The following post is designed to be the starting point of a discussion on this topic. Please don’t see my initial rant as the be-all/end-all of this topic
I have had some shitty things go on in my life. Some of them happened to me.
Some of them I perpetrated.
All of them, in the series of cascading events that make up my life, have led me to where I am now.
As anyone who knows me or Bonnie is well aware, I love where I am right now… I’m married to my best friend (someone you people would likely kill to spend as much time with as I get without even trying). I work and make a living in the entertainment industry (and most days I don’t even have to put on pants when I’m working).
People who have heard me talk about the mess that is my past (those things I’m willing to share) often ask, incredulous, how I even survived the mental and emotional trauma that was my life.
I was going to do a video or an audio for this course, but when I tried, I felt like I was just being a dick about everything, so I’m sticking with text.
You all know stories of people who have accidents, get all mangled, and years later are happy and laughing and saying how the accident was the best thing that ever happened to them… then they list a lot of things that were consequential of the accident… renewed focus on what was important, surrendering to the inevitable, an almost forced closeness with family and friends… crap like that.
People often have crap happen to them, and in an attempt to give them some perspective, I will tell the story of the trail of events that led me to meeting Bonnie (“The Luckiest Man in the World” story for those who know it), and how that series of events got me to where I am.
Here’s a little industry secret… you know how “they” tell you that you need to have a comedic and a dramatic monologue that you can deliver when you’re in auditions or meetings or whatever? Well, the story of how I met Bonnie is both my comedic and dramatic monologues because it tells really well both ways. Maybe you can develop a personal monologue that will do the same thing… much less shit to memorize.
Anyway, I can tell this story in a fun/funny way to people who need to have their hearts lifted, but I can also tell the story in a really dark version for people who think their lives are over… and I’m like, “Really? What fucked up shit in your life do you have that even remotely compares to the shit I lived through???”
And the truth is that people, for the absolute most part, have not come close to the crap I lived through.
Refer back to the stories of other people’s trauma. When they get past it, they gain perspective on things.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a tool that allowed you to apply future perspective to a really crappy, stressful situation that you’re experiencing right now, today…? Wouldn’t you love to have a mantra that you could lean on when you’re feeling like you can’t take this shit anymore… whatever “this shit” is?
Well, the lesson I learned in the midst of going through the trauma in my life that eventually led me to the life I have now is, I believe, just such a mantra, just such a tool.
I learned the power of… grace… in my immediate life.
It’s weird, I know. You can say it. We all know that’s weird.
But that doesn’t stop it from being true.
Here’s the tool. Here’s the mantra. Here’s what will lighten your life.
“There are no such things as ‘good’ things or ‘bad’ things that happen to you in life. There are just things that happen and the grace with which you deal with them.”
Grace is sort of a detachment based on a different, enlightened point of view. It’s like the future perspective thing. Grace is a function of knowing you’ll get through this thing, knowing that life is a series of events, not a series of discreet, separated things. Grace is saying — when you’re in the middle of some shit — “This is going to be a great story someday.”
If it’s going to be a great story someday, please come to understand it as a great story right now.
Learn to strengthen the muscle of responding to things in a grace-filled way.
It will lighten your life in ways — I swear — you cannot imagine.
Filling your life with in-the-moment, grace-filled choices… about everything… will really rock your world.
It rocked (and continues to rock) mine.
Yay for grace! Thanks, Keith! After taking this course, I’ve been trying to remember to CHOOSE to feel good, and I will add to that choose to respond with grace. MAN that can be hard sometimes, but the more I am AWARE of my choices, the more I can remind myself that every response is a choice and to choose happiness and grace and hope and fun and goodtimes is way more worth it than to stay there feeling shitty. 🙂
Love this! I put “choose grace” into my Balanced app. It’s a muscle I’m constantly working, and Keith has taught me a lot about leaning into it!
There are some days I feel like “man, I haven’t accomplished anything this year.” But the more I let that mindset take over my thoughts, the more I’m choosing the negative over the positive. And then the more I’m inviting things into my life that don’t even need to be there. It took a really long time to realize that the way we feel and our outlook is a choice. All the time. I’ve had a string of “bad” things happen in my life, but that is part of the ever changing way of life. It takes real courage to get through past traumas and manifest that into grace and future perspective. It’s easy to lock yourself into a corner and feel like the universe just has it out for you. Thank you Keith for sharing this.
Thank you, Keith, for your insights. I have done a lot of spiritual/emotional work over the years myself. Lots of Woo-Woo journey here. I have learned most of us grew up in some amount of dysfunction and/or made some messed up choices in our lives (not implying that mine were worse than yours here). For me some of the best wisdom about this has been around not letting those events DEFINE me anymore. Yes, these things happened, but I don’t need to use “the story I tell myself about myself” E.T., define my identity. This goes along with what you shared about not defining things as “good” or “bad”. So certain things happened to me but, whether or not I think of myself as a VICTIM is a choice. When I learned this concept it blew my mind. If I carry the events of my past around like a ball and chain of course that’s going to mess with my happiness today, my reality and my presence with others. Yikes! Yes, I had to work through this stuff in a healthy safe place, but knowing today that I and those that caused me harm were doing the best they could in that moment or as E.T. puts it “acting unconsciously” means it’s not personal. Newsflash Lisa, sick people act sick! Now whether I can or want to be in relationship with these people is another thing. So in the forgiveness and self-forgiveness is GRACE. I do it for me. My life runs better in this level of awareness. I don’t get my feelings hurt as easily. I can detach (work in progress of course). Today instead of banishing people when I feel betrayed, I can gracefully set necessary boundaries. I have reestablished relationships with family members I never thought I’d talk to again. GRACE makes all of this possible.
Looking forward to Aug. 5th ya’ll!
You might also consider incorporating the corollary to this notion…
There’s a tweetable quote from me during the 100-Days… that mental health has nothing to do with being mentally healthy… You can see that while you may be broken by your past traumas, but that doesn’t mean you’re broken.
If you can become ok with how you are broken, if you can invest Grace into the memories of how you broke, you can become ok with the brokenness.
Once you realize that everyone has broken bits inside themselves but everyone seems to function just fine… you get a handle on the notion that broken doesn’t mean abnormal… functioning normally means operating just fine while broken… because broken.
And once you realize that everyone’s broken, and you’re broken, but that that doesn’t mean you’re *broken*, the world gets easier…
And that’s what I’m about… making sure you can see that your world is not as rough as you think.
Soooooo looking forward to our time together, Lisa. Great insights! I want to know who “ET” is! Can’t figure that out.
Eckhart Tolle, I imagine?
Good stuff, good stuff.
Ahh… yes. Makes sense. Thank you!
Love this, Keith, and I really wanna hear how you met Bonnie. Will you share that someday?
Thank you for sharing this great rumination on GRACE. Fabulous soul food.
ahh.. this is GOOD. Thank you, Keith!
You’re more than welcome…
Love this. Thank you. xo
Thank you Keith! This is so true and a great reminder!! I had open heart surgery to correct a congenital heart defect almost 3 years ago. At the time I thought my life was over but looking back now it was the best thing to have ever happened to me. I wouldn’t be here now following my dream of acting if that had not happened.
Life is funny, hard and amazing. 🙂
<3
This is amazing Keith. I read this at just the right time. My acting teacher and I have also been talking about grace, and more specifically, forgiveness. How I need to show personal grace and learn to forgive myself. I never really knew I was allowed to forgive myself for the macro and micro of life. It’s been deep, personal work, and I’m soaking myself in self care as I go along.
Read the reply I made to Lisa Carswell up above… Please note that it’s applicable to forgiveness as well. The transgression that needs forgiving and the need to hang onto the guilt/shame/hurt is just a kind-of and variation-on being broken.
If you’re not careful as you move through this, you can get stuck in a negative loop of “not being able to forgive yourself for not being able to forgive yourself,” and it’s unpleasant and unattractive.
Here’s what I’ll say… I like you… a lot. Your energy and spirit are joyous and sensual, and you’re very easy to be with. From my perspective, any rough edges that you think you have should be looked at as if they are the facets of a well cut diamond rather than the fractures and sharp deformities of a dirt clod you might find at a bad construction site.
Who you are right now is amazing. That means that what got you here is worthy of reverence… even if parts of what got you to where you are might be seen as “personal failings.”
Diamonds come in colors. Did you know that? A pure, carbon diamond is clear. The colors come from impurities in the crystal matrices. So the things you need to forgive yourself for are what make you a pink diamond instead of a clear one… you’re still a diamond, and anyone looking at you can see that.
You’re a pink diamond, and that’s pretty awesome.
Be glad you’re not a dirt clod.
We’re bright motherfuckin’ diamonds, Keith!!
Tee hee!
I’m writing “This is going to be a great story someday” on my whiteboard, right next to my vision board. Thanks for this, Keith.