You Were Built For More Than Survival | What happens when you walk away from the hustle?
Everyone thinks they need more to be happy. More money. More recognition. More achievement. When Simone Adams sat down with me for the Shaping Freedom podcast, she told a different story. What happens when you strip your life down to what you actually need.
Simone is the founder of Color My Outdoors, a nonprofit rewriting the nature narrative for people of color in the South. Her story starts in a moment every parent dreads. The moment when your child stops expecting you to show up. "I told my son I was taking him to dinner, and when I got home rushing and told him to get in the car, he said he'd already eaten," Simone shared. "He said he just expected I wouldn't be able to make it."
That moment became her pattern interrupt. The woman who went from working 60 hours a week to 20. From spending whatever she wanted to $30 a day. From Atlanta's hustle culture to solo camping in the Pacific Northwest. Three patterns emerged from her story that I wanted to share with you:
1. How inherited patterns normalize survival mode
"I was good at the hustle and bustle life," Simone told me. "That hustle and grind culture that Atlanta and so many cities will ask of you. I was good at it." But good at surviving isn't the same as living.
This didn't come from nowhere. "It's part of black women culture, right? We're always striving to prove ourselves and overcome the obstacles. And so we do a lot." The pattern was so normalized she didn't see it until that moment with her son. "I realized it wasn't the job, because I'd been a workaholic at the job before that. It was really my mindset."
2. Why stripping down shows what you actually need
Simone's solution wasn't better balance. It was radical subtraction. She challenged herself to live on $30 a day. Worked just 20 hours a week. Moved from a city of 5 million to a town of 1,600 people. "I gave myself this really interesting challenge. How little can I make? Instead of how much can I make?"
The experiment taught her what she actually needed versus what she thought she needed. "I had to give up a lot of the social eat and drink experiences. That's where my money went in Atlanta." What she gained was time. Time to walk her son to school his senior year. Time for morning coffee rituals. Time to discover she was an introvert who'd been playing an extrovert her whole life.
3. Why it's so hard to put yourself first
"I had built this character based on what other people needed of me," Simone explained. "I had inherited people pleasing. And so I was really great at being the person other people needed me to be." But she always felt something was missing.
The only way to find out who she was without everyone else's expectations was to get away from them entirely. A year in New Mexico. Three months camping solo. Moving to the Blue Ridge Mountains. "I needed a blank canvas," she said. "I love who I am now, and I don't have that feeling that I had before where I was missing something."
TL;DR:
Survival mode can become so normal you forget you're surviving instead of living. When you're always proving yourself, always doing more—that's a pattern, not a personality trait.
Stripping down shows what you actually need versus what you think you need. Radical subtraction reveals what fills you up versus what drains you.
You can give yourself permission to live differently than everyone expects. The life everyone thinks you should want might not be the life that actually works for you.
Learn More:
Support Color My Outdoors at colormyoutdoors.org—a nonprofit creating access and visibility for people of color in outdoor spaces.
Follow Simone Adams and Color My Outdoors on Instagram to see what happens when someone chooses authenticity over approval.
Listen to the full Shaping Freedom episode (TO BE ADDED) to hear why sometimes the smallest step is taking off your shoes and feeling the earth beneath your feet.
Ready to recognize your patterns
Join me for "Your Past Is Your Present" – a two-hour live workshop where you'll learn to identify the inherited strategies shaping your reactions. March 1st, 4:00 PM PT. Learn more and save your spot at shapingfreedom.com.