Why Life Feels So Hard: Stop Making It More Difficult

About this episode

This episode explores the difficulties of life and how Stoic philosophy can help close the gap between our desires and reality.

Why does life feel so hard, and how much of that difficulty are we actually creating ourselves? In this episode of the Via Stoica Podcast, we look at the gap between our desires and reality, and why closing that gap is one of the most practical things Stoic philosophy offers us. Welcome to the Via Stoica Podcast, the podcast on Stoicism. Each episode explores what it means to live well: not as theory, but as something you practice in the life you actually have. We have been sold a version of happiness that keeps moving. The perfect job, the right moment, the life that looks good from the outside. But that pursuit quietly makes everything harder. Stoic philosophy points to something more stable: contentment, not as a consolation prize, but as the actual goal. The wider the gap between what we want and what is, the heavier and more chaotic life feels. Desire and suffering are more connected than we usually admit. And a lot of what we carry, the anxiety, the overthinking, the sense that we are falling short, is something we are adding rather than something being done to us. That is confronting. It is also liberating. Because if we are making it harder, we can also start making it…

People in this episode

Host: Benny Voncken

Topics covered

• Stoicism
• inner peace
• desire
• suffering
• contentment
• philosophy

Keywords

• Stoicism
• life difficulties
• inner peace
• desire vs reality
• contentment
• anxiety
• overthinking

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Via Stoica Podcast, Badmic.com

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