Tips to increase Inner Peace
Are you comfortable in your own skin? Are you your own best friend? Do you believe that ultimate reality is ultimately benign? Are you contented with what you have? Are you open to change? When wake up in the morning, do you look forward to the adventure of a new day?
If you can say YES to all these questions, why are you reading this? Go write a book. Potential readers are waiting to be enlightened. You will probably make millions and be featured on the Oprah show.
If you can’t, then you are normal.
The bad news is, abiding inner peace is a rare phenomenon. Everybody I know has times of feeling frazzled, frightened, inadequate, frustrated, envious, vindictive, or just plain awful. Permanent peace is generally reserved for the dead. To be alive means to struggle, to grow, to have doubts, and to fail. We are hard-wired to explore and dominate our environment, and we tend to be unhappy when things don’t unfold the way we expected.
The good news is, no matter how little inner peace you feel, it is always possible to move in a positive direction. No matter how bad things get, there is always at least one thing you can do to improve your situation. Often it is a simple, physical thing, like washing the dishes or finishing that overdue report. The resulting sense of achievement will help to unblock the channels of creativity
There are probably 1001 ways of making your walk easier. Brainstorm as many as you can, as fast as you can, in writing. Pick one. Circle it on your list, add the date, and make a concerted effort to take action. Stick with it for 21 days, and observe the results. If it doesn’t help, discard it and start something else. If it made a positive difference, keep it and add another one whenever you feel up to making the additional effort. When you feel like brainstorming a new list, start with your active items and their start dates. There is no need to rush. If you manage two helpful changes in six months and keep up that pace, you will have twenty new behavior patterns in place five years from now
Here are a few to get you started.
- Stop blaming – Even if you can pinpoint who or what is responsible for the unpleasant aspects of your life, that knowledge will not help you feel better. Your task is to take constructive action about what is going on here and now.
- Choose your battles – If you fragment yourself trying to fix everything that is wrong with the universe, you will never finish anything.
- Allow other people to own their own emotions – If your mother is unhappy because you choose not to spend next Christmas with her, that is her problem. She owns that emotion, and she is the one who has to deal with it. It is not your responsibility to manipulate her into feeling differently about the situation. Acknowledge the existence of her negative feelings without judging them, smile so she will know that you still love her, and move on..
- Make self-care Job #1 – If you think that is selfish, consider this: if you burn out and become non-functional, other people will be inconvenienced by the task of looking after you.
- Take time for yourself – Unstructured time when you can do what you feel like, as well as structured time for fun activities.
- Laugh – Hang out with people who make you laugh. Silliness is not a sin – it’s therapeutic.
- Seek balance – Balance work and rest, companionship and solitude, your needs and others’. Consider and honor your physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, particularly in relationships.
- Learn to distinguish between needs and greeds – Never go into debt for something that is unnecessary.
- Learn to listen to yourself – but listen to the good stuff. You can get negative stuff also from yourself.
- Improve your spiritual connection – The answers you seek are often at a deeper level.
A lot of power and money has been acquired by people who claim to have the Ultimate Instant One-Step Solution to Inner Peace. Don’t go there. This is a life-long journey.
– Saleesh Kumar Subrahamanian
