Veronica Dearly - How to Do Hard Things: Actual Real Life Advice on Friends, Love, Career, Wellbeing, Mindset, and More.

When you look at all the different things that make up your life, as I have tried to do here, it becomes quite clear why it feels so bloody overwhelming sometimes.

Whether it is chores at home or stress at work, maintaining friendships or managing your finances, theres always so much to do. So many little pieces of life to try and stay on top of. Some are big, some are small. Some bits you will find super easy, and other bits you will studiously ignore and pretend they dont even exist because you just cant face up to dealing with them.

You can have almost all your shit together, but if there are one or two areas of your life that you cant quite get the hang of, then it can easily feel like nothing is working. This is especially true if the area you are struggling with feels like the most important one in the world.

Unfortunately, one of the many hard things in life is learning to say Excuse me, Im finding this really hard.

This book encourages you to acknowledge the things that feel difficult to you. It doesnt matter if everyone else seems to find them easy. This book understands that for every tiny little thing that feels easy to one person, there will be someone else feeling like that particular tiny little thing is just too hard .

It doesnt expect you to know how to do something already without having ever been taught. This book is here to help you! It doesnt want to judge you or make you feel all embarrassed. It wants to make the hard bits of your life just a little bit easier.

This book would also like to remind you that you are not the only person in the world who finds things difficult.

This book is a journey through what I hope is a rather comprehensive breakdown of your life, a look at what you are already absolutely brilliant at, and how you can do those things that right now feel like theyre just too hard.

Above all, it is here to politely but firmly remind you that you can do hard things.

I mean, its a book, and its yours now to do whatever the heck you want with it. Ive written it as though it is a gentle, meandering exploration of your life, with lots of interactive pages for you to complete and, hopefully, enjoy.

You can flick through to find a specific chapter that speaks to you, work through methodically from front to back, or open it at random and see what you learn.

We spend a lot of time being told to push our emotions down and pretend we dont feel them, so its no wonder we tend to do just that. We say, Im fine, Im okay.

Even when we are really absolutely not okay. Even when the person asking you can tell you arent okay, its still somehow easier to pretend you are to avoid an awkward conversation where you actually acknowledge that you arent a robot person.