CHANGE, Reminder #2 - When In Change, Extend More Grace
“Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” — Maya Angelou
“You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” — John Wooden
Change is an unsettling force in our lives. A storm that threatens to dislodge us from our foundation. The tool shared as our first reminder in this series was cornerstone habits—the habits that help us remain grounded in times of uncertainty and discomfort. These cornerstones are a great first-line-of-defense when we find ourselves in a storm of change, a place we all can relate to now...
Change is all around us and is being felt by humanity more than I have ever experienced in my lifetime. What’s needed for facing change well are reminders that we can preach to ourselves in the times we need them most. Not only do we need to preach those reminders, we must also believe in them in order to put them into action, daily.
But we are only human, and there will be days when we don’t believe in the truths and reminders we preach. There will even be days when we don’t preach any truth to ourselves, and in turn, believe in the lies or half-truths propagated within and around us. These are the days and times when reminder #2 is needed most:
Reminder #2: Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to show and extend more grace to yourself (and others) especially in tumultuous times of change.
Grace, Grace
Grace—what a word; what a concept!
What is grace? What does it entail? What does it bring? These are a few of the questions we will explore today.
Grace, simply understood, is: receiving something that is not deserved.
Showing grace means: extending greater leniency or allowance in times when we don’t feel like it or when we don’t believe ourself or others deserve it.
Grace is an easy concept to wrap our minds around, but it is a much harder concept to implement in our daily lives and interactions. The opposite of grace is often thought of as justice. Justice is what our hearts and souls long for. It is the cry for “good” to get good and “bad” to get bad. It is the natural mode we all operate under. But grace? Grace feels wrong, especially in action. It feels like a betrayal of our human responsibility.
But what if our human responsibility doesn’t take into account our human condition? What if by erring on our desire for justice, we further bury our human condition in a grave we can’t dig out of?
“Love thy neighbor and if it requires that you bend the truth, the truth will understand.” — Robert Brault
When Grace Is Needed Most
Grace and justice are often at odds. So the first piece of the grace-puzzle we must realize is that grace is greater than justice, or you could say it transcends justice. Our human condition begs for the issuance of grace. We will fall short. We will not live up to others’ expectations or even our own. Showing grace is essential, because human nature requires it.
Grace is needed most when we fall short. It is needed not only for the times when we fall short, but especially in the times when we can’t live up to the usual expectations we have for ourselves or others. Grace is needed even more in times of immense change.
This is often illustrated in my own mind through the difference in practice-mentality vs. performance-mentality. When you are practicing a skill or technique (such as golf), showing yourself grace is not helpful. In practice, the stakes are relatively low-to-nonexistent. This means the only pressure is self-induced. Showing grace to yourself in practice is actually not helpful, because by taking it easier on yourself (showing grace) you end up hurting your training, stunting the development of your skills that will likely result in poorer performance within the actual competition.
Conversely, showing grace to yourself in a performance/competitive setting is vital for producing your best results. If you err on not showing yourself grace within a competition, you will constantly be beating yourself up over missed opportunities or mistakes that you made. This further fuels frustrations, mistakes, and stifles your ability to execute how you typically would.
To summarize: grace is not needed in situations or environments that are already easy, such as practicing or training for sports. Grace is needed in environments that are exceptionally challenging, such as the actual competition.
Likewise, grace is most needed not in times of consistency, comfort, and stability. Grace is needed in times of upheaval, unsettling, and unknowns.
Grace is needed most in times of change.
What Happens When We Extend Grace
It is an undeniable fact that we are all experiencing a season of change beyond what we are used to. This time calls for a greater extension of grace, towards others and ourselves, so that we can better support and empower one another. But how does grace do that?
Grace has a cascade of effects that we can experience through embracing and extending it.
The first and most notable effect of grace is freedom. Extending or embracing grace produces freedom—first in others knowing that, even though they may trip or fall (mess up or fall short in some way), they still have the power and ability (and freedom) to get back up on their feet again; and second, in ourselves, by embracing that grace for ourselves especially when we don’t feel like we are worthy of it.
This freedom allows us to live more fully into our identity and calling within the world. Without the freedom that extending grace brings, we wouldn’t have the courage or boldness to take steps forward toward the goals we feel called to accomplish in the world.
The second effect grace unleashes is a spirit of kindness. Kindness is something that is possible by all but practiced by few. Showing grace is a form of showing kindness, and it is one of the most powerful ways to be a force for good in the world. And sometimes, that simply means inserting a bit of space to allow a kind act to surface.
A third effect of grace, and the last we will visit today, is empowerment and motivation. While counter-intuitive, grace actually provides a substantial amount of motivation to get back on our feet faster and push forward farther. This is a form of empowerment as grace is not doing the work for someone else (or having someone else do it for you). Rather, it is extending greater leniency in a time when needed most, and, as a result, empowering the recipient of that grace to take greater ownership in the future with a larger reserve of motivation to boot.
Are We Capable?
Grace is powerful. Grace is beautiful. Grace is transcendent. And why? Because it is a divine concept. It began with God and it flows from Him to (and through) us, illustrated by Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection celebrated anew last Sunday on Easter. With Jesus’ example and power, we are able to overcome our default posture of justice and offer grace to both ourselves and others.
The point is this: we are all capable of extending grace to ourself and others especially in times of great change and situations like these.
Why?
Because grace 1) gives us freedom, 2) unleashes a spirit of kindness, and 3) empowers and motivates the recipient to press on.
“Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other’s achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain. We need to accept the fact that it’s not in the power of any human being to provide all these things all the time. for any of us, mutually caring relationships will always include some measure of unkindness and impatience, intolerance, pessimism, envy, self-doubt, and disappointment.” ― Fred Rogers
