Give Yourself Grace When You've Given All You Can
Sometimes we hear a phrase that gives perfect words to a truth you've known for a long time but didn't know how to explain. This happened to me last year. I was reading this interview of Julie Morris on the blog Raising Explorers. Julie is a rock star of brand strategy for some of your favorite cable channels like Food Network and HGTV, and was recently announced as SVP of brand strategy and operations for the new channel from Chip and Joanna Gaines coming in 2020. The interview was part of a series highlighting the real-life experience of moms who travel for work and the phrase that jumped out at me was "Give yourself grace". This is part of my nature, I just never had the right words for it.
A friend once asked me how it is that I am so unaffected and unstressed by the constant stream of tasks that make up adult life. I laughed and said "Easy, I just lower my standards!” It's a partial truth. I'm highly goal oriented and in order to achieve those goals, I have to lower expectations for myself other areas. It's a conscious decision and it saves my sanity daily. "Give yourself grace" puts more beautiful language around this practice of letting things go. If more people knew how to give themselves grace it would shift their perspectives and reduce their anxiety. It allows you to release yourself from the negative emotion surrounding an unmet expectation.
“Giving yourself grace allows you to release yourself from the negative emotion surrounding an unmet expectation.”
This past weekend I had to challenge this thinking, or maybe better put I had to expand on it. Every fall for the past decade I've run a half marathon. This year I registered and trained as usual until about 2 weeks ago when a period of transition caused stress and insomnia, which led to poor dietary choices and skipping training runs. Going into this race I was already nervous about my physical condition. To pile on, the weather didn't cooperate. Humid and too hot for me.
Very early, around mile 2, I thought of that phrase "Give yourself grace". I was listing the things that weren't in my favor and affirming to myself that I was right to prioritize other things during those two weeks. By mile 6 I was taking some walk breaks. By mile 9 I was just walking. That's when a sign caught my attention - Grace Realty - and it brought me back to that phrase but this time it struck me as completely false. When I visualized myself walking the rest of the race, the phrase "Give yourself grace" didn’t fit. Why? Because I knew I wasn't giving my best in that moment. Instead I was searching for a way to let myself off the hook for something I could have done better. Not a great feeling. If you aren't giving the best that you can give, in that moment, under those specific conditions, then you can't give yourself grace. You can try, but it won't release you from negative emotions in the way it does when you've given to the best of your abilities. I ran [mostly] the rest of the way with a nice push for the last mile.
“You can only give yourself grace when you’ve given all that you can.”
Yesterday I earned my slowest time ever in a Half Marathon, including the time it down-poured the entire race during the inaugural Love Run in Philly and including my first race after having my kids. But you know what? I course corrected and did my best, so I gave myself grace… then I ate the Swedish fish, and the slice of pizza, and the Wawa hoagie.