Burnout by Design: How the Bootstrap Mentality is Making the Rich, Richer By Destroying the Competition - You
🛒 Shop BWA | 🌈 Shop Ophelia's Bazaar | 💸 Become a Sponsor | 🔔 Subscribe
Why Do We Believe in Impossible Things?
I’m not exempt from this deepseated belief that the highest form of success is a fiercely independant, ‘I can do everything all by myself’ mentality. Just last week I found myself in tears over an incident involving transporting my youngest to and from an evening activity. (I’ll link to the podcast “Red Lights, Giraffes Kicking Kids, and Redefining Strength: When Being a Good Mother Means Letting Go” down below if you want to hear the whole story.)
The Bootstrap Mentality infects every aspect of our personal lives, our businesses, our relationships, and it’s destroying us from the inside out like a parasite.
Bootstraps: We’re Missing the Point
To pull yourself up by your boot straps is literally an impossible task, try it someday, how quickly do you get off the floor by tugging your shoe?
The purpose of a bootstrap is to firmly enclose your foot in the boot.
And yet the wealthy regale us with tales of their “self-made success.” These are fairy tales. No one succeeds on their own. No one.
The bootstrap they keep telling us to pull on to find success, is actually the noose around our necks.
And we keep pulling it tighter.
Still skeptical? Let me ask you one simple question.
Can you name a single business that can be a financial success without any employees, vendors, or wait for it… customers?
No?
My point.
They didn’t do it alone, and neither will you.
The expression “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” first appeared in the late 19th century, originating from a physics textbook. The book posed the question, “Why can’t a man lift himself by pulling on his bootstraps?” as an example of an impossible feat.
When the phrase later began to be used in a socioeconomic context around the turn of the 20th century, it was intended as sarcasm, highlighting the absurdity of achieving success through sheer effort alone without external support.
Somewhere along the way, we lost the sarcasm and began to take the phrase seriously.
The belief in impossible individualism and self-reliance will doom any entrepreneur into an early grave.
Do you know a friend who might benefit from this article, or business edu-tainment, generally? Click refer and let them know about The Library 📖 at the Business Witch Academy
The Impact of the Bootstrap Mentality on Freelancers and Solo-preneurs
“Wearing all the hats” is not fun, easy, or healthy. It is not the path to success and it certainly is not the path to happiness.
Micro businesses of individuals are freelancing a vast array of services, struggling to make ends meet and burning the wick at both ends. When you need to be the marketing department, accounting department, customer service and order fulfillment, you are going to burn yourself out.
We have been disillusioned and betrayed by the corporate monster with its backstabbing, hyper-competitive, environment. The corporate monster masquerades in a mantra of teamwork, yet sabotages true collective effort at every turn, and now we’re afraid to trust other people and we have no idea what true teamwork even looks like, let alone how to do it.
It’s time we learned how to ask for help. How to co-operate, co-ordinate, and collaborate for our mutual benefit.
It’s time to admit that we have weaknesses.
It’s time to play to our strengths, and partner with those whose strengths complement our weaknesses.
If you want to make some waves, you’re going to need to surround yourself with a team and think creatively to figure out how to make that team truly work for everyone.
The Library 📖 at the Business Witch Academy is a reader-supported publication. Knowledge is my product. Like you, I have bills to pay and loved ones to care for. If you ever have, or would, pay a college or university for sharing knowledge with you, and you find value in my writing, please consider a paid subscription so that I can continue with my work.
If you enjoyed this, dig deeper with…
Stay Magical,
Cheryl
🛒 Shop BWA | 🌈 Shop Ophelia's Bazaar | 💸 Become a Sponsor | 🔔 Subscribe
DISCLAIMER
Many of the people and businesses I feature are ones that I've met in the course living my life and running my businesses. I feature them when I feel they have something my readers may be interested in hearing about.
Some outbound links may financially benefit me through affiliate programs or sponsorships, but frequently they don't. Any affiliate relationship doesn’t influence my opinion, and I would never endorse people, programs, products, or services I didn’t use, approve of or feel familiar with. So If you use it, I may get compensated — but there’s no additional cost to you.