The term “give grace” has been around since before any of us can remember, originally stemming from religious ideology, yet the older I get the more and more I seem to hear it. To “give grace” simply means to practice forgiveness and patience to those around us. In this we often forget to extend it onto ourselves or extend it too far. Like all things in life a balance in this practice is crucial, but in a society where too often we choose the extreme, a balance seems all too rare.
Whether its grind culture or plain laziness, society today loses what it really means to “give yourself grace”. This grace is either fully forgotten, putting an unimaginable pressure on us and blaming ourselves for every mistake; or it is used as an excuse for every shortcoming. Giving grace is neither of these, it is striving for better while giving yourself the room for error and forgiveness to keep going. While grace can be applied to situations between people, the most forgotten is with yourself, and with this said, we will further explore what it means and how to give ourselves grace moving forward.
Kindness, patience, and forgiveness are the three most prominent features of giving grace and are what make up a healthy balance in our personal minds.
- Kindness
In order to extend grace upon ourselves, we must first learn to be kind. This means being compassionate and understanding with ourselves as we would anyone else. When it comes to being a good person, a friend, we all remember to be kind to others. When a friend is sad, we offer a shoulder; when a stranger is struggling, we offer a hand; but when we seem to be down ourselves, we offer nothing except criticism. Many say the golden rule is about kindness – treat others the way you want to be treated – but who is to say ‘others’ doesn’t include yourself? I propose to you this: treat yourself the way you treat others.
- Patience
Next is patience. As we progress as a society, our standards quicken, and attention spans shorten. In a life where everything moves faster and faster, we lose the patience needed when we don’t. Not every skill can be mastered in a day and sometimes we get things wrong the first time around, but people don’t grow by doing everything great immediately, they grow when they give themselves the space and time to improve.
- Forgiveness
In this world it is impossible to be perfect. Despite this, we all try and turn our backs to this fact. We expect to be everything we dream and imagine to be, but when inevitably we aren’t, we beat ourselves up over it forever. When someone else makes a mistake, we tell them it's okay, to forgive themselves. When they say this to us, we shake our heads and dwell. To give ourselves grace, we must learn to forgive ourselves, and in doing so we learn from the past and improve instead of being caught in it.
A phrase as common as this often loses its meaning over time and through translation, but taking a moment to remember, to practice what it truly means to give grace can only benefit you. Allowing yourself the space to make mistakes but keeping the motivation to grow from them is the embodiment of this phrase and is how we find the perfect balance.
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