Subjective hardship
To the statement people make that life is hard, I usually ask myself after hearing it, what is this person comparing their life to? There are so many people saying the same thing, life is hard, but most of them don't even know what they really mean by it.
I'm not trying to say I'm some tough person, but let me explain.
After working for a while, I get tired. I feel like I have a physically demanding job and therefore I have an easier time than most people, whom I see as tougher than me. Some of those people are working longer hours than I am. They seem and look more exhausted than I am right now, but very rarely do I hear them express in any form a complain about they being tired. With this, I began to question whether I truly have it bad or not.
The best answer I can come up with is, relativity.
Many students say, school is hard. I felt the same when I was in third year college. I had classmates who had to do homework, take tests, and I believed I had more than enough stuff to do. But when I looked around again, I saw that some of my classmates take more and, sometimes more difficult classes than I do, yet have lesser grade averages than I do. Many of those students got up at the crack of dawn every day to study for tests and went to bed after midnight to study for tests. I came to the conclusion that hard is a subjective experience for us.
Through comparison with others, I've learned to see my own challenges more objectively in order to identify those things which I can work on to improve and those that I cannot work on to improve. That allows me to concentrate on myself, my work and my own progression, rather than to comparing myself to others.
Regardless of how hard it is, somebody is in a deeper shit than you. It somehow comforts me.