Why Does Life Suck So Bad Sometimes? (And How to Fix It)

Why does life suck? That may be a question that comes up when you are faced with many difficult challenges that are completely out of your control. Besides the coronavirus epidemic we’re all facing right now, there’s also death, disease, bankruptcy, injustice, mental health issues, illness, and the list goes on.

Why Does Life Suck?

There are so many more things that make life so hard. It also feels like they come in waves; one bad thing happens, and then they keep coming, like the world wants to kick you when you are down.

So why does life suck sometimes? There are times when it has nothing to do with you, how hard you are trying in life, or how good of a person you are. Life gets hard, bad things happen, and sometimes it just plain sucks.

The fact that life sucks sometimes is never going to stop because life is filled with challenges and difficult moments that we simply can’t avoid. Even if you had unlimited money, fame, or fortune, you wouldn’t be able to avoid the inevitable difficulties.

The Good News

If life is always going to suck, and adversity is always going to be coming for you, you can’t control that.

So stop trying. You can’t control anything in this world except yourself and your reactions. It’s time to stop focusing on the suck and begin focusing on the good in your life. Life is all about perspective, and perhaps right now you are choosing to obsess about the negative, the lack, the suck.

This is addictive because we are biologically programmed to do so, to assess all situations for danger through the negativity bias.^[1]

We are biologically programmed to focus on negativity because it keeps up safe and forces us to avoid things that may cause us harm or discomfort. We have evolved since the days of constant physical threats coming from wild animals or ominous sounds, but our survival instincts have remained intact. Because of this, we focus on the negative, and we now have to learn how to fight with the feelings that naturally arise from this.

Since we are biologically predisposed to look for danger, this trait is exploited by the media to sell products to you, which you can’t control. You also can’t control the outbreak of disease, your friend’s poor choice to treat you like trash, or the price of food going up.

None of this is within your control. Instead, it’s time to let go of the fear mongering and focus on the things you can control.

What to Do When Life Sucks

You can choose to follow your Neanderthal programming and focus on fears you can’t control, or you can choose to focus on all the abundance you have in your life. We have never lived in a safer or more abundant time in human history. With that in mind, here are my top six ways to stop yourself from asking “Why does life suck so much?” and start embracing the abundance.

1. Focus on the Good

You have a lot going on in your life, and some of it is unavoidably positive. If you’re reading this, you likely have a safe place to sleep every night, people who love you, and unlimited access to food.

Instead of focusing on all the good things we have, we often focus on what went wrong, what we don’t have, and what isn’t good enough in our lives.

Society has set an impossible standard that encourages you to feel like you don’t have enough and that you aren’t enough. Relentless sales ads convince you that everything about you is flawed and can be repaired if only you purchased this one product.

Instead of focusing so much on why life sucks, spend time focusing on all the good you have in your life. Every day, write something good that happened and do more things that spread goodness.

One act of kindness a day gives your brain a boost of oxytocin. It will also give the person you are helping a boost of oxytocin as well, and anybody watching you be kind also gets the boost^[2].

Being kind spreads love and positivity, so start being kind and helping more with no expectation of a reward. Your life will get easier when you have your natural brain chemistry working with you.

2. Express Gratitude

Another way to focus on the positive in your life is to express gratitude daily. Every day, find something you are grateful for and write about it, post it on your social media (for shared oxytocin release), or find a way to express it through art. Send someone flowers, or simply take a moment to tell someone how much they mean to you.

Gratitude is the antidote to misery. It costs you nothing and spreads more goodness into the world. The best part is that you can inspire someone else to express gratitude, kindness, and happiness.

Gratitude and kindness are infectious and can help you respond when you’re asking “Why does life suck so much?”

3. Handle Problems Head on

Challenges that cause life to suck are going to keep coming, and they are going to hit hard. Don’t bury your head in the sand, as that only leads to delayed suckage and an extra dose of anxiety.

When something hits you hard, don’t ignore it and hope it goes away. Grab a notepad, write out the problem, and then write down possible solutions. If you’re having trouble, ask your closest friends what they think. Ask them for some emotional support to carry out your plan if necessary.

Try not to create excuses about how you are busy or tired. Taking a moment to handle your problem head on will not only save you time in the long run but also relieve your emotional struggle when life sucks.

It will also energize you to move forward knowing that something has tried to knock you down but that you rose to the challenge, took control, and defeated it.

4. Take Mental Health Days

Sometimes we experience real pain, loss, and suffering that make life really suck. The death of your best friend, the loss of your job, or difficulties in a relationship may present hard times that drag you down.

In these cases, taking a day or more to stop and face the feelings can help you return to a sense of balance. Try to face your grief and know that no matter how inconvenient it is, it will take time to heal.

The world is getting more complicated, painful, and stressful, and the more this happens, the better you have to take care of yourself. We are overwhelmed every single day with information that inundates our brains to the point of collapse.

All this pressure means that something has to give, and often the first thing that goes is taking care of our mental health. We ignore our feelings because we have decided they are bad, and instead, we focus on our loss and sadness.

To counter all of this negativity, slow down, take a deep breath, and prioritize your mental health. Clear out all of those unhelpful emotions so you can feel more balanced^[3].

5. Think of Adversity as a Way to Grow

It should be no secret that many moments of growth and great leaps of personal development come from making it through suckage and adversity. Successful people will tell you that they wouldn’t trade their pain and their struggle, for without it they wouldn’t be who they are.

Adversity is a test from the world to you to see if you have grown enough to be able to face the things you want to achieve. You have dreams and goals that are out of your reach, and you get challenged until you grow into a strong enough person to handle the next level of challenges.

This is why it is so important to not only embrace challenge and pain but to ask how you can become a better person from it.

6. Quit the Negativity on Social Media

Nothing promotes a negative, the-world-sucks mindset quite as much as the news and media outlets on social media. The world is struggling, but it shouldn’t all land on your shoulders.

If you want to feel like you are doing something positive, pick something you are passionate about and do it with all the spare time you now have not scrolling through negative news stories.

In the meantime, use less plastic, eat as local as you can, and do the best you can to live guilt-free. Unsubscribe to all the negativity and drama that the news and social media are constantly blasting at you, and you will immediately gain more peace of mind.

Conclusion

These are my quick steps to help you start to feel better and move forward when you start asking “Why does life suck?” You need to take care of yourself, and that may mean more than just buying yourself gifts, giving yourself half-hearted compliments, and or taking a bath.

It may be necessary to give up the compulsion to listen to the news, make time to face your feelings, express gratitude, and focus on the good in your life instead of what’s lacking.

The hits come, but when you get back up, make sure you are walking in a positive direction. One day, you will thank your struggle, for without it, you would not have found your strength.

Featured photo credit: whoislimos via unsplash.com