Do you ever feel that the world is crowding in on you and stifling your peace and serenity? Do you sometimes feel crushed by the weight of stress and anxiety? Do you ever wonder how to find your inner peace? How much is your mood affected by the weather? Does the news sometimes fill your heart with despair and darken your thoughts with gloom? It’s incredible how so many events can intrude into your senses and disturb your precious peace of mind. And it can happen in so many unexpected ways.
Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.
– Saint Francis de Sales
If you’d like to discover the actual value of your inner peace, start working on yourself, it is one of the most effective methods to cultivate is the subtle art of detachment. It’s a surprisingly effective technique for insulating your inner calm from the random events that seek to distract you.
Once we understand that the vast majority of our reactions are a product of early childhood conditioning, it’s easier to appreciate that most of our emotional responses are inappropriate. It’s hard achieving your inner peace and tranquility in your life. Does that surprise you? Take a moment to consider how you feel about the events that are flowing around you right now. We’re programmed to react with anger, fear, judgment, criticism, and a whole raft of negatively biased emotions. It’s part of our learned defensive behavior and was initially intended to make us aware of all the dangers that lurk in the world. Unfortunately, it usually also involved a great deal of unnecessary fear and taught us to react with our emotions as if everything somehow threatened us directly.
There is a criterion by which you can judge whether the thoughts you are thinking and the things you are doing are right for you. The criterion is: Have they brought you inner peace? – Peace Pilgrim
Have you noticed how you always react with some kind of emotion? It’s extraordinary when you pause to think about it. How can the events taking place outside of you gain access to your emotional repertoire and elicit so many robust responses? The answer’s surprisingly simple. It’s because we’ve all been taught to react in this way. It’s part of our cultural heritage. It makes us more socially acceptable because we demonstrate the same kind of emotional reactions as the rest of the herd. But is it helpful for our inner peace, our progress, and our ability to influence how we think and feel? We, no, it isn’t helpful at all. That’s why we need to practice the art of positive detachment.
No man is free who is not master of himself.
– Epictetus
When external events trigger your emotional responses, your state of mind and your wellbeing are thoroughly compromised. Since we cannot control everything that’s happening around us, we cannot entrust our peace of mind to whatever’s going on in the world. There is certainly no peace to be found outside the realm of our mental and emotional domain. And this is a good point to ask ourselves a pertinent question:
“What difference does our reaction make to the situation?”
The fact is that our reactions, which may well be very strong, rarely make any positive contribution to the situation. Have you noticed that? We get upset, feel angry, or stressed, and the only changes that take place are the ones inside of ourselves as we degrade the quality of our health and wellbeing and compromise our inner peace. Indifference and detachment, however, do not involve developing a challenging and callous shell.
We call our new state of mind ‘Positive Indifference’ because we wish to identify where, if possible, we can make a positive contribution. And, if we can’t do anything to help or resolve a particular problem, we need to conserve our power and resist the temptation to pour vast amounts of emotional energy into a black hole. It’s so helpful to learn to pause before reacting. Take a breath. Relax. Consider your emotional state. Are you in a position to help? Or is it more appropriate for you to play the role of the detached observer?
This is a constructive step to take on the pathway towards self-mastery. You’re challenging your conditioned behavior. You’re reflecting on your emotional habits, which is the first step towards disarming them and choosing how you wish to feel. This sense of distance between your inner state and the outside world serves to restore better control over your emotional reactions. It enables you to select one set of emotional responses over another. You can opt for a positive mindset and take full responsibility for how you think and feel. This may be one of the most significant steps you can take in your life.
Listen to the inner light; it will guide you. Listen to inner peace; it will feed you. Listen to inner love; it will transform you, it will divinize you, it will immortalize you.
– Sri Chinmoy
Let the power and love of your inner peace fill your heart with joy.
Greg Parry created The Wellness Foundation and the Cognitive Empowerment Programs specifically to help people master their stress, overcome their limitations and explore the power of their true potential. If you enjoy these blogs, you can imagine how much fun it is to have Greg in the room as an inspirational and highly perceptive speaker. If you’d like to invite Greg to talk to your company or organization, or event, feel free to get in touch.
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