Grace and Space
Intro Music:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach, and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live, love, make money and change the world.
Tracey:
Hey, I’m glad you’re here. This is episode 33, and I want to talk a little bit about grace and space. It’s a gift I’m giving myself. It’s a gift I’m giving other people- grace and space.
It’s the week before Thanksgiving, so I’m mentally preparing for traditions and holidays and celebrations and family time. And these are all really good things. I’ve also got work and life things going on, and when we get caught up in life and projects and work and all the things, it’s easy to get a little stressed out, to feel a little pressured, to beat ourselves up when we don’t perform the way we want to perform or when things don’t go the way we hope they’d go.
So I just take a deep breath and give myself a little grace and give myself a little space.
Sometimes I tell myself out loud, now, if you ever see me and I’m walking around and it looks like I’ve got earbuds in and I’m talking to somebody- the person I’m probably talking to is me because I talk to myself a lot.
They say, “Oh, you don’t ever have to worry about talking to yourself unless you answer yourself.” Oh, baby, I crossed that bridge a long time ago. I answer myself all the time. I have really good conversations with myself. I encourage myself a lot. I answer myself a lot. I puzzle things out, just me and myself.
So anyway, one of the things that I do for myself is to give myself a little bit of grace. I don’t beat myself up because I talk to myself. I try really hard not to beat myself up when my efforts just don’t turn out as significant as I hoped they would. There was a program I was applying to the other month that I hoped I’d get in. Wasn’t sure if I would or not, but it was worth a try, and it was really more about who I would become in the process of having to gather my materials and kind of make my pitch- show them what I’d like to do.
I found out I didn’t get it and I was really okay with it. Yeah, I was disappointed, but I gave myself grace because I got what I really set out to do– to step up and become a little bit stronger me in the process and to be okay with feeling disappointed.
It’s very natural to be disappointed when you don’t get something that you worked to get. It’s natural to be sad, it’s natural to be depressed some. I’ve had a couple of conversations just recently where I’ve mentioned that there’s nothing wrong with being sad or depressed. I’m a little sad here. And the response was, “Wait, you’re really a happy person. You’re sad. It’s really okay?” Yeah, it’s very normal. It’s okay to feel sad and disappointed or lonely or frustrated.
We put these labels on feelings like, “Oh, this is good. We always got to feel good.” Feelings aren’t good or bad. It’s the stories that we attach to them. It’s what we make them mean.
So when I say I’m giving myself grace and space, I’m telling myself stories about what’s going on. Okay, so it’s fine that I’m a little bit sad, a little bit disappointed, but I’m also really happy that I worked hard. I put effort in, effort that I’m proud of. When I remember that, hey, I believe everything is working FOR me.
If I believe that everything is working for me and I’m a little bit sad and I’m a little bit disappointed, I can be all of those things and give myself grace to not call myself stupid or “What a loser- you didn’t get in”. You didn’t get the result that you hoped you might get. I’m not a loser. I’m a “try harder”.
But I give myself space, too. I give myself space to feel the feelings, to not fight them and not wish they’d go away, but to just go, “Yeah, I feel disappointed”. What does that feel like? It’s all right. And I’ll tell you what disappointment feels like to me. A little heaviness in my body, a little bit of a knot in my stomach, kind of a little ache in my heart. Oh, have mercy. Billy Ray Cyrus’s Achey-breaky heart (laugh). It’s not that bad, but it really is just kind of a little bit of a clutch at my heart. I’m a little sad, a little disappointed. And then I let that feeling process. Then I also feel proud of myself that I put some hard work, some effort into going after something I wanted and because I believe it’s all working out for me.
Ultimately, I’m in a good place, but I wouldn’t be in a good place if I weren’t giving myself grace and space. And I am just now hearing all the rhyming I’m doing here.
I’m in a good place because of grace and space. Almost feel a country song coming on…
So maybe I better stop while I’m ahead.
Hey, thank you for listening. I appreciate you. Now let’s go live, love, make some money and change the world.
For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.
