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I see with brand new eyes no, I've never been so sure Take my head let's run into the unknown this is the beginning. You are listening to the Kristen Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Boss. As a best selling author and performance coach, I'm on a mission to share about sustainable and purposeful approaches to both business and life. Each week I bring relevant topics that I believe are necessary to create a life of purpose, significance and meaning. Entrepreneurship is about so much more than growing your bottom line. It's about who you are becoming in the process and building a life that is truly extraordinary. Entrepreneurship is really just the beginning. Hey friends, welcome to another episode of the podcast. It's going to be an uncomfortable one. You're going to feel called out. We're all going to sweat a little bit first before we dive into it. If you have not registered for the three day success rewire, you're probably going to at the end of this episode. Don't wait, don't delay. I'm so excited to be delivering a new three day challenge for the first time in over a year. So bring your accountability buddies, bring your friends, bring anybody who is a goal getter or sees themselves as a goal getter. They're constantly their personal development junkie. They love, you know, chasing things to better themselves, but they, like most people, fall through when it comes to consistency and implementation. So if you haven't registered, go ahead and do that. December 8th, 9th and 10th, the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Only $9 replays are available just through the end of the week, but if you want to keep it, we also have an upgrade for a lifetime access as well. I All right, without further ado, let's get into the juicy topic of the day. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to feel called out. And that's all right, because I see myself in this too. And this isn't just in relation to. I think this is really timely right before the year end when we are filled with regret, cheese, overspending and remorse. And we tell ourselves, all right, once the new year, you know, kicks in, I'm gonna get more organized, I'm gonna clean things up, I'm gonna get that thing, get that goal, chase that resolution. All right, friends, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. And so I want to speak to the person, are you this person? And if you saw the podcast title, you might be like, yeah, maybe I am. And I've seen this in the sense of like, people who, you know, are in business where they sell products that improve health, improve someone's well being, and they call themselves, they're like, oh, I'm a hope dealer. I'm a hope hustler. Well, I'm going to redefine what hope hustler is, and I want to know if it's you. And here's the thing. This is a pattern that a lot of people get caught in. They see it, but they don't know how to get out of it. They find themselves repeating the pattern over and over again. And these are the people who love the feeling of a fresh start, the idea of starting over. And I find that, you know, starting over, it kind of does give a little bit of a dopamine rush. It's, we get the hit of a fresh plan, so the thrill of a new routine. So it's, we buy a new book, new journal, a new system, maybe we buy a new program, buy a new piece of exercise equipment, whatever it is, the setting up, I'm gonna call it the setting up of the thing we want to pursue. I think we get a dopamine rush in the planning, the preparing, the, the getting ready to get ready. So, like, maybe you're like, okay, I'm. Nothing feels better than buying a cute workout outfit to get started. Or I'm gonna buy this program or buy this app or, you know, buy this recipe book or finally sign up for that thing. Now, I think that's all well and good, but that is not, that's not going to sustain. And we're going to get into that. But this is, this is the person who is amazing at beginning things. They, they can create vision, they get excited, but then once the novelty of new and exciting wears off, you're gone, you disappear. And it's not because I want to speak to this idea of, I want to speak against the narrative of like, you must not want it bad enough. I don't think desire has anything to do with this because you can genuinely want to lose the weight, get organized, save the money, improve your relationships, you know, show up consistently and build, you know, a social media presence. You can want to, you know, invest in your skills. I think that desire can remain steady and our follow through has nothing to do with our desire, how bad we want something. And I think that's the narrative we often default to. It's not that you don't want the result, it's because you don't like the process because the process feels slow, uncomfortable, and way less exciting once the novelty wears off. The mundane and the repetitive sets in. If this is you, you're probably a hope hustler. So who is a hope hustler? A hope hustler is the person who loves the idea of changing their life. I swear, I can't tell you how often I'm coaching people. I'm like, do you actually want that goal, or are you in love with the idea of that? Go. I think so many people that, you know, I remember when I used to, you know, dream about, like, making six figures a year. And so many people I would coach be like, I just want to make six figures a year. And they have this fantasized idea and. Or I want to. Whatever you are, I want. I want to make multi six figures, seven figures, or I want to, you know, finally lose the weight. Whatever it is, it's. They are in love with the idea of it. But when it comes to the actual work, the effort, the grind, the process of it, they're not in love with the process. So in that they, you know, they're in love with the idea of changing their life, you buy the tools, the apps, the planners, the courses. I even think there might even be a pile of purchases and unused things that you bought in your dopamine, ecstatic state of the, you know, new, exciting thing you're doing. Novelty. Something you bought from novelty. And you, you know, you get that burst of motivation. You might great for three to seven days, but then once the novelty wears off, you start to lose steam. And then often I find the all or nothing approach kind of goes hand in hand with this person that's like, I. I'm gonna totally change everything about my life. And I'm like, And it was so funny. I caught one of my clients saying this today. She's like, next year is the year I implement everything. And she's probably gonna laugh when she hears this episode. She's like, I'm gonna implement everything. I said, uh, you are setting yourself up for a fail right there. And she starts laughing. I said, what do you think I'm gonna say to you? And she said, you're gonna tell me to implement only one thing? I said, yes, that's right. Because this idea of once we. When we have this all or nothing thinking, what if we think a hundred percent, giving a hundred percent is the standard every day? When we give 80% on a given day, then we automatically assume we are failing. And then shame comes in. And that's like, well, why even bother now? I. To quote, start over. I can't even begin to Tell you how many people are like, have the start over mentality. I'm like, no, you're going to keep going. You're not, you're not starting over. You're going to keep going. So they feel shame and then they throw it all, all out. And then here's what I think. I think, you know, and I talk about this in guilt driven goals. I think once we create enough distance between from our shame and you know, time passes, then shame is replaced by scarcity or pressure or urgency of wanting to again fix the new thing. Being like, okay Fin, I'm going to do it this time. This is going to be the thing. So what I want you to know is this is not a lady laziness problem. This is not a motivation problem. And everybody thinks it's a motivation problem. And they go out and they go seek dopamine from the motivation instead of actually learning to work from a different place. Not working from desire, not working from dopamine, but working from a place of like, alignment, something that is val, like valuable to you. And even, even being the person that's like, I'm willing to put in the reps to build the musc muscle memory of somebody who can stick with a process even when it's not fun. But here's the thing about the Hope Hustler. They thrive on the idea of transformation, but they struggle with the implementation or the embodiment of transformation. The idea of transformation is sexy. We all love. I mean think about, think about the shows we watch, like the before and afters, we just live for that. But the messy middle when there is no clear after. We struggle with that. We struggle. So many people struggle, struggle with how to actually embody and stay in the process of transformation. They want the quick fix. We are the society that sells fast and easy, not slow and sustainable. And it's, it's wrecking us. And we, I think with having everything at our fingertips, you know, and so readily available, I do think instant gratification is destroying our ability to put in the time and the effort for the things that are worthwhile. So I actually think, think we're going to see people struggling even more so with following through on their goals because we're in such a, you know, instant gratification culture. And so here's why people are, let's talk about why people are vulnerable to this pattern. Um, I believe it's because we are wired for intensity and big vision. And we think in, we think intensity. We value intensity over intentionality. We value, we think we have to go big. And you're sold that. Think about all the gurus and all the things you're. You're told with, like, go big or go home or these like, what is a fad diet? A fad diet, I think, is. Is an entrepreneur's version of going big, trying to overhaul your entire life. And I'm like, wait, what, How. How are we not taking into account our starting point? I would never tell somebody who has been sedentary for the last year and averages 2,000 steps a day. If they were to be like, I'm going to go run a marathon in a month, I'd be like, okay, you're. That's one way to break your body. How about we just work on if your average steps have been 2000 a day, why don't we just average your steps to 4,000 a day and make that your new normal? And then we build on that. But what happens with that? When I say that we have resistance to that, our pride comes in. And then we're like, well, that's not. We think it's not sexy enough, so we think it has to be bigger. And so, like, our nervous system tends to want speed over sustainability because speed is a form of urgency. We think, like, again, our nervous system wants to propel us out of discomfort as quickly as possible. And so if it's out running the grizzly, grizzly bear, it's like, I don't want to walk away from a grizzly bear. I want to sprint away from the grizzly bear. And the grizzly bear being whatever the thing is that's causing pain that your nervous system doesn't like, you know, it could be, you know, I, I hate how I feel in this way. Whatever it is, like, it's. It just wants to find ease as quickly as possible. And so we also tend to mistake progress with, like, adrenaline. If we are not. If we don't feel like our body is vibrating with excitement, we don't know how to work without that. And now I'll tell you, I can relate to that. And this is something I've really been working on, even with my therapist. Something I've been talking to her about is like, what does it look like to pursue goals from a really grounded place and not a. I, I personally call it a sober place. I've been talking about this concept of success. Sobriety is like, how do I pursue meaning and achieve things from a place, Place of mental and emotional sobriety, Not a place where my adrenaline is through the roof, where I'm. I'm. Buzzing with, with that hustle energy where I know I'll burn out. And I will tell you this year has been the year of detoxing from my adrenaline fueled journey. And so I think we, we think adrenaline has to be driving our goals. Another way we are vulnerable to this is we can we, we conflate excitement with commitment. Those are very different things. You know, it's kind of like newlyweds so excited to get married and then when the honeymoon phase is gone then you learn about what commitment is because marriage isn't always exciting. In fact you have to, you have to create excitement. And so it's the same thing in our business. It's like there is going to be a day, I promise you word's not going to be exciting. It's not going to give you the dopamine, it's not going to give you novelty. It's not going to give you the feedback and the excitement that you want that you're going to learn what and honestly if you are someone that has thrived in chaos your whole life, learning to operate in an environment that is safe and stable and secure and non chaotic it takes recalibrating to that new environment. Because when you learn to operate outside of chaos calm feels very unsafe because you're used to, you're used to chaos calm. You're, when you're in a state of calm you're like surely there's going to be a shoe drop at any point in time. Something's going to blow up. And so you have to learn to recalibrate how you, how you operate in life. So we also, we get an emotional high from false promises we make to ourselves of like this time will be different. We think about this, the emotional state you're in every time you say this is going to be the time I actually follow through. Just check in with yourself. It's very rarely have I heard somebody say it from like a grounded, for lack of a better term, sober minded place where they're like emotionally calm, collected, calibrated. No, usually it's I hear like a, their speech is rushed there. It's this excited wired place. Right. And so, and, and we are not. Very few people have tolerance for mundane. Think about how everything in your life you're able to move out. Like we don't know how to tolerate stillness or repetition or mundane. Especially in today's culture where you know, we are fighting for. I've said this before, we are in an attention deficit economy. What marketers are always working on is like how do we get someone's attention when the average, you know, attention span is less than three seconds. And so if we have an attention span of less than three seconds, how on earth are we meant to give our goals the attention on a daily basis, especially when it's mundane and it's not working yet? You have got to build your tolerance for this messy middle that is mundane and hard, where I'm calling it. You are skilling up. You are learning and mastering the skills in order to get to where you want to go. And in that skilling up phase, it is not sexy. It is hard. And you have to learn a lot of kind of inner talk with yourself. So this is what I'm going to say. Hope hustlers, they're not addicted to the change. They're addicted to the feeling of possibility. Think about that. Hope hustlers are addicted to the feeling of possibility. But when that feeling fades and discomfort starts to creep in, your brain goes searching for the next place that's going to provide you novelty and excitement and dopamine. Do you see what I'm saying? This is what. So this is the Hope Hustler cycle. I'm going to walk you through it. So it starts with, like, inspiration. You get fired up. You feel clear, you're ready. You're like, yeah, this is it. And then you go from that really, like, emotionally high place, that high energy in your body. You go create your plan. You, you know, make it. You get your highlighters and your planners or not only do you go and create a plan, I actually think you go and buy stuff. You buy stuff. You go and outsource, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna go search for the silver bullet, and that's gonna be the thing that finally makes it stick. I'm like, no, you are the person who uses the thing. Like the pla. Very rarely is the tool the problem. It's the person implementing the tool or not implementing the tool. So you go and create the plan. You buy the things, and then you start strong. You feel incredible. And then reality kicks in. Now your. Your excitement has faded, and now commitment and consistency is what is required of you. And then your nervous system resists this boredom because it feels flat, slow, uncomfortable. This is where all of your stories come up. This isn't fun. This is hard. Maybe this isn't for me. You know, I could be doing other things with my time. It should be easier by now. Why is it working for everybody else and not for me? This is where stories hijack your hijack ability to show up. And so in that resistance, when things get hard, people misinterpret the resistance as failure or as a sign that something has gone wrong. And then they shame themselves for that being like, oh, it shouldn't be this hard. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Resistance is a very normal, healthy part of the process. Resistance is what is how we build our muscle. It's no different in the gym. Like, you cannot build muscle without resistance. You have to strain. You have to put pressure on it. So we cannot build, you know, our consistency muscle, our implementation muscle without resistance. Okay? And then from there, I think there's like, quiet little quits, the micro quits, the micro negotiations you make. You'll. You tell yourself, you know what? Now's just a really crazy season. I'll revisit this when it's less crazy. It's just never gonna not be crazy. I'm only 40, but I've learned in the last, I don't know, 15 years, I'm like, oh, my life's just never gonna slow down. It's just gonna continue to be this complex thing that requires different things for me. Some seasons it's going to require more of my time. Sometimes it's going to require more of my energy, my emotional energy. It's just. Let's just stop telling ourselves the lie that it's going to slow down and get easier or more simple. It's just not. Not on its own, not without. Not without our intention. Like. Like, listen, your life isn't going to slow down unless you intentionally create a plan to slow down and rebuild some things around your life. But even then, life still happens, right? So then from that, then you go and find something new, whether it's another book, another podcast, another coach, another planner system habit. You get what I mean? So this is just. I call this hope addiction. You're addicted to the feeling of hope and possibility. And so we stay in this cycle and we go and chase the next thing that gives us a sense of hope for our future, hope for our health, hope for ourselves, hope for our family. Just. This is what it means. You're hustling for hope. And so really, what hope hustling is, is it's just a. It's a cocktail of dopamine seeking, looking for the high of newness because it temporarily provides relief from emotional weight you're carrying. And so your dopamine seeking, it's the avoidance of current discomfort or emotional discomfort. So the real process of transformation demands patience. The tolerance tolerating the feeling of being not good at something yet. How about that? Like the. To like building a tolerance for like, okay, I know I was an A plus student and that's how I have prized myself. But maybe this season is about getting Cs. Maybe it's about failing and just moving forward. Right. I also think there is this fear of consistent effort. I think people, it's like this fear of realizing that you're going to have to confront your limit, your limits and your imperfections. I think this people are really afraid of that being like, then I'm going to have to contend with realizing I'm not perfect, I can never be perfect. Or maybe I'm not as good at something as I thought I was, or maybe I don't have it all together. So I think it's. We have this fear of what's going to be revealed about ourselves in the process. And anytime we pursue consistency, it's. It's a. It's going to reveal things about ourselves. It's going to reveal things about our character, our stories, our wounds we carry, you know, anything. You know, I can't even think of every, every area of life where I've pursued transformation. Transformation requires confrontation on some level. Confrontation first with yourself, your stories, maybe your past, and then sometimes confrontation with others. People in your life that maybe have stories about your transformation who would rather, who feel inconvenienced or threatened by your transformation and don't want you to transform, like have any type of transformation, because your transformation makes them look in the mirror and realize, oh, I'm not choosing transformation. So instead of, of, you know, holding myself responsible, I'm gonna make you feel bad. That's what people do, right? And so the next thing is like, what else is happening with hope? Hustling is, it's, it's really just your stress response continuing to go on loop. So, you know, I've talked about this. What we do inside of our Hondaira membership is understanding. Like, everyone has a unique stress response blueprint with how they pursue things, how they handle stress. And so a fight type pursues their goals very differently than a flight type, a freeze type, or a fawn. A fawn type. And so I have found that, you know how hope hustling looks for each type is different. You know, a fight type will. They will over plan, over commit, over compensate. And like on almost always, they burn out. They. They will likely reach the goal, but it'll come at a great cost. And then they have to go into a season of burnout, recovery, and then they're like, ooh, I don't know if I want to pursue that goal again. Flight types, they will, they'll make a plan and they will stay in it until it gets uncomfortable. Then their procrastination and their avoidance of the hard work, They'll. They'll be easily distracted. They, they are going to be more. I find flight types are more prone to constantly changing the plan and seeking novelty because they don't want to face or feel what the process is requiring of them. Hello, that's me. I'm a flight type. Freeze types, they're just going to over commit, overthink the steps. They're going to be constantly optimizing the plan without implementing it. They're just going to be overthinking over optimizing, making it better. And it's like a stop that they. Inaction is where they're going to get caught. And then our fawn types, they're going to, they will commit to a system so long as it's not a burden to anyone else. Or they will talk themselves out of the goal and somehow be like, I'm selfish for this or I mean, this is an inconvenience to others. Or you will commit to goals that aren't even yours. You'll just assume it's what's expected of you. Someone will hand that to you and you'll be like, sure, I guess I'll do it. Instead of naming or pursuing something for yourself. So all that to say is this is not a. I think we can tend to gloss over this, be like, this is a mindset problem. No, what, what this really is, is it' regulation problem? It's. It's when we are dysregulated in our nervous system, when we especially dysregulation mostly hits once the novelty wears off. And it's how you manage your stress around that. And we will go into our default patterns of fight, flight, fawn or freeze. And then we will literally sabotage. We sabotage everything. And we wonder why. Well, it's not because it's. It's more than just like, this is why people are like, oh, just do positive affirmations. I'm like, yeah, you can positive do positive affirmations, but your nervous system isn't going by it. When it's in survival mode. It cannot. You cannot plant seeds in a. In inhospitable soil and expect them to grow. And that's what happens with doing basic mindset work without understanding how to regulate your body so that you know the mindset work can actually take root. Right. So here's. Let's talk about the cost of being a hope hustler. There's a few costs here. The biggest one I see is that it erodes self trust. Your brain actually, eventually, with time, you do this enough, your brain won't even let you set goals because it's like, why? I'm just gonna suck at it anyways, so I don't actually follow through, so why bother? I think when the self trust erodes that much, you get to the why bother mentality. And then you just stop setting goals, period. You stop pursuing transformation and you tell yourself like, well, this is good enough. Or like you know it every time you're. You're like, okay, here's the plan. But in the back, your mind, your brain's like, ah, yeah, we're just gonna quit it on Monday. Another one is. Another hidden cost is I find people confuse like busyness or movement with progress instead of like, okay, but what are you actually doing to move yourself forward instead of just moving for the sake of like looking busy or whatever. Another thing that happens is you. You burn through a lot of emotional energy on your false starts. I see people constantly having to emotionally recover from the hope addiction cycle. They're exhausted by it. They're like, I'm so tired of living this way. And so. And that propels to the next point. You burn a lot of emotional energy on those false starts. And then I believe people that stay in the cycle, they live in chronic shame. Like every restart becomes proof that you suck, that you're not good. It's proof of failure, proof that you're not worthy, that you can't follow through and becomes this really awful place where you start to build an identity of failure. And then lastly, I think unless the pattern is named and changed, you stay in the fantasy or the world of constantly seeking change instead of actually experiencing real transformation. You. It's kind of like chasing the illusion of momentum but never actually achieving real momentum in your life. And I think, I think the personal development industry and the professional development industry knows this, knows that people get excited about the idea of change and hook locks them in, but fails to support people in the most important and vital process, which is the, the implementation process. That's when all of our dysregulation, our stories hijack everything. This is why I say, like, I don't care about the strategy. In fact, probably a lot of the strategies that you, you can throw away, it's just noise until you actually learn what it, what it means to be somebody who can learn to tolerate discomfort in your body while you are going through a transformation process, because transformation is uncomfortable, period. It's not. It's not comfortable. It feels awful. So how do we do this? How? Like, we've talked about the cost, the signs. What do you do? Well, first you need to allow, like, increase your tolerance for boredom. And I would say to do this outside of your goals. And so maybe instead of scrolling all the time, like, be like, oh, I'm bored. I'm gonna sit here for five minutes. What you're doing is you're increasing your capacity for mundane and boring. And if you can do that in other areas, you're going to build your tolerance elsewhere. Right? And so it's learning to not chase novelty and excitement 24 7. I would also say take your plan, whatever plan you're excited about, and make it way smaller because small is doable and it creates self trust. Okay? The next thing is you have to stop looking for the silver bullet. My God, stop. Stop chasing the perfect system. And I want you to know, I want you to know how I promote Sandara is. It is the bridge that closes the gap between knowledge and implementation and helping you actually be. Become somebody who can pursue, like, creates meaningful change. And so this idea of, like, somebody who's selling you a magic strategy but not able to actually help you with the implementation, they're just selling you a band aid. And you just have to stop looking for band aids. You need to get to the root cause, stop treating the symptoms. I just want you to think of that every. Everything you buy, thinking it's a magical bullet. You have to actually say, okay, this is treating a symptom, but how am I actually addressing the root cause? This is everything I'm going to be teaching in the success rewire. Okay? You also have to build the tolerance for the middle phase, the part where you are telling yourself nothing's happening. I'm going to tell you right now, the middle phase is where you literally think nothing is happening. And oftentimes on the outside, it might be true. The scale might not be moving, your bank account might not be moving, your Instagram account, not by me, be moving. But you are changing. This is where we almost always see intangible results before we see tangible results. I've seen this over and over and over and over and over again. And like, this is the reality I'm living. I'm like, yeah, I'm living in the intangible right now. I know I don't see change externally yet, but I know I Am a completely different person in this process. Okay. And then next is you have to redefine success as this idea of, you know, it's a. It's continuity. It's not a sprint, it's not intensity. You have to redefine how you. How you pursue transformation. It is not an overnight process. Rome wasn't built in a day, so stop expecting your life to change in a day too. You've been operating this way for a really long time. It doesn't change overnight. So stop acting like it should. Right. And then lastly, learn to regulate. And that's something I'll be covering in my three day is learning how to calm your nervous system to bring back your critical thinking back online. Um, and there's more to that. But here's the thing. When you learn to be a regulated person, you actually are able to build tolerance for uncomfortable emotions. You're actually able to tolerate discomfort. Uh, I heard this quote the other day, and I think it's so good, I'm gonna share it with you. It said, when you become somebody who intentionally does hard things. Things when you are somebody who intentionally does hard things, you become somebody who can handle. Who can better handle hard things when they unintentionally happen. Think about that. If the only time you are building resilience and grit is when things are happening to you, or things are, you know, things you didn't sign up for, you're going to feel hit by a bus every time. But if you are somebody who intentionally puts yourself in the way of hard things, you become somebody who is better conditioned, better equipped, and has greater capacity for when hard things come your way, not by choice. Do you hear what I'm saying? I think that is so powerful and it is so good. So I'm going to close you with. I'm going to close. I'm going to close out with this. Listen, if you're a hope hustler, hey, I see you. Welcome to the human experience. And it's what a lot of it just means. You've been chasing it. Excitement. And that you have to build tolerance. This is about rewiring how you see change. That it's not exciting, that it's kind of gritty, and that it's not sexy, it's not fast, it's slow, it's boring, it's mundane. Find. Find fast and easy somewhere else. But don't find it in the most meaningful things in your life, like relationships, your health, your finances, your career. Like the best things in life take time. And we are in a Society that wants to sell you fast and easy because it's sexy. And by the way, our nervous system and our brain is designed to look for the path of least resistance. Because everything we, we are creatures where we're trying to preserve as much energy as possible. And so in order to preserve energy, we want the path of least resistance. But the path of least resistance is not the most rewarding path. Stop chasing the fast and easy. Choose slow and sustainable. So friends, if you're a hope hustler, I want to help you break out of that cycle. I want to give you the tools and the support to help you do that. So come to the three Day Success Rewire. And if you're obviously listening to this post event, you can check out more in our show, notes of tools that can help you. But listen, when you actually stop becoming addicted to, to chasing hope, the feeling of hope, then you can finally make space for real transformation in your life because you become somebody who builds a relationship with process. And I get it. I feel like I've been saying this for years, but I'm gonna keep saying it because we, we have short term memory, we tend to forget we write these things off. So friends, before you buy that thing, before you buy that planner, before you buy that program, before you do that thing, let's first rewire how you go about doing that thing. And if you still need the tools and support, great. But there's a difference between buying a tool and support. Thinking it's the silver bullet and it's going to make everything easy and buying it from this place of fear and lack and scarcity and then buying a tool from a place of groundedness, knowing like I still have to do the work, but this is the thing I believe that can help me in that, that work and knowing that it's not going to rescue me from the hard. But this is a tool I feel aligns with me. Do you see how the decision making is different? That's what I want to help you do. So friends, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you found it helpful or useful, share it with a friend. Screenshot it, talk to your people about it, shout it out on social media. I always appreciate that, but we will. If you have a ticket to the three Day Success rewire, we'll see you there. Otherwise, we will see you in the next next episode. That's a wrap for today's episode. Listen, if you love what you heard here today, I would love for you to leave a real quick rating and a review. This helps the show get to see discovered by new people. Be sure to take a screenshot of today's episode and shout us out on Instagram. We'll shout you right back out. If you'd like to find additional resources or discover how to work with me, head to www.kristenboss.com. it starts right here.
Episode 241: Hope Hustler: Addicted to the Idea of Change
Host: Kristen Boss
Date: December 1, 2025
In this episode, Kristen Boss dives deep into the psychology behind why so many people—especially entrepreneurs and goal-getters—struggle with true, lasting change. She challenges listeners who identify as “hope hustlers”—people addicted to the feeling of transformation and the rush of new beginnings, yet unable to consistently follow through. Kristen unpacks the cyclical nature of chasing novelty rather than embracing the slow, often uncomfortable process of sustainable transformation. With both candor and empathy, she offers practical insights on breaking this cycle, increasing self-trust, building tolerance for discomfort, and finding true alignment in goals.
“A hope hustler is the person who loves the idea of changing their life… but when it comes to the actual work, the effort, the grind, the process of it, they’re not in love with the process.” – Kristen (08:05)
“Hope hustlers are addicted to the feeling of possibility. But when that feeling fades and discomfort starts to creep in, your brain goes searching for the next place that’s going to provide you novelty and excitement and dopamine.” – Kristen (29:43)
“We also tend to mistake progress with, like, adrenaline. If we don’t feel like our body is vibrating with excitement, we don’t know how to work without that.” – Kristen (22:30)
“You burn through a lot of emotional energy on your false starts… You live in chronic shame. Every restart becomes proof that you suck, that you’re not good. It’s proof of failure.” – Kristen (56:25)
“When you become somebody who intentionally does hard things, you become somebody who can better handle hard things when they unintentionally happen.” – Kristen (66:01)
“Nothing feels better than buying a cute workout outfit to get started… The setting up of the thing we want to pursue—I think we get a dopamine rush in the planning, the preparing, the getting ready to get ready.”
– Kristen (06:27)
“I don’t think desire has anything to do with this… It’s not that you don’t want the result, it’s because you don’t like the process because the process feels slow, uncomfortable, and way less exciting once the novelty wears off.”
– Kristen (08:35)
“Hope hustlers, they’re not addicted to the change. They’re addicted to the feeling of possibility.”
– Kristen (29:25)
“You have to redefine success as this idea of… continuity. It’s not a sprint, it’s not intensity. You have to redefine how you pursue transformation; it is not an overnight process.”
– Kristen (64:20)
“It’s kind of like chasing the illusion of momentum, but never actually achieving real momentum in your life.”
– Kristen (57:50)
“The planner—very rarely is the tool the problem. It’s the person implementing the tool or not implementing the tool.”
– Kristen (31:05)
Kristen ends with an invitation to disrupt the cycle of addiction to hope and novelty, urging listeners to pursue depth, alignment, and real transformation over fleeting surges of motivation.
“Stop chasing the fast and easy. Choose slow and sustainable… Find fast and easy somewhere else. But don’t find it in the most meaningful things in your life.” – Kristen (68:07)
Share this episode or join Kristen’s next Success Rewire challenge for more practical support on authentic, sustainable change.