“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
~Norman Cousins
Is your daily life filled with struggle? Are you prone to feeling stressed, out of sorts, and just plain unhappy?
It is absolutely true that a peaceful life is possible for you. It’s not going to happen by magic, and it might take a while for the changes to settle in. But if you decide to make peace a priority, then you will start to notice that it seeps in everywhere. Where you once saw disharmony and confusion, you now experience peace and ease.
Openness and Grace
A peaceful life doesn’t mean that challenges and difficulties don’t arise. It is not about creating a perfect life or engineering things to be exactly as you want them to be. After all, how much control do you really have over what happens?
The heart of a peaceful life has everything to do with how you receive what you experience. Circumstances arise, and you have emotional reactions to them. You get laid off, and you feel angry. The love of your life shows up, and you are filled with joy.
Peace comes when you say “Yes!” to the reality of all your experiences with openness and and grace.
When you stand squarely in the possibility of peace, anything can arise, and you – peaceful and accepting – are not disturbed.
Discovering Peace
Are you ripe for a peaceful life? Ponder these, and let your stress melt away.
Live without expectations.
If what you expect doesn’t happen, you are primed for disappointment or frustration. Expectations are in conflict with life and make you resist what is naturally offered to you.
But if you don’t expect anything, you are open to receiving life as it unfolds naturally. You are in sync with reality.
Recognize when expectations have taken over your thoughts. Reconnect with your longing for a peaceful life, let the filter of expectations go, and take things in exactly as they are.
Don’t take things personally.
If you evaluate everything according to your needs and desires, you are bound to feel hurt. Rarely, are people actually trying to hurt you. The situation has simply triggered an old feeling that you are lacking something.
Explore this feeling to its root by letting go of the story and experiencing the sensations in your body. You will find that underneath the sense that something is unfulfilled in you is an ocean of abundance. Life is always so generous with more love available than you could ever imagine.
Use feeling hurt as an opportunity to explore within, and your relationships will be so much more harmonious.
Feel the pain of judging and criticizing.
Judging and criticizing thoughts are so harsh. By repeating them, we do a kind of violence to ourselves and we feed separation from others.
Rather than trying to stop judging, which may be hard if it is a habit, let yourself feel the effects of these thoughts. When you judge, how do you feel inside? How do others feel? What is the effect on your relationships?
As often as you are aware, feel the pain of judging and criticizing. Then you are in a position to make the intelligent, peaceful choice.
Give up your need to be right.
Arguing your viewpoint brings suffering to your everyday life. If you need to be right, you will see others as wrong. You will react to their opinion and try to change their perspective. Needing to be right is all about resistance.
Instead, bring to mind your desire for peace. Does needing to be right serve? What options do you have besides pushing your point?
Try deep listening to understand the other’s point of view. Lovingly, with an open and generous heart, let others have their way. Decide to be close and connected instead of right.
Peace will pour into your life like a waterfall.
Don’t hide from your feelings.
When feelings are too strong or painful to experience, they go underground and wreak all kinds of havoc on your life. This is the source of addictions, complicated relationship dynamics, and general anxiety and dissatisfaction.
The road to peace is to be kind and friendly toward your emotions. Welcome them like a gracious host, and allow them to be present without acting on them.
Avoiding or indulging your feelings gives rise to endless dramas that are far from peaceful. Instead, simply take your stand as loving awareness and let them be.
Your Peaceful Life
A lovely, peaceful life is available for you. Commit to being aware of your inner life to see how suffering appears. Clarify your understanding of how you turn essentially neutral occurrences into problems. Then turn away from the battle with yourself and the world, and let things be.
You will know the heart and soul of the peaceful life.
Are you doing war with yourself? Have you discovered peace? We’d all love to hear…
I’ve lost my patience a number of times this week. What started as me trying to be kind in helping my mother not be a door mat for her adult son, resulted in me losing my cool and raising my voice because she didn’t see my point. Unfortunately at the time I felt that continuing to argue might eventually get her to see my point of view and she might be able to assert some confidence and finally tell him no. It, however, did not. It resulted in her having very negative emotions towards me because I was judging and criticising. While I know my intentions were good, I need to just stop my attempts at helping someone if I feel the need to raise my voice. It’s still very sad to me that I can’t convince her in any way, but criticizing was the wrong way to pursue this. I only wish gentle encouragement was at all helpful.
Thank you, Olivia, for sharing your struggles.
As you are discovering, wanting to change others leads to a dead end. I’m sure your mother already knows your views on the matter. Now it is up to her to change or not – it is completely out of your hands – even with gentle encouragement.
This leaves you watching a situation that brings up an emotional reaction in you. It is an opportunity for you to be with your emotions, even if they are strong and painful. This is where the letting go happens. I have a similar situation in my life currently. I have encouraged the changes, but others have not made them. So now I watch a situation that is sometimes difficult, but that pain is now my path and my responsibility. My priority is peace – making peace with my emotions and with the situation as it is. This has kept me in harmonious relationship, even though a part of me wishes the situation were different.
I wish for you the peace that you are looking for…
Well that is the second time today I’ve run into the right or happy issue, which is also reflected in my second step–decide if you want to be right or happy. Hmmm, something to think about for me today.
Love the opening quote. I think of that as not dying in advance.
Hi Galen,
Right or happy – great to hear that message as much as possible. I’ll take happy any day, as I know you do also.
I hear that your book about happiness will be out soon. Great news! I wish you much success with it.
Love…
Hi Gail
I felt a touch of peacefulness while I was reading your article,your words erased the stress i was carrying,thank you and looking forward to read more such articles from you.
Laxmikanth Muvva
laxmikanth.muvva@gmail.com
Not hiding from my feelings is one thing that I do my best to focus on.
I know that all negative feelings are good (!) because they are an indicator that something needs to be addressed.
Not sure if I make friends with them, but I do appreciate that they let themselves be known!
That’s great, Wendy – appreciating feelings as an indication that something needs to be addressed..
Another way of thinking about making friends with them is to be neutral and accepting – not avoiding or pushing away. Acceptance, allowing, welcoming – this is where struggle ends.
I believe we need to have dreams, goals and aspirations, but agree to definitely let go of the expectation. We can feel blessed when what we do want, happens. We can feel the disappointment, let go of it, and then move on to what’s next, when things don’t go as planned. If we can learn to release expectations (often we find they are unreasonable anyway) then we can live a truly peaceful life!
Beautiful insights, Sofia! Expectations are usually unreasonable. They are like laying a film on reality. When we can receive things clearly as they are, not through the veil of expectations, peace is possible.
Thank You Gail, Your Blog calls out to the very best in each one . You words are refreshment and wise.
Thank you, Cindy. A warm welcome to you…
Thanks you, this was a great article on living a peaceful life
Two things lead man to disappointment why not even mental illness
The first thing is
Expectation always ends with disappointment.In my life i have learnt one propotion,
Expectation is directly propositional to disappointment.
But no one can live without expectation which s a human hobby….
The second thing is
Believing others.
Whoever the person may be we should not believe them.
beliving someone and being openhearted towards someone is too dangerous for our success.
if we prevent from these two diseases,then we can get rid of chance of getting mental depression and lead a peaceful life
Welcome to you, Krithika! Thanks so much for visiting and taking the time to comment.
Yes, expectations lead to suffering. And that is a function of the human mind, but as awareness, we can notice when these expectations have arisen and see them as false conceptions that don’t serve peace and happiness.
I’m not sure what you mean by “being openhearted towards someone is dangerous for our success.” Certainly, we need to walk our own path and not buy into the criticisms and judgments of others. Standing in our own truth is so peaceful…
wow this is the best help I’ve ever received.
Thanks so much for your comment, Allen. I’m so glad this article is helpful to you.
I I always feel confuse n unsatisfied. I feel I want everything. n I don’t know but I feel sad by comparing all the time.n feel my husband don’t share his emotions to me n even I don’t share.there is something missing between us.
That may be true, Ashwini. But the only one you can work on is yourself. Instead of comparing, consider what you really want and express that. Decide to be very loving toward him and do what you can to bring that closeness to the relationship. Also, take care of yourself with friendships and doing things you love. Focus on a full life for yourself, then you will come to the relationship with more acceptance.
THANKS MY DEAR, I WILL LIVE A PEACEFUL LIFE.
It really liked the article. It helped me a lot to create peace with my mind. I even shared ur article with my friends.
Thank u soo much. It was great help for people like me.
Wonderful to hear!
Hi Gail, what a wonderful piece, thank you. The battle with inner dialogue seems to be increasing with the digital age and the “always on” generation. I hope people take advice like yours and are able to live a peaceful life.
when you said ,”turn away from your battle with yourself and the world” in the last , wont this cause a distress within oneself always haunting him or her always that they ran away from their problems . like how this will give you inner peace . just a question that’s all moreover it was a great article .
I appreciate your point, Princy. It’s a balance of addressing the problem – but not being stuck in it. In my own path, I have found that what I thought were problems, was just me being tangled up in my mind. When I let all that go, there’s freedom here and now.