Inner peace is what we all desire. In fact, this topic is the top request in my Instagram DM's right now. How do I access inner peace? Inner peace! How can I stay calm and peaceful through all the chaos and darkness of the world? Where do I even start!? In this blog, I'll be dishing out some tools, but most importantly, the two qualities you'll need to activate your innate sense of peace within. Lean in!
1. Grace (60%)
The thing about peace is that you won't always have peace. Therefore, fighting like hell for peace is exactly what will cause the opposite: internal conflict. Peace is actually best sought after through grace. If you want peace, you need to learn how to be graceful. True grace is riding every wave that comes your way. It's a practice of disciplined surrender.
Some practices:
- Practice checking in with yourself often (the golden question: how am I feeling right now?).
- Allow yourself to feel. Grieve. Scream. Cry. Give yourself the space and permission to emote. Life is hard. Feeling and expressing makes it beautiful. Feeling is what gets us unstuck and back into peace.
- Give yourself what you need to build self-trust and also to show yourself that grace is empowering and helpful (example: feeling tired? Get some true rest!)! Self-Care School is a great resource for practicing this.
- Allow for mistakes and imperfections. We are humans, not robots. No one is perfect and that's what's perfect. This is inevitable.
2. Protection (40%)
We've all heard the phrase, "protect your peace." But what does it mean? Protection is a disciplined practice. It's setting boundaries. It's speaking up for yourself. It's leaving. It's getting the rest that you need for recovery and reflection. It's taking the time that you need for yourself. It's a meditation. It's finding stillness. It's saying "no." It's vocalizing your needs. That is how you protect your peace.
Some practices:
- Set boundaries. This is important with people, places and things - and of course includes social media and the news. Boundaries are protection. What are your non-negotiables? Get clear, be disciplined and communicate them. No one else will if you don't. Save yourself. More on this in my blog: How to Set Boundaries.
- Meditate. Meditation is a peace practice. It's been proven time and time again to lower cortisol (our stress hormone) and shrink our amygdala (the fear center of the brain) overtime. Commit to a daily practice. For real stress management, five minutes in the morning and five minutes at the end of the workday will do you wonders. That's TEN small minutes of your life and day to unplug, breathe and center. It's also a practice that will strengthen your mind and help you move through challenges with much more ease. You know I can help with this. Check out my Mu Membership for your personal meditation library.
- Practice handling the weight of disappointing others and remember that disappointing others is always better than disappointing yourself. As a recovering people pleaser, I got you. Let me know if you need help.
- Create space. Sometimes we don't know what to do or say in the moment. That's okay. Get space. Excuse yourself. Breathe. This in and of itself is protection and from this spaciousness, we can execute even more effective and pinpointed protection.
The reason why I've made protection less important than grace when it comes to inner peace is that when we try too hard to protect our peace, it can slip right through our hands and have the opposite effect. Sometimes protection doesn't allow for grace. When we live in constant protection-mode, it's not peaceful. With too much control, we lose our peace to ourselves. But when we're in constant surrender-mode and we don't protect ourselves at all, we can end up hurting ourselves and losing our peace to someone else. With lack of control, we lose our peace to someone else.
See the balance? Grace and protection. We need both for inner peace and both take practice.
How committed are you to your inner peace? I'm here to help.
