intro: 00:00

Welcome to the Infinitely Precious podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

James: 00:12

Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and it's time for me to share some thoughts with you. At least my time to share some thoughts with you. Hope they'll be helpful. We're about 7 days into a new year.

James: 00:28

Now you and I both know the calendar is a construct. It's, you know, it's based on how long it takes for our planet to get around the sun, and, we randomly chose when it began and when it ended. And now we're settled into it. So January is indeed, right now, the beginning of a new year. Now what that allows us to do when we think about a new year is to sort of reframe how we're gonna see this new year.

James: 00:58

Maybe we're not satisfied with the way last year went. Well, this is an opportunity in the new year to reframe it. To, to engage it and to try to engage it in a way that is perhaps different than the way you engaged last year. Now, since we're 7 days in, for those of you who made resolutions, you may be 7 days into an amazing regimen of what ever your, resolution was. For those of you who have already slipped in your, resolution, keeping, the discipline around that.

James: 01:38

This is an opportunity to regroup. We're 7 days in. You have the opportunity to take a look at whatever you resolved to be about this year, whatever you resolved to do this year. Because what's most important, dear precious ones, is that you are already precious for the gift you are. And whatever you're trying to sharpen, increase, grow, strengthen, whatever those things are, there is still an opportunity to begin right now.

James: 02:18

Now part of what I try to do or have for the last 4 or 5 years, inspired by by my very good friend, Sarah, is to choose a sort of focus word for the year. And that word will be a word I come back to that I sort of measure, where things are as sort of that intention begins to unfold into the world. And my, focus word for this year is grace. And grace is the gift of letting go for me. I didn't set resolutions.

James: 03:03

I set some goals for this year. And part of what keeps me sometimes from, succeeding in the goals I set is my Enneagram type. Let's not get all bogged down. You can read about it, but I'm a 7. And sevens like to have lots of choices, lots of possibilities not to be boxed in.

James: 03:25

So if I set a goal that sort of makes some part of me within feel boxed in, then I find lots of other things to distract me and keep me from doing the thing that I have perhaps set as my goal. Another thing is I'm a recovering perfectionist. I've talked about that before in a variety of settings. But as a recovering perfectionist, if it's not gonna be perfect, why even do it? And I'm letting go of that.

James: 03:56

And part of that is, for me this year, focusing in on grace. I already know that the divine has absolute grace for me, unlimited grace for me. There is always space for me to turn around and to rethink whatever it is that I have not quite done. Failure is is actually an opportunity for growth for me. Talked about that before too.

James: 04:26

But in order for it to be an opportunity for me to grow, I have to have grace. I have to give myself grace. Just knowing that God gives me grace is a great thing. But I'm gonna say something that may sound heretical to you, and that is knowing that God has grace for me is not enough. It's not enough.

James: 04:51

Knowing that other people in my life, because they love me, give me a certain amount of grace is not enough. I need to have grace for myself. And then, as I develop more fully having grace for myself, I can have grace for others. So to come back around, for me, as I've begun to set goals, some writing goals for myself, some content goals for myself, both on my website and in other locations, as I've set some of those goals, I have noticed the distractions that I am quick to jump on. I have noticed this procrastination that comes from my recovering perfectionist self.

James: 05:41

I've noticed those things. And in the past, the pattern that would emerge in the midst of that would be for me to beat myself up about it. I'm pretty good at that. I don't know about you. Maybe you're pretty good at it too when you aren't quite what you consider to be good enough.

James: 06:02

You didn't quite cut it. And instead of letting it go and trying again, I have to first have that moment when I, rake myself over the coal, so to speak. Do I really need to do that? Do I? Do you, do any of us, really need to rake ourselves over the coal in addition to learning something?

James: 06:30

It's one thing to learn something. It's another thing to call ourselves names or other people, projecting our own sense of deficiency onto other people. It's a whole another thing to just let it go. Okay. I made a mistake.

James: 06:48

I let myself be distracted for 15 minutes on, you know, in a real hole, r e e l, hole that I got sucked into. Alright. Those 15 minutes are gone. I can't get them back. Do I need to beat myself up about it?

James: 07:03

Do I need to shorten the amount of social media I allow, the time limit that I have set on my, my phone? These are all possibilities, but it doesn't help to set a different goal, to reapproach it. It doesn't help to add to it an overtone of negativity, an overtone of self judgment, an overtone of judgment for someone else, a blaming it's their fault that I haven't done this, doesn't help at all. It doesn't those things don't help. They may temporarily release your own sense of, of responsibility as you then can move forward.

James: 07:49

But each time you beat yourself up, you think less and less of yourself somewhere in there. So for me, my focus word is grace. It's grace. Yes. I I haven't been writing all that I could have been.

James: 08:03

I haven't done all the things that I set as goals in this first 7 days. I have failed in some of them. I will let myself be distracted, from some of them. And quite frankly, the first 5 days of, the year, 1st 4 days of the year, I was, I was on vacation. I was vacationing.

James: 08:27

I was taking some time to slow down and step back. So beating myself up because I took some time off to rest so I'd be more ready to gauge, that doesn't help either. Oh, what a circle. What a circle. And it's a circle that we all can get caught in.

James: 08:46

Maybe that's not your circle. Maybe you have a different circle that you keep coming back around to. And it becomes the way that you beat yourself up. Think less of yourself, judge yourself more, or perhaps project your own self judgment onto somebody else. That's a lot of what we do so that we don't have to feel bad about ourselves sometimes.

James: 09:10

Instead of any of that, give yourself grace. Take a little bit of my word, borrow it for 15 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 seconds, and use it. If you haven't made your goals in the 1st 7 days of this year, that's why there's a whole another 358 days if you're gonna bind it up by the year itself. So what will you do about it? What will you do about it now?

James: 09:43

Now. That's all you've got is now anyway. You don't have the future yet, and you can't regain the past that you didn't do. You can be right here, right now. Give yourself some grace for whatever you haven't done, whatever steps you haven't taken, whatever ways you failed.

James: 10:02

Learn from the things you failed. Maybe you set your sights too high. Maybe you didn't set your sights high enough. Reevaluate and reengage while giving yourself grace to have learned in the 1st 7 days some of the pitfalls that may be the the real pitfalls of your resolving to do things or setting goals to do things. Reevaluate the goals and re approach it.

James: 10:31

It's not too late. You have right now. Here you are. Here we are. Take this moment.

James: 10:39

Give yourself grace and re engage. And as always, remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are. You truly are a gift. Don't forget that. Give yourself some grace.

James: 10:54

Until our next time together.