Redefining Ambition: From Hustle to Harmony | Mid Week Tease

As the year winds down, many of us are running on fumes, juggling deadlines, expectations, and the pressure to “finish strong.” But what if success didn’t have to come with exhaustion?
What if ambition could feel soft, steady, and nourishing? This week on The Mid Week Tease, Adelle explores how to redefine ambition, moving away from hustle culture and into harmony.
It’s a reflective conversation about ambition that honors wellness, rest, and purpose without guilt. In this episode, Adelle shares:
- The myth of hustle culture and how it silently shapes our self-worth
- How burnout has become an identity — and why that’s dangerous
- What ambition looks like when you center peace instead of performance
- Practical ways to build dreams that don’t drain you

As we reach the end of the year, this is your reminder that you don’t need to prove your worth through exhaustion. You can still be ambitious and rested. Driven and grounded. Focused and free.

Join the conversation:
How are you redefining ambition for yourself this season?
What does success feel like when peace becomes part of it?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the midw Teeth with me adele Jngle, where
I share some random and not too random thoughts on things.
And in this episode, let's talk about going from hustle
to harmony. And this is purely inspired by the fatigue
I am wading through right now. I am so tired.

(00:23):
I'm so tired that I'm actually finding myself forgetting chunks
of things. Like my colleague and I were having a
call earlier and I couldn't remember an entire part of
a project. Right I'm kind of having that inner conversation
with myself to remind myself that rest is allowed. Slowing

(00:44):
down doesn't mean anything is going to go into crisis mood.
You have systems, you have people you can lean on.
Because I am tired that specific kind of and yet tired,
like my body is still moving, but my spirit is
just like, please, can we just take a nap? Like

(01:05):
right now, I feel like very many of us are
experiencing this. In fact, another one of my colleagues who
heads even Steam, we were chatting about whether we should
have another wellness talk in December, and I was just like,
do we have the bandwidth? Does our community have the bandwidth?

(01:28):
You know, and she was saying, actually, you're right that
she's seen and heard very many people talking about India
fatigue and just like wading through it. But the thing
I want to focus on is this conditioning we've experienced
that has forced us to believe that exhaustion is achievement,

(01:48):
you know, And being in this mode, I've just been wondering, right,
what if ambition didn't didn't have to hut, you know,
what if it didn't mean that we sacrifice our energy
or our peace, you know, And what if we could
redefine ambition so that it moves from being this endless

(02:12):
hustle team no sleep and all of that jazz into
a rhythm that feels more like harmony and alignment. Right.
I feel like there's this unspoken rule that the more
tired you are, the more successful you must be. We
have romanticized not only the hustle culture that is super unhealthy,

(02:35):
but also struggle and when you don't sleep. Like I
remember that hashtag being so trendy, hashtag team no Sleep,
and people would use it on post where they're showing
and like putting on display with this pride how much
they're working that they're never sleeping, Well, everybody else are sleeping.

(02:56):
I'm grinding. So we call like sleepless night's grind mode.
We call burnout dedication. And it's not just like on
social media, it's literally cultural. It's how we're moving through
the world, even offline. Many of us grew up hearing

(03:16):
you must work twice as hard to make it etc.
And it was all of this survival advice that was
passed down with love, yes, but also with fear, and
so we inherited the idea that rest is laziness and
that stillness equals failure. But what I think is true

(03:38):
is that we have just confused exhaustion with excellence, right,
And I think you can be ambitious and still rest.
These are some of the things I'm telling myself now
as I'm having these little tinges of guilt creeping in
while I'm resting because I'm tired. I am tired, and

(04:03):
I'm reminding myself that you can be ambitious and still rest.
You can have goals and still you know, be very
protective over your peace. You can be driven without driving
yourself into the ground. Right. And so I keep on
going back to this question, that is, if my success

(04:23):
constantly costs me my well being? Is it still success? Now?
Let's talk about what happens when you're worth and how
you see yourself gets tied to productivity, and so you
wake up thinking of your to do list even before
like you have thanked the ancestors or your God, or

(04:46):
the powers that be or your belief system for another
day alive, You like me, start feeling guilty for taking breaks,
and even when you're resting, your mind is racing two
things that you should be doing, the email you haven't sent,
or even like comparing yourself to other people who are
not resting in the moment that you are. You know,

(05:08):
I know I'm not alone in doing that, and I
think that's not ambition. I think that's self abandonment in disguise.
I know I navigate this on and off right now.
As much as I have moments of guilt while I'm resting,
I've learned how to call myself back to order. I

(05:29):
wasn't always as good at that. And if you've been
listening to our shows, he had legally clueless long enough,
you know. End of twenty twenty three, I suffered burnout
that had me on bed rest. So I have really
whenever I get tired, been like, hey, babes, do you
wanna yanna learn? Back in that bed? You know? And

(05:53):
I remember hiring my right hand woman from my bed
and just really understanding like, hey, adele, you cannot build
this dream if you the dreamer is being killed, right.
And the thing is like your body will always whisper
before it screams, and mine whispered. It was fatigue, it

(06:14):
was headaches, it was creative blocks. It was feeling like
this thing that I was so excited to build was like, oh,
I'm not really I'm not really psyched to wake up
to do it. And then finally it's just like I
can't get out of bed. I needed my person to
come and buy groceries and stock up my house, and

(06:37):
not just any groceries, groceries with stuff that's easy to make,
so you know, pasta in a cap type things. Because
it was difficult for me to get out of bed,
and in the moments that I could, I couldn't stay
out of bed for too long, you know. And I
feel like that was such a wake up call for

(06:59):
me to redefine what ambition really meant to me. Ambition
doesn't need to be chaos. It can be calm, it
can be kind, it can be soft. And I feel
like redefining ambition for me meant asking myself what am
I chasing? And why am I chasing this thing? And

(07:22):
asking myself does this thing I'm chasing align with who
I am now and not who I was five years ago.
And those questions led to a lot of pivoting even
as a business. It led to the birth of our
new show for Manalist women, the birth of our wellness talks.

(07:43):
It led to hiring of people and delegating. You know
what I mean, Those two questions were so important. Another
thing that I think ambition can look like is creating boundaries.
Imagine like saying no. I've said no to projects, projects
that could have paid me. I realized, yes, we need

(08:08):
to keep the lights on as a business, but what's
also more important is keeping my life on and my
team's life on. So having boundaries where I can say
no is very important. So I'm building something sustainable, not
just impressive, Because to me, peace is also a form

(08:31):
of success. Joy is also achievement and ease and softness
doesn't mean lack of drive. It really just to me
means like I'm being very intentional with my drive. So
for me, ambition isn't just about how far you go,
it's like how well you feel when you get there.

(08:52):
And so when I started, I said, we're talking about
moving from hustle to harmony. So how many doesn't mean
doing less. It just means doing these things differently. It
means giving yourself permission to move at your own pace. Right,
it's designing your life where your goals and your wellness
are not in competition with each other, they can compliment

(09:14):
each other. Imagine, And these four things I want to
share with you that can allow you to start small.
The first one is to protect your mornings. Do not
check your phone, and further than that, do not check
your emails first thing when you wake up. Protect your mornings.

(09:35):
This has been so transformative for me. I'm even like
closing my eyes when I'm telling you, like, that's how
deeply I feel it, because on the days that I haven't,
I felt that burnout creep in. And I've realized everything
has its time, and the first three hours when I
wake up, from six am to nine am, those are mine.

(09:59):
They're slow, they have ease, they have softness, they have
silence and they actually fuel the rest of the day.
Another thing that really helps, and I'm learning to do it,
especially now in my season of India exhaustion. I'm becoming

(10:20):
better at this, taking one full day off each week,
no guilt. So far, the progress I've made is going offline.
But now I want to not only go offline in
terms of social media, but go offline in terms of
work and just have a hard stop and say, on
this particular day, no work, and no one's gonna die,

(10:43):
nothing's gonna go into crisis mode. Everything's gonna be okay.
Another thing I'm really adamant about is reconnecting with joy
outside of work, and for me that's my gardening and
playing off the drums. So you need to find an
activity that brings you joy outside of work, an activity

(11:06):
that you won't money tize. Don't change it into a
hussle when we're trying to make it har money here.
But it's just purely for you to enjoy. It doesn't
even need to have goals, you know, like my playing
of the drums moved from hey, I need to finish
this book. You know, the books that my teacher uses

(11:28):
to teach me and to finish this one, move to
the next one. No, it's just become me. I'm just
having fun. Men, I'm just enjoying this thing' its role
is purely to bring me joy. And the fourth thing
is celebrate your progress instead of chasing perfection. We wait

(11:48):
until we've sealed the deal to celebrate. We wait until
we've launched the thing. We wait until we've posted the thing.
Celebrate the progress. Imagine clap for yourself for showing our
and doing chapter one. Don't wait for chapter five for
you to celebrate it. Because I feel like the more
you honor the progress, the journey, your peace, the more

(12:12):
sustainable your ambition becomes. You know, I think drive doesn't
It doesn't disappear when you do that. It doesn't slow down,
It actually becomes clearer. And so the year wind's down,
I know there's pressure to finish strong, two more months
have you done this, that, and the other. But maybe
finishing strong doesn't mean doing more all right, Maybe it

(12:33):
means doing it well. So if you're tired, pause, rest
is fuel. It will make you more productive. So just pause, rest.
You've done enough and you are enough. You don't have
to lose your fire so that you can find peace
and success. No, redefine those things. You can find a

(12:54):
way to build your dreams in ways that don't burn
you out and in ways that don't leave you empty.
You know, I feel like, yes, hustle got us here,
but harmony will help us stay. I want to hear
from you. How are you redefining ambition for yourself as
the year ends? Are you resting? Are you navigating end

(13:18):
year fatigue? Please let me know. Drop a comment in
the comment section Wherever you're listening to this on and
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(13:38):
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