Why Life Feels Harder Than It Should
Yesterday, I led the first of my new Overcoming Underconnecting workshops. After hearing the participants’ stories and thinking through things afterward, an idea struck me. We were focused on relationships and social confidence, which is still important and useful. But it occurred to me that underconnection might run deeper than that. Why does life feel flat, heavy, or off-track, even when on the outside everything seems like it’s going well? What is feeling stuck, frustrated, exhausted, or uncertain all comes from the same source? Not just missing relationships but a gap in connection to yourself, your purpose, your community, or a sense of impact. I have been struggling lately with why there seems to be so much discontent everywhere in the world. Why those with objectively great lives feel like it’s not working, or it’s too much, or everything is so hard. And in that moment after the workshop, it clicked: underconnection might be at the root of it.
The definition of connection is “being joined or linked together”. Underconnection is the opposite: the gaps that make life feel harder than it should. You may have everything you thought you wanted but decisions feel heavy and you hesitate, you lack confidence, and possibilities feel distant. That sense of flatness, maybe it’s all the weight of being underconnected.
Underconnection shows up in ways we can’t notice until we step back. It’s the hesitation before picking up the phone to call someone. It’s the frustration when your ideas never seem to gain traction. It’s the nagging feeling that life should be more exciting or meaningful than it is right now. Life is meant to be experienced in connection. Relationships, purpose, community are not optional extras. When they’re missing or weak, motivation is harder to summon. It’s why people with “great lives” can still feel exhausted, stuck, or unsatisfied. Underconnection takes away your sense of aliveness.
What if the struggle, the frustration, the sense of things being harder than they should be, isn’t about failing but about underconnection? What might life look like if those gaps were noticed, or even just hinted at?
