I think that this picture represents that we should put others above your self and that most people are down on them selves more than others.
From a young age I was taught to always be kind to everyone...the whole “if you have nothing nice to say then don't say anything at all” kinda thing. I mean I consider myself a fairly nice person, I like to cheer people up when their down by telling people that “It's all going to be okay”. If my friends ever have a giant test or presentation they think they bombed I'm the person to come to to tell them that their mistaken, that they probably did fine and hey, it happened. Yet as Carl Richards points out I am really tough on myself. Everything I do I tell myself It's probably not good enough, and in the smallest tasks I strive for perfection, and although I may not show it, it tears me apart when something I do doesn't turn out how I imagined it. And I think it all stems from self love. To accept your mistakes you need to love yourself. You have to be able to pick yourself up say “next time I'll do better”. Because every time you give in to those mistakes you lose confidence. People need to realize that they are only human, and that you don't have to put all the pressures of life on your shoulders. Now I'm not going to lie, I have my moments when I may not be fond of who I am, but I've grown to care and love me for me. If everyone believed in themselves a little more then maybe both bars in his drawing would be equal.
When it comes to others, whether it be our friends, family, or our classmates, we are always telling them positive things. "It's okay!" we say, when they apologize, slip up, or perform poorly on a test. "Don't say that about yourself," we reply, when they make stinging comments about their own bodies or personalities. We are always dusting off negative comments from the shoulders of others; whether they are self-inflicted, or from other people.
When it comes to ourselves, whether it be our personalities, our bodies, or our
GPAs, we are mostly saying negative things. "You can do so much better than this. What's wrong with you?" we say, when we slip up, make a mistake, or don't do as well as we'd hoped for ourselves. "Gosh," we say, when we detect flaws in ourselves, "Why am I like this?" We rarely extend kindness to ourselves; we are always hunting for the flaws, whether they are visible or hidden to the human eye.
We allow others to be human, but we do not let ourselves be human.
We let others slip up, but we tell them that it's okay because "Everyone makes mistakes!" But the second that we slip up, we tell ourselves, "What's wrong with you? Everyone is watching you. Everyone is judging you right now."
That’s what Mr. Richard is saying in this sketch.
Of course I have had an experience where I extend more grace to others than I
do to myself - just about everyone has. I, like many others, must remember to give myself the ability to be human.
I think that what Mr. Richard tried to communicate with this image is that, sometimes, we are so focused in other people in trying to really be kind and trying to be estimated for another people, that we forget to estimate ourselves, we forget to treat ourselves as good as we treat someone else. I totally agree this message, because it has sometimes happened to me. In that moment you really don’t think about what it’s happening, but something happens that Akers you realize what you are doing wrong. This does not mean that you have to stop treating people with kindness, it just means that you have to start giving more grace to yourselves, as much as you give to the others.
I think the message that Mr. Richards is trying to convey is that too often, we forget to treat ourselves with the same level of kindness that we give to others. From a young age, we are taught to "treat others the way we wish to be treated", and with that, we focus all of our energy into treating others in a right and just way. Although this is extremely important, I think that self-health is also just as important. We should try and equally focus on treating ourselves with kindness as treating others with kindness
I think that Mr. Richards is trying to show how easy it is to compare yourself to other people. Through failure, body image, and all sorts of societal pressures our world makes it so easy for us to measure up with other people. Mr. Richards wants us to shy away from putting ourselves on a pedestal smaller than others when they make the same mistakes. Forgive yourself as much as you forgive others. Personally I connect with this a a lot especially in school. In math, my friends will not pass their test as well but it is so easy to reassure them it will be okay, when I can't even tell myself that it will. I think more people need to set the same expectations and respect for other people as they do for themselves.
With this image Mr. Richards is trying to portray that as humans we tend to compare ourselves to others and when we encourage other we think negative thoughts about our selves.
My opinion of this message is that this is an interesting message to put out there. This message helps people, growing people, realize how unfair you treat yourself and how often you beat your self up for the little thing. It also helps us realize how much I tend to compare my self to others.
The picture shows that we are much kinder to other people than we are to ourselves, especially when dealing with failure. I think this happens because of the way we perceive our failure, which is different compared to the way we perceive others'. When we fail, we are more likely to blame it on ourselves, rather than something external. We chastise ourselves for not being good enough or for not having the right skills. When others fail, well luck just wasn't on their side or their talent wasn't recognized.
I think this lopsided judgment is born out of a sense of fear. Fear that if we don't succeed now, we will never be able to succeed. Sometimes we feel as though our present situation, especially when it is a unfavorable one, is the situation we will always be in. As for others, we don't, unless it is someone really close, have this deep-rooted sense of fear for their success, so we're not as harsh.
I experienced this feeling when I didn't perform well in exams or in competitions. I had a fixed mindset about improving my skills and so was scared that I would never do better, which is definitely a misconception. We all can get better at extending grace to ourselves by being a little more forgiving of our failures and working on solving the problem.
In this picture grace represents kindness as said in the brief description. In this picture grace we extend to others is way more than we extend to ourselves. I believe the "Sketch Guy" drew this picture to remind people to be kind to themselves. People are always complimenting each other but then think so little of themselves. An example of this is a student thinking bad about their appearance, work, you name it, but this student is always nice to everyone and always complimenting them. Sure everyone needs a compliment every now and then, but it is the individual person who controls how they feel. I believe that as long as people try their best, they shouldn't look down at themselves. Share kindness with others but make sure to share a little kindness with yourself.
I think the purpose of this article is to remind people the importance of self encouragement and respect. It's easy to criticize and critique ourselves because, of course, who knows you better than you do? When I saw Mr. Richards work, I immediately thought of one of my biggest fears: public speaking. Seeing someone speak in front of a crowd, no matter the size, never seizes to astonish me. I think of my palms sweating, knees shaking, and my stomach turning into a sinkhole and have immediate respect for anyone who can stand and speak to an audience. I could hear the most brainless speech known to man and still stand in awe over the courage it must have taken to present it. However, I can begin working on a speech and be completely confident in its effectiveness and eloquence, but when it comes time to actually propose my ideas all confidence is lost, and I often stray from my original work. My throat gets dry and I start to scratch at the skin around my thumbs, my whole presentation is a blur until I sit down and the last drop of life has left my body. I instantly initiate self destruction on everything I've just done, and continue to be embarrassed for who knows how excruciatingly long. My attitude towards myself and others in this situation, I think, fit into the graph depicted by Mr. Richards perfectly. I don't know why it is that I think more highly of others than myself, but I do know i strongly relate to this drawing as i'm sure others do as well.
I think the message Mr. Richards is trying to convey is that people are so focused on being kind to others, that they forget to be kind to themselves. People often say "you are you're greatest critic" and I find that ties in with the message being portrayed in the art. Often times we are too hard on ourselves and feed ourselves with negative thoughts and feelings. This is an unhealthy way of living because often times the mistakes someone is mad at themselves about, isn't as bad as it can seem. I am glad Mr. Richards created this art piece because people need to realize that they need to be kind to themselves. I've had an experience similar to this when I miss a goal in a soccer game. I tend to get more disappointed in myself if I miss or mess up, but try to be supportive to another person if they mess up or miss in a game.
I think that Mr. Richards is trying to say that when people think of being nice, they think about being nice to others, rather than to themselves. Other people hardly notice when you are nice to yourself, they sometimes think that you are being selfish and not caring about others. On the other hand, when you are nice to others they notice and thank you, so you keep doing it. I know people that are super nice to others, so much so that they think of them before themselves which can sometimes be their downfall. They will be helping a friend with a science project until 11:00 pm and not have any time to study for their test the next day, which they then beat themselves up about getting a bad grade. I think that we need to start finding a balance so that other people like us, but we like ourselves, too.
Why do we beat ourselves up all the time?
Wouldn't it be so much easier to succeed if we gave ourselves as much credit as those around us?
That's what Mr. Richards is trying to convey here. I struggle with this daily. I'm awkward so I can't have friends, I say. I'm overweight so I can't date, I say. I ramble so I'm not articulate, I say. If only I had the stones to say "you know what? I'm smart. I'm well-liked. And I'll be darned if anyone's going to let me believe otherwise", things might be a lot easier. I think the same is true for a lot of people.
Throughout my life, I made some bad grades on my test and quizzes. I feel really horrible and shy after it happened. Afterword, I know what I did wrong and what to improve on the next one
Mr. Richards is saying that we are often too hard on ourselves, and while it may not seem like it, we are our own biggest hater. I can understand this, I don't even remember the last time somebody else failed, but I remember of dozens of failures I've had.
I think the whole purpose of this activity was to show that not only are we more negative about ourselves than others, but that we are all to some extent insecure. We think that everyone else around us is perfect, and that we are not worth as much as they are, which is completely untrue. I think people are too afraid to accept themselves for who they are sometimes.
I can completely relate to this, I often beat myself up for something really dumb, even when I realize that everyone makes mistakes. We should all just let go of our insecurities every once in a while, it will make us freer as individuals.
This made me think that I should not be so hard on myself and give myself more credit. Failure is part of success, so doing bad on a math test will teach me to study harder and paying attention is important. I should not compare other peoples successes to my failures.
The message this article is trying to tell us is that we think often think lowly of ourselves and put ourselves down by focusing too much on what we do wrong instead of what we do well, in a way we are our own enemy. It is hard to think the same about someone else especially if it's someone you love because it makes them feel bad, but people don't feel badly about putting themselves down. Our society is very self-deprecating.
I think he is trying to communicate the idea that people need to be more kind to themselves. It is important to learn from your mistakes, but you should not beat yourself up over them. I think this is very true. Everyone is always much harder on themselves than they are on other people. I have experianced this many times, especially when it comes to school. Often when I fail a test, or do poorly on an assignment, I can't stop thinking about it. This stops me from being able to do better next time, because I'm so focused on the past.
This activity really showed me how hard people can be on themselves. I noticed my failure i thought of was just about as bad as the other persons failure and I still had different thoughts about myself than that person. I felt angry and ashamed, embarrassed, and stupid about myself while when looking at someone else's failures you can see how they grow from it how they are strong and just made a mistake. I think its important so notice how hard you are on yourself and its a good thing to look out for so you can in fact grow from your mistakes and become a stronger person from them.
I am a fifteen year old girl and this comment made me realize how unfair i have been to myself and how i always beet up myself for not being as great as i think other girls are and i kind of blame my parents for that because they always used to compare other kids to me and tell me how they are better than me. but I'm not gonna let myself think like that again. thank you!
The message that Mr. Richards is trying to communicate through this image is that in situations, we often pride and give more credit to others that fail than to ourselves. I believe that this occurs because when people are growing up, they always learn about people who have pushed through hardships to get to a successful position. So naturally, when people see the others around them fail, they encourage them, think of the message behind their failure, paint them as a brave figure, but because they aren't in the other persons shoes, there's no way of feeling the first and emotions others are feeling on the inside. So when failure does strike, a natural reaction is that all hope is gone and they start to feel like they will never redeem their failures instead of learning from the mistakes right away. A lot of the times I see my friends going through rough times or good times. Either way, I'm always going to help them and see their bravery, but there's no way for me to put myself in that position so when I am in the same situation, it's a whole other experience.
When I did the activity of writing down how I felt when someone I knew failed in comparison to me, I answered differently than the author thought that majority of the audience would. Natalie Proulx thought that by doing this activity, the reader would identify in his or her own mindset that they are kinder to others when they fail in comparison to themselves. When I was trying to think of someone I knew who had failed recently I thought of my friend who had messed up recently and got in trouble. I wrote down that I felt bad for her and sad that it had happened. When thinking of my own failures I thought about how I had not made time for my work in the past and instead of putting myself down I wrote that I felt tired of making the same mistake (procrastination) and that I was going to make a change. I think that the author of this article is intending to make the reader think of their own failures and not be mad a yourself because that doesn't change the outcome of your actions. There has to be steps made towards changing and one the first one is being self aware. This is possibly an activity to notice your own faults and make changes to become a better individual.
Mr. Richards is showing that we show so much more kindness to others than to ourselves. We are our harshest critics, so it's easy to be hard on ourselves and not be kind to ourselves. It's just as important to extend grace and kindness to ourselves as it is to others. Know that making mistakes is okay, and there is always room from improvement. We think that people pay much more attention to ourselves than they really do, but most don't. Love yourself and believe in yourself, and extend grace to yourself. It's much easier to compliment and compare ourselves to others, but we should try to extend the same grace to ourselves. If we believe in ourselves, we can also be kind to ourselves.
I believe that Mr. Richard is trying to display that we are all our worst critics and even when others may have the same "flaws" as us, we can only see ours. It is a systemic nature that society has brought upon us. We all feel the need to be perfect. Of course we should all except others and not focus on others flaws, but it is also important to not stress the little thing in ourselves as well.
Maybe the reason that we put more pressure on ourselves is that we know more the circumstances that we are put in, and have reasons why we should've done better, and we ma not know that about others who we witness failing.
In this article what Mr. Richards does tells me that sometimes in life we should really evaluate and really looking at our own success and failures then rather just beat ourselves down on our failures without acknowledging that we did succeed in other parts of our lives and that in the end that we did try.
I agree with this article and that you should treat yourself like you'd treat a friend. If you're going to say something to yourself, you should imagine you saying it to a friend and if you wouldn't, don't say it to yourself.
The message that Mr. Richards is trying to communicate in this image is that we show much more kindness towards others than ourselves. This is usually a good thing, as selflessness is a great quality to have, but it could easily become a bad thing. Of course we should always show kindness towards others, but we shouldn't beat ourselves up for little things. This could potentially become a negative quality, as kindness towards ourselves is just as important as being kind towards others. We deserve to appreciate ourselves, and to be confident in our achievements, and love ourselves just as much as we do towards others. I believe that we should be kind towards others, but also kind towards ourselves. Sometimes I feel like I'm much nicer to others than I am to myself because I have a habit of comparing myself to others, or even beating myself up against miniscule details. To wrap up, I believe that we should definitely be nice towards others, but we should also reciprocate that amount of kindness towards ourselves.
Yes, of course it is important for us to extend out grace to everyone else but it is important to love ourselves in the mix. Without being able to love and respect yourself, you can't portray grace to others. The amount of judgement and criticism we put on ourselves in today's society is unhealthy. Learn to love yourself a little more and maybe it will be that much greater when you want to extend it to others!
When viewers look at this picture, they can take the information in differently than others. Personally, I think that this image is saying how people should start trying to put others before themselves. We live in a society where everyone is always thinking about themselves, how much money they have, what new phone they need, when in reality the author wants them to be thinking about other people. Not many are constantly thinking about the life of someone else. Someone is having a worse time then you, someone doesn't have a home. Carl Richards is aiming for the world to become a better place and for people to become kinder to one another, taking it just one step at a time.
Paul Zahl, author One-Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World, defines grace as a "love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable."
As a teacher for over three decades, I've had to learn how to show grace to my students and myself. Otherwise, they and I would be miserable.
Students now--more than ever--need grace. They live in a world of high stakes pressure from parents, coaches, friends, and teachers. In this air-brushed world, they think they can't afford to make mistakes or be less than perfect. Some identify themselves as their grades. Today they are an A. Tomorrow they might be a C.
Teachers, too, live in a culture of high stakes testing. I fight the tendency to let test scores measure my worth as a teacher.
And when they and I live this way, there's no room for grace. Perfection snuffs out grace. Pride snuffs out grace.
I'm a wretch and know it. The danger was when I didn't know it and tried to be perfect. And, man, I was wretchedly perfect. Unreal expectations of myself and others. Love based on performance.
When I learned that grace--this unconditional love--has nothing to do with anything I've done, can do, or will do to earn it, I was truly able to love.
On my best days, I rest in the sea of imperfection with my students, relying on Jesus's love that seeks me out when I have nothing to give in return.
My guess of what the picture means that we are nicer to others more than us individual. We complement other, but when are focusing on themselves they tend to only focus on the bad things about them and feel imperfect. That is basically what he is trying to show in this illustration.
I think that this picture shows how we are much more kind to others around us, but we are too judgemental of ourselves. I think that being kind to people around you is a great thing, but everyone should try and be kind to yourself as well. I think that people shouldn't bring themseleves down so much, but also try to spread positivity around.
I believe that this picture shows how we, as a society, project kindness outwards towards others. I think that because we struggle to have confidence in ourselves that we tend to raise others up and bring ourselves down. Sometimes It is so to recognize the greatness we see in others that we forget to acknowledge our own success. What we put into the world is what we get back. So we should focus on extending our grace onto others.
While it is critical to extend our kindness towards others, it can be said to be just as important to do so for ourselves. How can we as humans form long, healthy, kind relations with others if we can't form a good relationship with a lifelong partner, yourself. The world would be an excellent place if everyone was as kind to others in ratio to themselves, as depicted in the drawing. But imagine the world if everyone was as kind to ourselves as we were to others. Everyone would be happy, how great would that be. Maybe Mr. Richards is trying to tell us we need to be more like the drawing in our treatment of others, or maybe he is trying to communicate that we as a race need to make the "ourselves" bar big enough to fit the word inside it.
If in this context "grace" means kindness, I think that one can infer from looking at this illustration that we give much more kindness to the people around us than to ourselves. I believe that people do this because almost, if not everyone, has low self-esteem and our thoughts about our image and our smarts are constantly changing. It's much easier to recognize how another person is thriving in themselves and in their image, than to recognize our own growth in ourselves.
I think that what Mr. Richards is trying to communicate is that we are often much kinder to others than we are to ourselves. We are often over-critical of ourselves, and we give others a break. I believe that this is definitely true. This is partly because of human nature and partly because of society. We are taught from a young age to be very modest and to be kind to others. We are seldom told to be nicer to ourselves. Throughout my life, I have noticed that I rarely criticize my friends and classmates, but I am nothing but critical to myself. I think that people should balance kindness and criticism to ourselves and others.
You can interpret this picture in many ways. I think that the majority of humans think that the people around them need to be kinder and blame things on the people around them. But, I think more people need to focus on how they can better themselves and spread more love and positivity. This picture is trying to prove that others extend more grace than ourselves. That the people around you are only as nice as you treat them. However, I think that this picture can also prove that sometimes we just judge and critique the people around us and not judge ourselves for the own mistakes we make.
We should all extend more grace toward others instead of ourselves. Selflessness brings about kindness to our world. I believe that if everyone in our universe was as selfless as what the illustration depicts, our world would be in a much better state. Things like world peace could actually become a reality.