Over the past several years, I have written about many different aspects of resilience. I have written about the role of conflict, and beauty. I have written about hope and the role of adversity and challenge in the development of character. I have written about the role of trust and trustworthiness, providing a template for a corporate charter that would give all the opportunity to grow together in their ONE mission.
I have explored the role of creativity, and I have reflected on the impact of our ego through the Enneagram personality profile. I wrote about our resistance to change, and what we can do to overcome our inhibitions (part 1, part 2, part 3).
In the end, all of these nurture resilience, but perhaps one, above all, brings it all together: Grace.
Grace has become the safe space for me to take responsibility for my behaviors without condemnation. It has allowed me to hold all of my trauma and past regret without despair. It is enabling me to look to the future with a greater sense of anticipation and to be released from past and regret to be more fully present within the moment.
Through grace I have the opportunity to view crisis and challenge with a sense of curiosity instead of a subconscious expectation of never being enough. I am coming to experience a greater peace in my creative efforts, adopting a perspective of making better mistakes tomorrow.
I still feel the effects of my childhood trauma, but grace is providing me the opportunity to live beyond them. Grace has become the most potent of catalysts, unlocking foundations of resilience for a purposeful life, with peace.
Grace has become the fortress of freedom; the safe space between stimulus/circumstance and my response. As I live with grace it affects all areas of my life: for all that I am, and all that I am not, and it calls me forward to share the seeds of it fruit with others.
Applied Grace 101: Just pause, sit back and exhale – then let the truth in.
So much of our fear, regret and overwhelm is fuelled by a loss of perspective and margin – the distance between us and our change/challenge/crisis has eroded and with no margin/perspective left, it has become all we see.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Viktor Frankl
There is no growth or freedom, no maturity, no positive formation of character without a pause; it is the key to self-awareness and reflection. Grace enables a disarming of the judgment (even subconscious judgment) that restrains us from an open and honest exploration of truth; the discovery of reality as it is without prejudicial filters of fear.
A quote to ponder:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.” Albert Einstein
NOTE: EVERY human could benefit from reading Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
