The Only Thing You Need to Know to Achieve Inner Peace in 2021

Isuru Pamuditha
ILLUMINATION
Published in
4 min readJan 1, 2021
“Intelligence, Environment and Human Mind” — A drawing by the Author

“The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence

— Norman Vincent Peale

Unlike my other articles in this blog, I’m going to keep this short and simple. This is the only message I would like give you all in this new year to find inner peace to the best level possible. Inner peace is closely related to happiness. From Buddhist philosophy to Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, they have all been strong proponents of inner peace.

First all, we must understand that life is not fair and it will most probably try to disarm you every step of the way. This whole article is targeted on giving you the insight on how it can be tackled just by keep reminding yourself a small phrase. It took me close to 5 years to achieve this mentality and hack “the way I think about the meaning of life”, because let’s face the truth, doesn’t matter how good you know about the way of life and how matured you face the “not so great situations”, we still tend to do the same mistakes over and over and make a mess.

This method has two simple steps.

Step 1 — Live your life good

The world is full of people without ethics and morality. The world is full of people who would take any form of disgusting action for their own benefit. What the world lack is good people. People who would go out of their way to do good for others. People that act selflessly & with compassion. People that understand everything is temporary and we must be living our life good without doing hurting anyone else by even a word. People that consider their life as a gift given to them by someone of higher order to fulfil some sort of a duty towards the society. People who love the environment & are self conscious. Become such a person. Do good. Be happy and confident. Because for me, there is no greater happiness or satisfaction than having that ultimate confidence about yourself that you are a good person. We all know who we are very well. We know what sort of unnecessary actions we take in order to achieve selfish desires or to escape a situation without considering the impact it will create on others around us. We know how bad we have treated some people to face unnecessary/ uncomfortable situations. We know how brutal we could be in the face of an innocent.

Instead, if you are someone who has a pure goal to be the best version of yourself and if you’re trying to contribute something positive to the society, there won’t be any other greater satisfaction. Become that person. Identify good people & take the higher values which can be seen in them and apply them to your life. Once you march on this road to find a new, better version of yourself, you will feel 10 times lighter in your mind. That is inner peace. Be good. Do good. Speak good.

Step 2 — Know the difference between what you can control and can’t

“Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

― Reinhold Niebuhr

Yes. Doesn’t Matter whether you live your life good, still there will be occasions you find it difficult to cope with. There will be situations that you cannot escape from. There will be people doing their own form of senseless activities creating circumstances where you would rather quit the whole thing than facing the reality. Yes it sucks. But we can’t let those situations defeat us. All you need to ask is just two simple questions and work accordingly. The first is, “is this situation is caused by something under my control or out of my control?”. If it is under your control, think about what sort of an action can you take to prevent that from happening again and do it. But if the situation is out of your control, then simply think about the following phrase and you will get the required amount of dose filled with hope and motivation. Think that you are a good person and you live your life good. So doesn’t matter what I do, as long as I am a good person nothing will go wrong.

If you think about it, it is practically Newtonian. There is a reaction of the same form to every action you take. Therefore, if you do good, everything will be alright at some point and all your problems will disappear. If you do otherwise, then you will never be able to achieve inner peace because deep down you know that you hands are dirty. Choose good people, choose the right actions because people who would do the same and people that will truly understand you, support you and help you make the world a better place are quite rare.

Even though it was a movie for kids, I’ll conclude this with a quote I came across in an animated movie which resonated in my mind for a long time because of the depth of that simple yet complicated thought.

Hope I gave you some important and useful advice to turn this year into the one you want it to be. Good Luck! Happy New Year!

“Remember Dragon Warrior, Anything is possible when you have inner peace”

— Master Shifu

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Isuru Pamuditha
ILLUMINATION

Ponder & Wander... That'll make you an interesting person || Engineering Undergraduate ||