It’s my passion and life’s work to reach as many people as possible with this life-changing message. And I’m so excited to tell you that I have
another book coming out next year on just this topic.
It’s called Suffering Is Optional: A Spiritual Guide to Freedom from Self-Judgment and Feelings of Inadequacy.
The idea that suffering is optional may sound nice, but when you’re overcome by fear or anger or you’re tangled up in a stressful thought pattern, it might seem impossible.
But with the pure intention to find your way to peace and diligent practice in as
many moments as possible, you can know that suffering is optional. This is my story and the story of almost every client I work with. Here’s an example.
Jenna has been focusing diligently for a couple of years on being free of deeply held conditioned patterns. The emotions she experienced came on strong—anxiety that
made her shake, anger she could barely control, the fog of overwhelm so intense she could hardly open her eyes.
But things are very different for her today. She stays relaxed even when things are stressful. She says, “I feel different in my body. I’m now present in my life—and more
grateful.”
Jenna has discovered what is possible for all of us. It didn’t happen overnight, and familiar painful feelings still arise. But she absolutely knows this truth available in any moment: suffering is optional.
In this book, I chose to focus on a particular thought pattern that causes so much distress for so many people—the belief that you’re inadequate, worthless, or irreparably broken. This is a self-belief that is rampant in our culture today, causing so much unnecessary suffering.
Does it ring a bell with you?
Through the chapters of the book, we’ll walk together, step by step, to untangle your in-the-moment experience of believing you’re unworthy. You’ll learn to
understand deeply how these thoughts you believe about yourself just aren’t true, and you’ll discover the kindest ways to be with your emotions so they don’t overrun you.
As Jenna says, “There’s so much space to just live when the mental and emotional entanglements fall away.”
Ultimately, as limiting patterns that you think define you dissolve, you’re available to the pure aliveness of who you are. You’re spacious, deeply peaceful, open to joy, and welcoming of things as they are without edginess or resistance.
You’re in perfect harmony with the free flow of life.
The publication date of Suffering Is Optional is June 1, 2018. I know that’s a long way away!
It’s been a pleasure for me to work with New Harbinger Publications on this book. And I look forward to telling you more in the coming months.
In the meantime, I’ll continue writing Friday Inspirations, and I invite you to visit the archives at GailBrenner.com for hundreds of articles about this most essential topic that we’re all passionate about—happiness.
And I welcome you to access your own innate wisdom to know that suffering is optional. What I present is not unique to me and isn’t rocket science. It’s the truth about the nature of our experience in any moment, so it’s always available as the core knowing of who we are.
And that’s true for the 7 billion of us on this planet. It’s where we meet, with our hearts open, undivided, in love and surrender.
