How to maintain peace, when everything is falling apart

When your life is in upheaval and it feels like everything is falling apart, that’s when you know you are on the right path.

Sounds paradoxical, I know.

But it’s in those moments that you learn the lessons that will allow you to “level-up”, towards the truest, most authentic, and most peaceful version of yourself.

So let’s look at how to leverage these moments, to move you towards peace.

The reason for suffering

Suffering is part of the human experience.

I’m not arrogant enough to say I know why. But I do know that we cannot escape it.

If we weren’t given the obstacles that we have had in this life, then we would have been given others.

No matter how many circumstances might have been different, no matter what choices you might have made differently, you would not have been spared suffering, and you will not be spared suffering in the future.

I say this because as humans, we try to avoid suffering. Even worse, we shame ourselves for past decisions that led to suffering, and we sit in fear of future suffering.

If we can come to a place of acceptance that suffering just is, that there is medicine in the pain, and that suffering actually brings us closer to peace, then maybe we can ride the waves of suffering with a little more grace.

But the only way to learn how to ride the waves well, is to ride the waves poorly first.

It follows that we must then suffer, in order to learn how to suffer well.

That is, to minimize our suffering.

And while we may not be fully aware of it in the moment, our lowest points plant the deepest seeds for this kind of learning.

Why you feel like you’re dying

During our lowest moments, it often feels like we are losing everything we love.

We feel out of control and overwhelmed.

We feel like we don’t recognize ourselves.

We feel like we don’t know how to move forward.

We feel lost, stuck, and alone.

In a way, we feel like we are dying, because…we are.

What we are experiencing is an ego death.

You see, at any given time in our lives, our ego identifies with our physical reality. That is, our sense of self strongly attaches to our physical experience of life.

For example, our ego may attach to a role we play, like mother, daughter, peace-keeper, etc., or it may attach to our job title, or to the kind of home we live in, or to how we spend our time, or to what hobbies we have, etc.

It may attach so strongly that we feel like we are those things, rather than those things are just parts of our life.

And as often happens, life throws us curveballs. These curveballs often alter or eliminate parts of our physical reality.

And if our ego has identified strongly with the affected part(s), we experience an ego death.

We are forced to let go of how we’ve defined ourselves; we must literally let go of who we feel we are.

We are forced to feel our old selves dying, and we experience all of the grief that comes along with that. It truly does feel like we are losing everything because we don’t know who we are without those things.

In this process, we face confusion, anxiety, fear, guilt, and grief.

To get to the other side, where we connect back to our authentic self, where we rebuild our sense of self and start moving forward, we must feel all of it.

The importance of ego deaths

Ego deaths can happen at any time.

Ego death experiences might include:

When you are fired from a job or when you switch careers.

When someone you love dies or when an important relationship ends.

When you move away from a place that has been your home.

When you invest in self-development and grow apart from the people around you.

The list goes on and on.

Just fill in the blank with when you lost yourself.

As we navigate these ego deaths, the Universe moves us towards a state of non-attachment.

Practicing non-attachment means moving closer to peace.

Peace is who we really are at our core, without all of the programming we’ve been taught.

Therefore, non-attachment brings us closer to our authentic self. The one who remains in a state of peace, regardless of what is going on.

Learning non-attachment

Non-attachment is a skill that everyone can learn, and it greatly reduces suffering.

Here are two things you can do to instill non-attachment in your life.

1. Notice when you are hyper focused on the outcome.

You can notice this by asking yourself why that particular outcome is important to you.

If your honest answer has something to do with you finally feeling worthy or proving something, then you are too attached to the outcome.

The real work should be on improving your inner worth and learning to follow your passions.

When I first went full time with Coaching, I was so excited and proud of my decision. For the first time in my life, I was doing something that was meaningful to me, and that was in direct service to others.

Being a Coach was a dream come true. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops!

I dedicated my whole life to Coaching and to “making it work”. I followed the instructions of people with more experience than me, and I dove into creating social media content.

At first, I was so motivated towards my goal that no obstacle was too big!

After a while though, after encountering obstacle after obstacle, I started to lose confidence in myself. I wasn’t so sure I could do this anymore.

Around that time, I noticed that my whole purpose had become, “being a Coach”. I noticed that my life was starting to revolve around forcing this dream.

My ego had attached so strongly to the role of “Coach”, and I had become attached to the outcome of success as a coach, that I lost myself.

I realized I had completely burned myself out by creating so much social media content, that I wasn’t even enjoying the process.

I realized too, that even though I felt like I had followed my passion of Coaching, I had lost site of my passions in the process of creating my life.

Social Media was draining me, and so I had to switch gears towards things that really excited me, like writing and being with people in person — these were the mediums by which I would find success, not by forcing a social media strategy that felt unaligned and draining. I had to realign to my passions.

I also had to detach myself from the idea I had of myself as a “Coach”.

I had to go on a journey of self-discovery, to build back my self-worth, and get to know who I am as a person, beyond who I am as a Coach.

This required me to start listening to my body, to set boundaries around what it was communicating to me, and to speak those boundaries to others.

It is only in trusting yourself that you will build your self-worth. And it is only in listening to yourself and honoring yourself, that you will build that trust.

This is a journey of knowing your worth, beyond any role, want, or outcome.

But it just goes to show that even when your life is purpose-aligned, you still must work towards non-attachment. This was a great lesson for me.

2. Notice when you are trying to control everything so that things go perfectly.

Are you holding other people and your environment to perfectionist-level standards?

Perfectionism is a sign of attachment.

Your real work is in exploring your perfectionism towards yourself, learning to hold more self-compassion, and in knowing your boundaries, listening to your body, and communicating your needs.

In the last year, I moved back to my hometown. I faced many unexpected triggers stemming from childhood trauma.

My inner child was crying out for me to protect her, and that led me to trying to control my situation and the people in my life in a way that felt urgent and unpleasant.

I felt so much anger and sadness.

This experience led to a few important realizations.

Firstly, I was holding the people in my life to perfectionist level standards, in an attempt to control their behavior and protect my inner child.

I was also holding myself to perfectionist level standards, expecting that I would always, “do the right thing”, at all times.

This journey has led me to cultivate deep self-compassion, to the point where it doesn’t matter what I do, there is no “right” or “wrong”, because I know myself and trust my intentions so deeply.

It also led me to the conclusion that all I can do is express my needs, and then see what others decide to do.

That was a complete shift because previously, I had been so attached to seeing the “right” changes in others’ behavior, because I was so attached to the outcome of keeping them in my life in a specific way.

This only led to my own suffering.

So instead, I learned to say the hard things, I expressed what I had been holding in for years due to fear of making others uncomfortable, and I let the chips fall where they may.

I let go of the need for the outcome to be a certain way, and therefore, I stopped trying to control the people in my life.

I let them choose if they wanted to change. Read this post to understand why that is important.

And it was only after I let go of the need for them to be perfect, that I was able to see and accept the ways that they were actually trying to change.

But wow, did this process come with some massive ego deaths! I had to let go of what I felt like I needed the outcome to be, in order to allow it to be what it is.

And low and behold, it is beautiful.

In summary…

• Suffering is the key to learning how to suffer well, so try to accept it as your teacher when it comes.
• Suffering will lead to ego deaths at different times in your life — embrace these deaths as opportunities to get closer to non-attachment.
• You can practice non-attachment, to get closer to inner peace, by analyzing whether you are too focused on an outcome, and whether you are trying to control things through perfectionism.
• Learning non-attachment is a journey that takes you closer towards your authentic self — and that is where true peace lies.

Molly is a Self-discovery & Transformation coach, helping women rediscover themselves and live a life that is authentic and fulfilling to them. She works with professional women and new moms in their 30’s, who feel lost and unmotivated, and guides them in finding their motivation, their inspiration, and building a life that they truly love.

For more mindset shifts to get to your fulfilling life, download my FREE Workshop “4 ways to feel inspired by your life again!” Because I know you don’t want to just live, you want to be present and happy while doing so.