everything seems hard

[Olaf]

I feel like everything in life, even the `positive` things are hard, is everything just hard or am I making it hard? I am not only talking about career, just in general.

[LordFall]

Everything in life is hard, it's just about having the right goals so your suffering is worth it and also strategies to lower your feedback loop so you get your wins often and ideally weekly and daily instead of having to wait months and years for them.

It's why I'm a fan of posting content daily, you get to have an idea, edit it and post it within an hour or 2 and you get to push it to the market for feedback that same day. I've started a challenge where I post daily for Legend of the Abyss, I'm gonna film the content for day 9 a bit later today. 

Me and this guy here have been doing accountability calls, you're welcome to join. I'll hold you accountable! 

 

[Lyubov]

It’s two things tangled up.

I would say that hard is largely a perception of it. We have expectations and wish things were different, when these don’t align with reality we feel resistance and uncomfortable emotions. 

TRUTH: Regarding life being hard, life is just life. It’s possible to cultivate an experience of flow, shape your life in a way where even when things get challenging and we wish something were different, that there is greater peace and sense of wholeness and belonging in this world. The truth is life is just life, it is what it is, we are here, we exist, we are whole as we are, we ARE. 

PRACTICALITY: Now, practically speaking, reality itself can get very nuanced and things we set out to do can be incredibly complicated. They may take hundreds of ours if our time, our energy, our focus. We will most likely make all sorts of mistakes, some with life changing consequences. So just by sitting and observing reality, yeah there are indeed some very important things we need to be responsible for, many things we need to know, many traps we can fall into. 

The spiritual path (Wu Wei) recognizes both of these and balances them. If you go too far into either direction it can create an imbalance in your life.

[Inliytened1]

14 hours ago, LordFall said:

Everything in life is hard, it's just about having the right goals so your suffering is worth it and also strategies to lower your feedback loop so you get your wins often and ideally weekly and daily instead of having to wait months and years for them.

It's why I'm a fan of posting content daily, you get to have an idea, edit it and post it within an hour or 2 and you get to push it to the market for feedback that same day. I've started a challenge where I post daily for Legend of the Abyss, I'm gonna film the content for day 9 a bit later today. 

Me and this guy here have been doing accountability calls, you're welcome to join. I'll hold you accountable! 

 

To piggy back off this - it's important to that you take little steps each day to accomplish long term goals. Rome wasn't built in a day.  And its a marathon not a sprint.   Small gains each day will start to add up.  So it is babysteps.  You need endurance but you also need consistency.  I used to start things and quit.  When you work towards a goal...you want to start and go all the way to the finish but note that it will take little steps each day maybe for 5 years, or whatever it takes.  But follow through.  And often times you will want to give up.   Those are the times to keep pushing. 

Edited yesterday at 01:23 PM by Inliytened1

[Jordan of the Shire]

I get this, it's hard. Every morning I wake up and have to *reload*. The upbringing conditioning is so engrained. The physiological and the mental have so many forms that aren't conducive to peace. So it takes practice to come to peace. But it can be done. And it doesn't seem to be a one and done kinda thing. More of a, ah i'm at peace this moment, I got there. Then there's the next thing that comes up. Such is life.

[Inliytened1]

5 minutes ago, Jordan of the Shire said:

I get this, it's hard. Every morning I wake up and have to *reload*. The upbringing conditioning is so engrained. The physiological and the mental have so many forms that aren't conducive to peace. So it takes practice to come to peace. But it can be done. And it doesn't seem to be a one and done kinda thing. More of a, ah i'm at peace this moment, I got there. Then there's the next thing that comes up. Such is life.

Yes. Life is constantly throwing you curve balls.  It becomes a game of cat and mouse.  And sometimes you just want to bury your head in the sand because life has beaten you down to a pulp.   But it is the lust for life itself that should make you pick your head up and keep going.  Until you reach the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Edited yesterday at 01:28 PM by Inliytened1

[vinc3nc]

 

@Olaf Yes, it’s hard, especially if you’re a man.The odds are stacked against you. Very few people actually “make it” in the sense of becoming successful across all areas of life: health, wealth, happiness, and love.

Everything gets more expensive every year, while salaries struggle to keep up. Loneliness is everywhere. Building wealth requires taking risks, and sometimes those risks cost you years of progress.

There are no shortcuts. You have to work on yourself constantly. You have to become stronger, more disciplined, more capable, because life doesn’t get easier. In fact, it gets only harder if you refuse to do it. You have to become the kind of person who can handle whatever life throws at you.

And that raises the real question: Are you willing to become that person? Because if you want to be in the top 1%, forget about the idea of a perfectly “balanced” life.

There simply isnt enough time to maximize everything at once. You can’t simultaneously spend hours every day working on yourself, build a successful career, become wealthy, maintain a great social life, have a gf and give her the time she deserves, be there for your friends and family, sleep 8 hours, have multiple hobbies, travel, relax, and still have plenty of free time.

Something has to give. At some point, you have to decide what matters most to you and be willing to sacrifice the things that matter less. You don’t get extraordinary results from an ordinary level of commitment. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to be willing to live differently from most people.

And sometimes, you can do everything right and life still won’t reward you, at least not immediately. That’s why persistence becomes just as important as discipline. You have to keep going even when the results arent there yet, even when it feels like your effort isnt paying off.

[Joseph Maynor]

This is because we want what is not happening.  This is okay, but it also causes us suffering.  It is good to have some intention to control the future.

[Olaf]

@vinc3nc so many insights in one text, incredible! thank you for sharing

[Jordan of the Shire]

13 hours ago, Inliytened1 said:

Yes. Life is constantly throwing you curve balls.  It becomes a game of cat and mouse.  And sometimes you just want to bury your head in the sand because life has beaten you down to a pulp.   But it is the lust for life itself that should make you pick your head up and keep going.  Until you reach the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Yea totally. Keep going is the goat advice. 

Keep going

(I realize that might sound sarcastic, it's not!)

Edited 12 hours ago by Jordan of the Shire

[Jordan of the Shire]

On 9/2/2026 at 4:37 PM, Olaf said:

I feel like everything in life, even the `positive` things are hard, is everything just hard or am I making it hard? I am not only talking about career, just in general.

There is another teaching around the pāramīs. These are the perfections that build merit. Merit supports both life circumstances and the capacity for transcendence. The state of a life is not only luck or personality; previous and present wholesome action is a condition. You improve a pāramī by knowing what it is and applying it at a level you yourself choose.

Take generosity. A simple training is giving to someone who asks on the street. Don’t judge what they will do with it. Don’t dictate. If you walk away and see it go to drink, don’t let spite arise. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t compare arms or stories or who “should be working.” Give for the sake of giving. A workable householder measure is: of ten, one goes out. Then joy may arise. Let it arise. Know it with awareness. Do not land on “I am a good person.” Awareness knows joy. Awareness is not the joy.

This can be practiced as a lokuttara dhamma—beyond the worldly eye—without waiting to be a saint. It is easier to see the separation of awareness and mind when the body is not contracted. The pāramī is built by releasing the inner no, by not identifying with the meritorious act, and by actually giving. That field is responded to in ways the worldly eye does not track. It also makes loving-kindness less theoretical.

The other pāramīs work the same way: virtue, patience, energy, truthfulness, and the rest. You pick one. You set the level. No one assigns it as a moral badge. As it builds, life is still life, but it stops feeling like a permanent uphill argument with the world.

 

(I wrote the initial draft but used AI to clean up my wording a bit, and to make this easier to read. So it's not my tone per say, but it is legible and gives a gist which could serve as a good place to start.)

Edited 11 hours ago by Jordan of the Shire

[pablo_aka_god]

17 hours ago, vinc3nc said:

 

@Olaf Yes, it’s hard, especially if you’re a man.The odds are stacked against you. Very few people actually “make it” in the sense of becoming successful across all areas of life: health, wealth, happiness, and love.

Everything gets more expensive every year, while salaries struggle to keep up. Loneliness is everywhere. Building wealth requires taking risks, and sometimes those risks cost you years of progress.

There are no shortcuts. You have to work on yourself constantly. You have to become stronger, more disciplined, more capable, because life doesn’t get easier. In fact, it gets only harder if you refuse to do it. You have to become the kind of person who can handle whatever life throws at you.

And that raises the real question: Are you willing to become that person? Because if you want to be in the top 1%, forget about the idea of a perfectly “balanced” life.

There simply isnt enough time to maximize everything at once. You can’t simultaneously spend hours every day working on yourself, build a successful career, become wealthy, maintain a great social life, have a gf and give her the time she deserves, be there for your friends and family, sleep 8 hours, have multiple hobbies, travel, relax, and still have plenty of free time.

Something has to give. At some point, you have to decide what matters most to you and be willing to sacrifice the things that matter less. You don’t get extraordinary results from an ordinary level of commitment. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to be willing to live differently from most people.

And sometimes, you can do everything right and life still won’t reward you, at least not immediately. That’s why persistence becomes just as important as discipline. You have to keep going even when the results arent there yet, even when it feels like your effort isnt paying off.

Maturity is realizing that you can't get everything. Also people start from different points, of course becoming a trillionaire is easier if you are elon musk which comes from a wealthy family than if your dad was in prision.

Knowing the cards you have and managing expectations it's not being negative, it's being mature.

[Yimpa]

It’s soooo hard.

But we do it anyway.