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WHY YOU SHOULD SAY “NURTURING IT” INSTEAD OF “CRUSHING IT”

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“Crushing it” at work is a term that gets thrown around a lot. Whenever people begin to complain about their work, or have a gripe that can’t seem fixing, they will often find themselves staring down the barrel of “love what you do” type rhetoric. Complaints about work are usually met with “just love what you do”, or “look at me, I’m crushing it”. These are not answers to anything. They are banal platitudes, designed to mask some deep insecurity held within the person that is self proscribing that they “love what they do” and are “crushing it”.

This type of rhetoric is repeated online, and perpetuated everywhere. There are hundreds and thousands of motivational speakers, or pseudo-motivational speakers that have little to no idea about what actually goes into an average work day. The term “crushing it” denotes that a person has no actual concept of what they want to do or where they want to go, only that they are confident that if they did know, they would get there.

“Crushing it” is a term used to express that a person is confused as to their actual positioning, so instead needs to find a clear mantra to showcase who they are. It is the universal identifier for someone who is confused, scared, or most of all, running away from where they truly need to be.

“Crushing it” or its elder cousin “Killing it” are used to guide people who are lost. They seem to be binary states that you can exist in; you are either in a state of “crushing it” or you are “not crushing it”.

This type of syntax really expresses one true meaning: Self-loathing. The very act of crushing is to put something under you. If you really loved what you did, you would not need to “crush it” or even “kill it”. You would instead find enjoyment out of it, and spend your time carefully nurturing it. The problem is, “nurturing it” doesn’t sell tickets to speaker events.

Nurturing your work involves taking great care to ensure that your work is done to the best you can achieve given the circumstances, and that consistent improvement is a much more sustainable avenue than “killing” or “crushing” your work or your opposition.

We never hear of sports stars referring to their work as “crushing” or “killing”. Most of the time, we will hear them clearly talk about the specifics of each moment, carefully crafted and controlled by them. This type of talk denotes passion, care and nurture.

If you describe your day as “crushing it” or “killing it”, you are doing yourself a disservice. Nobody wins. Nobody loses. We just exist.

If you want to “crush it” at work, maybe this is not a reflection of how good you are doing at work, but how you treat yourself. Maybe it’s time to reconsider the term “crushing it”, and instead focus on the term “nurturing it”

Individual results may vary, but at least it puts things in a different light.