Photo by Michael Shtern on Unsplash
Life feels so hard because most of us are carrying it on ground that keeps moving, and then blaming ourselves for wobbling. Work, money, family, your body, the phone in your hand: each one asks for constant effort, and almost nothing gives you a floor to rest on. Add the private belief that everyone else got a manual you didn’t, and ordinary hard turns into “what is wrong with me?”
You’re not in a crisis. Nothing terrible happened this week. And still. The bills, the job, the text you haven’t answered, the dishes, the thing with your mother, the news. You lie in bed at night thinking, is it supposed to be this hard? Is it just me?
When I was four, maybe five, my mother worked all week in Dublin, and the only time she could do the shopping was Saturday morning. We didn’t have a car. The grocery store was two miles away, so the three of us walked. Across fields and main roads, hoping to beat the rain. My mother with heavy bags cutting into her fingers. Me with two lighter ones, trying to keep up. My sister dragging a plastic bag of whatever wouldn’t break.
Those walks taught my body something before I had words for it. That the ground was never entirely stable. That safety was something you earned, not something you were given. That life required constant effort, even just to eat.
I didn’t grow up without love. I grew up without ease. And for years I thought everyone else had the manual for life and I didn’t.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. You don’t have to carry all of it tonight. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the shoulders, the chest, the belly, and whether something in you lets go a little or holds on tighter. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If something in you let go a little, or a voice said “sure, but other people manage,” notice both. That voice is the one that’s been keeping you going, and it’s tired too.
In two decades of sitting with people in pain, I’ve learned that nobody can solve anything until there’s steady ground under their feet. A problem in the open ocean is unmanageable. You’re sure you’re going to drown, and being sure is what makes you sink. Put the exact same problem in a teacup and you won’t drown in a teacup. Same problem. Different ground.
That’s the mechanism of most struggle. Not that your problems are uniquely big. That you’re facing them with no floor. Money that buys less every year. Work that can vanish. A family that was never quite steady. A phone that never lets your nervous system stand down. Every problem lands in open ocean.
And then shame arrives and tells you that you’re the only one. The only one secretly wondering how everyone else is making adulthood work. That part is a lie.
Everyone is suffering. Early on, working on a broker’s desk, I sat surrounded by people making more in a year than all my aunts and uncles made in their lifetimes, and they were terrified. Since then I’ve sat with founders who just sold a company for a fortune and with couples who can’t afford childcare, and the emotional pattern is the same. Everyone is pretending. Everyone is bracing. And everyone thinks their suffering is a personal defect.
Life is hard. You’re not failing at it. You make sense.
Why life feels harder than it should
Everything has become a project. Rest has to be productive. Hobbies have to become side hustles. Even mindfulness turned into self-improvement. When everything has to justify itself, nothing is ever just living.
You never get to stand down. Your nervous system knows it’s being asked to stay switched on too long. One notification, one scroll, and you’re activated again.
You feel like you have no choice. That feeling is a signal. When you feel trapped, you’re usually running on your survival self, the one built to get you through, not the one that wants a place in your life.
Change and loss pile up. A move, a breakup, a new baby, a parent getting older. Even good changes take ground away before they give it back.
Life isn’t fair. Some people start with more ground than others. I did, in ways I didn’t see at the time. Naming that isn’t self-pity. It’s accuracy.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Aliveness ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So we start with today, the hard thing in front of you.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. One long breath out, longer than the in-breath. You don’t have to solve your whole life in the next five minutes.
What happened
One plain sentence about today. “I opened my bank app and my stomach dropped.” “My boss emailed at 9pm and I’ve been tense since.”
Where it lands in the body
Shoulders up around your ears. A tight chest. A heaviness behind the eyes. Rest your attention there for a moment. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
Which part of you is carrying this? The one who keeps going no matter what. The one who wants to crawl under the duvet. The one who says everyone else copes fine. It usually carries a coin: too much (I’m too needy to find this hard) or not enough (I should be able to handle this). Thank it. It’s been working overtime.
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. When did you learn that life takes constant effort? Who carried the heavy bags in your house? What did you learn about asking for help?
Feel it and tell someone
Say it out loud to someone who’s glad to hear from you. “Life feels really hard right now, and I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t.”
One creative action
Pick one thing you can shrink from ocean to teacup. Not the whole money situation, one bill. Not the whole job, one email. Put a floor under one thing and let the rest wait.
What to do when life is hard
The answer isn’t working harder. It’s building ground. Ground your nervous system actually trusts. I used to think that if I ever taught movement I’d call it The Wooden Floor, because a floor that holds is what makes the dance possible. Jumping is safe and falling is safe when there’s a floor underneath you.
The ground doesn’t stop hard things from happening. In my fifties a lot of hard things arrived at once, with my marriage real, the kids safe and the work meaningful. The ground didn’t stop me falling. It stopped the falling from meaning there was something fundamentally wrong with me. The ground isn’t what stops the bill arriving. It’s what lets you pay it.
And you need some places where nothing needs to get better. For me it’s the ocean and the dance floor. No phone, no narrating, no turning it into proof of anything. Just being alive for a while. Protect one of those fiercely. What is the point of any of this if not to live fully alive for some of the time you’re here?
Some days you’ll slip back into bracing. That’s not failure. That’s the practice. You begin again.
One thing to do tonight
Find ten minutes where nothing needs to get better. Phone in another room. Make tea, sit by the window, or put on one song and move. Don’t improve anything. Don’t post it. Just notice you’re here.
Would therapy help with this?
If life feels hard because of stress, pressure and too much on your plate, coaching is often the right size of help.
But if you’ve stopped enjoying almost everything, if you feel numb or hopeless most days, or if it’s been weeks and you can’t get out of the fog, that may be depression, and it deserves real care. Please talk to a licensed therapist where you live, or your doctor. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Aliveness ground, that means enough floor under you that life gets to be something you live, not only something you survive.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Aliveness ground, for the nights when it all feels like too much. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
That boy carrying the shopping home in the rain still lives in me. He still braces sometimes. But these days he gets to put the bags down.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
Why is life so hard for me?
Usually because you’re facing real pressure without steady ground under you, and then blaming yourself for struggling. It isn’t a personal defect. Almost everyone is bracing, and almost nobody says it out loud.
Does life ever get easier?
Life doesn’t stop bringing hard things. What gets easier is how you meet them. As you build ground, in your body, your relationships and your days, the same problems stop feeling like open ocean.
Is it normal to feel like life is too hard?
Yes, most people feel it at times. If it’s constant, if you’ve lost interest in almost everything, or you feel hopeless, please talk to a licensed therapist where you live. That’s a signal to get support, not a sign you’ve failed.
The idea that feeling you have no choice means you’re running on your survival self comes from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
