We all know how draining, and overwhelming life can be. At some point in our lives, we’ve battled both internal and external chaos.
So for some people, it may seem challenging to find calmness and inner peace, especially in today’s modern world. But there are proven ways to obtain inner peace.
Here are some ways to experience and appreciate life on a deeper level:
Table of Contents
- To achieve inner peace, we must be happy and confident in ourselves
- Self-care and respect are a big part of achieving inner peace
- Lastly, when it comes to inner peace, we must be patient with where we are at in life
- Practice total and complete acceptance of your circumstances, people and yourself
- Stop protecting yourself from people who aren’t attacking you
- Embrace and celebrate breakdown
- Appreciate the little things in life
- Count your blessings
- The way to develop inner peace is to deal with life’s ups and downs without becoming indifferent or narcissistic
- Explore your “what if’s” to their full conclusion
- Shift your what-ifs to what is
- Shower yourself with empowering words
- Less reaction, more breathing
- Practice gratefulness
- Spend time alone
- Living a healthy lifestyle
- Helping others helps you, too
- Based on my personal and professional experience, finding one’s inner peace starts with pausing
- A lot of people find inner peace by writing down whatever’s on their mind
- Inner peace is a mindset shift that can happen by bringing more mindfulness into our daily lives
- Inner peace is a choice that you make
- Inner peace stems from the clarity of knowing that your actions align with your values
To achieve inner peace, we must be happy and confident in ourselves
Harmony and contentment lie within. So often in life, we are quick to blame others for our failures, depression, and setbacks. Guess what? Nobody has control over our thoughts or peace except us. We’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to inner solace.
Fortunately, there are steps we can take to help achieve this inner peace.
Related: How to Love and Accept Yourself as You Are
Self-care and respect are a big part of achieving inner peace
Ensuring that we are meeting all of our intellectual, spiritual, physical and emotional needs is critical. Balance brings harmony. We also need to take time for the things that make us happy and the people we love. It’s crucial to remember what’s important and to put our time and energy there.
There will always be people who don’t like or understand us; disregard them and learn to shrug off haters. It has more to do with them than you anyhow.
Lastly, when it comes to inner peace, we must be patient with where we are at in life
There is no single timetable or recipe for success. Learn to enjoy those small moments of joy along the journey. Focus on your own fulfillment and what you can control. Inner solace can be yours if you desire it.
Practice total and complete acceptance of your circumstances, people and yourself
Your peace of mind is disturbed by resistance to what you experience. Practicing acceptance is an aspect of non-resistance. Resistance gets the mind chatting.
When you resist anything, your active survival consciousness and your mind start strategizing and talking to you without your permission. Practicing acceptance leads to peace of mind.
Stop protecting yourself from people who aren’t attacking you
Most of the people in your life are doing the best they can to live the life they want to live. If you step back and get honest with yourself, people are just trying to survive. There is no need to get aggravated with people who don’t behave the way you want.
Unfortunately, the survival mind, which I call The Drunk Monkey, is threatened by people who don’t behave the way that you deem appropriate. For the survival part of your mind, different equals dangerous. The natural instinct is to resist people who or even get angry when people don’t behave the way you want.
Resisting people will rob you of your peace of mind. Instead, practicing acknowledging that people are just doing what they need to do to survive. There is no need to protect yourself from people who aren’t attacking you.
Embrace and celebrate breakdown
Peace of mind is not possible when you are resisting the way that your life is. When things go wrong, and they will, it is very easy to resist the situation.
Breakdown feels bad because The Drunk Monkey in your head gets attached to losing the results you want. Yet, breakdown the beginning of a breakthrough. Your success in any endeavor is a series of well-managed breakdowns.
When a breakdown happens, and it will practice celebrating that breakdown. Trust that all is well. Know that you can begin again more intelligently. This context will help you achieve peace of mind in your day to day life.
T. J. Menhennitt
Spiritual Leader | Author | Inspirational Speaker
It sounds so easy when someone asks, “How can I find inner peace,” as if we can just go online and order it and have it delivered to our house with same-day shipping.
We all wish it. We wish for that genie in a bottle to pop out and grant us that magic request. But in reality, we need patience, practice and, unfortunately, we most likely need a challenging and or tragic episode in our lives to make us want to reach for inner peace. I for one had to be in the trenches to ask for this miracle.
Appreciate the little things in life
Miracles are a funny thing; we tend to beg for that lightning and earthquake-like response, but we look over the simplest and smallest cues that the universe is on our side and it wants us to be happy and live in peace.
It was while I was in the trenches, in the dark on my back when I was begging for just that earthquake. But it was then that I realized that while I was there, the stars were shining their brightest on me.
This was something that struck me deeply. I realized that I was focusing so much on the things that I had lost in my life that it kept me away from inner peace and led me to anger, fear and a loss of self-worth. I was overlooking some of the brightest things in my life that I did have.
I’m sure you will agree that so many wonderful things in our lives get forgotten or put to the wayside on a daily basis.
Count your blessings
This is the one life tip I stress. This has to be done daily as you awake in the morning before you go to sleep and any time during the day you aren’t feeling peace in your life.
When you arise in the morning, are you focusing on a negative day ahead of you? Shift those thoughts to what you are experiencing now…maybe that early morning coffee on the back deck or patio and just remind yourself of the blessings you do have in your life.
It could be your health, family, or just the fact that you are watching the sun come up with the smell of the fall air around you. Be grateful!
It’s often the little things that are forgotten that bring us peace.
Maybe you can’t run a full marathon, but you do have the ability to take daily walks in nature. So, get out and walk!
You see, it’s so easy to first see everything on the negative side. As a matter of fact, as you were reading this article, the first thing you might have said was, “That would be great, but I don’t even have a patio or deck to sit at to enjoy a cup of coffee to watch the sunrise.”
I get it, I was there too, but it’s when you start counting your blessing that you realize that a park bench downtown might work too, or even just a drive with your coffee to have some alone time.
These are all choices of course. It’s a choice if you want to be happy or not, a choice to see that glass half full or half empty, and it’s certainly a choice to choose peace within. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
G. Scott Graham, MS, LADC
Licensed Substance Abuse Counselor | Psychotherapist | Business Coach, True Azimuth, LLC | Author, Ten Things You Need to Know About Coaching Before You Get a Coach
Inner peace is a learned skill and not a state of being.
There is a big difference between pop meditation and the meditation taught by the Buddha. The latter will help you create inner peace in your life by helping you build the skill of equanimity.
Most people think meditation is about bliss and floating on some euphoric cloud — that somehow getting the meditation high will creep into other aspects of your life and that is how you find inner peace.
That searching for a euphoric cloud and meditating like a Zen monk in just 2 hours that we are sold by audio programs, special devices, feedback tools, and whatnot only increases your suffering and pushes you further away from inner peace.
The way to develop inner peace is to deal with life’s ups and downs without becoming indifferent or narcissistic
The key is equanimity — and that is a hard skill to learn — almost impossible without vipassana mediation.
Through vipassana, you focus on your experience and sensations — all of them — the good, bad and the ugly — and work to not react to them — not waiting for the negative experience, pain and difficulties to end and not hoping that the positive experience, bliss, and pleasant sensations will continue. Just observing. And that is how you develop equanimity.
It’s a micro training. Like going to basketball camp and doing free throws over and over and over again. When you first start those free throws you miss most of them but over time with practice, you get better and better.
Vipassana trains your brain in much the same way. It’s not easy and fraught with failure to start (and you strive to not react to that either). But over time, the space between aversion (wanting to avoid the paid) and grasping and craving (wanting the good experience) gets broader and broader and you teach your brain not to react on a very small scale.
This grows over time to help you respond with equanimity to the ups and downs of life which equals inner peace.
Heather Hayward
Immersive Experience Leader
Inner peace is often stolen from us by dysphoric rumination in the realm of unknowns. By wandering into the future or the past, the restless mind can easily corner us in an inner echo chamber of “What IF’s”, trapping us in a feedback loop of doubt, worry & fear.
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Therefore, in order to have inner peace, we cannot dwell on unproductive conjectures and suppositions, or allow the unknown to maroon us on an island of uncertainty.
Instead, we must venture into the unknown by exploring our “What IF’s” to their conclusion. By plotting waypoints of certitude along our journey, we can create an internal map to guide our thinking back to the realm of knowns. It is here that we can rediscover our inner peace in the full surrender to and acceptance of what is.
So, my three steps to finding inner peace would be:
Explore your “what if’s” to their full conclusion
Answer the question, “If this happens, what will I do?” Be specific and thorough in your answers to utilize your imagination constructively.
Shift your what-ifs to what is
Once you’ve exhausted the dysphoric or unproductive avenues of your imagination, shift your attention to what is. Ask yourself, “what is happening?” Answer this question with momentary observations of immediate reality, “I’m sitting in a chair, at 2:00 PM, drinking water.” This sort of inner talk soothes the brain by focusing it on specific facts, not feelings.
Shower yourself with empowering words
Lastly, repeating a favorite prayer or empowering words can further quiet the mind, creating enough space for comprehension and acceptance of the moment. A declaration I’ve always used is, “Everything works out.”
In a stressful and go-go-go world, it can be a challenge to find true inner peace. We overbook ourselves, drink coffee in excess and are unable to keep our “cool” if something goes wayward.
However, over the past ten years, I have been a fitness trainer for professional women and throughout that time and I have learned how important it is for all of us to live a life of peace rather than stress if we wish to live a long and healthy life.
I have put together a list of five things that you can do (right now) to start living a life that is full of peace:
Less reaction, more breathing
We tend to “react” to negative information with anger, anxiety, and/or frustration. Instead of reacting immediately, try to breathe deeply when you feel stress coming on. It sends a message to your brain to calm down and relax. The brain then sends this message to your body.
Those things that happen when you are stressed, such as increased heart rate, fast breathing, and high blood pressure, all decrease as you breathe deeply to relax.
Practice gratefulness
With social media in our faces constantly, you may find yourself comparing yourself to other people or families. However, when we stop and take the time to list out some amazing things in our own lives, it helps us to feel grateful; rather than spiteful.
When you see all of the good in your life, it makes the slightly bad moments not seem so bad after all.
Spend time alone
Sometimes we just need time alone to recharge. Inner peace can be damaged if we have too many people in our ears telling us what to do and how to do it. Time alone—free from technology and goal-oriented activity is highly beneficial.
Related: How to Be Happy Alone?
Living a healthy lifestyle
Having inner peace means appreciating yourself and we tend to feel better when we are living an overall healthier lifestyle. Focus on moving your body more, eating a well-balanced meal plan, and ensuring you’re getting plenty of sleep as well.
Helping others helps you, too
Research has found many examples of how doing good, in ways big or small, not only feels good but also does us good. For instance, the well-being-boosting and depression-lowering benefits of volunteering have been repeatedly documented.
This finding suggests that when providing emotional support to others, trying to fully take on their perspective can increase reappraisal and lead to better psychological outcomes for those who are providing support.
Educator | Philanthropist | Author, Pause 2 Praise: 30 Days to Happier and Healthier Relationships with Your Adult Children
Based on my personal and professional experience, finding one’s inner peace starts with pausing
We have created lives so full and hectic that we rarely “pause” to notice the miracles all around us. Ironically, we seek what we will not find because it isn’t lost. It, inner peace, is inside of us.
A quiet still voice that guides us towards peace and prosperity. Innerpeace was given to us by our Creator. Finding it means ‘pausing’ and giving thanks for the moment. A daily intentional purposeful pause will connect us to that peace.
The practice of pausing doesn’t have to be a vacation or a formal sabbatical. I have found that bonding and sharing with 2 or3 people a connected “pause” will remind us to anchor daily to that inner peace.
A lot of people find inner peace by writing down whatever’s on their mind
This can be journaling, making to-do lists, or just writing down all the thoughts that are rushing through your head right now.
Writing down your challenges, thoughts and things to do forces you to confront them head-on. This is a very small step that can have highly beneficial results on your inner peace.
Why? Because writing something down can prevent it from causing chaos in your head. Think of this as clearing the RAM memory of your computer. If you’ve written it down, you can safely forget about it and start with an empty slate.
This is how you can stop thoughts from rushing through your head, and how you can find inner peace instead.
Inner peace is a mindset shift that can happen by bringing more mindfulness into our daily lives
You for sure can’t find inner peace by searching aggressively… nor expect it to find you!
If inner peace is your goal, fall in love with the process, not the outcome! Start by progressively bringing more mindfulness into your daily life through simple practices that will make you aware of your thoughts: journaling, meditation, yoga, reading, spending time in nature… chose a few that make you feel calm and connected.
Practicing mindfulness every day is the easiest way to remove the emotional blockages that are preventing you from letting go of what doesn’t serve you anymore and finding inner peace.
Doing a small step every day for the rest of your life is more powerful than doing too much and quitting after the first week, so put the right amount of effort into it: not too much nor too little! Inner peace is all about balance.
When finding your inner peace, there are a few aspects to look at. Where you are today, where you’ve been, and where you are going. Sometimes when we reflect and respect our journey it takes some true inner work.
Here are three ways for you to find your inner peace:
- Focus your attention on things you can control. The truth is this is one of the most difficult things to do. This means we may have to let go of people or things we love.
- Meditate on your greatest. Meditation is calming and can clear those unwanted beliefs.
- The truth will lead you to clarity. Listen to yourself and your happiness. Do not stay in a position because of someone else’s perception.
Adina Mahalli
Certified Mental Health Consultant, Enlightened Reality | Relationship Expert, Maple Holistics
Inner peace is a choice that you make
Once you start the journey towards inner peace, you’ll find that you’re able to harness this state of mind wherever you are and whenever you need it.
The reality of the matter is that you’re unlikely to find inner peace through an app or on social media. Through disconnecting from your virtual self, you’re able to connect to your inner self.
Going for a walk in nature, spending more time outside, and participating in activities that give you joy are just a few of the proactive ways you can find inner peace.
Inner peace stems from the clarity of knowing that your actions align with your values
With this in mind, beyond the physical actions above, you might also want to spend some time thinking about what your deepest values are and making sure that your life aligns with them. This can give you a great sense of peace and fulfillment.
Tiffany Mason
Certified Life Coach | Lifestyle Blogger, The Hygge Mama
A common thread that I’ve seen throughout the years when it comes to finding inner peace is that inner peace is people think it’s a magical pill that you can take to be happy and content.
We think that if we buy the latest gadget, we’ll be happy or if we purchase a program and/or course about mindfulness that we’ll find peace and happiness.
This is the problem. People think we must buy something in order to discover inner peace.
I’ve learned in my own personal growth journey that inner peace is not something that we find, but rather something that we awaken from within.
We all have a part within us that wants to slow down and be content with what is right in front of us. The problem is all the distractions that want our attention and money.