Finding inner peace doesn’t require you to go up a mountain to meditate or to do yoga by the beach.
Contrary to popular memes, the good news is that you can have inner peace at home, at work, and with a bunch of little ones demanding every last bit of your attention.
You can also have peace when there’s chaos in the world (something I did an entire podcast on here: When There’s Chaos In The World).
Because most people don’t know this is possible, I’m sharing my best tips on how you can achieve a sense of inner peace wherever you are. Inner peace is a state of mind that you can achieve anywhere.
How To Find Inner Peace
While it would be my pleasure to give you a step-by-step guide to “finding inner peace” what is going to help you more than that is to implement these tips below and start using them in your everyday life.
Finding inner peace is as much about your intention and deliberateness to do it as it is about it becoming a habit and routine in your daily life.
Follow these tips below to start finding inner peace today…
Tip 1: Visualize Feeling Inner Peace
Tip #1 is to visualize feeling inner peace.
Since we’re talking about feeling inner peace, you need to know what that feels like in your body.
This is something that may be completely foreign to you if you’re new to any sort of mindful practice.
How it works is you focus on your body. What does the feeling feel like? Is it hot, cold, open, closed? Is it in your stomach or your throat?
The more you can stay in touch with your body and describe what inner peace feels like, the more your body will be able to create the practice of experiencing it regularly. Spend time practicing how inner peace feels in your body at least for a few minutes every day to do this.
Tip 2: Define What “Inner Peace” Means To You
Tip #2 is to define what “inner peace” means to you.
Inner peace can’t mean that everything happens perfectly as it should (as you want it to) all the time.
There is war.
There are pandemics.
And there have been problems in the world since as long as forever.
That’s why I teach “problems are forever” (more on this here).
So, how can you have inner peace without the world changing?
You decide what inner peace is to you, given how the world is.
And you decide, as Byron Katie says, to “love what is.”
You can check out her book, Loving What Is here (one of my favorites!).
“Loving what is” requires that you accept the contrast of life (that there is good in the world and bad). It means you get to be at peace internally, knowing it’s pure chaos externally.
This gives you a sense of control and peace of mind unlike anything else.
When you define inner peace this way, your peace becomes dependent on the only thing you have control over: you.
Tip 3: Practice Breathing Intentionally
Tip #3 is to practice breathing intentionally.
Just paying attention to your breath—the speed, the way you use your nose vs. your mouth, and the length of each breath—can be extremely helpful.
This is a way to practice mindful breathing. You focus your mind on your breath. You slow down your breathing and bring attention and love to each breath in and out.
Breathing intentionally keeps you in the present moment, instead of worried about the past or future. In this practice, you’ll end up with greater peace and happiness than if you did focusing on feeling more “peace and happiness.”
Tip 4: Meditate For 10 Minutes Every Day
Tip #4 is to meditate for 10 minutes every day.
I started doing this just this year and I absolutely love it.
Set your timer for 10 minutes on your phone. Sit down on the ground. Close your eyes. Breath in and out. Focus on your breath. Let your thoughts pass by.
That’s all.
And this little daily practice will change your life. Promise.
Tip 5: Challenge Negative Thoughts
Tip #5 is to challenge your negative thoughts.
While there’s no way to control all the things happening outside of you (other people and everything going on in the world), you can control what’s going on inside of you.
This means you have power over your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Since your thoughts create your feelings, and your feelings drive your actions, it’s best to look at the root cause of any negative results in your life: your negative thoughts.
What negative thoughts do you have?
Write down your negative thoughts on paper.
Then, challenge your thoughts by using inquiry (this is what I teach you how to do in Grow You, my virtual life coaching program). You basically get really curious about your thoughts. You look at the feelings, actions, and results the negative thoughts are creating in your life.
For example, if you have the thought “my sister in law is gossiping” it’s likely that the result is you’re gossiping about sister in law (you’re mirroring her). Without the awareness that you’re doing this, you’ll think sister in law is disturbing your inner peace, when really she’s not. You can have a sister in law who gossips and still maintain your peace.
This is the power of thought work. It’s magical.
A Final Note
Part of finding inner peace is optimizing your mental health and emotional health with thought and feeling work.
The result of doing this work is that you have a newfound peace that never leaves you, regardless of what’s happening in your life or the world.
You learn how to feel good from the inside out—a gift no one can ever take away from you.