This week we have been asked three times about world peace: is it an illusion? Is it attainable? Can we truly have peace in the world? The shortest and simple answers are: no, yes and yes, but we have work to do. A lot of it.
Everything that is dark in our societies is a manifestation of our inner state. We cannot have peace in the world unless we cultivate peace inside us. And whether you are concerned about world peace or not, think of inner peace as an important component to lead a happy healthy life.
The following tips are based on our own experience to lead such life and to contribute to make the world a better place:
- Practice mindfulness. It will help you achieve a mental state in which your awareness is focused on the present moment while observing and accepting your feelings, thoughts and sensations at the same time. Not only will this permit you to experience the fullness of life but it will also turn out to be very therapeutic.
- Meditate. Research has confirmed that meditation reduces anger and aggression; in the long term, it increases your capacity for empathy, compassion and rationality. It leads to less self-centered behavior, and reduces cravings for power and wealth. It also generates a sense of well-being which makes people less liable to be affected by prejudices.
- Practice gratitude to cultivate positive thinking. Studies have shown that people who take (only!) 2 minutes to write down 3 new things they are grateful for everyday, experience a substantial improvement in their positive thinking: their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.
- Spend 20 minutes outdoors in nature everyday. Being in a natural environment calms the left hemisphere of the brain, which often times becomes restless due to its capacity to constantly interpret, analyze, categorize, fabricate the future and relive the past. Being in nature will stimulate the right hemisphere which is the side that experiences happiness, peacefulness and fulfillment.
- Don’t take anything personally, things and experiences are simply unfolding. Oftentimes, it’s not about you anyway.
- Become a neutral witness of whatever arises in or around you. For the record, we are not saying become a vegetable or remain apathetic to situations that are clearly wrong. No. Being a neutral witness means to be wary of attachments and before reacting, observe and create the space, wisdom and power to decide if responding is the right course of action and in what way you will respond.
- Take time to be with yourself without having a purpose behind it. Simply enjoy your own company and allow yourself to hear your own Highest inner voice, a busy cluttered overstimulated mind cannot do that.
- Drop the sense of I as much as you can. The end of the personal self (which is what many sages would describe as “enlightenment”), dropping the story of an “I” and realize, see and feel Oneness in multiplicity is perhaps the most powerful way to get rid of everything that is negative in ourselves and ultimately the world.
- Be kind. Even when others are not. Yes, this is SO hard but do remember that whether consciously or not, everyone is on their own path of Self-realization so be kind and project peacefulness onto other creatures.
- Don’t just think about inner peace, let your actions reflect it as well. from your interaction with the world to the food you put in your body. Let it all be a reflection of non-harming and peacefulness. Meditating is good and all but to practice compassion and spread peace, you must stand up and go do it.
We help motivated individuals on their quest to inner and outer change through inner growth, entrepreneurship and becoming the changemaker our world desperately needs. Pay us a visit and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for free videos to help and empower.
Blessings,
Thomas & Ruth
WEARECO 🌿| Founders
