When something feels difficult, my old question was usually some variation of:
What’s wrong with me?
I didn’t always phrase it that bluntly, but that was the undertone. A quiet assumption that ease meant competence, and friction meant failure.
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with a different question:
What am I being asked to engage with here?
The shift is subtle, but it changes the texture of the moment.
Instead of fighting the difficulty or trying to escape it, the question invites curiosity. Is this asking for patience? Better boundaries? More rest? A cleaner signal? Or simply time?
Sometimes the difficulty doesn’t go away. But it stops feeling like an accusation.
I’m finding that when I meet hard things this way — without immediately trying to optimise or overpower them — they often soften on their own. Or at least become workable.
I don’t think the aim is to make life easy.
I think it’s to learn how to stand in the right relationship with what’s here.