Our Hard Is Most People's Easy: decide the life first
Carlos Hidalgo on bottoming out after twelve years running the agency he co-founded, boundaries instead of balance, and why work makes a lousy god.
Carlos ran the agency he co-founded for twelve years before it caught up with him. What got to me about his story is how ordinary the slide looked from the outside: hitting numbers, growing the business, and quietly coming apart behind all of it. The rock bottom became his wake-up call, and the rebuild started with a reversal most of us never consider. Decide the life you want first, then make work feed it. He thinks Western culture has that backwards, and after our conversation, I can't argue with him.
We talked about why he gave up on balance and started building boundaries instead. He gets the same 168 hours a week as everyone else, so he draws hard lines around the few things that actually make him him, and his faith sits at the center of that. The line I keep thinking about is the one he has to give himself: don't mistake God's provision for your own performance.
He also doesn't hand strangers the pen on his own story. The critics online don't have a front seat to his life, so he takes critique seriously from about five people and lets the rest go. His measure of a good life is experiences over stuff, because as he puts it, there's no pockets in a shroud. Buy the jet ski, skip the second house, and remember that our hard is most people's easy.
“Work has become a lousy god, and you only get 168 hours a week.”
Notes
- He defines the life he wants first, then makes work feed it, because Western culture has it backwards.
- He stopped chasing balance and builds hard boundaries around the few things that matter instead.
- Online critics don't have a front seat to his life, so he accepts critique from about five people.
- The UnAmerican Dream turned out to be the book he needed to write for himself, not just the one he was selling.