For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a “girlboss”. It’s a term popularized by American businesswoman Sophia Amoruso, which loosely refers to a successful, ambitious woman who works hard.
To girlboss is to hustle, and to be a girlboss is to be a hustler. While I’ve prided myself on being one for many years, for the first time in my life, I’m deciding that I am no longer girlbossing. It’s been taking a toll on both my physical health and mental health and I’ve come to realize that it’s an incredibly unsustainable way to live.
My girlbossing began at a very young age. I entered the workforce at age 15, juggling a part-time sales associate position at Michaels Canada (which was really just the adult version of Disneyland) and being a high school student. After I graduated from secondary school, I was still working as a sales associate, only now I was also doing a Bachelor’s Degree, a receptionist position at a physiotherapy clinic, and a second receptionist position at a chiropractor clinic. For a while, I managed 3 jobs and a 4-year undergraduate degree, where I took 4 classes each semester with no time off.
I was only 23 years old when I completed a Master’s degree and before I had even graduated, I had lined up my first real adult job where I worked well beyond 8 hours a day and 5 days a week. For the last two years, it feels like I’ve been working two full-time jobs, as I juggle my role as General Manager for 5X Festival and being the host of the podcast Brown Girl Guilt.
If you ever needed someone to be the poster child for girlbossing, I could be it.
When I sit down with myself and try to make sense of where my girlbossing comes from, I realize that my being a hyper-independent brown girl and being the oldest daughter of a Punjabi household both have a lot to do with my toxic productivity. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to prove that I can do it all–and that I can do it alone. After all, I saw my parents do it, as they juggled multiple jobs, long hours, raising children, and managing their home as new immigrants. All I really knew of my parents was their ability to thrive in survival mode. There was a time where the one thing that I admired the most about my mother was her ability to finish every single one of her tasks on a daily basis, without missing a beat. I realize now that, while it may have looked like nothing was falling through the cracks, perhaps she was just as good at hiding the impact of her toxic productivity as I have been.
Laura McGoodwin, the author of Power Moves: How women can pivot, reboot, and build a career of purpose writes, “we are a generation of young women who were told we could do anything and instead heard that we had to be everything”. She says that, “we were held to high standards, but also held to the notion that we could have successful careers and picture-perfect family lives, and maintain our emotional and physical health while doing it– if only we were willing to put in the work”. McGoodwin also points out that, “unlike previous generations of women, we grew up consuming media that illustrated an unrealistic picture of success, assuring us that as long as we had the prerequisites (i.e., education, social skills, motivation, etc.) to be successful,” it would happen for us.
I, too, was told that I could have it all, do it all, and be all that I wanted to be– as long as I worked incredibly hard for it. I had to put in long hours, work constantly, be in every room and space, network, say yes to every opportunity, and do it all while managing a social life and being a good daughter, sister, cousin, and friend.
I’m finding, though, that the harder I work and the harder that I girlboss, the more and more alienated I feel from myself. I’m also finding that, as I continue to sell the world on my girlbossing, all I’m really selling is a false narrative that actually makes me feel disconnected, disorientated, unhealthy, and ungrounded.
The summer of 2022 saw me go through one of the hardest and darkest times of my life. I was unhappy, devoid of motivation, and incredibly burnt out. Balancing all the things I had going on in my life had caught up with me. My relationships were failing, I was feeling incredibly irritable and impatient, and I felt like my natural ability to bounce back from adversity wasn’t working. The math wasn’t mathing. I knew something had to change. I knew that I had to let one of the many things that I was doing go.
During the fall of 2022, I started to seriously consider what I wanted to change. I started to reach out to people that would be able to help me see what I was doing wrong. That’s when my friend Amrita Ahuja came in. Amrita is the CEO & Founder of Groundwork, a system and framework for living life that I adopted back in 2020. Amrita is an Executive Coach and serial entrepreneur who knows a thing or two about ambition. She’s the ultimate ‘girlboss’ and has created an art form out of girlbossing– but with ease, intention, and flow. In chatting with Amrita, I realized that I wanted to deepen my practice, not only with the Groundwork framework, but also with myself. I knew she could help me break out of my relationship with toxic productivity and drop the girlbossing once and for all.
In working with Amrita, I’ve realized that I have a strong feeling of not being good enough. I don’t think that I deserve a majority of the things that I have worked hard to get. I don’t think that I am deserving of love, respect, kindness, or care. I also don’t think I’m deserving of support and help. This is why I think I must do it all alone. This is all conditioning and none of this is true, but when I was younger, I convinced myself that it was true.
Because feeling like you’re not good enough is no fun at all, I trained myself to keep myself busy. If I was busy, I wouldn’t have time to be alone. If I wasn’t alone, I wouldn’t have to spend time thinking about how I wasn’t good enough. This is how my relationship with toxic productivity started and remained consistent throughout the rest of my life. In working with Amrita, I was able to not only identify the root cause of my insecurity and self-doubt, but come up with a solid plan to undo it and heal it.
As such, part of healing what Amrita calls my “survival pattern” is to get to the root cause of my insecurity– the not feeling good enough. In order to get to the root, though, she’s taught me that I have to undo all the harm that I have caused myself in the process. For me, it means doing less and spending more time alone so that I actually sit with the pain and move through it. It means not subscribing to the previous model of toxic productivity that I was upholding, saying yes to less, and creating more time for what Amrita is a master at— ease, intention, and flow.
Someone once said to me “you have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce” and it formed the basis of how much and how hard I work. What I gathered from this quote was that, firstly, I can be Beyonce and that I basically am. I could be just as successful, famous, and rich as Beyonce, as long as I was working as hard as her. Second, I learned that resting or taking care of myself during the same hours that Beyonce is Beyonce-ing is something I should feel guilty for.
What I failed to realize is that, much to my dismay, Beyonce and I are not the same person. She probably has a lot of help, can afford to outsource, and also didn’t arrive at her current position overnight.
These days, as I take the girlboss power suit off and put down the girlboss armour, I’m embracing a different sentiment. Speaker, author, and entrepreneur Greg Crabtree maintains that sometimes, growth is actually subtraction, not addition. This premise maintains that, it’s in the letting go and in creating space that we allow for growth to happen. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.
After two years of hosting Brown Girl Guilt, I’m deciding to pause the podcast. I’m choosing to shift all of my focus to my full-time job as General Manager of 5X Fest. It’s not a goodbye, but a simple “hold that thought”. If you ask me whether this decision was a tough one or sad one to arrive at, I would tell you no. I’ve loved being the host of Brown Girl Guilt, but there are not enough words to describe how much I love being General Manager at 5X. It’s everything that I’ve ever wanted.
I’ve felt a lot of guilt in making this decision, though. I’ve thought about every single one of you during this decision-making process and the arrival of my decision. I thought about how I might be letting you all down and if I was withholding something from you all. But then I thought, “Harpo, aren’t you just reinforcing brown girl guilt when you’re feeling guilt for your decision?! The very thing you’ve been telling everyone to undo?!” I know it’s the best thing for me and that when I focus on just one thing, it’s going to help me make tremendous impact in my community. That’s something none of you would ever resent me for.
So there you have it, folks. I’m no longer girlbossing. Instead, I’m girlbeing, girlresting, girlexisting. I’m allowing for more white space in my calendar, saying no to opportunities that will absolutely come back around, and making time for things I enjoy. It’s doing wonders for my nervous system, my relationship with myself and relationships with others. It’s making me a lot better at my job. Some may even say that it’s making me the “ultimate girlboss.”
This doesn’t mean that our time together is coming to an end. It means the quite opposite. You can still stay connected with me, just in different ways. I’d encourage you to follow me and stay up to date with my happenings on Instagram @itsharpo. I also encourage you to check out 5X Fest and join our fam. Most importantly, I want you to remember that everything that you see and admire in me is what you already possess inside of you. You just have to turn your attention to it. That way, you’ll have a little piece of Brown Girl Guilt everywhere you go.
