Expressing Peace. Inner Peace (2). 96.
Inner Peace – Lilies
This will be our second look at inner peace. 83 posts ago we listed different ways to identify, define, experience our individual inner peace. Today we will take a sampling of 12 ways to achieve that inner peace.
I’ve encountered, read, and sampled dozens of suggestions to get to one’s inner peace. During the past 95 days, I’ve shared many of the regular, repeated practices I enjoy. Today, let me offer a list of one dozen tips I agree with. More importantly, let me encourage you to look for, identify/create, and cherish your own steps to inner peace. Oh, and share them, please!
Meditate. Whether you engage in structured, formalized meditation or merely allow your mind to relax and let go of thought, a few minutes of mindful meditation take a strong first step.
Exercise. You can run or swim or lift weights or walk or perform yoga or raise and wave your arms. Exercise can be as strenuous or as relaxing as you wish.
Express yourself, your peace. Let your creativity out. Let your editorial critic go and just enjoy drawing, writing poems, singing, dancing, telling stories, sculpting.
Love yourself. Make several minutes free to remind yourself how wonderful you are. If it helps, list ways you are wonderful. If it helps, read the list out loud. Frequently, regularly tell yourself “I love you.”
Spend time with nature. Get outside. Look around and notice. Take deep breaths and register the scents. Listen to nature’s music.
Simplify. Limit your To Do list to only 2 or 3 items. Don’t be slave to mindless tasks: i.e., check your e-mail only 2 times a day. Remind yourself to “keep it simple, sweetie”.
Accept. I consider it the Serenity Prayer’s “title line”: the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. It’s my favorite line of the prayer. Because to accept makes it possible to…
Forgive. Gerald Jampolsky (Love Is Letting Go of Fear) said, Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions. I think it’s good advice to look first to myself and see what I need to forgive there, first.
Enjoy what you do; do what you enjoy. It’s not impossible to find something enjoyable in any task. Creating joy is our God-given power (one of them!). Also it’s a good idea to be sure you make time to do what you enjoy doing. You deserve it.
Apply kindness. A happy dose of peace automatically follows performing an act of kindness. The potential for those acts is infinite. The only real work is keeping eyes and ears open to discover them. The reward is worth the work.
Ignore judgements. In other words, don’t take it personally. When you feel you’re being judged, remember the power of forgiveness. Remember the power of starting with self-forgiveness.
Protect your inner peace. Savoring the moment when you’re conscious of your inner peace will make it last. Enjoying the sensations inner peace delivers will help you not hurry on (or back) to the “other stuff” that too often gets in the way. Moments of inner peace deserve to be extended.
Provider of Peace,
as you give the endless gift of Peace,
you also let us learn ways to bring peace to ourselves.
The power of heart-listening to your Spirit
and allowing that to be heard by our minds
leads to our implementing tools to stir
our inner peace.
You let us see and hear and move and pray.
You let us think and sing and dance and rest.
You let us eat and cheer and hug and watch.
You let us do whatever we will do to let ourselves
know peace.
You help us learn from what we do
that we may do it better, that we may find
a different way and do it better still.
As you feed us, Sweet Spirit, you teach us to fish.
And we thank you.
And so it is. Amen. Amen.
Enjoy Peace. Express Peace.
In: Commitment, Forgiveness, Happiness, Inner Peace, Life, Peace, Prayer, Praying · Tagged with: Forgiveness, Joy, Peace, Prayer, praying, spiritual simplicity
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