The Hustler’s Playbook: Hustlers Don’t Retreat

Hustlers don’t retreat. They don’t surrender to resistance. And they don’t give up.

• Hustlers don’t surrender to setbacks, missteps, or failures. Failures are merely events; they don’t define a person. They are learning experiences to be used as feedback on future efforts.

You know those mistakes you’ve made? You know those times things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to? That’s feedback. It’s not failure.

• Hustlers change their approach. When something isn’t working, the hustler changes their strategy, changes their tactics, or changes direction. They might take a more indirect path, but they move forward, always chasing what it is that they really want. Instead of retreating and accepting something less, they use their resourcefulness to find another way.

You know you sometimes feel stuck? You know how you want to seek the comfort of giving up and accepting the consolation prize that is certainty? That is the sign that it’s time to change your approach.

• Hustlers push through the resistance. Sometimes the resistance to achieving your goal is so great, you want to go backwards. But a hustler is comfortable being uncomfortable, even when it sometimes makes other people uncomfortable. The last bit of resistance is always the most difficult to break through. Like when you are trying to do ten reps of the heaviest weight you can handle. All of the growth comes on the eleventh rep.

Hustlers have mental toughness. They have the intestinal fortitude to keep going when others give up, give in, and go home. They are driven, and the force that drives them doesn’t allow them to retreat.

Are you going backwards when you should be going forward?