PRACTISE PEACE | 15 Ways to Increase Peace
Some people that I talk to tell me that ‘inner peace’ seems so far out of reach that they wonder if there’s any point even trying. It is my hope by sharing this list of 15 practical ways to increase inner peace that it feels more achievable for you.
The only way to fail is to not even try. Yes, it is true that at the extreme end of the ‘inner peace spectrum’ that permanent and complete peace is possible, but as we move towards this grandiose goal, there are many things you can do, immediately, to bring more moments of peace into your daily life. So pick one from the list and do your best to apply it. You may surprise yourself at how peaceful you soon feel.
1. Meditate every day
It is perhaps unsurprising that we begin our journey to more inner peace with a recommendation to mediate. Meditation has been practiced since the beginning of time (literally!) because it works. A primary purpose of meditation is to rediscover and rest into the underlying presence of our ‘being’. With practice and perseverance we can discover that our ‘being’ is already at peace. It is the calm contextual landscape within which all thoughts, emotions and life events come… and go. Meditation helps us to stop being so distracted by the senses, and hone our attention, so that we can remain attentive to the permanent underlying presence of peace, which resides within every human being.
2. Make peace your priority
To experience more inner peace we must make inner peace important. To experience a much more permanent inner peace, we must make it more important than anything else. This requires a simple yet profound shift in our values. It is only when we make peace our priority that we realise how often we make other things more important, and in doing so, give away our peace for silly reasons.
We get upset because we are stopped at a red light. We get hurt because someone says something that offends our ego. We get stressed because we have lots of ‘really important things’ to do today. I used to get so angry whenever I got a parking ticket. Back then, a parking ticket cost around £40. This basically meant that my peace was worth £39.99 or less! How silly. When my peace became more valuable to me, I naturally experienced more peace, more often.
3. Care less about being right
Linked with the previous recommendation, we’ve must make our peace more important than being right. Or said differently, we need to let go of needing to be right. In todays world there are millions upon millions of opinions flying around. Some you will agree with, others you won’t. It’s natural. We all have different upbringings, cultures and conditioning. I used to have long, drawn out arguments with my friends, family members and partners because I needed to be right. I then discovered that the need to be right is fuelled by ego-based fears. The ego hates to be wrong. The ego hates to be challenged with different opinions than what it already believes. The ego hates to be humble, say sorry, or lose. So much peace comes from letting others be right, even if you think they are wrong!
(The caveat to this is if someones apparent ‘wrong’ opinion is life-threatening, but this is rare!)
4. Forgive yourself and others
I once heard that unforgiveness is like drinking poison expecting the other person to fall over and die! I’ve met countless people who have suffered for decades due to something they did or something someone else did. Or at least it appears on the surface that the cause of their suffering comes from what happened in the past. The truth is suffering is a result of unforgiveness; of not letting go and letting things be. Again, unforgiveness often comes from ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’.
Whether you ‘live and let go’, or not, again boils down to how much you want peace. Is it more important to hold the hurt? Is it more important to hold the grudge? Unforgiveness harms our health and hurts our hearts, whereas letting go of the past is one of the most freeing and multi-beneficial things a person can do. Everyone is on their own path, and during that journey, everyone says or does silly things. Don’t resist this reality - welcome it by letting yourself and others off the hook. For more inner peace, you must forgive yourself, others and life, for everything. Yes, everything.
5. Be kind to yourself and others
Research shows that when we perform acts of kindness, our body produces more oxytocin, which reduces the stress response and alleviates anxiety. The amazing thing about kindness is that it is something we can choose to do - anytime, anywhere, and in any situation or circumstance. As it’s a choice, it is one of the most empowering ways to actively increase your levels of inner peace.
The kindest person in any room is the person who’s going to cure any potential relationship conflicts. Kindness looks for what’s right rather than wrong, what’s present rather that what appears to be lacking. Kindness can take courage, especially when faced with people, politics or circumstances that makes your ego want to defend, push back or point blame. In times like these, do your best to hit pause in your reactions, take a breath, and remind yourself that your peace is more important than being right. Aim to be the kind of person that leaves a trail of kindness everywhere you go.
6. Focus on the present moment
Inner peace is easier when you know and directly experience the benefits of perhaps one of the best-kept secrets in history. Namely, that this moment is the only moment that exists, and therefore, the only moment that is real. This one! No other. Not some past memory or future fantasy, only now. Unfortunately, millions of people live their entire lives not recognizing this fundamental truth of life and reality. They go about their days replaying their past or pre-playing future scenarios in their mind, as if what they are thinking about is real, again and again and again. In the process, they struggle, they suffer and they experience stress because they feel what they are thinking about.
When you are not thinking about the past or future and are attentive to “now”, you are more likely to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This in turn activates the relaxation response, which promote inner peace. Furthermore, when you are present you immediately start to experience the ‘presence of the present moment’, which is still, silent and peaceful.
7. Aim to do less and be still more
Robert Holden PhD talked about this in the foreword to my Mind Calm book:
“Have you seen the Monty Python comedy sketch ‘100-Metre Dash for People with No Sense of Direction’? Picture the scene: John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle and the rest of the runners are at the starting line. They are impatient and agitated as they wait for the starting gun to fire. Finally, the race begins, and everyone races off in different directions – meaning no one gets to the finishing line, no matter how fast they run. This sketch is a perfect metaphor for our mad-dash world, manic lifestyles and the chronic busyness that repeatedly takes us to our knees and makes us feel there must be a better way.”
“Where does this pressure come from to live so fast, to be so busy and so manic? Is it from society? Our upbringing? The media? Sandy recognises the external pressures, but he encourages us to look closer to home. In Mind Calm, he shows us how to liberate ourselves from the inner mind-made pressures that cause us to race for our lives.” To speed up our return to inner peace, we must be willing to slow down. We must be willing to stop being a human doing and reclaim our ‘human being’ birthright. We must re-learn to appreciate the pleasure of doing less and being still more.
8. Say ‘no’ when your heart’s not in it
This is a big one for the people pleasers out there who find it hard to say ‘no’, but it’s an absolute must for a more peaceful existence. Your heart is constantly communicating via your intuitions, silent knowings and frequent feelings. Listening to your heart is a heroic act because it requires you to trust and act upon your inner knowing(s) instead of letting logic or fear get the better of you. If you don’t listen, then life becomes limited and compromised, which is corrosive to your peace, your purpose and your prosperity. Moreover, the less you listen to your heart, the more your head ends up driving things.
Unhealthy compromise happens when you know that something isn’t right for you, but you continue being, doing or having it anyway. Over time, having a conflicted head-heart compromise like this becomes corrosive because it is stressful for the body to constantly suppress your inner knowings, energetic impulses and intuitive desires. Compromise makes you fight against the creative forces of life that need to flow free for your peace to greatly improve and your life purpose to be achieved. Compromise creates an inner conflict between what your heart knows is right and what your head believes is realistic. However, when you are willing to listen to your heart, by knowing when to say ‘yes’ and when to say ‘no’, then the inner alignment with your life purpose causes a deep peace.
9. Spend time unplugged and offline
The obvious irony is I’m currently writing this article while sitting at my laptop screen and will be using Wifi to upload it for you to read on my website. You will also be reading it on a screen, also connected to the world-wide-web. This recommendation is not inviting you to reject technology or hide away in a cave, far from civilisation; with nothing but a candle to keep you company.
The point is we need to become more discerning about how much time we spend looking at screens, navigating virtual worlds. Billions of dollars are spent each year to keep you staring your life away into a multitude of screens. We need to know when we are spending way too much time online in virtual worlds, rather than the ‘real world’. We need to recognise when we’ve been scrolling through social media contacts more than we’ve been connecting with ‘real people’. Speaking from first hand experience, my mind becomes less active, my body feels more relaxed, and my soul soothed, the more time I spend properly unplugged and offline.
10. Move your body and breathe deep
Pent up (unused) energy can impact your natural ability to remain peaceful. The physical body is made to move. The simple act of sitting too long and adopting a sedentary lifestyle is a common undercover cause of so many people’s unexplained unease. The air we breathe produces energy. The water we drink provides energy, and the food we consume is being transformed into energy. (The official terms for this process is ‘cellular respiration’ - when the energy in food is converted into energy that can be used by the body's cells.) In short, we are energy-generating organisms.
But here’s the thing… If this energy is not used, then I believe it can build in intensity and be experienced as unease, angst and even anxiety. Exercise and other forms of physical movement are proven to improve mood (due to all the endorphins it generates). Remembering to breathe properly (so the belly moves in and out) also has some brilliant side-effects. Overall, it is not wise to ignore your body if you want to improve your peace of mind.
11. Know that you are not your thoughts
Being too caught up in your thoughts is the quickest way to reduce your levels of inner peace. Have you ever considered that we think so much because we believe our thoughts are real, relevant and required? The good news is they are not. And believe it or not, you don’t have to think as much as you may think you do, in order to sustain a safe and successful life.
To benefit from this recommended, answer this question: How do you know you have a mind? You know you have a mind because you are aware of it. This means, within you now, there are thoughts and something that’s aware of your thoughts. Despite the thoughts coming and going, the awareness that’s aware of them is permanently present. You cannot be your thoughts because they are temporary, come and go, and you exist even when no thoughts are happening. When you know that you are the awareness, and are conscious of being consciousness, you are less impacted by the temporary thoughts, and you naturally experience a still, silent, peaceful presence.
12. Be grateful for what you already have
Discontentment corrodes inner calm. If you buy into the belief that you can’t be happy or peaceful ‘until’ you’ve achieved x, y or z, then you will feel compelled to think lots about how you’re going to get what you think you need. You are also going to be far more likely to resist your current reality, and in doing so create a sense of inner unease, discontentment and angst. However, if you can actively be grateful for all that you already have, this reduces any attachments to life needing to be different. The need to think lots about the future and how to ‘create your dream life’ also falls away.
I’ve met both unpeaceful millionaires and peaceful people living near the poverty line. I’ve also met happy people with health conditions and unhappy humans who are physically healthy. Don’t let your conditioning convince you that you need to fix, change or improve anything in your body or life before you can experience peace. It’s just happy-ever-after ‘golden-carrot’ type thinking. Irrespective of circumstances, you can be peaceful, and choosing to be grateful is a great gateway.
13. Take life less seriously and personally
“Why so serious?” is one of the stand-out line from one of my favourite movies - The Dark Night, featuring Heath Ledger as The Joker. Obviously I’m not an advocate for The Joker’s value system and subsequent actions, but this one line is something I think we can all benefit from remembering, especially during days when we are taking life way… too… seriously. Why do we end up so serious? We first take things personally. We make it about ‘me’ and in doing so, start acting from ego.
Life is meant to be fun. Yes, it’s true. I would challenge anyone that would try to argue otherwise. Life can also be much easier than we often make it. Our journey can be joyful. Our path can be peaceful. My Spiritual Teacher once gave me some ‘homework’ that he said I should aim to do for the rest of my life: ‘Take life a little less seriously every day’. It’s been amazing to play with, so far. I’ve discovered that any time I’m taking life seriously I’m caught up in my mind and ego. By taking life less seriously and personally, there is much more inner peace.
14. Befriend your feelings and let them be
I spent the first few decades of my life in a relentless fight with my feelings. I constantly had feelings that I was taught to call ‘anxiety’ - like a furnace burning away at my solar plexus. Sometimes I even ended up laying in fetal position in my bed, suffering and praying for the feelings to be gone. I’ve since learnt that true emotional freedom comes from the willingness to experience the full spectrum of human emotions.
To befriend our feelings is not only about learning how to live with them, but to also hang out with them like you would a good friend. Welcome them and love them, exactly as they are - again, like you would a good friend. You can soon discover that the more emotions the better. Emotions are energy and you need energy to exist, to heal, and to create. The key to living with your emotions, including the more intense ones, is to be present and aware as they are passing through. (For more on this important topic, check out my Emotions Masterclass Series inside my Calm Clan.)
15. Welcome whatever the moment brings
The introduction to my Calm Cure book begins with these words: “Stop fighting life. It’s hurting you, making you sick, ruining your relationships and messing with your money. Hidden conflict creates emotional upset: it stresses us out, makes us a victim of circumstance and stands in the way of lasting satisfaction and success. It’s been said that ‘resistance is futile’ and it is so true. There is a direct relationship between how much we resist life and the stress and suffering we endure. The more we push against what happens, the more life tends to push back, creating conflict and preventing true peace and prosperity. But if you are willing to muster the courage to lay down arms and cultivate what I call ‘peace with life’, then consistent inner calm, better health, freedom from persistent problems and genuine life success can be your rewards.”
“We have been conditioned to be in a battle with life. To resist anything that doesn’t go our way, show up how we want, meet our high hopes or satisfy our eternal hunger for more, better and improved. We have been conditioned to be attached to what we believe will make us happy and end up frustrated or upset when life doesn’t match our expectations. Calm Cure brings conscious calm to anywhere in your life that there is unconscious conflict. Giving us the opportunity to be liberated from the constraints of the conditioning that causes us to be engaged in a fruitless fight with life.”
So much stress, suffering and struggle stem from this ‘fruitless fight with life’. For more inner peace I invite you to welcome whatever the moment brings. Even if you welcome it, you can still take steps to change it, if you want. But the lack of conflict creates a consistent state of inner calm.
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About the Author
Sandy C. Newbigging is a therapeutic coach, meditation teacher, and bestselling author.
Sandy’s books and techniques have turned self-help on its head and simplified therapy and spirituality. His award-winning Academy has qualified practitioners in his methods from over 20 countries and he has ‘made wisdom mobile’ with his global Calm Clan community.
“Sandy is the mind maestro” Psychologies Magazine
“Sandy is one of the best meditation teachers around” Yoga Magazine
