Where do we find our inner peace?

So what does internal peace mean for you? Does it mean a place of shelter where we can go and relax to get away from stressful situations? Is it a place of safety, away from the all the nervous tensions and cares of the world? Or does it refer to a place where we can be by our self, where we can take off the facade we erect when we go out into the world, the facade that many of us wear throughout the day so that people won’t know how we really feel? Can we only get to that peaceful place while we are in the safe surroundings of a specific physical location? Can we, no matter the shit storm swirling around us, go there anytime we want to and any place we might be hanging out? If you refer to Merriam Webster, internal is defined as: having to do with or situated inside of the body; of relating to, or existing within the mind. Peace is defined as: a state of calm and quiet; freedom from disturbing thoughts; and an agreement to end hostilities. For this rambling I will combine the two a bit and define internal peace as: a deep understanding of who and what we are, our true selves with a culmination resulting in a state of tranquility, harmony and balance within our self.

Internal peace is a BIG part of my life, a code I live by, if you will, and in this case, you should. My internal peace is very important to me and that is a big part of why I go to the beach and watch the sunrise. I use that time to contemplate my reactions to my surroundings, our lives are really nothing more than our reaction to the situations we encounter each moment of each day. We ALWAYS have the choice about how we react, if things are going poorly, whatever the situation, we can still chose to look for the positive of that situation, and EVERY situation has a positive in it. It takes practice and training to look for and see the positives, but they are there. If we chose to react poorly and blame someone or something for the situation we find ourselves in it tends to be self defeating, in effect it reduces our ability to look for the good. Once the sea of negativity washes over us, it is challenging to wash all that mess off and keep our head above the water. But wash it off we must, put on our life preserver if we stay with the analogy. Life is a bitch, it requires work – that washing off is not a one time deal, it is just like maintaining our teeth, a minimum of two scrubbings a day on the chompers will keep them functional for a long time. Each person has a different capacity for life, some will be scrubbing the negativity off 5 times a day, others a couple times a week and others maybe longer and some never realize they have to scrub at all – poor souls. It is not much different than the colon cleanse commercial I saw last night, we need to flush away the toxins, for internal peace the toxins are the negative outlooks and feelings we, for some reason, cultivate and harbor. They need purged, just like the potentially impacted and toxic fecal matter the colon cleanse product spoke about in the commercial – gross I know but that is what they said.

Over my life I have developed some techniques for helping me get through the days and maintain balance in my life. I think it is critical that we be able to honestly evaluate ourselves, that is much harder than it sounds at first. We must be able to listen to our self, in all matters good - bad or indifferent. On top of that we must be able to hear what we are saying, again sounds easy – sometimes not so much. We also must accept responsibility for our feelings, they are ours and ours alone. NO ONE can make us feel anything. It is 100% how we choose to feel, based on what and how we interpret any given situation. Blaming others gives away our power and when we feel like victims, we tend to react with anger and resentment - that solves nothing and it actually is counterproductive to finding internal peace. We should be careful about how harshly we judge ourselves, no one is perfect and we tend to forget that sometimes, especially when evaluating ourselves. We are not perfect and learning to accept ourselves for who we are, with all our strengths AND weaknesses will foster a calming peacefulness, at least it does for me. We do not have to be and will NEVER be perfect at anything we can do. When we strive for perfection, the exercise ends in failure, every time. When striving for perfection it creates feelings of not being good enough and when we do not attain it, it creates feelings of inadequacy. Why do we set ourselves up like that? When feeling inadequate we tend to be an even harder judge and no matter what we do, it will never be good enough. What BS, be nice to yourself, we should be your own best friend – first and foremost.

For any of this to work we also have to be able to let go of the past! The past is over and we did the best we could with what we had and knew at the time. And ya know what, even if we did not do our best, it is too late now to go back and do anything about it. If our past is full of painful memories, regrets and sorry, we have got to find a way to forgive ourselves and let it go. Without that forgiveness, the struggle to get past the past will consume us. Forgiveness does not mean we should condone the bad behavior of our past. It means we have released the memories and feelings so we can use our inner power to heal the wounds and provide ourselves with inner peace. We also need to learn to relax. We mostly seem to be uptight much of the time. That is why I go to the beach so often, to relax. There are many, many ways to stay in balance and harmony though. Practicing meditation as a daily ritual, reading, exercising, walking, or creating a sacred space where we can spend contemplating the good things in our life. Anything or anywhere that will allow us not to focus exclusively on what is wrong and to begin to see ourselves as being in full control of our life will work. This next trick is very helpful for me, we must practice gratitude – own the attitude of gratitude. When we start to pay attention to our surroundings and the plight of all humans on the planet, it will increase our energy and move our thoughts to peace, love, and abundance. Practicing the attitude of gratitude will remind us how blessed we are and multiply our odds for finding inner peace.

If you know me at all, you have heard me say, it is what it is. Good, bad or indifferent, things are what they are, and all we have is our reaction to them. I find it much easier to operate from the place of peace. Things are not inherently good, bad or indifferent – our reactions to those events are what cement the label to them. Let me say that again because that is the most important point, things are not inherently good, bad or indifferent – our reactions to those events are what cement the label to them. If we ride the emotional roller coaster of life, than we are going to have our emotion lives going up, down, over head, upside down and every other direction the new coasters will go. We tend to approach the coaster as if it were a new ride and we are unaware of the twists and turns that are coming. If we accept the fact that roller coasters are FULL of twists and turns and most are scary we can than look at the coaster with the knowledge that we know the ride may be rough.

Life is a bitch, if you let it be one. OR, OR we can take control of our life and live it like we mean it!