Peacefulness, in its simplest definition, is a state of calm and quiet. We all live rushed lives, especially given how goal-driven today’s world is, we are always in a hurry to fulfil the goals we set for ourselves. It takes a lot of hard work to work towards our ambitions, and we often find ourselves running a race to the top, except - we never really signed up for that race, we only ever wanted to be able to achieve. Regardless, with the advance of technology, we are only going to be more accessible to people around us, making ourselves less and less accessible to ourselves.
Think about it, your friend group is planning an impromptu outing, and you may feel the need to attend because if you don’t have any prior commitments, what excuse do you have? Plus, you really want to meet your friends too! Socialising is also self-care, and provide you with a respite from your otherwise hectic schedule and crowded lifestyle. So you go out, meet your friends, possibly unwind. But you are still thinking, and you are still paying attention to the world around you, and your brain is still trying to process stimuli.
Even your professional life starts to bleed into your personal time. People nowadays find it very hard to find a healthy work-life balance, because you are at work even when you are not physically there. Given that almost all individuals have their phones on them all the time, everyone expects everyone to be available all the time too. If there is an upcoming project at work that is very important, not only do you work hard, but your teammates work hard too. And if they decide to continue to work on it after you have left for home, there might be times when they will call you up for queries, or to coordinate something. That is work interfering with your personal time. It impedes you from finally relaxing and not thinking of work once you are home. Sometimes an emergency situation at work might come up, and your employer might expect you to come in even on your day off. Again, this leads to external expectations eating into the time you may have allocated for yourself.
So, what we truly miss out on in such a lifestyle is - peace. Peace is essential for every individual, but even more crucial in hectic lifestyles because spending some time in peace is the only way to introspect, reconnect with yourself, re-evaluate your decisions, actions, and behaviour, all of which are important for individual growth.
How do you find more peace in life then?
Well, everyone has different lifestyles, a different attitude towards life, different definitions of what peace means to them.
For some peace is physical peace, that is an environment that is peaceful. This can be hard to achieve for the urban-metropolitan crowd. In the heart of the hustle-bustle that city life usually entails, solitude can be hard to find. But even cities have pockets of peace. Parks and gardens are such places, that usually tend to be calm and peaceful, as most of the people who go to parks and gardens have the same common goal, that is finding a place that is silent, calm and peaceful, where they can relax. Go to the closest park or garden near you, sit, get a book with you and read if you like reading, or simply sit and watch nature and its inhabitants in the form of birds and squirrels around you, or listen to music that relaxes you. Some people also like writing or journaling as a way of relaxing.
Another place you can find a peaceful environment in a city is a library. Libraries are silent by rule, and if you are a bookworm, it is the most ideal place to find peace. Some people find comfort in the mere presence of books, and the smell of books, so if you are one of those people, go ahead and visit a library.
If libraries are too silent for you, ironically enough - cafés are a good place to find peace without losing the presence of people around you. Most of the crowd in a café is self-involved, which means nobody is going to approach you as everyone is concerned with whatever they are doing. Journaling, writing, or even getting your work done becomes a lot less demanding in a relaxing/peaceful environment such as these.
While physical peace is important, mental peace is more important for some other people. A very important component to achieving mental peace is, of course, a physically relaxing environment. It would be very hard to work towards mental peace in an environment that is too chaotic or demands too much of your attention, or is too loud. Sometimes, mental peace is simply not having to worry. Unfortunately, that is a rare occurrence. So sometimes, we have to settle with acceptance. There are times where we can’t change our surroundings or our circumstances, and the best-case scenario in such a situation is to simply accept and move on, to try and work with what we have. Such an approach can bring you mental peace. But honestly, mental peace can be quite hard to achieve, and many people end up spending their whole lives in pursuit of it. There are entire religions dedicated to finding the path to mental peace.
While the journey to mental peace is arduous, you will find a lot of help and resources, since humanity is very focused on finding the answer for a long time now.
There are many self-help books, with multiple approaches. Some are philosophical in nature, aiming to ease or at the very least try to resolve, the many anxieties we may face in life. There are many that take a behavioural approach and aim to scientifically observe and identify changes we can make to our behaviours and decision-making patterns to reduce the mental friction we may experience. Many try and imbibe confidence in you, to embrace life and its experiences.
Meditation, and a relatively new cousin to it - mindfulness, are techniques that help you earn mental peace as well.
Spirituality, too, aims towards a better connection with yourself, and mental peace that helps you cope with life better.
Peace in your life leads to countless benefits:
1. You can concentrate better, for longer.
When you try and find peace in daily life, give your mind rest when you can, your mind will reward you by being less distracted. Think of your brain like a car, just the way your car needs servicing after an approximate number of miles/kilometres on the odometer, your brain and mind too need reprieve after an amount of time. The more rests, or moments of peace, in this case, you give your mind, the better it will be able to declutter itself and help you focus on the tasks at hand.
2. Everyday hassles become less of a struggle.
A significant amount of our mental energy goes, not into important and big ideas/projects, but into the small everyday activities and hassles. How do we recover and recuperate from that? How do we recharge and restore the mental energy we need to achieve the bigger goals in life? We give ourselves time, peace and a chance to be less overwhelmed with everything that we have to do. Once you have done that, your mind and brain is refreshed and a lot more efficient in figuring out how to best get along life.
3. You know your strength.
Like we discussed before as well, finding peace sets you off on a journey of introspection and self-discovery as well. Introspection and attempts at self-discovery often lead to self-awareness. It is good to be aware of yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, your comfort zone and your limits. It helps you figure out which strengths you need to hone, and which weaknesses you can improve upon. It also gives you affirmation, assurance, and makes you confident. And having a sense of the strengths you possess is essential as you battle it out with life every day, it becomes a firm ground to stand upon.
4. More tact, tolerance and patience.
Exercising and incorporating peace into our life and the philosophy of it into our outlook towards life also brings about change in the way we interact with others and enables us to influence their experience with us in a positive way. Once you have peace with and within yourself, you tend to be more patient towards others, as you don’t feel the need for unnecessary rush. You learn to be more tolerant towards others and their opinions, as you realise opposing perspectives can co-exist, and don’t feel threatened in the validness of your opinions. Tact, too, comes easily to you, as your words tend to be less defensive, or your intention to offend, rather it is to put your point forward respectfully.
5. Less stress, anxieties and worries.
Possibly the biggest positive from the quest for peace is the abatement of the hold of anxiety, stress and worries from your life. Make no mistake, trying to find peace isn’t going to magically solve all your problems, or somehow make you a master problem-solver. It just keeps you from overworking yourself, and from overthinking the worse situations you could find yourself in. It also helps you think with a clear mind, which is infinitely better than a mind that is moving in a thousand different directions, to figuring out the solution to the problems you might be facing.
6. Inner happiness becomes a lot more familiar.
The eternal chase of mankind to capture happiness is not lost on any of us. We all want to be happy. It is a driving force behind life going forward every day. You ask a child what they want to be, what is their goal in life, and you will be met with a variety of answers ranging from the more realistic doctor, pilot, scientist, fireman to the more fantastical dinosaur or tiger. But you ask an adult what they want to be, what is it that they want to achieve, and more often than not the answer will be happy - we just want to be happy. If you think about it the answers aren’t that different, to the child the things they state out as what they want to be is what makes them happy. And finding peace within yourself is, in many ways, a fight to find happiness for yourself.
7. Peacefulness is the key to restful sleep.
Insomnia is the greatest plague of the current lifestyle. I’m sure you have experienced it too. You go to bed at a reasonable hour, hoping to catch a good and refreshing night’s sleep. But the hours tick away and you find yourself no closer to falling asleep, tossing and turning does not help you find a comfortable position and the more time that goes by the more stressed you get at not getting enough sleep, which further pushes you away from proper sleep. A big reason for such an experience could be that your mind is not at peace, and you feel restless which does not let you fall asleep. Trying to find peace for yourself will inevitably help you put your mind at ease and fall asleep.
8. When your mind is at peace, you don’t let yourself get affected by other’s opinions of yourself.
When you find inner peace, you tend to be a lot more self-assured and secure with the way you feel and the kind of person you are. This helps you with confidence, but it also helps you not be easily fazed by what others think about you or have to say about you. As a result, you don’t let your behaviour or actions be influenced by others, and are your most authentic self.
9. Lessens the restlessness of the mind.
A peaceful and tranquil mind is free from restless thinking and is not inclined to run from one incomplete thought to another the way an agitated mind does. Peacefulness also helps you ‘tame’ your thoughts, helps you better organise them instead of running rampant.
10. You are not easily discouraged.
When you have a peaceful mind, you are not easily swayed and upset by unforeseen events, or the problems and difficulties you may face. Peacefulness helps you realise the importance of rationality and steadiness, and you are more attracted to thinking of feasible solutions than you are to spiralling thoughts of everything that could go wrong.
11. Peacefulness also helps you project yourself as a calm individual.
A tranquil mind helps you maintain inner equilibrium and come to an assessment that is grounded and not shrouded by the error in thinking that panicking usually ensues. It ensures that you think as objectively, and as calmly as you possibly can in the given situation.
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