The reason we struggle with work, responsibilities, discomfort, and things we simply don’t feel like doing.
Adulthood is made of annoying tasks and ordinary responsibilities. We need to go to work, pay our bills, run errands, cook, clean, do paperwork, exercise, have difficult conversations, or show up tired. We basically have to do things we don’t feel like doing, and this, most of the time.
None of this is fun or particularly glamorous. It’s nothing we’re gonna post in our Instagram stories or tell our friends about. But social media has created an expectation that life should always feel exciting and aesthetic, and that we need to constantly post and show that we’re doing these exciting and aesthetic things. But this is not the case, and everyone is pretending because we all feel the same thing. We want to show others we have an interesting life, so we keep posting. And by doing that, we encourage everyone else to keep doing the same thing.
Also, we’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the ordinary burdens of being an adult. We interpret ordinary discomfort as evidence that something is wrong. When we’re tired, we think that we need to prioritize ourselves. When we have responsibilities, we think we have too much on our plate, and we need a break. When we do unpleasant work, we think we shouldn’t have to do it. When we’re criticized, we think that we are not valued enough. When we have to adapt, we complain that people don’t accept us as we are. When we have to wait, we feel frustration. And when we have to sacrifice, we feel resentment.
But feeling discomfort doesn’t mean something isn’t working. Sometimes work is boring, and tasks are repetitive. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. And sometimes we have to swallow our pride and be polite to someone we don’t like. But none of it means that life is unfair to us. We just refuse to accept that life is hard.
So how can we become the person who runs our own life, even when it’s hard?
We need to start with a simple premise: our life is our responsibility. Our judgements, choices, desires, and responses belong to us. We have control over our mind and behavior. We don’t control other people’s behavior or external circumstances. Our task is just to perform the best we can within the circumstances we’ve been given.
This is a very different philosophy from the one that states the world owes us an experience that feels good. No one owes us anything.
The first adult realization is to understand that life isn’t supposed to be easy. It contains unavoidable friction: work, responsibilities, illness, rejection, loss, boredom, financial pressure, or difficult people. It’s not a mistake or a failure to experience these things. What is a mistake is to think that we shouldn’t experience them. That we’re somewhat above them. Above life. We can never be above life. We just have to become more capable of dealing with it.
We need to stop asking ourselves “why is this happening to me?” and start asking ourselves “what can I do about it? What is inside my control? What would improve my situation?” Because other people can create our circumstances, but they can not take our response away from us. Our judgements, choices, actions, and values belong to us and us only. We own them, and no one can take them away from us.
But they’re also things we don’t control. Other people’s opinions, other people’s choices, or external circumstances. We can’t control whether people like us. But what we can control is whether we’re honest, competent, and considerate. We can’t control whether we’ll get our dream job. But what we can control is whether we’re building valuable skills. We can’t control whether someone gives us an opportunity. But what we can control is whether we’re becoming the kind of person who earns one.
Also, we don’t need to wait for other people’s approval to take our life seriously. We don’t need to wait til people see us, validate us, recognize how hard we’re working or how much we’ve been through. We just need to do what we have to do, without expecting anything in return. We don’t need a medal or a round of applause for waking up early, going to work, exercising, eating healthy, paying our bills, managing our finances, or handling our responsibilities.
We think they’re extraordinary because they’re difficult and annoying. But they’re really normal, and everyone does them. It’s just part of adulthood. It’s just that no one shows it on social media. We just show the good things, the exciting and the aesthetic.
We don’t post about having to compare 10 different home insurance companies to find the best one. We don’t post about having to handle an issue with a customer service representative to get our refund. And we don’t post about having to take the car to the mechanic. But it’s not because people don’t talk about it or post it on social media that they don’t do it, and that we’re somehow exceptional for doing it.
The thing is, we’re not entitled to a soft or glamorous life. We’re not here to do only the fun things. We’re not entitled to brunch, shopping, skincare, vacations, self-care, or rest anytime we encounter a minor inconvenience. We don’t need to be compensated for any minor difficulty. And we don’t need a reward for an ordinary responsibility. No one is coming to do the difficult parts of our life for us. These responsibilities belong to us. Yes, they’re annoying. But they’re part of life.
Sure, we can enjoy pleasure. But it’s not something we’re owed. And yes, we can also rest. Rest is actually necessary. But we shouldn’t use rest to avoid responsibility. Because there’s a difference between resting and avoiding. Resting is when we work hard, and we recover so we can continue. Avoiding is when we don’t want to deal with something difficult. We avoid it so we don’t have to confront it.
Also, there’s a difference between real suffering and ordinary difficulty. Not every difficult experience makes us a hero or a survivor. Not every inconvenience is a trauma. Not every rejection is oppression. And not everything deserves public recognition.
We’ve become very good at turning ordinary conflict into moral injury. We’ve normalized clinical terms like boundaries and trauma. But if we constantly narrate ordinary difficulty as exceptional suffering, we begin building an identity around being someone who’s always overcoming something. The difficulty becomes part of your identity rather than something you simply handle. So at the end of the day, it makes us weaker because it makes us incapable of handling anything.
We also have to keep in mind that other people have their own problems and their own responsibilities. They’re not on the sidelines waiting to cheer us on and give us a medal. They have their own race to run. Our boss has responsibilities, our partner has needs, and our friends have problems. Everyone is carrying something. We’re just one person within a larger human system. So our job is just to perform our role well.
We cannot demand that everyone else reorganizes the system around our emotional experience. We have the responsibility to adapt. Sometimes we need to learn social norms, to change our communication style, to sacrifice, to apologize, to compromise, to swallow our pride, and to accept criticism. We shouldn’t believe that we don’t owe anyone anything, that people should take us as we are, or that we’re enough and worth it. We cannot place the burden of adaptation entirely on other people and expect everyone else to go out of their way to accommodate us, without giving anything in return.
For instance, we see this bad-bitch culture online glorifying coldness, harshness, detachment, eye-rolling, humiliation, and contempt. Because it looks strong on camera. But real-life success stories require politeness, agreeableness, diplomacy, patience, listening, restraint, and the ability to swallow pride. Being difficult isn’t being powerful, and being agreeable isn’t being weak. We have to control our ego and make people want to work with us.
We also often talk about being a high-value woman or wanting the princess treatment. But are we building actual value for our partner? What are we bringing to the table? Why would they want to be with us? Standards are not wrong, but the problem is when they become demands with no reciprocity, gratitude, humility, or relationship skills. Because we can’t expect to always receive and never give in return. We can’t expect sacrifice from someone without any obligation, adaptation, or accountability. We can’t extract maximum benefit at no cost or limitation.
Also, a person obsessed with winning every argument becomes controlled by other people. If we react whenever someone insults us, disagrees with us, misunderstands us, or disrespects us, eventually other people are controlling our behavior. Not everything is worth our time and attention. Sometimes being strong means confrontation. But sometimes it means walking away or saying nothing. The most important thing is that we choose our response rather than react without thinking. Because we need to master ourselves before we try to control everyone else.
We often say that power, especially for women, is to make everyone respect us, never tolerate anything, not compromise, not lower our standards, and make people afraid of losing us. But the thing is that we need to look in the mirror first. If we cannot govern ourselves, we’re not powerful, regardless of how intimidating we look. On the opposite, we can often look ridiculous.
If we’re controlled by anger, validation, envy, impulse, status, and attention, then we don’t govern ourselves. Those things govern us. Even though we think we’re strong, confident, independent, and detached. The real power is to be able to choose our behavior when our emotions want something else. And for that, we need to stop asking “how do I feel about myself?” and start asking “what can I actually do?” We need to build our mindset, our skills, our income, our savings, our health, our knowledge, our relationships, our discipline, and our resilience.
Because confidence can’t be faked. Otherwise, it’s just performance. We’re just acting and pretending to be confident. Real confidence comes from competence. You become confident when you master something, when you’re actually good at it. So before becoming confident, we need to become capable.
Because the truth is that the world doesn’t owe us success. We need to build it. We’re not guaranteed a great career, a perfect partner, financial success, and loyal friends. We actually have to participate in creating the life we want. Because who would want to be a great partner or a loyal friend to us if we don’t sacrifice in return for them? What would they gain from a relationship with us? Why would someone give us a job if we don’t have the skills? They don’t care that it’s our dream job. They care if we can actually do it and how good we are at it.
Because other people have wants and needs too. Not everything revolves around us. So instead of focusing on what we want and what we deserve, we need to ask what we’re willing to do and sacrifice. Instead of complaining that something happened, we need to ask what we can do about it. For instance, instead of complaining that no one understands us, maybe we can try to communicate more effectively. And instead of asking why life is so hard, we need to ask ourselves how we can become more capable.
So my final message is that yes, life is hard. But you can become strong enough to live well. And you actually have to.
The goal is not to become someone who never needs help. But it’s to become someone who can carry responsibility, tolerate discomfort, make difficult decisions, recover from failure, adapt, be trusted, and keep going when nobody is applauding. The ultimate goal is not getting a life where nothing difficult happens. It’s to become a person who can meet difficulty without surrendering judgment, dignity, or agency.
And that’s exactly what a Soveryn is.