The Dalai Lama said, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” Agree? If we see possibilities for healing our traumas by choosing grace, we begin to take back our inner powers against suffering when pain presents. And it will!
During one exceptionally long walk my feet began to burn and blister. As if sandpaper slid in between souls of my sandals and souls of my feet, discomfort grew as I limped along. Focused on the long walk back, I regretted my decision to trek so far without proper care for my feet. Then I spotted the grace!
A dusty tube of body lotion with faded words lay almost empty a few feet off the sidewalk. With disbelief at first and soon followed by immense joy, I spread its comforting cream onto my burning blisters. That lotion smoothed my throbbing feet quite quickly, and the burning stopped as I made my way home without pain.
Daily we meet difficulties or frustrations that sometimes seems insolvable. Perhaps an adult child let us down, perhaps a parent failed to live up to even basic parental care, or maybe we disappointed ourselves deeply and daily. Whatever the cause of suffering, solutions lie waiting within a grace mindset choice that is as tangible as refreshing cream I chose to rub onto my burning feet. Grace-filled choices such as:
1). Consider eternal, inseparable love and agape support.
We’re diverse and our images of God may differ. When images include grace through, we heal from the deepest hurts. Our DNA holds a birthright gift of grace yet a choice to open and access this gift remains our option. To share our hurt, pain, and suffering is to encounter God’s love much like “a mother hen brooding over her chicks.” (Luke 13: 34) Jeremiah 1:5 reminds us: “Behold, while you were in your mother’s womb, I knew you and I named you. How could I love you less now?”
2). Unleash joy that dissipates personal pain.
When play, fun and laughter confront suffering, courage and strength tend to win. Joy lightens our burden, and alleviates grief and trauma. Joy flows faster when we focus on delightful experiences and perhaps retreat to take inventory! Our brain delights in joy’s reward center much like drugs gratify, but with better outcomes.
3). Risk living grace in tangible ways in spite of setbacks.
Infuse one day with eternal agape love and we give our dreams wings to fly. Rather than focus on failure or loss, we access an inner superpower to override suffering. Choose a grace mindset and we become a fun friend to ourselves. We care when the chips are down, just as we’d tenderly and kindly support a best friend. We lay out adventurous risks to convert cruel memories into grace-filled celebration.
4). Step back from both strengths and weaknesses.
Mindfulness helps us to pattern our behavior on healing in the moment rather than powerlessness from past failures. We acknowledge problems through a self-love lens that motivates us to improve our situation. We tap into grace’s depths of inner kindness and care for ourselves and others. Rather than expect perfection, we accept that disappointments will sometimes arise, and we look to self-kindness as essential and available for sustainable wellbeing.
5). Journal to identify and process painful experiences.
Explore possibilities to grow grit by journaling negative emotions, as we lay down new neural pathways for a kinder, grace-filled focus forward. A toxic chemical, cortisol increases when we store tormenting traumas without solutions into our amygdala, which is the seat of our emotions. Journal gratitude and we overtake grievances with a grace mindset actions. In toxic times, we grow in grace as we respect even if we were disrespected, care if we were uncared for, trust if we were distrusted, welcome even if we were excluded.

6). Run from criticism, abuse and traumatic settings.
Rather than feel criticized, abused, or traumatized, a grace mindset leaves us feeling cherished and fully equipped to cherish others. Simply create time and space for healing as we would from a physical wound. It takes time apart and perhaps antibiotics with a bandage that creates space and time to mend. The same is also true for healing emotional wounds. Healing from grace comes from validating our pain and retreating into kinder healing spaces within God’s eternal love for us personally.
7). Shout “NO” to guilt.
Let go of guilt and we’re ready to become the grace-filled change in our suffering world. A grace mindset means we no longer expect others to fill and sustain our need for value and love. Nor do we yield to demanding perfectionism from ourselves or others. Research shows an increase in dopamine in the striatum which is a brain region involved with reward and behavioral motivation. Simply stated, our brains come fully equipped to apologize when we misstep, heal, discover grace and replace painful toxins with healthy chemicals that restore joyful feelings of worth and value.
Without guilt we increase our brain’s aha chemical serotonin, and balance inner levels of dopamine to delight in the kind of adventures that choose joy-filled lives that don grace to enjoy guiltless pleasures, even on ordinary days. Marcus Aurelius described it as a new way of thinking where, “Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within ourselves in our way of thinking.”

8). Burn strong in grace but don’t burn out in exhaustion.
It’s true that our dark times of exhaustion or drain, bullies us into anxiety and depression where we see how painful suffering from burnout is real. Yet it’s also true we can choose pain free moment by refusing to judge ourselves harshly for falling short, or not being good enough for challenges we face. A grace mindset never leaves us alone in struggles, or doubting our basic worth, even if it takes a wee course change or tweak in direction to sustain our strength.
9). Choose help wisely.
Initially, we may need the help of a skilled psychotherapist or wise faith-based or experienced teacher. We may need personal help to transform our trauma and suffering from effects of anger. Such help is essential, not only for our sake but on behalf of angry-laden settings. When applied, grace mindset practices such as awakening God’s love and accessing inner kindness, we begin to avoid misery without mercy. We dance our days beyond hatred, arrogance, entitlement, wrath, death, judgment, unworthiness, unkindness, hopelessness, loneliness are too often tied into one painful trap. Grace allows us to flow with wisdom from sources we value.
10). Choose relationship over religion.
Sadly, religion too often acts against grace that refills our inner pools, and religious rituals can lock us deeper into suffering. It’s also true that relationship to a higher power motivates us to access grace and listen for its lifelines rippling within and tethered to agape love’s transformative powers. Grace equips us to be loved and to love without conditions. It comes from divine pools yet fuels a grace- mindset to grow resilience as we also enjoy daily experiences.
What will it take to step back today, visualize grace as it awakens in our DNA, drink in the depth of its personalized love pools and enjoy life-giving grace-mindset nourishment in safer spaces?
A grace mindset rarely means we can completely avoid suffering. However, it can free us from unexpected suffering and pain, with care, kindness and courage to oppose toxins and focus on possibilities that bring an uptick in serotonin, the brain’s chemical for mental wellbeing and healthy emotional progress with a grace mindset that minimizes suffering and maximizes compassion kindness to create a better way to be alive. We increase our brain’s oxytocin to energize kindness prompts from within our blood chemistry, and within an eternal storehouse. We also reboot dopamine and serotonin which then uptick a more hopeful look at possibilities rather than panic because pesky problems present. And they will!
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