5b7652a1ebc9c1.66584304.jpg "PEACE OR HAPPINESS")
The shift from the pursuit of happiness to ultimate peace is attainable. Although happiness is perceived as peace and one starts looking for peace in money or power, the latter is often an illusion. In our earlier blog, we discussed how happiness and peace can often be misunderstood to mean different things for various people.
Here, I’d like to bring a focus on the 5 Mantras to set you on the path for inner peace. Peace, as we know, is achievable irrespective of circumstances.
Only you can make yourself happy. Find time to connect with your soul.
1) Be in Touch with Yourself
The need to be constantly in touch with the world online has led to a massive ignorance of being in touch with your own self. There’s a lot of emphasis being laid on building great relationships at work, friends and more. What many tend to ignore is building a deep connection with self. This is about knowing what you want, your aspirations, knowing your flaws (and working on it), owning your mistakes and truly embracing yourself. While happiness is not entirely in your hands, self-acceptance is. Peace begins the moment you build a better relationship with yourself. You must truly understand what you need to do to be a better version of yourself. This is your journey of life. No one can define it but you.
2) Practice Mindfulness
We often live in two minds One that exists in our past and the other, the future. This means we often miss out living in the present leaving us feeling shallow and unhappy.
Mindfulness helps us bring the focus on -
- Where you are
- What you are doing
- Creating a space for ourselves and our reactions
Yes, your mind will wander. But, mindfulness is about bringing back the attention again and again to the present moment. A simple mindfulness meditation practice will help realign your thoughts every time you feel you are losing control over your day.
Find a good area to be seated. Pay attention to your breath. Return your mind to the present condition every time it wanders. Repeat this process. Use this practice to be aware of your thoughts, resist the temptation of being carried away (to your past, or future), and learn the art of pausing the moment.
Mindfulness with meditation improves one’s concentration levels, emotional wellbeing and reduces stress levels. With peace as the doorway to happiness, mindfulness will help you get there with ease. When we are mindful, we are aware of the 5 senses - touch, taste, sight, hearing, and sense of smell.
3) Choosing Reflecting over Reflexing
Our emotions are not always easy to control. The good news is you control your reactions. Ever lost control over your emotions at work or yelled at somebody who irked you in the heavy traffic? Maybe you snapped at your colleague or had an emotional outburst in a meeting. Our sudden emotional response to external stimuli that is intense and blows out of proportion is called reflexing. This is when we are highly reactive where we react first and think later.
Take a deep breath. Think, then react.
Sounds familiar? What if you choose to reflect instead of reflex?
When you reflect, you re-examine your own thoughts and feelings carefully. You are conscious of your state of mind where you can review the current situation and decide the outcome. You allow yourself a considerable amount of time to reconsider the situation. You introspect and examine your conscious thoughts and feelings and find better outcomes. Reflecting often will help you introspect on your true nature maximizing the possibility of having better experiences.
4) Increase your frame of reference
It’s easy to lose your peace and happiness when you have a limited approach to life and limit your thinking. What if you could recognize, learn and change your self-limiting patterns? In Psychology, the frame of reference refers to a person’s perceptual frame of mind (his/her perception) about the world. Two people can perceive the same view or situation in different ways with opposite viewpoints.
Different people relate and react disparately to the same scenario. We often tend to build a stereotypical view of people resulting in many conflicts at work or in personal relationships. Ever noticed how people with different viewpoints are often at loggerheads with each other on social media platforms? Our need to maintain supremacy over people can often be self-destructive. By increasing your frame of reference, you learn to be more accepting, develop broader perspectives, and be open to various viewpoints and cultures.
5) Develop a Learning Attitude
Did you count the number of times you complain in a day? Complaining about your Manager, your lost promotion or the lack of opportunities will only create more unhappiness in your life. Complaining drains your energy and this negative attitude reduces your productivity and makes you an unpleasant person to deal with. What if you could learn a lesson from that situation and decide to work around it so that you do not recreate it again?
Developing a learning attitude is an extremely powerful approach. This leads to increased positivity levels as you learn the lesson and do not repeat the mistake. What is inside us, we recreate on the outside.
If you want to bring more peace and subsequently more happiness, you must work on your inner space. By expanding your outlook and choosing to learn, you will find multiple avenues to overcome your current obstacles. So, instead of complaining, “Why is life treating me this way”, change your attitude. Worrying, complaining and blaming others will only further destroy your inner peace as you let others control you. Instead, raise your awareness levels and you’ll build deeper connections at work, in your relationships and with the Universe.
It’s easier to find peace when you connect with your supreme self and shed your ego and inhibitions. With peace within you, you can develop a state of calm and joyfulness irrespective of external circumstances.
Have questions? Drop me a comment below.
Comments