Giving Grace
Be gentle. Give grace. We tell our children to do these things all the time and recently they’ve worked their way into adult vernacular, but what do they actually mean? How does one give grace or be gentle with themselves and others?
When I’m working with clients and we’re talking about giving grace to ourselves and others or being gentle, often what I’m referring to is permission to be human. Permission to be impacted by other things going on in your life and to behave imperfectly. When you have a lot on your plate, gentleness means listening to your body and listening to your mind about what you’re able to do in that moment and not punishing yourself for those limitations. In interactions with others, giving grace is allowing them to also be a human. Understanding that you, your needs, or this interaction, might not be the top priority for the person you’re interacting with and understanding that they may have other things in their life impacting their ability to respond to your bid for connection in a precise way that you’d like. It often means allowing space for repair.
This has a huge overlap with self-talk. If self-talk is our internal dialogue, gentleness and grace are related to the tone of that dialogue. Giving yourself grace has the power to take negative self-talk and shift in into something neutral or positive. For example, if you’re struggling to understand a concept, negative self-talk might say “Ugh I don’t understand this! I’m so stupid!” while coming at that same situation with gentleness and grace might sound like “Ugh I don’t understand this! This is challenging and I could use some help-and it’s okay to not understand everything immediately. I’m doing my best.” Or, if you’re accustomed to having difficult workouts and you’ve been sick or gotten injured, negative self-talk might sound like “I’m so lazy. I should be working out harder” while coming at that with grace and gentleness might sound like “Not exercising the way I used to feels strange and kind of wrong, AND I’m also not usually sick and injured so this is what my body is saying I need right now”.
How do you start changing the narrative and make space for this? First, start becoming aware of your internal dialogue. What are your core beliefs about yourself? To what expectations do you hold yourself? Then, imagine how you might talk to your best friend if they were dealing with some of the things that you are talking to yourself negatively about. Recognize that you are worthy of the same care and understanding that you afford others. Catch yourself in those negative self-talk moments, literally stop, and replace it with something akin to what you would say to someone you love.
Now, what is treating yourself and others with grace and gentleness NOT? It is NOT not having expectations for yourself and others. It is NOT making up excuses to not get things done. It’s NOT allowing others to routinely treat you poorly. You still have expectations of yourself and others, gentleness and grace help you to shift how you and others may reach those expectations in accordance to your actual abilities and limitations in a given moment.
Gentleness and grace lend us and our loved ones flexibility and permission to adjust every day. Treat it carefully and be intentional with your gentleness and grace. See how it impacts the way that you feel in a given day. If you’re struggling with this whether it be extending it to yourself or to those around you, click the button below and lets have a conversation.