McGee - The good hustle: creating a happy, healthy business with heart

My deepest gratitude to John McGee, without whom life would be less sweet. To the Lady Squire for bringing me into the journey. To Murwillumbah, Ubud and Portland and Brooklyn. And to my girlfriends, bhakti yogis, teachers, gurus and virtuous friends, for appearing at exactly the right time to deliver your wisdoms.

Published in 2018 by Murdoch Books,

an imprint of Allen & Unwin

Text copyright Polly McGee 2018

Photography on page 216 Douglas Frost 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

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eISBN 978 1 76063 544 2

Cover design by Madeleine Kane

Internal design by Vivien Valk

REMEMBER, YOU DONT HAVE TO CHANGE THE WORLD, YOU JUST HAVE TO MAKE IT BETTER FOR SOMEONE ELSE FOR A MOMENT, THEN REPEAT THAT ACTION ENDLESSLY.

Contents

Ideas are funny things. Some of them whiz in and out, visitors that remind you of the endless store of creativity within. Others are more persistent, they are bigger and more urgent in their calls to action. Writing The Good Hustle was definitely one of the latter. The idea for this book came to me while I was undertaking yoga teacher training at an ashram in tropical northern New South Wales. How I came to be at that ashram was a story in itself.

By the end of 2014 I had spent a couple of years working for big organisations, in roles that should have been the crowning moments of my career. Yet I certainly didnt feel that way, and was on the point of chucking it all in and hoping I could make it working for myself. But I had niggling doubts, and was worried that I wasnt going to get enough work if I went out on my own. It came time to commit to a new contract at the place I was working. I went around in circles in my head, then decided to stay on.

A few weeks in to the new contract I knew I should have backed myself and left. But I could see the opportunity to put some behavioural change into action and make the best of my decision to stay. What if I actually tried to live each day like all of the spiritual teachings and readings recommended: in the present, surrendering the work to the divine, and seeing it as service. Aside from quitting or whingeing, I had no other option.

Each day, before I took the fifty-minute drive from my house to work, I would set an intention to simply be in the moment, to connect with everyone I met, and see how I could best serve them. Throughout this time, I was forced to admit to myself that my attachment to financial rewards and reputational standing, which I believed reflected my sense of value, were causing me great suffering. I had pursued careers throughout my working life that legitimised me, that showed my status, that made me authoritative, useful and important in the public eye. Yet none of these careers had given me lasting happiness. The more I got, the less I had.

This suffering was self-made. I had to give up the desire for status, along with having any kind of control. It didnt change anything, except me. I began to loosen my grip, and I made it my mission to find opportunities to be of service. As a result, my world appeared more expansive, and I set about getting another project, my novel Dogs of India, published. I was practising discipline to make more time available to complete my paid work tasks as well as my side hustle. I had consciously begun narrowing what I put into my head: what I was reading, what I was listening to and watching. If it didnt serve my spiritual development, then I didnt fill up my mind with it.

When I look across my life with the uncensored voice of hindsight, I see that my decision-making process at that time had been run by my rampant sensory attachments with the pleasure and comfort button dialled up to ten. I believed that these sensations were what happiness was, but I couldnt get them to hang around. My rope bridge was unravelling, and I was clinging tighter and tighter to the desire for permanence. My year of living mindfullydoing something that was not my usual striving stab at pleasure followed by a swift exit before embarking on the next bite at happinessslowed me down. It gave me time to think, to focus on what this life I had been rampaging through was all about. It gave me a taste for giving more, and doing less for my own self aggrandisement. It tuned me in to my inner wisdom. The more I listened, the more I could distinguish the sound of this spokesperson for my true self from the louder, bullying voices of its ugly sisters, self-criticism and self-doubt. I grew comfortable with my commitment to being in the moment and appreciating what I had now, not what I thought I could get around the next corner of my life.

One spring day I was driving back from a blissful yoga retreat. The weekend of meditation, kirtan, silence and yoga with one of my best friends had left me feeling a sense of deep equanimity. My spiritual practice was continuing to grow, and my gratitude and contentment along with it. Out of the blue I heard my inner voice telling me I was done with the work I was doing, I had learned the lesson of sticking with something, and should take the next opportunity that was offered to me. The message was direct and unexpected. My last day at work was marked with a big red smiley face on my calendar and I was quite determined to complete the job. I had booked a trip to India to volunteer at a school for girls as a reward for my perseverance. But here I was, being instructed to start mentally packing my stuff in readiness for the next stage of my life. I recalibrated myself to a watching brief, curious to see what was going to happen next.

Change came, out of the blue: an offer of a short but lucrative consultancy job meant I would have enough savings to be freed from having to earn money, and could invest some time in developing my own projects. At the same time, a fortuitous conversation had lead to a publishing deal for Dogs of India. Surrendering, listening to my inner voice, working from a place of divinity, asking for help was delivering. I felt happy, fulfilled and motivated. In late December, as I was preparing for my imminent departure to India, a small ad popped up in my Facebook feed for a two-month immersion yoga teacher training at a spiritual community set in an ashram near Byron Bay.

I instantly knew without question that I had to go, that this was the experience that was calling me to prepare myself for the next adventure of my life and I should cancel my other plans. Even with my appetite for agile life decisions, this one was left field. I decided to listen to my inner guide again and back my intuition. I cancelled my trip to India and headed north to the ashram.

In so many things I do, I compare my approach to that of a method actor, diving in and living in character, Stanislavski style. Now, it appeared, I was going to become a yogi. But not your live-in-a-cave-style yogi. I was going to be an urban yogi, living a life with meaning and joy, though integrating the traditional restraints and observances of yogi life. When I talk about being yogi throughout this book, it is a metaphor for a life where you are pointing yourself towards something bigger than you are. Something with meaning that motivates grit and resilience in pursuing your goals to get to your higher self. But being yogi doesnt happen overnight. I had to get ready. On 1 January I gave up meat, fish, eggs and booze in preparation for ashram life. By diving in with only four weeks to get my practice on, I didnt have time to think about the social impacts of this radical change of lifestyle, whether people would judge me or think I wasnt fun anymore. I had such an attachment to being a foodie and my cork-popping, cocktail-shaking life, and if Id overthought it, I definitely would have struggled, suffered and faltered. Instead, I just became yogi, and so all my choices followed this new path of living. It was easy to say no, because I knew how hard it would be if I went to the ashram unprepared mentally for the physical demands. By being what I wanted to become, I became it. In Buddhism, you meditate on the Buddha as though you possess all of the qualities of a fully enlightened being and behave with complete compassion. You arent the Buddhayet. But in doing this practice you are acknowledging that within all of us there is Buddha nature: the capacity for enlightenment in this lifetime. It is much easier to do nothing if you feel there is no way you can reach the finish line. By acknowledging whats possible, finding the sacred in the mundanethe daily acts that stitch our days, weeks and lives togetherI set my mind to living the right way, accepting that there would be plenty of wrong paths taken along the journey. This undoubtedly accelerated and deepened my spiritual experience. It also became my earliest foray into growth mindset.