This is the one everyone skips over, puts to the bottom of their to-do list & avoids. Do – good freelancers, creatives who double as activists, nonprofits and benefit corps, and all the for-profit industries that challenge how we function, live and connect as humans. These individuals cannot separate their personal and professional lives like some industries can, and that’s okay – but let’s admit that our current corporate structures do not cultivate healthy foundations for these people. We have to be talking emotions, how we ourselves have to be willing to be challenged and take the time to be the best we can be so we can create honest, accountable, and transparent communities.

The first years of my career taught me that our culture of work has no place for emotion, setting standards that forgot about the basis of humans, the reason we launched ideas and created jobs in the first place. Yet this same time has taught me that our lives are defined by our feelings: businesses play to them for purchases; burn out buries impact under turn over; and growth is only as attainable as the health of the leader. Still I’ve spent too much time watching owners choose stress over intention, avoid expectations for fear of failure, and watch people escape across the country to skip confrontation of quitting. Why? Because it all feels too much.

Yet there isn’t room for emotion; I get eye rolls when I encourage my clients to set expectations or I see owners place blame on their business partners while they choose burn out versus intention. We are sinking in our emotions, yet there is no place to integrate them into operations. Muscle memory is a mofo & we’ve let it control us instead of using it as a checkpoint.

So let’s talk muscle memory — What strategies do you shift to manage stress? What focus do you let fall away when you feel fear? How do you build up the ability to balance bias amidst the unknown?

I’ll call myself out here, last year, I realized it had been five years since I had taken the time to assess my own reactions, intentions and perceptions. And as a person precariously perched on patterns, I knew I needed to knock down the needs I had convinced myself I had — dismantling discomfort to make room for a person that not only learned but applied the work I have been doing, ensuring I am the person that will stand behind the why of my work.

We are all vulnerable humans, those who push themselves to the physical limits of their work through relentless hours, managing the organic chaos when taking into account individual needs and desires. This is why we work with individuals from the sex industry as much as we work with those in architecture. And that’s why we’re so excited to work with bleeding-edge companies like Osito Solutions, to 1984 Studios, to Our Wellness Community— companies comprised of teams who want to bring these communities to support the evolving structures & demands this type of work takes.

Hope you’re hungry for some hustle y’all, cause it’s going to be fucking hard. But what’s living without challenge & creating for others?