Business Isn’t Life & Death

Why You Don’t Have to Break Yourself to Make It in Business

There’s a lie floating around the entrepreneurial world. You’ve heard it before, and maybe you’ve even internalized it. It goes something like this -

You have to suffer to succeed.

You have to sacrifice your peace, your well-being, and sometimes your sanity to achieve greatness.

We see it everywhere, this glorification of grind culture, where stress is a badge of honour and burnout is the cost of making it big. A few of my podcasts guests have even agreed that this is necessary. We’ve been conditioned to believe that success and joy are only achievable after we’ve been through hell. That only once we’ve endured enough pain, can we finally taste the rewards.

But here’s what I’ve come to know - that’s complete BS.

Business Isn’t Life and Death

In life, sure—there are deep emotional truths that tell us pain and joy are intertwined. Losing someone you love, facing challenges you can’t control, experiencing heartbreak—these moments shape us. They make the sweetness of joy, love, and triumph even more meaningful. But business? Business isn’t that. Business isn’t life and death.

Yet somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that the same laws of life apply to our careers. We’ve internalized the notion that if we’re not sacrificing our mental health, then we’re not working hard enough. We’re not "worthy" of success if we haven’t bled for it.

But Business Stress is Self-Inflicted

In life, we don’t always get a say in what causes us pain. But in business, we do. We choose what we let stress us out. We choose the endless late nights, the grinding through exhaustion, and the belief that we need to be constantly “on” to get ahead.

What if I told you that you don’t have to live like that? That the stress you’ve been shouldering in your business isn’t necessary. It’s a product of a mindset that’s sold us all a toxic bill of goods?

You have the power, right now, to run a business without letting it run you.

Stop Applying Life’s Hard Truths to Business

We’ve taken this bigger worldview that the concept that pain is the price we pay for life’s ultimate joys and we’ve twisted it to justify our entrepreneurial suffering. We tell ourselves that the grind, the sleepless nights, the endless hustle are just part of the game. That once we’ve been through enough, we’ll get to enjoy it. We’ve bought into the idea that “no pain, no gain” applies to business as much as it does to life.

But here’s what we’re missing. Business is a system. It’s a structure. It’s something we can control.

We can build it to fit our lives, not destroy our lives to fit it.

Your Pain Doesn’t Equal Progress

In business, pain doesn’t equate to progress. If anything, it’s a sign that something is broken. And the worst part? We’ve convinced ourselves that this suffering is inevitable.

You know what’s actually inevitable? Burnout. If you keep feeding into this toxic belief that stress is the price of success. It’s the entrepreneurs who refuse to take responsibility for their own well-being who burn out the fastest.

But here’s the truth the hustle culture won’t tell you:

You can be wildly successful without sacrificing your mental health, your peace, or your happiness.

Taking Responsibility for Your Well-Being is Power

It’s time to take responsibility for the way we run our businesses. It’s time to stop romanticizing the struggle and start acknowledging that we hold the power to make different choices.

You don’t have to work yourself into the ground. You don’t have to trade joy for success. You don’t need to suffer to prove you’re worthy. The business world doesn’t get to tell you that stress is the currency you have to pay to play.

Success without stress is possible. You don’t have to suffer. You just have to decide what kind of business, and life, you want to build.

Your Business, Your Rules

You’re the architect of your business. You decide what stress deserves your time and energy. You get to create a business that feels like freedom, not a prison sentence.

The only reason we cling to the myth of suffering is because we’ve forgotten that we’re in charge. We’ve been spoon-fed the narrative that joy comes after the pain, when in reality, we can build joy into every step of the journey.

Don’t mistake life’s deeper truths for rules in your business. They don’t apply here. You have the power to create success without stress, to experience joy without suffering. You don’t need permission from anyone to decide that your well-being is worth more than the hustle.

Remember that your business exists to serve you not the other way around.

Now, go build something that brings you joy. Not because you survived the pain but because you chose to thrive in spite of it.