Gentle Money: Choosing Abundance Without the Hustle

Yesterday, I was watching a video on YouTube about monetizing social media and it triggered overwhelm. The video suggested constant posting several times per day with the goal of gaining thousands of followers per day to be financially successful. It sounded exhausting – so exhausting that I didn’t finish watching the video. 

I spend most of my time on Facebook. I watch several content creators recycling the same posts that they’ve copied and pasted from each other, creating the same reels with hopes of being monetized. Similarly, I’ve noticed some of these same creators complaining about being demonetized or not making much money to begin with. As much as I’ve loved the thought of being paid just for being me and posting on the internet, I began to wonder what was wrong with me. I want financial freedom, but this feels performative, exhausting, and fake. I found myself asking, Is something wrong with me? Why doesn’t this grind mentality resonate? Does it mean that I’m lazy or don’t want to achieve? 

Our culture is designed around the trap of constant hustle. From the moment we start kindergarten, there are tests, grades, homework, and state testing. The best of the best is paraded in front of classmates and parents at the end of each school year and heaven forbid if you don’t measure up. And even when you get all the awards and all the scholarships, adulthood comes, and you realize that the awards mean nothing once the moment has passed. You’ve got to keep grinding. You’ve got to keep working hard and being at the top of the list. I went from being the scholarship kid with enough honor roll awards to wallpaper my bedroom to being an adult with a corporate job – being told monthly that although I am a top performer, it’s not enough. There’s always more to be done and more to strive to. I found myself in a state of constant, never-ending burnout. As soon as I had a moment to recover, it would be time to jump back out there and push and push so that it could be seen that I was worthy and doing a good job. 

I’ve realized that this sense of overachieving has transferred to my art – the things I was born to do, that I loved to do, and that were my source of therapy and expression. I started drawing as a tool to express myself through childhood trauma. The more I began to share my art with the world, the more I started to feel that my art wasn’t worthy because I didn’t have an MFA and didn’t paint like the old masters. I attended art school and learned about gridding, but trying to be a photorealistic artist didn’t feel good to me. I didn’t feel like I was being expressive. I felt like I was performing. It wasn’t me. 

I started music at nine and writing at ten because I loved the emotion in song lyrics. Writing helped me express what I couldn't say out loud. Sharing my poetry at a company event showcased my talent and showed my words could heal others, but it also led to exploitation. People wanted me to perform for "exposure" without payment, and I ended up writing about others' thoughts and values for free. 

Before I knew it, I had become just as burned out by doing the things I loved as I did from doing the “reality” things that I didn’t like. It became about consistency, numbers, platforms, and urgency. The experts will tell you that you need to work hard at your 9 to 5 and then go home and work just as hard on your passions from 5 to 9. How exhausting.

As I’ve been doing all of this, my body and spirit were signaling, “no” through anxiety, fatigue, resistance, and emotional disconnection. I’d have to force myself to do the simplest of tasks, feeling as if my brain were shutting down and not wanting to perform. I developed artist block, writer's block, and probably a bunch of other types of block. It wasn’t until my body and mind would force me to rest that I started to feel better. 

But I can’t rest and be successful, right? I have to get up and grind and keep going! 

Through my healing journey, I began learning more about inner alignment and how intelligent my body is. I began to realize that any success that costs my peace is not true success. I’m learning to trust my own timing, pace, and intuition.

I remember being that teenage girl who was told that I needed to focus on a “real” job. I remember spending years wishing that I could just fit in and want to be an accountant or a mortgage broker or a lawyer. Even something as seemingly glamorous as being a content creator felt ick to me, and I wondered what was wrong with me? But then I started to wonder, what if I’m not broken? What if the system is? What if there was another way that didn’t exhaust me just thinking about it? 

That’s when I started learning about gentle money. I love learning about money and learning from people who have created abundant lives for themselves that they enjoy. I discovered that truly abundant people focus on overall wealth, including time wealth. They love what they do every day so much that they would do it for free. It’s possible to invite money into my life being authentically me, not forcing myself into some elaborate formula based on hustle culture. Gentle money means that money can align with joy and not burnout. Gentle money means income rooted in creativity, care, intuition, trust, and genuine service. When I took a deep breath and truly looked at my life, I realized that I have always attracted money to me in this way and it has felt good to me. Even when people were telling me that I couldn’t make money as a creative, I was doing so the entire time. 

Lately, I’ve become more intentional. I’ve reconnected with my voice and authenticity through blogging, writing, spirituality and art – allowing the things that feel good to me to be the vessel. 

The path forward is listening inward and trusting the whispers coming from inside of me. It’s about understanding that slow growth is okay, and it’s also okay to reject what’s fake. The path forward is knowing that there is a space for success that feels good to me.

So, if you are a Gentle One, I want you to know that it’s okay if you feel like a misfit in hustle culture. You’re not alone, you’re not lazy, and you’re not broken. You are in the process of building something real – something that honors your nervous system, your art, and your humanity.