Christmas is coming up. As a matter of fact, you by the time you're listening to this, you may already have had Christmas come along. What happened at that time? What happened when you went and saw your your parents or your your relatives or you had a big family get together or whatever it is? You may have even decided never mind. I'm not even going to be around them this year because I can't stand it, whatever it is.
Wanna talk about allowing grace into your life this coming year, and we're gonna be talking about that this week on episode 255 of the relaxed. This is the relaxed male. A show that comes to you each week, helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live their life on their terms. Join the host certified coach Brian Goodwin as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey, man. Hello, and welcome to the relax mail, and welcome to the end of 2024. I mean, this is this year has been a a wild year. And we are we are at the end, and it is and the and it's coming up fast. And as a matter of fact, we are by the time this episode comes out, we're gonna be doing some really good, show prep here, Brian, but, let's see here. This actually comes out let's see. Ta da. Wednesday. It's gonna come out on the 26th.
So as you're with listen to this, Christmas has come and it's gone. And you may have gone to your parents, to the family gather gatherings, to the whatever, and you may have gone begrudgingly knowing that you're going to catch crap from your parents, crap from that uncle loud mouth uncle that you have, the one that doesn't let you likes to argue just for the sake of arguing. I know that uncle because I am that uncle. But one thing that you wanna know when it comes to
family get togethers and all the family stuff that is that that happens at this time of year. And, yeah, you may have let decided, never mind. I'm not doing Christmas this year. I am just gonna set up the house. I'm gonna have our friendsmas, and we're it's just gonna be me and a couple, 3, 4 of my close friends who all agree with what I think, and we're just going to do that. And
that's nice and stuff. That's a that's a way to do it, but I want to offer a different view, a different path that you may wanna try taking in 2025. And that is I would like for you to step back and just kinda relax and envision yourself at the end of 2025. It is this very same day, 1 year ahead of us. What would your world look like if you simply just allowed grace to flow in the year of 2025?
Interesting question. I I I get it. Because a lot of people hear that, and they're going, oh god. Gotta go off and forgive everybody. Yeah. To a point, you do, if that's what you would like to do. And I would like to pose the argument as to why allowing grace is actually the better thing in the to do. And it has nothing to do with that loud mouth uncle that likes to argue all the time.
It has everything to do with that one thing that the society has loved to talk about the past 4 years, and that is the mental health of everybody. What would improve your mental health? Is this little trick called allowing grace to flow. Allow that grace to just flow from you. So we're talking about grace, and we're talking about how it benefits you.
And it doesn't have anything in the world to do with that loud mouth, uncle. It doesn't have anything to do with with how they feel about you or how you feel about them. It just is the power of what grace is and the power that grace allows. And what what happens to you when you allow grace? So first off, wanted to look at what is grace, to start with. So what are we allowing
into our lives? What are we allowing to flow through us? What are we allowing to to spread in our in our world, in our sphere of of influence. And that is grace is, if we boil it down, it's just unearned forgiveness. And I get those those of you who think you you have been mortally hurt, wounded, destroyed, emotionally broken, whatever. Your wife has left you earlier this year, and how are you supposed to give her unearned forgiveness? She cheated on you. Right? She left you with the kids.
She just abandoned. She's having the time of her life while you're at home suffering. Right? Why should you should you give her forgiveness? And for and damn sure why should you give her unearned forgiveness? She hasn't done anything to her. Well, that's where unearned comes from. You know? But grace is, when you boil it down, unearned forgiveness. This is they don't actually deserve to be forgiven of their transgressions of whatever it is. But yet, what if you did let them let their,
their transgressions go? Let their their sins upon you go. Let the sins that they committed upon your child because your wife left. What if you just let it all go? Performed a little little Elsa, dance and just said, let it go. Let it go. And a lot of us, we hear that, and we're like, oh, hell no. I ain't about to do it.
Again, because like I said, they hurt me. I was just minding my own business, and they came along and screwed everything up. And when you hear that, all those little thoughts like that that you're hearing, oh, as to why you should not give them grace, that is the very thoughts that are holding you back. These are the very thoughts that are keeping you small. This is why you cannot rise above where you are right now.
This is why doing the doing the work and processing the thoughts and the emotions within you is so important. Because when you do, you can actually start seeing what grace actually does. Because what grace actually allows for you when you allow grace, it allows freedom within you. It allows for the power that you feel like you've been robbed of. That allows that to come into your life.
When you allow grace and forgiveness that other people have have done to you, it shows that you are actually the better person because you see grace comes from a place of strength. When you are strong and confident, you unders you see and understand that that person who has wronged you, however, your wife left you, your parents, they turn their back on you, whatever it is, whatever pain you have deemed as happened upon you, no matter how far back
society likes to call that trauma. It's not trauma, but we're that's not the that's beside the fact right now. No matter what that is, a strong man can give grace, can go, alright. That person has no power over me. That person has no influence over my life. They may think they could do, but they only have that power if I grant them that power, and you have the power to not be influenced by them. You can make that mental choice of let them run around, say whatever they want,
but you can rest easy knowing that the truth is like cream. It rises to the top every single time. Some people are a little thicker, so it takes a little longer for that truth to really rise up. But, eventually, it does rise. And you have to you can only allow grace to come from a place of strength. If you try to bring grace in from a place of weakness,
that grace is with stipulations. That is not an earned forgiveness. That is well, if you've tell say you're sorry, then I'll go ahead and forgive you. What is that gonna do for you? Say you say you got the offending person, your your uncle who likes to argue and has called you a name that to you has hurt your hurt your feelings, and you are you are irreparably harmed, you believe, by by the fact that he called you a snowflake?
Let's we'll just go that way. Both sides call each other snowflakes these days. It means nothing now. So say your your combative uncle says called you a snowflake, and you have decided that that means that he is a horrible, terrible, awful, bigoted, nasty man. You have if you are you got him and you have him chained down. He has got his arms bound, his legs bound. He is in on his knees, hunched over, chained to the floor.
Even if he says he is sorry, is that going to do anything for you actually? No. You're going to choose to to continue loving him or not loving him. You're gonna choose to grant him grace and forgiveness no matter what. And if anything, having a guy chained to the floor is more of a forced apology. So does he do you all be always having that little thought in the back of your head? Well, did he really mean it? So, no, you have no power over a person. You can influence them. You can coerce them.
You can, in some form or fashion, get what you want out of them. But, again, that is a very hollow win. While if you grant grace and allow the grace to flow through you, all of a sudden, you don't even have to tell him that you forgive him for everything that he does. You're he's just a regular dude in a regular going through his regular day. Why is he so darn combative? Why is he so nasty to you? Who cares? It doesn't matter. Because what's he's trying to do is and you can look at him as just
being a nasty, horrible person. Now, again, that is just you being conditional on your grace. But if you can actually give him grace, then all of a sudden, your those those thoughts that you have become a little bit different. Instead of him being this nasty, horrible person, he's just a man who is living his life based on the thoughts that he perceives to be true. That doesn't mean you have to believe him. He could even tell you, you have to believe it this way. No. Actually, you don't.
Your mom and dad tell you you're you're you have to believe that, that the world's going to hell in a handbasket. And you could say, okay. Well, that's what you think. I love you because I don't think that. I have, you know, you have the power. Giving grace is an act of kindness upon yourself. Because if you do not grant grace, you're holding a grudge. You're holding it back. That grace congeals and can go and and binds together, and it starts to grow.
And it becomes this heavy burden that you carry. And the sad thing about this burden is that it doesn't affect the other person. It only affects you. Carrying a burden a burden like that, holding a grudge is, as many people say, you swallowing poison and waiting for your enemy to die. It doesn't do anything for you other than it makes you feel like crap. You're gonna feel terrible because you're waiting for your that person to apologize. And 1, you haven't ever told them to to apologize.
2, they don't have a reason to apologize. So they're just doing their normal life. And the sad thing is is they're not even thinking about how they hurt you because it's not important to them. So why is that apology that you demand so readily and so it fervently,
why is that so important to you? Well, it'll make me feel better. No. No. Actually, your thoughts about the apology will make you feel better. Because like I said, you could make the you could make him apologize. That's an empty apology. There's nothing there to it. But yet, if you if he comes to you and all of a sudden says, out of note out of the blue, say, I was kinda rough on you last last year. I've kinda called you some horrible names, and I'm sorry.
Are you still suddenly just gonna go, oh, okay. Well and everything like, act like everything never happened? No. You're still going to hold your grudge. It takes a very strong man to set that type of grudge down. And it poisons you. It holds you back. You're going to play life small because you have decided you're going to hold on to this grudge. So giving allowing grace to flow through you means you are washing that that grudge, that resentment
away. It's like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't affect me. And you actually mean it doesn't affect you anymore. So what what I say allowing grace to flow, what am I meaning by that? Well, that's just freely giving that grace. Freely up forgiving everybody around you who may have done you wrong. What if you walked up and down the street and everybody who might be out to get you all of a sudden is not? What if they're just living their life and you're just living yours? How free would that be?
How open would your world be then instead of running around scurrying like a like a rat in the corners because, you know, you don't know. Maybe somebody's go out to go is gonna gonna find something out about you. And all of a sudden, they're gonna expose that about you. Well, what does they do? What are you making all that mean? Because when you allow that to affect you, you're allow you're agreeing with what they're saying.
You may wanna fight against it and scream up against it, but that's the louder you scream, these saying he doth protesteth too loud comes about. Because, again, you have no control of what other people think. You have no control over other people's actions. You have control over your thoughts, your actions. That's it. So you have the ability to allow. You can you can allow the free flowing grace that you have to flow over anybody and everybody.
All the enemies that are that you've had in this past year, that you have that have come along and have have have sold you out, you can forgive them. And then there is somebody who you don't normally ever forgive for anything, and you actually have the opportunity to forgive them too.
When you're able to start forgiving strangers and family members, start forgiving them of all their wrongdoings, all of a sudden, it becomes a little bit easier to forgive the biggest offender of the person who has offended you.
The biggest person who has slighted you and has held you back and has actually gotten your way more times this year alone than anybody else, and more than your your mom and dad when they were in their alcoholic phase, more than your your your uncle who called you a bad name, more than when your dad left the house, more than when your mom decided to move out and go live with a boyfriend and left you behind more than your wife who decided she was going to be,
she she didn't love you anymore, and she was going to go do something else. There's a person who has held you back more than any of those people have even contemplated to do, And that's if they consciously contemplated it. And I guarantee you, they didn't. And that person is you. Can you forgive yourself for all the times you failed yourself? There's a tough one, isn't it? How do you forgive yourself all the shortcomings you have done? How do you forgive yourself for the times that you
were going to try to do something and then just kinda went, never mind. It's something important. And then you beat yourself up for those times that you did. Call yourself out for being the weak, yellow bellied scum that you believe you are? What if you forgave yourself of that? What would you start doing? What if you started actually loving yourself for being the human being, trying to be a human that you are? The human being trying to find a way to improve his life, what would you do?
What it how would the world all of a sudden transform itself because you stopped beating yourself up for the problems that you did you created. Could you forgive yourself for something you did 20 years ago? How about 10 years ago? 5 years ago? Yesterday? These were all things that you can allow grace for. Because when you start forgiving yourself, all of a sudden, you're not just opening doors, you're blowing doors wide open, man. Everything in the world is possible. You wanna have a happy life?
Boom. You've got it. Boom. You've got it. You wanna find a way to bring your wife back around to being that loving bride that she was? You can do that. You have to get out of your own way. You have to stop thinking of yourself as the as the addict and start looking at yourself as the man who can actually do stuff. You have to start looking at yourself as an actual human being who is worthy of forgiving themselves.
Your uncle, your parents, and all the stuff that they did in in in your past life doesn't matter to a hill of beans as to what's happening right now to in to you. It's you don't even have to let them know that you're forgiven them for their transgressions. All you you have to do is just start living your life, having a life that you want to live, and I would love to be able to help you do that. We have our self grudges that we have imposed upon ourself. We have the turmoil ends within us
as men. Just naturally within us, we have a storm that rages. And coming next year, I am going to be doing a storm masters challenge where we get together and we start trying to master that internal storm. We start figuring out and learning how do we actually look at this storm and redirect its power so that we can become better men? How do we look at this power and the storm that's within us and turn it so that we can find the life we want?
We can find the the women, the woman that we want in our lives, the women that we want to blame for our our shortcomings and blame for our pain, we can start letting that go. We can stop blaming them. We can stop blaming the other men in our lives for our pain, and we can start to understand, oh, wait a minute. That's me. How can I forgive myself for causing my own pain? And if you wanna know how to do that, you go to relaxedmail.comforward/stormmasters. All one word.
And there's just a simple little Google form, just your first name, last name, email address, and I will reach out to you and we'll we'll get it all we'll we'll start getting everything put together. So if you're interested in quelching that storm that's within you, I recommend you go to relax mail dot com forward slash stone storm master. Fill out the form and let's see what that new year actually holds. Can you forgive and become better because of it? I say you can.
I wanna show you how that's possible. And, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for for the time listening to the show. Hope y'all hope y'all take the time to go make your plans for next year and and go for go for the gusto. Go for gusto, man. Just do it. You know, take the time to go and and dream a little bit and try something that's a little bit scary. Because when you do, you're going to see that that it's a little bit scary, but it's got it pays off
in spades, man. It is just an amazing result. But to be able to do that, you have to take the time to actually try. And so we that's what we wanna do this next year is try. Set a goal for something and go through it. If this, this episode resonated with you in any way, please share it out onto Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, x, blue sky, mastodon, whatever social media platform you like to use, you can pretty much just find me by just looking for relaxed mail. You will find me
on just about every major platform. If you don't find you find what I'm not on, guys, shoot me an email, Brian with a [email protected], and let me know. So, hey. Where are you at over on here? I'll I'll find myself, and I'll let you know where I'm at. So I'll I'll join up on it. So but, anyhow, guys, with that, I wanna say thank you very much for listening. Y'all take care. Have a great rest of this year, which is only just a few days left. And then let's have a fantastic next year. Till then.
Bye.