It’s an honor and a blessing to engage with people at the level I get to engage with them. This week, as I was coaching a couple, 50 minutes into the conversation I shared a thread I had been picking up on:
Grace.
There are two types of grace: the grace we receive and the grace we give.
The grace we receive is infinite and abundant. More than 99% of our lives and experience are the result of the grace we receive.
Vision, hearing, thinking, feeling, smelling, and tasting. Trees, animals, planets, stars, and galaxies. Minds and ideas. Relationships and conversations. Atoms, molecules, and cells. Breath, blood, smiles, tears, skin, and bones. The beingness of the universe.
The vast majority of the grace we receive comes from the Divine. The other grace we receive comes from the people in our lives. Our friends. Our spouses. The way they trust us, show up for us, honor us with their love, time, effort, concern, words, and generosity.
The grace we receive we mostly receive in ignorance. Yet, every single moment and every single part of our experience of life is given to us generously and continuously.
The second type of grace is the grace we give.
We give grace through our being.
Grace creates space. Grace softens the hard edges. Grace is a gift to the self and to the other. Grace is a gateway. Grace is an invitation. Grace is necessary.
There are two beautiful, powerful, and profound ways we can easily give grace: how we listen and how we speak.
We can listen with grace by assuming the best in the other. By assuming we don’t know what they’re talking about and listening very carefully. By listening like we’ve never heard this person speak before. By listening not defensively, but freely, courageously, vulnerably, and compassionately.
Listening with grace is one of the most generous and impactful gifts we can give.
To speak with grace is to speak with kindness. To speak with care. To speak with gentleness. To speak with love. To speak while also listening to how we’re being heard.
In our coaching conversation this week, my couple client found a new level of Love in their relationship by finding grace - and not in the obvious place we always look, which is in receiving grace from our partner. No, they accessed a new level of Love by learning to access a new level of giving grace - in their listening and their speaking. And they created a powerful mantra to remind themselves of this powerful distinction.
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Much Love. ❤️
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