Becoming A Peaceful Person
Peaceful: To be peaceful is to be untroubled, undisturbed, and unbothered in both your mind and spirit. It is to be solid against adversity. It is to be confident in yourself and accepting of reality.
**Peace is an essential skill to building the life of your dreams. Find out more about essential character skills and how to build your best life here**
What exactly does it mean to be Peaceful?
Peaceful. Calm. Tranquil. Serene. So many different words to describe one character trait. Perhaps because this one character trait is the single most important of them all. Without a peaceful mind it’s nearly impossible to become or accomplish anything else.
Inner Peace stems from confidence and acceptance. Confidence in yourself, that you are doing what you should be doing. Confidence that you can handle whatever comes your way. And acceptance of the way things will turn out. Acceptance of all the things that are beyond your control. Do your best and embrace the rest.
“Peace is the result of retraining you mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.”
How peaceful are you currently?
Rate each statement 1-5. 1 being you do not agree at all. 5 being you completely agree:
1. I rarely find myself feeling irritated.
2. I am empathetic.
3. I always think before reacting.
4. I rarely find myself worrying about the future.
5. I am confident in my abilities.
Add your scores together for your total score:
Score 0-10: Being peaceful is not a priority for you. Your internal state is reactive and uncontrolled. You act on your feelings with little conscious thought
Score 11-19: You exhibit an average amount of peace. Maybe you try to remain peaceful but regularly find your emotions getting the best of you.
Score 20-25: Peace may be one of your key character traits. It is clearly important to you. You keep your mind and spirit in a place of tranquility.
I currently score 12 on peace. I have a new meditation practice that is starting to help. But, I still have frequent thought tornados. I still have a hard time not acting on my feelings. I’m going to try the challenge myself and add the results here when I finish.
“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
Becoming Peaceful Can Add Value to Your Life By:
1. Increasing Your Joy
When you spend less time sucked in to the negative, less time worrying about everything that could go wrong, less time reacting to all the angry and bad out there. It opens up a TON of room for things like joy. The less you notice the bad, the more you’ll have time to notice the good.
2. Allowing you to be more productive.
Without peace, focus is next to impossible. It’s very hard to accomplish anything when you’re unable to focus on the tasks necessary. If you get your mind in order, then you can get your plans in order, then you can execute your plans efficiently and accomplish anything.
3. Improving your physical health
If you just google the effects of stress on your body, you’ll instantly be met with dozens of results such as: headaches, muscle tension, sleep disorders, fatigue, gut issues, cardiovascular issues, sex issues. It’s literally a never ending list. And most of the results will be from well trusted sources.
Peace is the antithesis of stress. The more peaceful you are, the less stress you have, thus the less negative effects on your precious, unique, body.
4. Drawing the right people towards you
So, there is the whole manifesting thing: where you have to be high-vibe and get your energy right and then you’ll sort of be magnetized towards your desires in a way.
But, aside from that, people are naturally drawn to peaceful people. Not only do people just naturally enjoy being around people that don’t drag them down. Peaceful people also have an air of confidence that makes people want to trust you.
Too Much of a Good Thing: Being peaceful does not mean that you are unresponsive. Although if you want to ‘take peace too far’ I suppose you could interpret it that way. If you start ignoring injustice, or you refuse to fight for what you believe in, I think it’s pretty obvious how this type of ‘peaceful’ can cause you, and those you care about, all sorts of problems.
“You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.”
The Simple Step-by-Step Process to Becoming More Peaceful
1. Pay attention to how you’re feeling each moment.
2. When something disturbs your peace, pay attention.
3. Analyze why this thing disturbed your peace.
Was it reminiscent of bad behavior you engage in? Did it make you feel a way you didn’t want to feel? Did it make you think about things you didn’t want to think about? Did it cost you money, or time? Will it negatively impact your future?
4. Find a solution.
Is there anything you can do to undo whatever this thing did? Is there anything you can do to minimize the effects of whatever this thing did? Do you need to evaluate deeper emotions that this thing brought up? If so. Do it. If not, move on to step 5.
5. Let It Go
Imagine the disturbance as drops of water slipping through your fingers and falling to the ground. Dry your hands on a cloth. The water is gone. your hands are dry. There is nothing left to do. The water no longer has any effect on you.
If you have trouble letting go try one of the following:
See the situation from another perspective.
Think through potential deeper reasoning behind your upset
Remind yourself that you control your thoughts and feelings, they do not control you.
6. Repeat
As you repeat these steps, overtime you’ll notice yourself reacting less emotionally.
Tips and Tricks::
1. Meditate Daily
It’s literally practicing peace. When you meditate you learn to let intrusive thoughts and feelings slip away. If you’re doing this in practice daily, you’ll quickly notice yourself doing it out of practice as well.
2. Swap Shoes
See the situation from another perspective. It’s easy to be angry when someone says or does something upsetting. But, just maybe if you think about why they may have said or done the thing (which has nothing to do with you a good 80% of the time), you’ll realize there’s no point in being upset. We’re all just doing the best we can with what we have and what we know.
3. Work through the Worst-Case
When you're worried about an outcome, imagine the worst-case scenario. No imagine how you’ll survive it. How you’ll be okay. Know that you can handle anything, even the worst case, which is probably not all that likely anyway.
Challenge::
Spend one day, carrying a small notepad, or using a note app on your phone. Make a brief note, every single time something disturbs your peace, whether it’s something small or big. At the end of the day take each item and write how you could have handled the situation with peace.
Learn More about Developing Inner Peace:
Related Character Skills:
Confident
