# The Problem With Hustle Culture | Real Talk ft. Dr. Tesneem Alkiek

**Author:** Dr. Tesneem Alkiek
**Series:** Real Talk Series
**Published:** 2025-12-18
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/CniJdUr4pcU
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/real-talk-series/the-problem-with-hustle-culture-real-talk-ft-dr-tesneem-alkiek
**Topics:** Allah, Faith, Family & Community, Marriage

## Description
Is hustle culture toxic? Like so much else, it’s a confusing mix of good and bad. Ambition, hard work, and high aspirations are noble, but they need to be kept in perspective. When our goals for the dunya start to outweigh our efforts for the akhirah, or when we push ourselves so hard we burn out,...

## Chapters
- 0:00 Introduction to Hustle Culture
- 1:09 The Pressure of Productivity
- 2:29 The Elusive American Dream
- 4:35 Finding Purpose Beyond Success
- 7:45 The Impact of Faith and Reflection
- 14:00 Reevaluating Legacy and Impact
- 26:33 Conclusion and Call to Action

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Assume how many full-time side hustles do you have?

**[0:17]** On the weekdays or the weekends? I'm not the one to be talking about hustle culture. I'm not any better, but I think that's exactly why we need to talk about it.

**[0:40]** When did life become a never-ending line? And why do they call that exhaustion success? And it's incredible, right? We're living in such a hyper-capitalist, hyper-consumerist world.

**[0:57]** Every ounce of human energy is monetized. Every minute of your day needs to be doing something productive. And that productivity isn't sitting down and having time for yourself. I think about the pressure, the expectation.

**[1:12]** You're making coffee, you gotta have your podcast playing, right? You're going to school, you gotta be doing something, you gotta be in a meeting. There's always something you're expected to be doing at every minute of the day. Otherwise what? You're like, what are you doing? What are you doing with your life? So this is my dream morning routine. My dream morning routine is that I'm up at 4:30 AM.

**[1:29]** By 5 AM, I would have already done my meditations for the day. I would have read my salah. And then I would be doing my first workout class for the day. But because in my ideal world, you need to work out twice in a day. Oh wow, of course.

**[1:45]** Are you serious? So in the morning, after I'm done, I will then go into a cold plunge because that's good for you. Sounds awful. My morning routine would then include sitting in a sauna for 15 minutes.

**[2:00]** Okay, not too bad. And then straight away after that, I will get my morning coffee. But I'll be listening to a podcast. And that's what, now you're at 6 AM or something? I'm at 6:30 AM. 6:30 AM, got it.

**[2:16]** Because I open my laptop and I'm ready for work at 10 minutes to 7. And on the dot at 7, I start my day. That's my perfect world. I don't know if I'm ever going to get there. But there's this pressure that you gotta do more, climb faster, climb higher, as if there's

**[2:34]** a pinnacle at the end of it. As if one day you're going to reach the top. Like you're going to fulfill what we call the American Dream, right? And there's no end in sight. That's the problem. It's like you're going to reach a moment where you think there's not. I haven't reached it.

**[2:50]** I haven't heard of anyone reaching it. And this is the thing. I feel like I've done everything I would have wanted to do. In the sense that high school comes around, I really push myself. I get the scores I want, get into the college I want, get the scholarship I want, get into

**[3:07]** college, get into the, you know, take the classes I want to take, get into the grad program I dreamed of, finish my dream grad program, publish an article, get some grant funding. Like, I've done everything I wanted to do. And I kept waiting.

**[3:23]** After every single one of those points, to be like, okay, now I'm going to feel it. Like, you think like, finally, I finished my doctorate degree, like, I'd feel like I did it. But I don't. And I still haven't. Right? And I think that's important. Because like, to me, I mean, I just keep waiting.

**[3:39]** Like, when am I going to feel good and feel like I actually am accomplished? And it really took like a couple years after I graduated to think like, wait, there's no moment that's coming because that's not the purpose of all of this. And you don't get satisfaction from it. And I was like that with material things.

**[3:54]** I thought like, when I buy this, when I get the better phone, when I get the better laptop, whatever it was, I'll be happier or more accomplished. And it just never ever gave me that feeling. Yeah, no. And you know, what's funny, I get that same sense with traveling. Once upon a time, I enjoyed traveling.

**[4:10]** Like, I still do, alhamdulillah, but when I travel, I don't get that like, finally, I get to go to this new place. Finally, I get to be here. I feel like that emptiness is just, it doesn't satisfy me. Going to new places, discovering new restaurants, whatever the case is like, and that's what

**[4:27]** we're told. Like, no, no, no. Once you travel, and you travel first class, or you have this whole experience, then you're gonna finally be happy. And it's like, still not working there. So how then do you stay focused in this type of intense culture? So you know what I think always keeps me grounded?

**[4:42]** Because I'm like, searching, searching, like, where's that moment? Where's that feeling? And this is what's kept me grounded, I think, for the past 10, 20, 10 plus years. Right before high school, my uncle passed away. And you know, there's something about death that forever changes your perspective on life.

**[5:04]** And I just, I'll never forget the day that I got the news. Like, I mean, you know, my mom shared the news. And I was young, right? I was, what, 12 at the time? And I remember just thinking, I just saw my uncle a couple days ago, and hugged and talked and did what we do.

**[5:20]** And I couldn't help, like, I'll never forget that moment as a 12 year old, where I was just like, looking at my hands and like, flipping them back and forth. Like, am I real? Like, is this life even real? Like, my uncle's hands are now six feet under the ground. What does all of this mean?

**[5:35]** And I think about how, of course, that was no doubt a life changing moment for me. But I think about how the Prophet (ﷺ), on so many occasions, like he would always remind his companions, frequently remember the destroyer of pleasures, which is death, right?

**[5:55]** Frequently remember, because when you remember death, when you remember like, there's a point to it. You're not going to find that satisfaction in this world. Like it just totally changes how you're going to approach the world in the first place. But what if remembering death makes you unmotivated and say, well, I don't need to even wake up

**[6:14]** this morning because what's the point? We're going to die anyways. Right? That's a good point, because I'm notorious. I always tell people, don't worry, you're going to die anyways. I decided it's a bad strategy, probably shouldn't do that. But it's again, it's the idea, intrinsic motivation is good.

**[6:29]** Pushing yourself is good. We're told to hold ourselves to a high account, a high standard. Right? But I think the problem, and death is important because the culture that we're living in today, it's not just like, okay, you know, push yourself for the sake of pushing yourself.

**[6:46]** It's like this endless pursuit. There's no end in sight. Like at what point am I supposed to be happy? Because I've gone through what everyone would, people on the outside, wow, mashallah, you're so successful. You're so accomplished. Why don't I feel that way? I don't feel that way. Right?

**[7:02]** And the thing is that it's like unguided. It's like, next, the only thing that's pushing us is money. Like, okay, the next, the next job. The next promotion. And prestige. Yeah. And I think a lot of this stuff, but again, like, it doesn't give you what you're looking

**[7:17]** for. So I think the problem is, like, death is not crippling. It's not supposed to be crippling where you think about it, like, what's the point of doing anything? But it's supposed to keep you grounded so that when you're going through these, when you're going through life, when things don't go your way or you don't feel that level of satisfaction

**[7:33]** you're looking for, it's a reminder that, you know what, there's something deeper here and there's something so much more incredibly meaningful that I have, you know, after this life. It really changes your perspective. I remember when I first, the first time I left home, I moved out for college, very near

**[7:50]** my parents' house, but I would stay there during the weekdays. And one weekend I had to stay because I had like a really, a few exams back to back and I just needed to study. And so it was the first time I stayed on the weekend and there was no one around. Like I didn't have my roommate with me. I didn't have, you know, anyone to hang out with.

**[8:08]** I can't explain to you that feeling because it was the first time I'm sitting in a room, I'm not with my family. My whole life I'm with my family, right? Your home, you're with your parents, you're with your siblings, whoever you live with, right? There's always noise. There's always something to do. There's always things to see, whatever.

**[8:24]** I'm sitting in my apartment and it was so quiet. And it was like this moment of like deep discomfort. I felt so uncomfortable. And I remember feeling anxious, like, like I, I don't know what to do with myself because

**[8:42]** like I was then at that point I was just like, I had nothing to do but think. And it was a terrible feeling. It's daunting. It's daunting. And I was so alone and like so small and so like, what in the world am I doing here? Why? What am I doing with my life?

**[8:58]** That moment I had to sort of push through that anxiety, that stress that came with being with my thoughts for the first time in probably a lifetime, right? Like just no, for hours and days in fact on end where I'm just with my thoughts. And I thought to myself, those, that first day was so difficult.

**[9:14]** And over time you become comfortable with it, right? And for me, if you recognize like, I don't get what I'm doing here. And it was like that reminder of like, what am I doing? It turned in from like, what am I doing in this, this room by myself to what am I doing in the world? What am I doing? What, what is my life's purpose?

**[9:30]** Like why am I, why do I exist? Did you get any answers? I got answers, alhamdulillah, right? Because I had that understanding of like what Islam is and what I'm like, what my relationship with Allah should look like. I might not be there yet, but I thought to myself like, okay, I can get past this because

**[9:46]** again, there's like all of this pressure to just keep going, keep going and keep going. And there's, there's going to be times in your life where things pause entirely. Like it's a moment. It's just like everything just comes to like a screeching halt and you're like, wait, I'm so used to always being on the go.

**[10:02]** I never really thought about it. And now I'm like, what am I doing here? And it's that moment of quiet that gives you that clarity. And I think most of us don't pause to reflect. It's difficult to find those moments. You know, when you talk about pressures or hustle culture, I think about this image we

**[10:20]** all have about what life should look like. I have it for me. I have this like house in my mind, these cars and these countries that I'm visited and like the food that I'm eating. And there's like this picture perfect image of what my life should be.

**[10:36]** Do you think that's part of the problem? Absolutely. Like, I think about my circles, right? All of us have this intense pressure and aspiration. You finish your degree, you get married, you have your three, four kids, you live in suburbia

**[10:52]** with the white picket fence, your kids are playing in the yard. Like, that's all there. Of course, you're married, right? And until you're married, until you have a degree, until you get your dream job or you don't have a job, like one of the cases, it's like you don't feel that success.

**[11:08]** And you don't get to enjoy life until you reach this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, if you're not married, like, what are you doing? If you don't have kids, like, what's wrong with you, right? That's the pressure that we have. And it's devastating because then someone who can't get married, someone who can't have kids, it suddenly becomes like a reflection of their value to society, right?

**[11:26]** So, anything that goes wrong becomes like a personal thing. It becomes like, I'm doing something bad. There's something wrong with me. My life is terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if something gets in the way of this image that either you've created for yourself or society has created for you, makes you resentful.

**[11:43]** And that's exactly like what I went through. I never had baby fever, like, right? And everyone's like, no, you get married, you have kids. Like, that's that perfect ending, right? And like this idea of like having kids, I was just, I love what I do. I love like just studying, right?

**[12:00]** Writing, reading. And kids are a lot of work, right? I had a kid and it almost felt like I was suddenly, like every moment that I had to spend with my child, I was like resentful because I'm like, I want to be with my books. Like the image of success for me is no, no, no.

**[12:17]** I got to study more, climb more, write more. And so now I have something in the way of my success. And for the first several months, I was very resentful and like bitter and tired and exhausted. And then I had to ask myself, like, okay, so like imagine in a situation where you can't

**[12:36]** get married or you can't have kids, like, you know, similar concepts right here. I had to ask myself, like, do I want to worship God in the way I want to, which is reading books and writing papers? Or do I want to worship Him in a way that He finds befitting for me?

**[12:52]** Maybe that's kids. Maybe that's a family. Maybe that's something that I didn't envision for myself. And when I made that shift, right, I'm laughing because I like everyone around me saw my like experience with my first child. When I made that shift, it really made a big difference because suddenly I started thinking

**[13:12]** like, okay, sure, kids, like instead of thinking of kids are taking away from my time, it's like, no, kids are an opportunity to come closer to God. This is what God has for me written in my life. And it's not my being exactly what I envisioned or I want, but this is a means that He wants me to get closer to Him.

**[13:27]** And I'm going to think of my children as ibadah. I'm going to think of my experiences as something that like having this contentment with the qadr of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And that's not easy when you have all of those social pressures, but it does help to have that reframing and knowing that God wants the best for you and your situation is the

**[13:45]** best for you. And when things are going exactly how you planned, it's easy to be content with your life. But the moment there's something that sort of goes wrong, then you're not even focused on that one thing that's not the way you wanted it. Your whole life is bad. Suddenly your entire life is terrible and awful.

**[14:02]** But let's talk a little bit about getting stuck in the cycle. How do I not get stuck in this vicious loop? It really requires self accountability. It requires you asking and thinking deeply, reflecting like, why am I doing what I'm doing?

**[14:19]** Why is it that I'm so upset about my current situation? Why is it that I'm unhappy about my current situation? And that's exactly the type of reflection I had to do to really get out of that. I really reframe and think to myself, no, no, no, this is not about me, right?

**[14:38]** This is whether it's a test from Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, with a good test or a difficult test. And that reframing has ripple effects in your life. I think of the hadith of the Prophet (ﷺ), he says, man kanat al-akhirah al-hamm Whoever makes the next life their whole goal, their hamm,

**[14:56]** always thinking about it, they're always preparing for it, they're always focused on it. ja'al Allahu ghinahu fi qalbihi Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will put richness in your heart. You'll have that satisfaction that you're craving. wa jama'a lahu shamlahu

**[15:11]** That he all, all of the things that you have to do in life, just all start coming together. Things that were once hard are suddenly bearable and simplified. wa atat-hu al-dunya wa hiya raghimah And this world will come to you whether it likes it or not.

**[15:28]** The world will bend at its knees for you when the world is not your priority. And there's always that one person who doesn't care about anything but gets all the nice things. Right? It's like that one family member, that one community member is like, what do you even do? And they're living like kings and queens, right?

**[15:44]** And it really is true because when you realize how irrelevant this world is, like everything just, and you make the akhirah your priority, your goal, like even things that are difficult become bearable.

**[16:00]** Even like, we're not saying like, stop over-exaggerating. What you're going through isn't like that big of a deal, right? No, it's hard, right? It's difficult. But it makes it again bearable when you know that this isn't it. This is not it.

**[16:16]** And the Prophet (ﷺ) continues. He says that the person who makes this dunya, man kanat al-dunya, whoever makes this dunya, their goal, that basically your affairs will be scattered. And Allah (ﷻ) will make sort of like the poverty, stamp poverty in between your eyes.

**[16:36]** Meaning like, no matter what you get, like you never feel satisfied. And I feel like that expression really just captures what happens when we don't have the akhirah in sight. It's an endless chase. It's an endless chase and no matter what you have in front of you,

**[16:52]** no matter what, like where you are in the world, all of the khayr, all of the goodness Allah (ﷻ) has placed for you, you can't see it because there's poverty stamped between your eyes. It's the thinking that if I don't do this hustle, then I'm going to starve. And I'm going to be poor and I'm going to just like die out of starvation because, you know, I have to work and I have to grind and that's it.

**[17:12]** Yeah, and maybe it's not even just about money. Maybe it's just about like the prestige, whatever it is it's about. No matter what, like you can see some of the most successful people. Think about how celebrities like are battling depression. Like you've got everything, shouldn't you be happy? And of course, the answer is no, because happiness doesn't come from wealth

**[17:30]** or doesn't come from your experiences or even your social prestige. And so I think it's just like this time and again, it's this reorientation. man 'amila al-salihat There's an ayah in the Qur'an. Whoever does good. min dhakarin aw untha Man, woman, right? Emphasizing, it doesn't matter who you are, what woman, when you believe in God,

**[17:48]** you have this vision for yourself. You know what you're doing here. fa-la-nuhyiyannahu hayatan tayyibah We will enliven you. It's like a double usage in the Arabic. We will enliven you with a good life, right? You'll get a good life. Like this is the promise of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

**[18:05]** You do good. You believe. You have that vision for yourself. That's what gives you a good life. That's what gives you satisfaction. It's not everything that we're trying to pursue. And that's not to say like quit it, like forget the prestige, forget the education, forget the money.

**[18:21]** Like, no, obviously not, right? But that can't be your end goal. And that's what we've made it into. So I think this is again, always reminding yourself because you're gonna get stuck in the cycle time and again. And then you need that moment to really stop, pause, reflect and ground yourself once again.

**[18:38]** Let's talk about the study that was done at the Yaqeen Institute between religiosity and mental health. Tell me more about it. It's an incredible study, right? We ran this a couple of years ago during the COVID era. And essentially we were trying to see, is there a correlation between people who are religious

**[18:58]** and their mental health? Like what did that tell us about their mental health? And we found that anyone who identified as more religious in terms of their practice and their commitment, their belief in God and all of this stuff, statistically had higher mental health.

**[19:14]** Like they reported less anxiety, less depression, happier levels, all of this stuff, right? And it's incredible because what it is, what it demonstrates is that religion and having this faith positions you in a place,

**[19:29]** a stronger place to have higher mental health. Why? Number one, it gives you purpose. You know what you're doing in this world. It answers your existential questions like, why am I here? What am I doing? What happens after death? And number three, it allows us to tolerate an uncertainty.

**[19:47]** And this is all really important because essentially it's again, going back to this idea that when you know why you are here, what you're doing in this world, and answering like what happens next, that makes you a stronger person mentally, right?

**[20:04]** That gives you the strength to sort of weather the tide. And specifically, I think tolerate uncertainty is important because it's like, this speaks to that pressure.

**[20:19]** Like you're in your life, you're not married yet. You don't have kids yet, or you're in a position that you don't want to be and you didn't get into your grad school program. You didn't get that dream job. Whatever it is, that test that you have in life, when you're in those moments, you feel like, are things ever going to change?

**[20:36]** Am I ever going to get that job? Am I ever going to have a child? Am I, right? And really having that faith in Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, in what Allah has decreed for you, knowing that whatever He's decreed for you is the best for you, it allows you to not make things easier.

**[20:56]** It allows you to weather the storm. And I think about when I lost my parents. I lost my mother and then three years later, I lost my father. And I said this to my friend, and I was like, I don't know how people who don't believe in tawakkul and qadr of Allah

**[21:12]** will ever get through this. Because the thing that kept me sane was that this was the plan of God. It happened. It was terrible and devastating, but it did not throw me off in a way that I couldn't find my grounding again. And I thought about like, what would life be

**[21:28]** if you didn't have that qadr in your mind? You can't make sense of anything in the world. You can't make sense of evil. You can't make sense of genocide, right? Everything just feels overwhelmingly devastating. And I think like that level of like awareness

**[21:44]** needs to be happening in our own lives too. Like you can't make sense of why you haven't been able to get married or anything like that if you don't have that centering, that grounding. And faith offers that. And it's incredible, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, like the way He describes the person He grants faith,

**[21:59]** afaman sharaha Allahu sadrahu li-l-Islam like He uses this correlation between inshirah, like this opening, this like, in Islam. What's like this opening? It's like, I think of that feeling when it's, I'm going out for, you know, a breath of fresh air.

**[22:15]** And you're like taking that deep breath, like, oh, like, what an incredible feeling. Like it's that opening, that like relaxation, that contentment, that fresh air that you get from your belief. And on the flip side,

**[22:30]** wa man a'rada 'an dhikri fa-inna lahu ma'ishatan danka those who turn away from My remembrance, they have this life, danka here, scholars say it's like this constriction. It's like this feeling of like, I can't breathe, right? It's like, and that's the sense that a lot of us,

**[22:47]** even as believers have, but perhaps it's because again, maybe for just a moment, we lost sight of what we were doing here. And then you get that inshirah, you get that opening of like, it all makes sense. I can take another deep breath. I can push past this. You know Tasneem, I think society is now catching up with that

**[23:03]** and realizing that hustle culture is making everyone miserable and we need to rethink it. Yeah, I know there's this new book that came out, right? By an author that I enjoy reading, Slow Productivity, right? And now it's like this acknowledgement, look at how guys, we've been doing it all wrong.

**[23:19]** Like, it's not about how much you do and how fast you do it, but it's about doing a few things that matter and doing them right. And it's like, to me, it's the pendulum swinging right back, right? Hopefully it's landing in the center this time, but it's exactly that. It's never about how much you do.

**[23:36]** It's about how, like what you do. And I'll add something here, why you do it, right? And I think that's the point, right? Why you do it, it always has to come back to God. Does that help culture inundate us with so much about discovering your purpose,

**[23:52]** finding you, I've read so many books in the last 12 months, name a book I've read it, but what can we do as Muslims, but differently? It requires finding a purpose. All this stuff is legitimate, right? But it boils down to what that purpose is, right?

**[24:08]** I think it requires the deep reflection that can only happen when you've quieted your mind. What do you do when you get to a stoplight? Stop? Besides stopping, you do something else? I immediately grab my phone. You immediately grab your phone, right?

**[24:24]** You're walking around, everything we do, it's like we're constantly distracted. Arthur Brooks, who also has plenty, I think, self-help books now, but I think he makes an interesting point, right? He argues that we, it's not a new idea here, but we're hardly ever bored.

**[24:41]** What ends up happening is that your brain does not switch to what he calls, what is called the default mode network, meaning you never give your brain time to actually think and pause and be bored. And what that does is you get to a point

**[24:58]** where you start thinking like, what am I doing here? Because you don't get to that type of questioning. You don't get- You can't tell me to be more bored. Like, I don't think that's possible. We don't even think it's possible anymore. That's how distracted we are. Like, I actually gave it a shot. I gave it a shot the past couple of months because I felt this summer,

**[25:14]** you know, this past summer, that I just was way too much on my phone. For some reason, I just, you know- And you don't even have social media. I don't even have social media, whatever it is. Like, I just still felt like I was checking my phone too much. And I realized, like, I was stuck back in this pattern where if I was bored for a few minutes,

**[25:30]** I'd just go grab my phone. I put it away. I would just hide it in another room, put it on airplane mode. And I cannot explain to you, in the first two weeks, the first week alone, I was like, I feel so much better. Like, I could think clearer. I could think better.

**[25:45]** I could focus more. And it really requires that level. Like, we have to force ourselves to go sometimes. And it's not just your phone, right? But just allow yourself to be alone. Allow yourself to really connect with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

**[26:00]** Allow yourself that moment of conversation of like, I don't know, ya Allah. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why I'm doing this. I don't know why I'm experiencing this. Like, ya Allah, like, give me clarity. I make this du'a all the time. What am I doing? What's going on with my life?

**[26:16]** Please, ya Allah, grant me like that clarity. And it really is, are those moments of like, reflection of quiet, of solitude, that you're able to even get to that sense of like, deeper connection and accountability and self-realization, really.

**[26:33]** You know, the thing that keeps me busy is this idea of, I need to leave a legacy. I need to make impact. And, you know, what is it like, what is this gonna mean when I'm gone? And I think about that a lot. And that's what keeps me super busy.

**[26:49]** And that's why I'm on my emails and on a call, you know, in another meeting. And should we be thinking about that? So it's interesting because I think the way that we like, think of legacy, right? Like, what are we gonna leave behind? We wanna leave an impact. You want, because you wanna transform more people's lives

**[27:06]** and even for the best of intentions, right? And I think to myself, like, in the process of wanting to do good in the world, we've discounted the little that goes a long way. I think of the woman, female companion of the Prophet (ﷺ). She was known for cleaning the masjid,

**[27:22]** always would go pick up, clean up after the masjid. One day she passes away and they bury her without informing the Prophet (ﷺ). Next day, the Prophet (ﷺ) shows up to the masjid and he asks about her, like, right away. And they said, oh, like, we didn't wanna bother you. We went ahead and buried her. And the Prophet (ﷺ)

**[27:38]** was visibly angry, like, take me to her grave now. Like, I'm going to make du'a for her. Think about that woman. And I think about how someone like her, who's doing something that is literally, what we would think is negligible, like, okay, so what did you do in your life, right? That woman would go to paradise

**[27:54]** for something so simple, right? I think about how often we want to sort of have, like, a certain, like, type of influence within our communities. Think about, like, what about, like, that person who stayed behind to take care of her parents, or that person who's just at home,

**[28:10]** just at home raising kids. Like, these are contributions are so magnificent in the sight of God, right? That I'm not saying don't shoot for the stars, right? I definitely do. But don't discount the little,

**[28:25]** because it could be that one simple thing you did. Maybe it was that one time you cleaned the masjid. And that's, that was, you know, the legacy you leave. Like, people appreciated you for that. So, so a lot of this is really just being able to reconnect with why you're doing what you're doing.

**[28:42]** And know that it's not about what people, the expectations people set for you, or even the expectations you set for yourself. It's what God wants of you, and how much effort and time you put into pleasing God. It's the little things that matter then. And they matter the most. How do you navigate hustle culture?

**[28:58]** And what do you do to find your pause? Let us know in the comments.

## Other Episodes in "Real Talk Series"
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- [When You Feel Conflicted About a Hadith | Real Talk ft. Dr. Tesneem Alkiek](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/real-talk-series/when-you-feel-conflicted-about-a-hadith-real-talk-ft-dr-tesneem-alkiek.md)
- [Tips for When You're Struggling With Your Faith | Real Talk ft. Dr. Tesneem Alkiek](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/real-talk-series/tips-for-when-youre-struggling-with-your-faith-real-talk-ft-dr-tesneem-alkiek.md)
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- [Why is Marriage So Complicated? | SERIES PREMIERE | Real Talk ft. Dr. Tesneem Alkiek](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/real-talk-series/why-is-marriage-so-complicated-series-premiere-real-talk-ft-dr-tesneem-alkiek.md)
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- [Trailer | Real Talk with Dr. Tesneem Alkiek and Qaanitah Hunter](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/real-talk-series/trailer-real-talk-with-dr-tesneem-alkiek-and-qaanitah-hunter.md)