What Is Peace of Mind?
Peace of mind is a state of mental and emotional calmness, with no worries, fears or stress. In this state, the mind is quiet, and you experience a sense of happiness and freedom.
Such peaceful moments are not so rare. You have experienced them in the past, at times when you were engaged in some kind of an absorbing or interesting activity. Here are a few examples:
- Watching an entertaining movie or TV program.
- Being in the company of someone you love.
- Being absorbed in reading a book.
- Lying on the sand at the beach.
- On vacation, when you experience some sort of mental numbness, forgetting your work and day-to-day life.
- In deep asleep, when you are not aware of anything.
Such activities, and similar ones take away the mind from its usual thoughts, worries, and constant thinking, replacing them with inner peace. Usually, this state lasts for only a while, but we enjoy it while it lasts.
The question is, how to bring more peace of mind into our life, and more importantly, how to experience it in times of difficulties and ordeals.
You might also ask, whether it is possible to turn it into a habit and enjoy it always and under all circumstances. Actually, there are a few things you can do to enjoy more peace in your life, and in time, you might gain the ability to experience it quite often.
- Minimize the time you spend on reading newspapers or watching the news on TV. Since most of the news are negative news, and you cannot do anything about them, why should you think about them and feel stressed and anxious?
- Stay away from negative conversations and from negative people. You don’t want their thoughts and words to sink into your subconscious mind and affect your moods and state of mind.
- Don’t hold grudges. Learn to forget and forgive. Nurturing ill feelings and grievances hurts you and causes lack of sleep.
- Don’t be jealous of other people. Jealousy means that you have low self-esteem, and therefore, consider yourself inferior to other people. Jealousy and low self-esteem, often, leads to the lack of peace of mind.
- Accept what cannot be changed. This saves a lot of time, energy, and worries. Every day, we face numerous inconveniences, irritations, and situations that are beyond our control. If we can change them, that’s fine, but this is not always possible. We must learn to put up with such things and accept them cheerfully.
- Don’t dwell on the past. The past is not here anymore, so why think about it? Let bygones be gone. Forget the past and focus on the present moment. There is no need to evoke unpleasant memories and get immersed in them.
- Learn to be more patient and tolerant with family, friends, co-workers, employees, and everyone else.
- Don’t take everything too personally. A certain degree of emotional and mental detachment is very helpful. On many occasions, it would be useful to inject a certain measure of detachment and non-involvement. This would bring into your life more peace, harmony, and common sense.
- Learn to focus your mind. When you can focus your mind, you can more easily reject worries and anxieties, refuse to think negative thoughts, and reduce the constant chatter of your mind.
- Meditation is not everyone’s cup of tea, but if you have the time, and are willing to try it, even just a few minutes a day will make a difference in your life. You will become more peaceful, relaxed and happy.
Inner peace eventually, leads to external peace. By creating peace in your inner world, in your mind, you bring it into your external world, and into other people’s lives
