Don’t park at the place of your pain

This was one of those messages that hits hard. Have you ever “parked” at the place of your pain? As in, have you ever just “sat with it” for way too long, allowing it to simmer and create tides of sadness, fear or frustration in your life. I’m sure most people can either recognize this from personal experience or in observing a loved one who is not quite able to move on down the road (so to speak).

Here’s the thing, whether our pain was created by something we did to ourselves (think a bad decision) or by someone or something else, it still impacted us. We should be okay with owning that, because after all, we are living, breathing and fully human. Sometimes life is just hard. We do, however, have a choice to stay in the pain, or to spend the energy we need to in order to shift outside of it – and learn the lessons it provided.

The most important aspect of this to me, is that we need to give ourselves and possibly others the grace to do just that. My favorite definition of grace is “undeserved forgiveness.” Our lives are meant to evolve and we are best when we observe, learn and grow.

We shouldn’t “park” in our pain. We should extend grace generously (yes, even to ourself), and as quickly as we can and consider the pain a gift that helps us eventually live out our best life.