I recently attended an online retreat with Jean Haner called The Spiritual Side of Chinese Medicine. Each day we learned about one of the elements of Chinese Medicine and discovered how to heal it if we were out of balance (and who isn’t???). On the day we were studying water, one of our assignments was to think about what we would do differently if we were to go back and do our life over – but this time with the wisdom we have now.
I would do many things differently, but the one thing that really stood out to me is that I would offer more grace.
I didn’t used to understand what grace is but I’ve come to love the word for meaning allowing people to be who they are and allow them space to heal their lives without my judgement.
When they make a mistake, letting them off the hook for it.
When someone is going through a hard time, offering support instead of criticism.
When someone hurts me, offering them grace knowing they are human and we all makes mistakes (I’m not saying let them hurt me – that is different!).
Growing up I held everyone to such a high standard and felt so disappointed when they didn’t show up how I thought they should. When they weren’t who I thought they should be.
I was such a tough critic!
If I went back with this level of wisdom I have now, I would offer everyone in my life grace. Including myself. I would offer myself grace for doing the best I could at the time with what I knew. We should be our own biggest supporters instead of our toughest critics!
Imagine what a gentler world we’d live in if we offered each other, and ourselves, grace.
Grace for your business.
I also want to mention offering ourselves grace when it comes to running our online business. There’s so much pressure to be on social media, to do this and do that – it can be too much! I’d love for us to offer ourselves grace with that too!
Allow for our own shortcomings, for the cycles of creation that come and go, for the desire to be seen and to NOT be seen at times too.
Letting ourselves be who we are and not judge ourselves so harshly.
You may enjoy this post from when I went against my nature and tried to really put myself out there on social media. I committed to showing up on social media for 30-days in a row and this is what I learned and the conclusion I came to.
I’m curious if there is one thing you would do differently if you went back and started over with your current wisdom? I’d love to hear it, if you would like to share.
XOXO,
