Many people are dealing with the issues of suffering in their life and it is one of those huge themes that comes up as part of Mastery as it is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of humanity.
The step from hardship into the ease and grace can seem insane and even obscene in area of life where lots of difficulty and suffering has been experienced. The mind was a witness of suffering and has taken photo images along the way, which it brings up every time joy is mentioned, or ease and grace are mentioned. The voices of resentment and complaints will raise their objections too. It seems impossible at first to even consider the possibility of ease and grace in that area. Or life in general.
The old way would be to seek evidence of joy first and then with time perhaps change ones mind about that area of life which was under suffering. It can help to look for samples of joy outside at first, to get an experience of what it feels like. Some parts that were suffering have never had any experience of self love. It will feel awkward at first. The inspiration can come from other peoples lives, music, movies, pets, nature etc. And as you start feeling some joy, some self love in those areas, as you allow these to permeate you, so then you open that space up and allow the flow to occur in places that were stagnant under suffering. And so you practice these feelings, and like mentioned, the inspiration can come from outside . But this is very different from waiting for life to give you 'evidence' first so that you can then change your mind and feel joy. Expecting for outside world to change first, so that you can feel joy, will be a very long wait for sure.
It is the nature of being the creator to have to choose & feel first, and not to experience 'evidence' first.
So as creator, you choose the new potential, the potential of ease and grace, then you allow those feelings of what that feels like to start permeating you. You have to feel the new that you are choosing first, despite of what the current evidence is showing you. Then the reality follows your new radiance, your new feelings, your new choice. Then your experience starts showing you the 'evidence' of your new choice. The flavour starts becoming that of joy and of ease. You start being able to perceive things of grace and ease and new easy ways of doing things. The parts of life where you are not loving yourself become glaringly apparent so you can love yourself in those spaces too.
The inner 'voices of the old' will have their say too, they will be loud at first. But you just keep choosing the new, and keep stepping into feeling the new. And allow any of the old structures that come up to flow through you and disintegrate. This process is not always comfortable but it becomes easier.
It does get easier and easier to keep choosing joy and to keep stepping into that space of ease and grace. The mind also now has new photos and the 'evidence' of the new and so it becomes easier to trust.
And yet it is still a huge leap to actually own the belief that joy is possible. That suffering is redundant. Unnecessary. That ease and grace are possible. Not only in other peoples lives, but in ones own too.
To own self love, to be it, and to live it. To act out of it, to make choices out of this new space. To let it flow, to let the experience flow. The experience of joy, of grace and ease. Not as a theory to think about and discuss, but to actually experience in every day life.