If Hustle Culture Worked, You Wouldn’t Be This Tired with Monick Halm and Moneeka Sawyer
There’s a quiet exhaustion running through our culture right now.
You can hear it in conversations between friends. You can feel it in the constant stream of productivity advice flooding our feeds. Women everywhere are doing exactly what we were told would lead to success.
Work harder.
Push further.
Stay resilient.
Keep going.
And yet so many feel depleted.
Not just physically tired, but emotionally and spiritually exhausted.
That’s why my recent conversation on Carrie On! with Monick Halm and Moneeka Sawyer felt so refreshing.
Because they’re challenging one of the biggest lies we’ve been sold: that joy is something we earn after the work is done. According to them, we’ve been thinking about happiness backwards.
Joy isn’t the reward.
Joy is the strategy.
The Lie of Hustle Culture
For decades, success has been framed around effort, sacrifice, and relentless productivity.
You grind first.
You achieve first.
You prove yourself first.
Then maybe, just maybe, you get to enjoy your life. But the problem is that the finish line keeps moving. There’s always another milestone to hit, another responsibility to carry, another goal waiting on the horizon. And somewhere along the way, joy becomes something postponed indefinitely.
What Monick and Moneeka argue is simple but powerful:
Joy isn’t what happens after success.
It’s one of the things that creates success.
The “Fun Deficit”
One idea that stuck with me during our conversation was what they called a fun deficit.
Adults have forgotten how to play. Children instinctively know how to create joy. They laugh easily, explore freely, and turn almost anything into a game. But as we grow up, we’re taught to become serious.
School gets serious.
Work gets serious.
Adulthood gets serious.
Fun becomes something reserved for vacations or weekends, and sometimes even then it comes with guilt.
Shouldn’t I be doing something more productive?
When real joy disappears, we often replace it with numbing. Scrolling endlessly, binge-watching show and overworking or overconsuming.
Anything that distracts us from exhaustion instead of restoring our energy.
Practicing Joy
One of the most interesting ideas Monick and Moneeka shared is something they call “blissiplines.”
Blissiplines are habits that intentionally cultivate joy. Just like discipline builds productivity, blissiplines build happiness. They’re small, repeatable practices that help you reconnect with what makes you feel alive — laughter, connection, movement, creativity, play.
And the key is consistency. Joy isn’t something you stumble into once everything is perfect. It’s something you practice. Over time, those small moments compound into something much bigger: a life that actually feels good to live.
Moneeka and Monick
Bliss Is Your Birthright
One of my favorite moments in the conversation was a simple reminder:
We are born joyful. Watch a baby or a toddler discovering the world. Bliss isn’t something they have to earn, it’s their natural state. But as we grow up, social expectations slowly pull us away from that instinct. We’re told to be quieter. More serious. More productive. And little by little, we forget how to access the joy that was always there. But if it’s something we were born with, that means it’s also something we can reclaim.
A One-Minute Experiment
Toward the end of the episode, I asked what someone could do immediately to bring more joy into their life.
Their answer was beautifully simple.
Ask yourself:
What’s one thing I could do in the next minute that would feel fun?
👇 Watch the episode here
🎧 Or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Learn more about the Fun & Bliss movement:👉 https://funandbliss.com
Monick Halm👉 https://www.monickhalm.com
