your success instead of striving for it. And, finally exhaling that deep breath instead of bracing to hold it as long as you can.
Because the big dreams you’ve been seeking aren’t about lowering your standards—but about raising the quality of your life.
You don’t have to keep earning your right to exist. You’ve already done the hard part, Monarch. Now, it’s time to actually enjoy the flight.
If you’d like to design your own flight plan – Monarch is here to help. Subscribe here for free and let’s do this together.
