Personal Peace

What image or thoughts does the idea of peace bring up for your? First thoughts of peace are of quiet, calm serenity. For most of us with our modern busy lifestyles it may well be a rare thing. A nice relax in the bath, a pleasant walk on an spring day or a day out somewhere with a friend all contribute towards giving you some peace.

Taking the concept of peace deeper makes us think of a time without strife, arguments or fighting. The ideal of people living together in harmony and showing respect and dignity towards each other also comes to mind. A life without worry can also be a life of peace.

Life does not give us the peace we want. External noise from traffic, people and machinery constantly invade on our attempts at quiet time. Demands from others stop us actually taking time out to relax. Wars and conflict at home and abroad all prevent peace being achieved. Concerns over how to pay the bills, personal health and those we love can also spoil our personal peace.

Are You at Peace?

What is real 'personal peace' and how do you achieve it? As mentioned above a level of peace can be achieved by relaxing in pleasant surroundings either on your own or with pleasant company. So can yoga, meditation, prayer or even just reading or doing a crossword puzzle. But how do you achieve a true inner peace?

To achieve real personal peace you need to be happy with yourself. Not other people, the state of the world or your home environment; just yourself.

How can we be happy with ourselves? The answer is simple, rather dog-eared and clichéd but true. We have to learn to love ourselves first, unconditionally. If you have children consider your love for them.

You want to do the best for them, keep them safe, help them grow. As they learned to walk you encouraged and praised them. They fell and hurt themselves, made mistakes. What did you do? Helped them up and on their way. You don't criticise a toddler for failing to walk by the time they reach their first birthday, or for falling over as they learn.

Neither should you beat yourself up over every mistake you make in life. Love yourself for who you are, what you were and what you will be to come. Be proud of your achievements, however small, because you worked for them. Don't criticise or be hard on yourself. Accept your mistakes, learn from them and move on. Forgive yourself when you do wrong or let yourself or others down.

If you can genuinely love and forgive yourself, and I mean 100%, warts and all, you are then on the way to being at peace with yourself. No amount of walking, yoga or meditation will give you peace if you don't love and forgive yourself as well.

Peace in a Noisy World

So you are comfortable with who you are. You then switch on the TV or radio, open a newspaper and bang, there it all is, bad, bad news. Cynicism, fault finding and negative attitudes all creating an image of a terrible world full of terrible people.

Stop worrying about everything outside of your control. Learn to let go of things. Worrying nas never solved a problem but has contributed to personal ill health through poor diet and lack of sleep.

If it is not bad news that we are being bombarded with it is advertising that shouts at our subconscious mind telling us that buying things will bring us happiness.

Neither the news nor advertising gives a balanced view of life. There are a lot of people out there doing good things as well as bad. Buying stuff does not always make us happy.

How To Redress the Balance?

The simplest thing to do is to avoid the bad stuff. If you want to keep your body healthy you eat a balanced diet, so to keep your mind healthy feed it a balanced diet! If you have a problem consider how you can solve it, rather than just worrying about it. If you cannot solve it learn to accept it or look for creative solutions. If you are still stuck let it go and see what happens.

Consider what you read and watch. Look for more upbeat material. Look around you and see the good stuff people do. Give yourself a new perspective on life and see how different everything looks!

It is all pretty obvious stuff but easier said than done. However by being aware and working at it you can make progress. It may be slow but it will be worth it. Relax and let it happen!