How Difficult?

How difficult do you perceive life to be?

I have been spending a lot of time recently thinking about something that people often tell me.

“Why do you find everything amazing?”

Now, for me, that’s a good thing. I enjoy taking pleasure in the simple things; however, some people find it annoying.

I struggled to answer the question on why until I really sat down to give it some thought. Please bear with me as I try to explain my logic and why I think it’s a position people should consider

From my humble perspective, the amount of time in life you are happy stems from the level of “life struggle” that you perceive as your baseline. The harder you perceive life to be, the happier and more amazing life is.

Here are two extremes to help put that into context:

In my perspective, life should be plain sailing, having a big house, numerous cars, the ability to travel, and eat out is the norm.

In my perspective, life should be challenging every day; all tasks are tough to complete, and even managing to pay basic bills is not easy.

Life has ebbs and flows; this is inevitable and something we all know. The duration of each and the intensity of each may vary case to case, but what we know is that both the good and bad will pass.

Now, if I am the person in scenario one, and my benchmark or my expectation is that life should be easy, it will mean that I will spend most of my time being less satisfied and only a small percentage of the time finding myself being amazed.

In contrast to this, scenario two means that on the daily, I expect challenges; I am prepared for them, and thus, anything that is not a challenge becomes a blessing. It can be simple, but you will perceive it as far better than the person in scenario one, as your perception of life struggle is a lot lower than theirs.

I have tried to build out a little graph for you to visualise it, I hope that helps.

So, what does this mean? Now, I am not saying what works for me will work for everyone, but I think it’s an insight that everyone should give some thought to.

We have become increasingly comfortable as a society, and our social “norms” have become more like luxuries without us even knowing.

My advice would be, no matter how privileged you are or what you are blessed with, work hard to keep in the forefront of your mind that life is tough. Be ready, and you will find yourself happier than you would be otherwise.

I am not saying not to enjoy or spoil yourself, but do it consciously. And no matter what you have, if you are making your life too easy or too privileged without being conscious of that fact, it’s living above your perceived level of life’s struggle baseline, and your happiness will soon diminish. Even when enjoying the simplest of pleasures, count your blessings and don’t think it’s something you are entitled to.

Work hard to make sure you are aware of and feel the struggle no matter what you have, and you will see the pleasure of the day-to-day multiply much faster and for much longer than any form of excess will.

Even when you have the privilege to consume in excess for prolonged periods of time, my advice would be not to, and you will find yourself happier.