Transforming Your Social Work Side Hustle Mentality

This past week the Side Hustle Book Club finished our first book entitled You are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero. The book encouraged us to take an introspective look at ourselves and the subconscious influences that drive our thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Clinical social workers who teach cognitive behavioral strategies will recognize this as the behavior cycle.

The book provided strategies we could use to begin transforming our mentality related to building a sustainable, successful and satisfying side hustle. Sustainability refers to the ability to maintain work over an extended period. The side hustle social worker receives the necessary resources to carry out the work in abundance.

Customers, clients learn that the side hustle is reliable, and they support it by purchasing products or services.
Success is self-defined. Each side hustle social worker determines how success looks and feels to them. Does it mean making lots of money? Does it mean reaching many people? Could it mean having a positive impact on the lives of others? Perhaps it means changing perspectives. However, success is defined, it is important to imagine it in detail. This includes the feeling, sense, and experience.

Satisfaction refers to the sense of fulfillment experienced because of the work. Satisfaction may be based on the amount and type of challenge the work poses to the side hustle social worker. Being appropriately challenged increases the motivation to accomplish tasks. Lack of challenge promotes boredom, disinterest and monotony. Boredom is a major reason many individuals dislike their jobs.

According to Jen Sincero, our subconscious thoughts must align with our actions to prevent conflicts within ourselves. These conflicts cause individuals to stumble or stop as they work to develop a side hustle to meet their professional or personal needs.

“We’re driven by our subconscious minds, not our conscious minds. And that when our subconscious beliefs are out of alignment with the things and experiences we want in our conscious minds (and hearts,) it creates confusing conflicts between what we’re trying to create and what we’re actually creating.”

Conflicts within cause some to develop barriers preventing them from proceeding to the next stage. Others may have difficulty taking consistent actions due to their defeatist mentality. Sometimes it may feel like being harnessed to a fire truck. You may quite before trying because it seems impossible.

The key to transforming your mentality as it relates to a side hustle is to explore the relationship you personally have with self, others and money.

Self – refers to the core beliefs that drive actions and reactions. These beliefs cause most of us to question our abilities. We develop perceptions of ourselves based on how others relate to us. These perceptions may or may not be ingrained in truth or reality. By exploring our perceptions of self, we can determine whether they are based in truth. We also gain an awareness of how to change in order to move forward.

Others – refers to the relationships or lack of you may have with other people. We learn how to relate to people through our family experience. Subconscious beliefs about family relationships influence the way relationships in work are approached. The complicated nature of family creates complicated work, business and social relationships. Business relationships are not the same as family.

Money – Social workers have been conditioned to have a lack mentality when it comes to our profession and the delivery of services. Many social workers work in environments in which resources are limited or difficult to get. Our mentality regarding money affects our ability to gain more and boost our incomes.

Examining your relationship in these three areas will establish a starting point to begin transforming the way you think of each. You may then take definitive actions to transform your core beliefs and ways of thinking to align them with your actions. This will create congruence that will limit barriers to a sustainable, successful and satisfying side hustle.

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It is Back to Business time. Ignite your Fire within and WIN inside this year’s Back to Business Virtual Conference for Women Entrepreneurs. This year our agenda is all about how you can step into your greatness and start to “Collect with Confidence.”

I will be a guest speaker this year sharing the secrets of being a successful “mompreneur.” Join us by following the link Back to Business Virtual Conference for Women Entrepreneurs.

“I work with social workers and hard-working professionals who want to be happy. I would love to hear from you.” You may join the conversation by commenting on this post or on our Facebook fan page REAL Social Workers Online Magazine or connecting with me on LinkedIn.