How to be gracious

A few months ago, I wrote something about being gracious; this was aimed towards my morning with my toddler, and today I am back again to report how it’s going.

There are good days and some not-so-good days, but there have been more ups than downs. However, last night, It was brought to my attention that it is not limited to my mornings alone, I have found myself now getting irritated at night, too, just before bedtime, but the plot twist is that I become highly exhausted right after putting my toddler to bed, I could never explain why. It was brought to my attention my exhaustion started from my mind. It started during dinner time; there is something my toddler does at meal times that gets me so irritated that no matter how much I try to encourage or discourage it ( I can’t go into full details here), it doesn’t change much. I get so worked up that I am mentally exhausted, and it’s not a far cry from my body exhibiting it.

Am I here to talk about my toddler? No, but follow me here. Yesterday, I spent almost half the day thinking about how I had gone to see someone the day before who was sick; it was only meant to be a quick hello, I told myself and the person, but somehow I felt I had done something wrong because it felt that I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I had not been “gracious enough”, so I sent a neutral message the next day to ask if she was feeling better today; she didn’t reply early enough, and so the guilt reeled in more profound. “oh, she must have thought the same thing too”, “why is she pretending to care, when she couldn’t even wait to leave”.

On the same day, I wished someone to have a lovely week, then I turned to the other person jokingly, “oh, not you”, immediately I thought to myself “, was that gracious or not”. The person then said, “oh, I also want a nice week too” I guess it was not the response I was expecting, especially after meaning it as a joke. Now joke or not, I still had to question myself, was that gracious?

So what have I learnt from this;

There is a thin line between self-awareness and guilt, but what you do with it afterwards is the critical bit. In scenario two, I was guilt-driven and somehow wanted to feel justified. The person later replied in the same usual tone ( because I was somehow expecting the tone to change). I was self-aware but mostly guilt-driven, i.e., in my self-awareness, I went over the line towards guilt and chose to allow that guilt to drive me.

Lesson two,

Being gracious takes extra work, and self-awareness is a good step; although I am not there, I am taking the necessary steps by being self-aware, so I can handle it better next time. There is nothing wrong with a little laugh (or joke); but we can make it a gracious little laugh ( and yes, I know it would take extra work to get to that level).

Lesson three,

Being gracious requires a lot of patience; it would sometimes mean holding back; if you can’t think or say something nice, then don’t say anything at all; that is what they say.

Now I want to end this by sharing my win of that day; someone was trying to compliment me on a write-up I shared; it started well until the part where he said, “where did you get it from”. I had to pause for a split second as I did not know how to answer that, but slowly ( well, it felt like that anyways ), the words rolled off my tongue “I wrote it”. I wasn’t sure whether to be offended, even though it did slightly feel like an insult. I recounted the event to a friend, whose reaction was in the face, how he looked at me when I said, “he asked me, where did I get it?” The look my friend gave me said it all, and I thought if I had given that same look, well, let us say it would not have been gracious; how I maintained a neutral smiling face and replied the way I did was a big win for me.

In conclusion, to be gracious, you must be able to pause first and think before speaking. It is a conscious effort. You can pray to be gracious, just as I do with my toddler, but you still have to do the work; you need grace and a lot of practice to get there, so be gracious to yourself too.