What would you feel if 90% of your children, nieces, nephews and younger friends in the age of 15-21 suffered from stress and 50% of them were lack of energy and motivation and very easily fall into depression? According to APA survey in 2018, Generation-Z is currently suffering from this stress. As parents and educators, what can we do to help our future generations to improve their well-being and emotional wellness so that they can continue to carry out the legacy of America?
I want to invite you to join us in this journey of exploring the five values of GRACE which will become one of the most effective tools to help our younger generations to become happier, healthier, and more productive human beings. This GRACE framework was adapted by Lyceum to combine with the emotional intelligence competencies model to serve as a guidepost for the students in decision making, stress management, conflict resolution, problem solving and self-leadership development.
My name is Anhlan Nguyen, I am the Executive Director of Lyceum – a social enterprise focusing on Life Skills and Professional Development for Success. I am also currently an ICF certified professional coach specializing in emotional intelligence and coaching for transformation. GRACE has some very personal meaning to me as I was going through my own transformation with my transitioning from my 25 year of IT career to serving the non-profits.
In this model, GRACE stands for the acronyms of the following values
G stands for Gratitude
R stands for Respect
A stands for Accountability
C stands for Courage
E stands for Engagement.
By practicing and integrating these five values in our daily life activities, we can live our life with much more joys, happiness and fulfillment. I can attest to that since I continue to be a learner and practitioner of GRACE and it transformed my life.
Gratitude is a deep appreciation of life in all forms, valuing both its gifts and its lessons. A deepest sense of gratitude is toward oneself, appreciate of who you are, where you came from and how you get into this day. Practicing gratitude proactively every day will help us have several small joys in our daily life. If you look through the lens of gratitude, everything seems more beautiful and wonderful. One cannot get depressed if one is practicing gratitude and it is the key that leads to happiness.
Respect is the awareness and openness to oneself and to others, accepting other different belief, culture and perspective from our own. To practice Respect, it starts with respect oneself, respect others and respect the environment. Practice gratitude and respect will help to improve your relationship with anyone who come into your contact.
Accountability is taking full ownership of our own thoughts, emotions and actions. Regardless of whatever circumstances you are in, you always have the power to choose what kind of response you want to have toward the situation and what kind of experience you want to create for yourself and your loved ones. Accountability is to choose always showing up at your best at every moment of your life, and empowering yourself to do the right thing.
But doing the right thing sometimes is tough and it needs the fourth value to stay through, that is Courage. Practicing courage does not mean that you do not have fear, but instead it gives you the energy to face your own fears and going through it anyway.
Last but not least, Engagement is the intention of wholeheartedly contribute our gifts so that we can help benefiting the communities around us and the natural environments. Engagement is all about connection, connecting with your own self (self love), connecting with other (Empathy) and connecting with the nature environment.
By developing the lens of GRACE and making choice with GRACE mindset, you will start experiencing the transformation in your life. You will become more resourceful, happier, calmer and always bring out the light of joys, happiness and gratitude to everything, everyone whom you contact with.
I want to invite you to join us in this journey of learning and developing yourself through GRACE so that you can become a light for yourself, for your loved ones, for the community surrounding you and for the world. At the end of the day, you are one of the 8 billion people living on this planet, without you, there is no humanity, without them there is no you! I would like to close with a famous quote by sir Winston Churchill
“We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give!”
Choose to make a life with GRACE!
Anhlan the Coach 