Tell Yourself This When Life Gets Hard
The single phrase that changes everything about suffering
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There’s a specific kind of hardship that feels unbearable not because of what’s happening but because of what you’re telling yourself about what’s happening.
You lose your job. That’s hard. But what makes it crushing is the story: “I’m a failure. I’ll never recover from this. Everyone will know I couldn’t make it. My life is falling apart.”
You go through a health crisis. That’s difficult. But what makes it devastating is the narrative: “Why me? This isn’t fair. My body has betrayed me. I can’t handle this. Everything I built is meaningless now.”
You watch someone you love struggle with something you can’t fix. That’s painful. But what makes it unbearable is the interpretation: “I should be able to help. If I were better, I could solve this. My inability to fix this proves I’m inadequate.”
The circumstances are hard. The stories you tell yourself about those circumstances make them either survivable or crushing.
Most people don’t recognize they’re telling themselves stories. They think they’re simply observing reality. They believe their interpretation of events is the same as the events themselves. They confuse their narrative about what’s happening with what’s actually happening.
But there’s always a gap between event and interpretation. Something happens, and then you tell yourself what it means. The meaning you assign determines your experience more than the event itself.
This gap is where your power lives. You can’t always control what happens to you. You can almost always control what you tell yourself about what happens to you.
When the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius faced catastrophic challenges during his reign, including plague that killed millions, constant warfare on the borders, betrayal by trusted generals, and the painful reality that his son was unfit to inherit the throne, he developed a specific practice. He would remind himself:
“This is what it is to be human. This is what existence includes.”
Not “Why is this happening to me?” Not “This shouldn’t be happening.” Not “I can’t handle this.” Simply: this is what being human includes. This is part of the deal.
This reframe transforms your relationship with difficulty from personal attack to impersonal reality. From “Why me?” to “Why not me?” From exceptional catastrophe to ordinary challenge.
When you believe your hardship is unusual, unfair, or evidence that something is wrong with you or your life, you add a layer of suffering to the already difficult circumstances. You’re not just dealing with the situation. You’re dealing with your interpretation that the situation shouldn’t be happening, that you don’t deserve this, that this is somehow uniquely terrible.
But when you understand that hardship is built into human existence, that difficulty isn’t personal or exceptional but universal and inevitable, you can meet challenges without the additional suffering that comes from believing you shouldn’t have to face them.
This doesn’t make hard things easy. It makes them workable.
The phrase that changes everything is simple: “Of course this is hard. What else would it be?”
When your savings disappear in an economic collapse: Of course this is hard. Resources are uncertain and markets fluctuate. This is what participating in an economy includes.
When your body breaks down despite your efforts to maintain it: Of course this is hard. Bodies are biological systems that eventually fail. This is what having a body includes.
When relationships end despite your love and commitment: Of course this is hard. People change, circumstances shift, and not all connections last forever. This is what relating to other humans includes.
When your plans crumble and your carefully constructed future falls apart: Of course this is hard. The future never unfolds exactly as planned and control is mostly illusion. This is what trying to navigate an uncertain world includes.
“Of course” is the most powerful reframe available. It acknowledges difficulty without adding the suffering of believing difficulty shouldn’t exist. It accepts hardship as part of the package of being alive rather than as evidence that something has gone wrong.
But this reframe requires giving up something that feels important: the belief that your suffering is special, that your hardship is exceptional, that what you’re going through is somehow worse or more significant than what others face.
We cling to the specialness of our suffering because it feels like the only compensation for enduring it. If this pain is extraordinary, then maybe I’m extraordinary for surviving it. If this challenge is uniquely difficult, then maybe my struggle has unique meaning.
But this need for your suffering to be special actually increases your suffering. It prevents you from accessing the wisdom available in recognizing that what you’re experiencing is a variation on what humans have always experienced. That people before you have faced similar challenges and survived. That difficulty is ordinary, even when it feels catastrophic.
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who lived much of his life enslaved and disabled, taught that we should expect difficulties the way sailors expect storms. Not with dread, but with recognition that storms are part of sailing. You don’t take storms personally. You don’t ask why storms exist. You prepare for them and navigate through them because that’s what sailing requires.
When a storm hits and you think “This shouldn’t be happening,” you’ve added mental suffering to physical challenge. When a storm hits and you think “Of course there are storms, I’m sailing,” you can focus all your energy on navigation rather than wasting it on resistance to reality.
This is the shift: from “Why is this happening?” to “This is what’s happening. How do I navigate it?”
From “I can’t handle this” to “I’ve handled everything so far, and I’ll handle this too.”
From “This is too much” to “This is hard, and hard is part of the deal.”
The words you use when you talk to yourself during difficulty shape your capacity to handle difficulty. If you tell yourself catastrophic stories about what hardship means, you’ll experience hardship catastrophically. If you tell yourself realistic stories that acknowledge difficulty while refusing to add unnecessary suffering through interpretation, you’ll handle hardship with more capability and less despair.
But changing your internal narrative isn’t about positive thinking or toxic optimism. It’s not about pretending hard things aren’t hard or convincing yourself that everything happens for a reason or that you’re grateful for suffering.
It’s about accuracy. About seeing what’s actually happening without the layers of story that make it worse than it needs to be.
Your job loss is difficult. Adding the interpretation that it proves you’re a failure doesn’t make you face reality, it makes you face a fiction that’s more painful than reality. The accurate story is: you lost a job, which happens to people, and you’ll need to find another one or create different income. That’s hard enough without adding narratives about what it means about your worth or your future.
Your health crisis is challenging. Adding the interpretation that your body has betrayed you or that this is punishment doesn’t help you navigate treatment options and lifestyle adjustments. The accurate story is: your body is experiencing a problem, which bodies sometimes do, and you’re working with medical professionals to address it. That’s difficult enough without adding stories about cosmic injustice or personal failing.
Your inability to fix someone else’s problem is frustrating. Adding the interpretation that this proves you’re inadequate doesn’t help the other person or you. The accurate story is: some problems can’t be solved by caring about them, and being unable to fix something doesn’t mean you’ve failed. That’s hard enough to accept without adding narratives about what it means about your value as a person.
Accuracy in how you talk to yourself about difficulty doesn’t eliminate difficulty. But it eliminates the unnecessary suffering that comes from interpreting difficulty as personal, exceptional, or evidence of something wrong with you.
Seneca wrote that we often suffer more in imagination than in reality. He observed how people make their actual circumstances harder by adding fearful interpretations, catastrophic predictions, and narratives about what difficulty means about their life or character.
The remedy isn’t to stop thinking about difficult situations. It’s to think about them accurately. To separate what’s actually happening from the stories you’re telling yourself about what’s happening. To distinguish between the inherent difficulty of circumstances and the additional suffering created by your interpretation of those circumstances.
When life gets hard, and it will get hard, because that’s what life includes, tell yourself this: “Of course this is hard. What else would it be? I’m human, facing human challenges, with human limitations. This is the deal. And I can work with this deal even when I don’t like it.”
This isn’t resignation. It’s engagement with reality as it actually is rather than as you wish it were. It’s the recognition that your energy is better spent navigating actual challenges than resisting the existence of challenges altogether.
The hardship you’re facing doesn’t become easier when you tell yourself accurate stories about it. But it becomes workable. The difference between crushing and workable isn’t in the circumstances. It’s in what you’re telling yourself about those circumstances.
📝 Today’s Stoic Gameplan
Notice your narratives: When you face difficulty today, pause and identify the story you’re telling yourself about it. Write down both what’s actually happening and the interpretation you’re adding to what’s happening.
Practice “of course”: The next time something frustrating or difficult occurs, respond with “Of course this is hard. What else would it be?” Notice how this reframe changes your relationship with the difficulty.
Separate event from meaning: Choose one current challenge. Describe the actual circumstances in one sentence without interpretation. Then notice all the meaning you’ve been adding to those basic circumstances.
Question catastrophic thinking: When you catch yourself thinking “I can’t handle this” or “This is too much,” ask: “Have I handled difficult things before? Am I still here despite previous challenges? What evidence suggests I’m actually incapable of navigating this?”
Life gets hard for everyone. The question isn’t whether you’ll face difficulty but what you’ll tell yourself when you do. The stories you tell yourself during hardship determine whether that hardship becomes unbearable or simply difficult.
Choose accuracy over catastrophe. Choose realistic assessment over dramatic interpretation. Choose “This is hard and I’m working with it” over “This is impossible and I’m failing.”
The circumstances don’t change. But your experience of them transforms completely.
Stay stoic,
SW
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