Stop Overcomplicating Inner Peace. Do These 3 Simple Things To Feel Grounded.

Photo by Amy Treasure on Unsplash

Finding inner peace is simple. You just have to stop looking for it in the wrong places.

The biggest obstacle to inner peace? It’s us, not others (contrary to popular belief).

We tie inner peace to external validation and short-term fixes. That’s on us to change.

First things first — external validation never leads to inner peace.

Inner peace is about finding comfort in your goals, your values, and your dreams — the foundation that you can always fall back on whenever you feel lost. It’s about being at peace with who you are, where you’re headed, and how you’re going there. It’s your moral compass that helps you navigate through life.

So don’t even bother looking at another person’s compass. It’s going in a different direction, guided by different goals, values, and dreams. We all have different paths to take to get to the north.

Also, stop mistaking dopamine hits for inner peace. Short-term fixes don’t clarify what direction you should take. They only pose obstacles that make it harder for you to find and walk your route.

Lastly, stop thinking that your daily responsibilities get in your way of finding inner peace. Finding inner peace is your first and foremost responsibility that’ll help you tackle the rest.

What I’m about to share with you isn’t groundbreaking, but it will help you stay grounded throughout your day.

And it’s simpler than you think. All it takes to find inner peace is 3 moments of mindfulness a day. It won’t even take longer than half an hour. You just need:

• A moment to embrace silence (5 minutes)

• A moment to practice gratitude (5 minutes)

• A moment to connect with nature (20 minutes)

1. One moment to embrace silence

Life is damn loud. And it only gets nosier.

Ambulance sirens are six times louder than they were 100 years ago. We get 46 phone alerts per day. Teens even get hundreds.

How did we get so tolerant about the ever-increasing noise and distractions around us?

At the same time, it strikes me how uncomfortable people are with silence. According to 11 studies, 58% of people would give themselves mild shocks rather than sit with their own thoughts for just 15 minutes.

What about you?

It’s harder than ever to disconnect from noise in this hyper-connected world.

I’m worried about people who spend more time on social media than in silence. We need silence to sweep through our thoughts one by one and filter out the messages that don’t serve us. We need silence to solidify our learning. You can collect as many dots as you like, but it’s only in moments of silence that our brain starts to connect the dots.

We need silence to make sense of ourselves and the world. The insights you gain from silence become your moral compass that you can rely on.

This is how moments of silence help you find inner peace.

2. A moment to connect with nature

I don’t always have my life together, but taking a walk in my nearby forest takes the weight off my shoulders. I disconnect from my worries and reconnect with my ideas. The wind shrugs off my worries as easily as it sweeps away the leaves from a tree in fall. I won’t find the magic trick that takes my problems away from me. But in the vastness of the forest, it feels like it doesn’t matter.

Forest walks are one of the most underrated things you can do for your mental health. But in Japan, people have long acknowledged the powerful healing efforts of walking in nature. They even coined a term for it: shinrin yoku — forest bathing.

When life feels like a never-ending cycle of problems to solve and you don’t know where to start, it’s a sign you need to get out in nature.

The benefits aren’t just limited to stress relief. Forest bathing will:

• Lift your mood

• Strengthen your immune system

• Spark creativity

• Improve sleep

• Boost attention

If you value your inner peace (and your overall health), daily walks are non-negotiable. A twenty-minute walk will do the trick. Do you live in a bustling city? Just go to a park and or walk along a stream.

3. A moment to practice gratitude

Gratitude gets a bad rep in the toxic positivity discourse.

But gratitude isn’t lame or overrated.

Yes, it’s mentioned a lot — but it can’t be mentioned enough.

You don’t have to be thankful for people who’ve hurt you or done you wrong in some way or another. But you owe it to yourself and the people who support and love you.

Our brain is wired to focus on the negative. It takes at least 5 positive comments to outweigh one negative comment. The magic of gratitude is that it trains your brain to focus on the good in your life. That’s actually helpful, because it can move you from a place of self-pity to grounded hope. Not delusional or utopian hope, but a reasonable belief that things can get better because you’ve been training yourself to witness all the good things happening along with (or despite) the bad.

What helps you stay grounded? Let me know in the comments.