Why You NEED Grace & Compassion in Your Life

When you are over programmed for speedy judgment, trouble always brews. Because the more you are behaviorally conditioned for speedy judgment, the less likely you are to consider cultural norms, to consider the other person's point of view, to consider whether or not you really need to voice your opinion or participate or engage the word I'm about to share with you, the topic I'm about to share with you, the personal development concept I'm about to share with you went out the window somewhere. I don't know where it landed. I don't know why it went out the window, but it certainly does not seem as prevalent as one would hope in a modern society. And today's personal development topic is graciousness. To be gracious and to act in a state of graciousness towards others. Oh my gosh, does that happen anymore? I mean, where I'm from, you were kind of brought up that way and maybe some of you can relate. Some people have no idea what I'm talking about. So I thought I'd share today four ideas around this topic of being the gracious person living in a state of graciousness, and talk about what that means in a modern society where there's so much hate online, where there's so many snap judgments that we've all been conditioned and trained to have to, I really believe our own and society's detriment. So let's start with this first big idea. To be gracious means to be polite and courteous, to do the kind thing. Now, those are all kind of different, right? Politeness is a little different than courteousness is a little different than kindness. But you get the vibe when I say those three things, polite, courteous, and kind. To me, that rolls up into the definition of what I would call graciousness. In human interaction, you're polite with people, meaning you have manners, meaning you listen, meaning you let them speak, meaning you don't throw your water at them when you're mad about something, meaning you don't attack them when you don't know anything about them. You're courteous. And where you're thoughtful about what they need, you're okay to hold a door open, or to help someone with their package, or to help someone cross the street. You're someone who will do the kind thing. We begin with the intention of other people having good experiences and good lives that other people deserve. Fairness, respect, compassion, kindness, Politeness. That you don't just haul off and scream at somebody or smack somebody, because that's not polite, right? That somehow in the social media world, we've lost that and very few people quite understand why that's happened. So real quick aside, when you're on social media, most people are for on average well over an hour a day. Now what they don't realize is all those scrolling and all those swipes. Several things are happening in your brain. From a neuroscientific perspective, what's happening is first, your mind is determining as you're scrolling through what to pay attention to. Is what I'm paying attention to worth another second, another nanosecond, then is if it's worth paying attention to. If I see it now, my first impulse. We've been trained millions of times to like it or deem it worthy of a like or dislike, or deem it worthy of like, dislike and or a comment. Now deem it worthy of it, like dislike, comment and or share. Now like it, dislike it, comment it, share it and or copy it, or use it for inspiration. Think about how many judgments happened in that second you saw that post. Well, if you scroll through, let's imagine 10 posts, you made all of those five decisions. You've made 50 judgments in just a few posts. Now you've done that for on average a squirrel session goes back about 40 scrolls. Now you're talking about making thousands of judgments, snap decisions every day. This is where people lost their politeness, their courteousness and their kindness. When you are over programmed for speedy judgment, trouble always bruise. Because the more you are behaviorally conditioned for speedy judgment, the less likely you are to consider cultural norms, to consider the other person's point of view, to consider whether or not you really need to voice your opinion or participate or engage. Beware social media making you a jerk. Number two, to be gracious, we must seek to understand the other's point of view. Graciousness in this way requires patience. We have to have a beat, a second where we think, okay, what are they going through? What do they desire? What are their needs? Why did they come to this perspective? What's going on? This old idea of walking in other person's shoes is, is to step into their world a little bit. And once you're in their world a little bit, you realize that everyone's got a story and everyone's struggle is deeper and longer and more difficult than we ever imagined. Even if it looks like they got everything handed to them. So often we fail to understand. Everyone walks a rocky road. When you realize other people walk a rocky road, you are more likely to seek to understand what's going on for them. Before those snap judgments. And now when they get something wrong, when something is something you know you don't like, or you judge, you know, not worthy or not good, you can take a minute to try to understand where they're coming from. In this way, graciousness is patience and perspective taking at the same time. Number three, learn to give the benefit of the doubt. Give the benefit of doubt. What does this mean? It means when someone does something, have your mind conditioned to assuming. Not that they're awful, not that the world is unfair, not that they're attacking you, but the benefit of doubt means there must be a reason they're doing this and get curious about it. This is why you study personal development, right? To gain self awareness about your own psychology and your own capabilities. Well, turn that on its head a little bit and understand for others, our job is also inquire and think about, I wonder what is going on in their psychology that would make them do that? What's going on in their life that would make them say that, believe that, take that action. Giving them the benefit of doubt assumes and allows you to say, huh, There must be a good intention somewhere here. They're probably doing this because there is a payoff for them. Somewhere they might not realize what they're doing is hurting others. Maybe they're doing it in a self protective way because something happened in their past, something's happening in their house right now, something's going on at work. Giving the benefit of doubt delays that judgment time where you're quick to be angry, quick to be a jerk, quick to judge, quick to treat somebody impolitely. Now I know at this point everyone always jumps on, you know, some kind of, you know, pseudo conscious train where they're like, no, no, no, no, you know, politeness is just a social construct and we shouldn't live within it. I'm like, yeah, sounds good. And then that's the same person who screams and hollers and gets road rage when someone accidentally cuts into another lane. The reality is we all need to take a breather right now. Society and culture is at like a heightened fire alarm number 10. And it's really sad to see. And it happens because people aren't leading and operating from a place of graciousness. You know, anyone might have their reasons for thinking through this and why it happens. I happen to think it has to do a lot with a failure of education, with our youth. We don't teach emotional or social intelligence at any depth, in any level of grade school, elementary school, high school, barely, rarely in college. But, you know, one topic, and I think by not having emotional and social intelligence education at deep levels, people are going to struggle with character. When you struggle with character, you attack others more often. So I think the education system is one problem. We also don't teach civics classes anymore. I don't know if you remember what civics classes were. I don't know if you have them in your school or your kids do. But civics classes used to teach simple ideas of what it means to be a good citizen, a participative citizen, a collaborative human being who's open to other ideas and, and who believes that in, for example, the western cultures, a democracy, or in other cultures that are more, you know, collaborative, that, hey, let's be open to other people's views, let's be thoughtful and patient and gracious as they seek to explain themselves or make their point of view. Because not everyone is a creator or an influencer who's incredibly articulate and knows everything that they want. A lot of people, when they talk, they, you got to be patient and gracious with them because they're sounding out their ideas, looking for their own position. Today, everyone's supposed to have a ready made position on every single situation, every political upturn. We're all supposed to know, you know, we're all supposed to be experts in foreign policy and experts in crypto and experts in social media and experts in building unicorns and experts and, you know, in every area. And so people are coming with ready made opinions where, you know, at least in civics classes that you should teach, hey, take a breather. Let's explore other perspectives before taking the position. In other words, let's have an informed opinion, not just a loud voice. Last but not least, I think it might be because we've lost a little bit of the foundations of a religious culture. Now. I know not everyone will agree with this. And this isn't about your belief or lack thereof. It's about some training we used to all get. You know, there's a biblical phrase or verse that goes something like, you know, the God is slow to anger and rich in love. And I always loved that because, you know, if you hear that as young person like, hey, be slow to anger, don't get so angry so quickly. Take a breather. You know what, if you're going to spread emotions in the world, make it rich in love. Spend your time coming from a place of love, not anger. And things can really change. Now, obviously that spreads across all the traditions of all the major spirituality texts. Speak about whether whatever religious text or spiritual text you read, they all in some way do say that, you know, less anger, more love is a good thing. Less fear, more faith, good thing. Well, I think when you learn to realize that being impatient or quick to anger doesn't make you a gracious person with others, doesn't make you feel like you're in a state of graciousness, over and over you start to change your behavior. If it sounds like any of this is preaching to you, I'm here to share you. I ain't preaching. I grew up in a immediately angry, impatient and oftentimes violent atmosphere. And all the way until my probably 25th birthday. I grew up in a fighting mentality, a defensive mentality. I had studied multiple traditions of martial arts and had, you know, my black belt and I had a lot, a lot of fights growing up. And I wish that someone pulled aside the young kid and said, hey, you really don't have to be this angry. You can learn to condition your emotions so you don't feel all this anxiety and stress bubble up and turn into impatience and rudeness towards others. I didn't know where it was coming from. And so no judgment. I do urge you though, maybe one day you'll make that decision. I did. I was in a bar fight somewhere in my mid-20s, protecting a friend. I hadn't started, just a friend got in trouble and I'm good in that situation. So I handled it. And afterwards I had some time to think about and I was like, you know, I don't, I don't want to be in that position anymore. I don't want to be around people who get in fights like that. I don't want to be in that situation to have to defend like that. In fact, I just want to be around people who don't get in arguments and screaming fights, often at all. I want to be around people who are gracious and polite and courteous and giving, who will always prefer to do the kind thing, the thing where the intention was respected and love and honor for others, where people give the benefit of doubt to others, where they seek to understand their view. Does all this make me old fashioned and silly? Perhaps. But my job is to be here reporting to you from now. 25 years of studying personal development and in studying that personal development to share with you. It's pretty clear the more you research, the more you look deeply, the more everybody's all been asking us to just be gracious people to one another. I know it's hard out there. I do Know that there's a lot of hate and not good vibes. So you doing personal development today? Listen, we're trying to elevate the consciousness of the conversation here. We're trying to get back to the roots of personal development, of psychology, of what we know from philosophy. There's generations and generations and literally thousands of years of recorded human history of people just asking one another to be good to another. I hope you'll do that today because every day is a good day to grow. Compassion begins with goals for yourself and others about them experiencing a great quality of life. Compassion means I want you to have a healthy, abundant, joyous, bright, happy, safe life. You know, when you have compassion for yourself or others, it begins with your intent. Well, my intent is for others. Gosh, I hope for others, I pray for others. I want them to have a great life. And when you realize that you want others to have a great life, when they're struggling or things aren't going right, you can have compassion. You're like, oh, gosh darn it, it's not going great for them. Or oh, gosh, it's not the way I want it to be yet. And the compassion for others begins with the goal for wanting them to have a good life. And so I just remind you to keep that in the forefront of your mind for yourself. Tell your mind, tell your brain, tell your soul, tell your spirit that you deserve a good life. And then when it's hard, it's okay that it's hard. And you know what? Darn it, you know, it's okay that you feel bad that it's not where you want it to be. It's okay that others feel bad that it's not where they want it to be and that they get discouraged. It's okay that you get discouraged. It's okay that you're not motivated 247 in all this uncertainty, like as soon as you realize that you want others to be happy, to have abundant lives, to be healthy, to have great relationships, good jobs, a sense of mission, a happy holistic well being. When you want that for others and they're not experiencing that, you know that's where your compassion is born. That's where empathy is born. That's where the will to be an understanding human begins. Wanting good for others. So many times in this community, I have to remind you, striver, that it is okay that you want more for your life, even if it's good now. You know, a lot of strivers and achievers, they always feel guilty for wanting more in their Life because they have so many people around them going, but you already have so much. You already are so much. You've already achieved so much. Why can't you just be happy? And the answer is, well, I am. I just want to keep growing into my full potential. I'm not done yet. I'm still getting warmed up. I'm still building, I'm still learning, I'm still growing. Babe, it's okay that you want more. And as soon as you realize, oh, okay, it's okay for me to want more and it's okay for other people to want more. And then when they get stuck, I. I can feel compassion because I want a good intention for them. Compassion begins with goals for yourself and others to have a good life. Second thing, compassion requires outreach. What do you mean by that? Well, a lot of people talk a big game on compassion. I have compassion for other human souls. And they'll never call a friend when they know a friend is going through difficult times. Even though they see it on social media where they hear it from their friends. A lot of people say they have compassion for others. But just when the others need a compassionate ear or some validation, they judge them. They tell them they're wrong, they tell them their feelings are stupid, they question the person and they leave the person feeling worse. Leave the person feeling disempowered versus inspired, heard, safe. Compassion means you reach out. It requires you reaching out to another proactively. Like people around you shouldn't have to beg you for your time, attention, loving energy. It should be there in spades for them. I really believe that too many people wait to be begged for attention by others and eventually others go find the attention elsewhere. Because compassion requires proactive outreach. And guess what? It requires it for you too. Self compassion isn't just about you saying, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself. Self compassion is also going, you know what, I'm struggling here. I'm going to reach out, I'm going to ask others for assistance. I'm going to let others know where I really am at and how I'm really feeling, what I really need. Self compassion requires a vulnerability in a social realm. Right? Real compassion for yourself means you're willing to raise your hand and say, hey guys, I need some help. It's okay that I'm struggling. So I'm also okay with asking for some help. Third big idea is that compassion is really a sense of presence and an act of listening. So you demonstrate compassion with other people and often it's just about your presence. You Know, it's like that famous quote I always put around Christmas time is your loved ones really want your presence, not your presence, meaning they don't want gifts from you as much as you being there for them. Your full presence with them, your attention, your energy in the moment, in that moment with them. Not thinking about the bills, not thinking about 10 years ago, not thinking about five days ahead, not thinking about, you know, next quarter. But no here. Be here with them now. Be here with them now and listen to them now. Not trying to solve their. Compassion isn't about solving everyone's problems. It's about being there with them. Being there with them. Well, guess what? Compassion with yourself is the same. To give yourself a moment of presence. I know people who, they're the most compassionate people in the world for others, but then they burn themselves out. Oh, hello striver, I'm talking to you. That you will burn yourself to the ground caring for everyone else. But your self care routine sucks. That is no discipline to yourself routine. There's no real compassion for yourself because you keep burning yourself night out after night, day after day, spinning yourself up with uppers and caffeine and spin yourself down with alcohol and whatever else we get in these cycles where we are nice people and we're giving people and we're people pleasers and we're generous hearts and beings and souls, and yet we won't be that generous with ourselves, with our own habits to care for ourselves. Compassion means being present and listening to yourself. Giving yourself a moment of mindfulness, a moment of rest, listening to your body when it's tired. Babe, last idea, compassion. It's all about the follow up, right? There's a moment where you can say a nice thing to a friend. You want to really show compassion, calm again tomorrow. You know what, that day that you're really struggling, you're hard on yourself and you finally take a breather and you meditate and you let it go and you're like, oh, okay, you forgive yourself that day. You know what? Forgive yourself again tomorrow. You know, you want to get healthier. Okay, good. You hit the gym, you listen to your body, guess what? Get there again next week. Compassion, listening to ourselves, being there for other people, it requires follow up. So much of every single thing you've ever heard in personal development comes down to consistency, my friend. It's that consistent action, that consistent spirit, that consistent way of being that establishes the real sense and feeling for yourself and others. If you want to live a compassionate life toward others, it's about okay, not just one outreach. It's about that consistent follow up. Hey, how you doing? I talked to you last Friday. You still doing okay? It's about when you write something down in the journal that's troubling you and you haven't figured it out. You go back to your journal again the next day, the next week, you revisit that. You give yourselves time and space to let that struggle be okay, to honor the process of improvement, to honor that you are trying. Yeah, compassion. It's about follow up. That consistent messaging of personal development in your ears rewires your brain, makes you more self aware, more intentional and over time, yeah, more successful, helps you create lasting relationships. It helps you grow. And it's a beautiful thing that, that compassion, self compassion, that it grows with practice, with the follow up, with the consistency. It just reminds you every day it's a great day to.