Congratulations! You’ve found the second part of the welcome email treasure hunt series!

P.S. Make sure you’d don’t tell anyone how you got here (you can give people hints to help them if they ask, but a big part of the journey is figuring things out).

Your reward is not just this picture of us with our boys (Meowi’s clearly a bit of a tech addict, still on the computer while we’re meant to be chilling on the couch), but a bit of an unexpected yet important bonus.

Rest?

Hustle culture did very few people any favours. Perhaps the only ones who benefitted are the few who expoused its merits to build a following, whilst indulging in the peace of mind that they don’t need to take any accountability for the poor results of most of their followers.

After all, if you failed, obviously, you weren’t working hard enough.

That was a you problem.

There certainly is truth to the statement that you need to work, and work hard, to build your empire and reach your goals. It needs to be emphasised that we are most certainly not denying that.

However, it is also important to acknowledge how other factors play into people’s success. Especially luck. Elements like timing, networks, resources and the various algorithms aligning in your favour are really, when it all boils down to it, in large part luck.

The idea that you “make your own luck” really comes back to the fact that you can’t wait around for success to find you… But you can certainly take that too far if you don’t acknowledge the role luck plays, work withstanding, at all.

Another thing hustle culture conveniently forgot, was how important it was to take care of the vessel that carried you throughout the journey (your body), the engine room that kept the programs running (your mind) and the heart that kept it all pumping (your friends and family)…

Which in the end, resulted in a lot of burnt out people, weighed down by guilt, feeling like they didn’t do enough, while they simultaneously spent their body, exhausted their mind and fell out of touch with the people who mattered the most to them, all in pursuit of some ambitious goal.

Though, I suppose it was their own fault, if only they’d worked harder…

That was a them problem.

After all, what was rest, other than unproductive, wasted time?

The people who would hustle and grind would build their fortunes, dreams and reputations! While the people who wouldn’t, would simply miss out and it would all be their own, stupid fault, wouldn’t it?

Rest!

Nowadays it seems many people have woken up to the fact that rest is important and that without your health, you really don’t have anything at all. The final academic results of the hustle culture movement came in the mail and they were a resounding Fail. The failure was so notable that many in the next generation, generation z, now actively mock millennials for ever buying into it and see it as a very funny joke.

But unfortunately, all is not well that ends well.

While some still hold onto hustle culture, drowning themselves in self-blame and guilt as they trade in their health for just another hour burning the midnight oil…

A new, more prevalent, but potentially even more sinister villain has come to prey on our ability to disconnect and rest.

And what is that you ask?

What is-

I bet you almost clicked away from this page to go check a social media account, your Discord alerts or your phone.

In fact, I bet you did!

It’s the endless dopamine excess that we’re all drowning in, the alerts, notifications, posts, messages zooming past, videos that we’ve missed, or TikToks we haven’t posted but need to post if we want to take advantage of the latest trend.

It’s the paragraphs that we’ve had to re-read three times because our brains turn into fuzzy cotton candy midway through and we completely lose our train of thought.

It’s the frustration, irritation and straight-up inability we have to just sit in nothingness, content with, just for a moment, not having something to fidget with, not having something to look at, not having something to respond to or be outraged by.

Even when seemingly resting, so many are doing it behind a selfie cam for an online post to follow the latest #SlowLiving trend or something similar. Or else, many are torturing themselves through the screams of their mind begging for the horrific waiting period to end, rather than indulging in true, delicious, rest and rejuvenation.

What went wrong?

It seems so very simple, why can’t we just sit?

Rest.

Experts in meditation have known for a long time that stillness of the mind is not something that comes to most naturally, it requires practice. Most people live with hurricanes and whirlwinds spinning their thoughts from sunrise until sunset, and never truly experience stillness.

Nowadays, those internal wind speeds have been turned right up.

There’s more information to process, more messages to read, more expectations from society and everyone is no longer just a person, but also a brand, a creator and an authority in their own right. It’s all quite a lot really!

But the process is the same.

To turn those wind speeds down,

Until they’ve slowed to a still,

And you can really,

Truly,

Rest…

Requires practice.

In this post there’s a link to a YouTube video with relaxing, entirely uninteresting waves, that you can practice sitting in nothingness to. There are many such videos you can find, this just happens to be one that we really liked, but you can certainly find others.

Even though the visuals are intentionally repetitive and uninteresting, if you find them distracting, you can always close your eyes and just listen.

There’s also a link to a website called “sit.”, which can help you set a timer to sit in nothingness. This is a good choice for you if you’re concerned about “oversitting” and missing out on important deadlines.

If you haven’t tried it, perhaps because it feels like a silly thing to do, hippie woo-woo or possibly just a giant waste of time… We urge you to try.

Try set a timer for 2 minutes, just 2 minutes.

That’s not too long is it?

See how many times your mind wanders off and you have to silence the thoughts and bring your mind back to stillness.

Perhaps there’s value in sitting in nothingness and training that muscle more often after all?