Giving Grace

I am hard on myself. Regardless of how much I'm going through and how much I still achieve, I'm notorious for getting upset at myself when I'm having a mentally down day, and continuing the spiral downwards. During this time, while having so much of it thanks to the global pandemic, it has given me plenty of chances to practice giving myself the space of grace to be in the dark rather than getting angry at myself for not being in the productive state. Grace is something that really doesn't come easily or naturally to me, be it as a reaction to some of partially how I was raised, I feel sometimes with too much grace, and trying to remove anything that was uncomfortable and made my life harder at the specific moment in time. I remember even when I was very young my reaction to that was to work harder and to push harder to get to that uncomfortable place of pain and growth since it wasn't the norm, rather something I craved. While I do find it hard to give myself the grace space, I find when I do I can actually get back to what I want to get done faster. Sometimes it's coloring for five or ten minutes, sometimes it's going outside and just soaking in some nature. I don't know if anyone is into not giving grace like me, I started noticing that even though I love seeing flowers around where I was going, I literally wouldn't stop to smell the roses.  Until I started having this excessive amount of "free" time when I could and would finally listen to the voice telling me to keep moving and then shoving it out and started giving myself the grace to slow down and actually stop and enjoy the flowers around me. Actually stopping and appreciating the shape, color, and individuality of each flower. I even started letting myself photograph the flowers and try to snapshot that grace I felt for myself in the photo. This grace that I have found in slowing down and enjoying the flowers and photographing the moment, I'm trying to bottle the grace and use it when I get down and hard on myself and give myself the feeling of smelling the flowers and inhale some grace.