I’m trying to live with more – as Seth Godin reminds me, I wasn’t born with grace, it’s a choice.

It’s about giving to others the best of who we are and do – we can all think of people who have been graceful to us.

We can also bring to mind people who have not been graceful.

Grace is beautiful and truthful .. and gritty.

We know a world with more grace in it would be better one – which is why its important for us to know it’s a choice.

Yesterday, I found myself rereading some of Godin’s thoughts on grace – on a bus, trundling along, I thought to share these today:

“To be willing to do new things you don’t think you’ll like requires
you to prefer the unknown.   Not just to tolerate it, but to prefer it.

‘One way to achieve that is to set out to experience things you’re
sure you won’t like.

‘To have conversation that are frightening.

‘Becoming generous beyond measure, just to see what happens.

‘And most of all, setting out to fail.  Failing helps you see how far
is too far, failing helps remind you that failing isn’t fatal, and most
of all,failing opens you up to succeeding.’

As Godin says elsewhere: ‘Art  is a personal act of courage – something one human does to create change in another.’

Something Dan Ariely shares about his honesty experiments helps us to see grace more sharply.  Ariely tried out a little test involving the contents of a common fridge, placing a pack of cokes in (all gone within 72 hours) and then a plate of cash (still there after 72 hours).  He then created a measurable experiment to see if people were more willing to take (steal) if it was a step away from cash.*  He found it was the case.

When his Skype account was hacked into and he ended up paying for someone else’s calls, Ariely was sure this person didn’t think they were really stealing – they weren’t stealing money.  His concern is, we’re moving towards a world in which ‘the days of cash are coming to a close,’ meaning people will be increasingly disconnected from cash and, at the same time, have more temptations to face.**

Gracefulness is about giving more than we take in everything we do.  The choice is going to be more important than ever.

(*Three groups.  The first (control) group received cash directly from the person checking their answers (solving 3.2 problems).  The second group could self-check their answers for cash (claiming they’d correctly solved 5.9 problems).  The third group received tokens for their correct answers which they could exchange somewhere else (and claimed they’d correctly solved 9.4 problems).)
(**James McQuivey suggests we’re entering an era of digital disruption: ‘innovators+infrastructure=digital disruption.  Massive digital disruption, at a scale and a pace most are simply not prepared for.’
(Cartoon quote from Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist.)