There are many different pathways to inner peace and each must find his or her own way.
You must first make a decision that inner peace is something you want in your life. You must be willing to investigate and then take actionable steps to make it happen because if you don’t you won’t see the blocks in your way to get there.
Without inner peace, many live lives filled with stress, anxiety, fear, anger and a host of other negative emotions.
One could say inner peace is a rare quality that most people have never really had in there life. Once you start to remove all of the the negative emotions, one by one, in your life it is something that arises naturally.
It is not something you have to work at rather it is something that you become.
That being said, let’s now look at 5 keys to finding inner peace in your life:
Key #1: Quiet Your Mind
When you take an honest inventory of what the mind thinks about most of the time, you would probably be surprised that more often than not your mind is the primary cause of negative emotions rather than the generator of empowering thoughts.
Almost all deep spiritual traditions start by quieting the mind or observing its nature. Almost all spiritual traditions take a practitioner to go beyond thinking to a state of being.
What you can find through observation is that the mind is often thinking about either the past or the future. It is generally NOT in the present present moment.
When you are in the present moment then you are able to just be and you can experience what is in front of you. This is actually NOT a common state for most people.
Key #2: Get Into Nature or Created a Sacred Place
Inner peace comes from a place of stillness and one of the fastest ways for most of us to reach that state is to be in a beautiful environment that nourishes us.
For many of us that is in nature, among the trees, next to the mountain or by a lake or sea. Being in nature is a natural gateway to presence and peace.
For city dwellers, you can also create a sacred place. It can be something simple such as a park bench. It can also be a space in your home with a small candle or flower. That place is a trigger for you to drop into your heart-space and just be with yourself.
Key #3: Disconnect from Negative People
Inside our natural state is peace. Often that natural state is covered up by people and situations that we have either consciously or unconsciously chosen to associate.
If there are negative people in your life then either cut them off or severely limit the time you are around them.
If you have negative family members then you will need to create some boundaries to protect yourself and your energy. This may seem selfish to you. You may feel guilty.
In the end one of the highest acts of service is to care and love for yourself.
Key #4: Decrease Use of Mobile Phones, Television and Social Media
The average mobile phone user checks their phone more than 70 times per day. Your attention and consciousness are brought into a different place and one that you do not fully control. It pulls you out of your center and is distracting. After a call or checking your phone notice that your mood will shift for the better or worse; then you bring that mood into the next thing you do.
The average person is engaged in this kind of mood switching over 70 times a day. How can you have inner peace when you are constantly being pulled outside yourself into a different world.
Television is much the same. Brain studies have shown that the neo-cortex (that is your thinking brain) literally shuts off. You watch and your body experiences whatever is on TV as real (and most of what is on is violence or advertising)
Social media is the same. The timeline and scroll is constantly changing and seeking your attention and clicks. You attention space decreases as your brain seeks the next dopamine hit.
So simply decrease your usage or if you want to be more extreme you can eilminate it. For me, social media is a big part of my business and how I meet the world so it is important. To stay in control and peaceful what I do is use it with intention and limit the time I spend each day.
Key #5: Track Tasks and Close Up Your Loose Ends
Often what occupies our mind is the unfinished business that we have in life that we need to complete.
Make a list of everything that you need to get done. Now rank the list with the easiest up top and the hardest tasks on the bottom.
Just by making the list you will free up a lot of brain power and your consciousness will relax a little.
Once you have the list then you can start to delegate when possible, eliminate items and start/complete tasks.
As your list gets shorter you will have more inner peace…but even if your list size stays the same or even get bigger, the fact that you have a list will relax your mind.
So those were 5 keys to finding more inner peace in your life.
Peace is something I believe we have to work at every day. It is always changing. With just a few simple shifts you can start to bring more and more peace into your relationships, your work and your way of being. As you do this what you may find is that the times you feel peaceful increase until it becomes your natural way of navigating through the world!