How To Find Inner Peace This Year

It was the start of a new year and we were gathered for a Vision Board party in my living room.

As I thought of my word of the year, the word PEACE immediately come to my heart.

I must admit I was a bit apprehensive: to find inner peace in a year seemed like a tall order!

And then I saw a sign that I took as confirmation:

PEACE was the first word that jumped out of a magazine page and my daughter pointed it out for me to cut out!

I ended up choosing Psalms 34:14 as my verse for the year, which is the Old Testament in the Bible:

“Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” (KJV)

I’ve learned so much about how to find inner peace and I’ve found so much PEACE in the past 52 weeks, even amidst so many trials and turbulent times…

I want to share it with you.

• 

Writing to you helps me because I feel like someone’s listening… thank you!

And as I write, I’m finally listening to myself.

We teach the message we need!

My Journey To Inner Peace

I don’t know exactly what you need because I’m not God.

But I tell you what…

I know the steps I took to seek peace and pursue it really helped me in my journey to find inner peace.

For the first time in my life, I can truly say that I know what peace feels like.

Raising emotionally healthy children while healing deep emotional trauma has to be one of the bravest things a mom can do.

Drama, chaos, and dysfunction was all we knew and there’s a powerful pull to the familiar.

And we developed some coping skills along the way that just don’t work with healthy people and in healthy environment.

So my journey to peace, and the happiness that came with that, involved departing from many evils that lived between my two ears.

Seeking and pursuing peace required me to unlearn and stop some patterns that kept holding me captive.

I feel freer, happier, and more on purpose than ever!

52 Ways To Find Inner Peace

The practices on this list of how to find inner peace may not be easy or come naturally to you, but they are worth it… and it gets easier and better, too!

Stop focusing on who you think you need to become and start accepting yourself for who you are.

Consult with yourself before making a choice or decision.

You have the final say in your life and you don’t need to rely on someone else’s opinion of what you should be doing or what you need.

Don’t leave yourself because you don’t want to be left by someone else.

Be okay without the apology, the explanation, or the closure you think you need to move forward.

When things are good, stop questioning why and decide to embrace and enjoy it.

Stop making excuses for someone else’s poor responses and behavior. Their nice gestures to you or others don’t refute or invalidate your experience with their neglect, oppression, abuse, or disrespect.

Don’t spend money on others without considering your financial wellness, as well as your financial goals and dreams.

Stop agreeing with others only because it is easier.

Stand up for yourself when you see a red flag, don’t let it slide in fear of losing that person or that person’s approval.

Learn to let go of what other people think. In fact, give them permission to be wrong about you!

Don’t deny or repress parts of yourself in order to be loved, approved of, or chosen.

Stop believing everything you think about yourself. Just because it’s in your head doesn’t mean it’s true.

Spend some time in nature.

Start taking it less personally when anyone tries to project their own limitations and insecurities onto you.

Stop apologizing for your feelings, your values, your desires, your choices, your boundaries, your preferences, your needs and your NO to what doesn’t serve you.

Be okay with being misunderstood. Some people are committed to misunderstanding you.

Decide in advance you won’t stay in unhealthy situations.

It’s not worth your time unless you feel safe, settled, and at peace in a friendship or relationship.

Start honoring your boundaries. If you don’t have any, set some!

Catch yourself when you start feeling responsible for others people’s emotions and release it as quick as possible.

It’s not your job to do anyone’s emotional work.

Stop seeking external validation and making someone else’s approval more important than my own needs, wants, values, priorities, and desires.

Say NO more often. Don’t say yes to things you don’t have a desire or priority to do.

Keep recognizing your own toxic traits and doing what you can to unlearn them.

Spend some time alone. Unplugged. Do it grudgingly until you enjoy it. It may take a while, but you will!

Stop ignoring and denying your own feelings.

Don’t ever do anything without considering first whether what you’re about to do is alignment with your values and intentions.

Start respecting your time and talents. People should not expect to just pick your brain or that you’ll do work for free.

Oh… and while we’re on that…

Don’t feel like you need to make yourself available to them , especially when they’re unavailable for you when you most need it.

Start responding rather than reacting. There’s power in pausing, praying, and pondering.

Be clear about how you want to be treated, whether you feel you deserve it or not. You are responsible for your life experience.

Start seeing your parents as people with their own unresolved trauma.

Ask more, assume less.

Commit to at least one daily habit that helps you become more aware of your thoughts, feelings, needs, and desires.

Remind yourself that you’re not your emotion. You are not sad, you are experiencing sadness.

See your feelings as temporary visitors and messengers, rather than identifying with them.

Speak up! Take a stand for yourself – and others – when necessary.

Start a gratitude practice.

If someone challenges or doesn’t respect your healthy boundaries, tell yourself they are clearing space for someone that will.

Get clear on your top priorities and preferences and clearly express them.

Stop using motivational guilt or calling yourself names. You won’t be able to ever shame yourself into lasting or meaningful change.

Start trusting yourself more. When you’re hurt, it becomes hard to trust others and even harder to trust your own instincts and intuition, when it’s been skillfully undermined.

Don’t take rejection personally. Nice things are rejected all the time by people who can’t afford them.

• 

Accept responsibility for the outcome of your choices.

Add these magic words to any labels you put on yourself: “Up until now…” so you start training your brain it’s a thing of the past (i.e. “I’m a procrastinator” vs. “Up until now, I’ve been procrastinating.”).

Stop saying “I’m broken” and start saying “I’m healing,” instead.

Give up the obsession of being right. Allow others to think and feel differently than you do – even when you think they might be “wrong.”

Talk yourself into doing kind, nice, considerate things for yourself, and tell yourself “I deserve it.” Yes, even if you don’t believe it, at first.

Beware of praise and approval – that’s how “they” get you to give up on yourself.

Aha: This can show up in any of your love languages.

Be true to yourself and let go. You are not in control of how others receive your energy.

They are going to filter anything you say or do through the lens of their past or present experiences – it’s never about you!

With that being said…

Keep your heart open. It’s possible to empathize with others, without taking on their problems and their burdens.

Treat your body like it belongs to someone you love. You know I always say that.

• 

Have the courage to decide in advance that you will be flexible when things don’t go as planned.

Rest. Give yourself permission to do nothing – even if it’s only for a few minutes each day.

Stop yourself in your attempts to fix yourself or others. There’s nothing to fix and you’re not in control, even if there were.

Oh and one last thing…

Spend less time judging yourself when you fall into old patterns. Yes, I said when, not if, because you and I both will – it’s the human thing to do.

I know that was a lot… so it’s time to remember that mastery doesn’t happen overnight.

I like this quote by David A. Bednar (I’m a big fan of his!):

“If today you are A LITTLE BETTER than you were yesterday, that is ENOUGH.”

• 

The most important rule in your journey is this mantra: ONE DAY AT A TIME.

Give yourself some grace!

Find Inner Peace Through Release

I believe that everyone is my teacher and I consider myself a Student of Pain.

Most of these lessons in inner peace, and probably all of the most valuable and impactful ones for me, came out of a painful interaction, experience, or event.

I am grateful for that and those which helped me learn and grow; however, one very important thing to say is that those people, places, and situations are no longer in my life.

Yes, the people who trigger you and push your buttons help you grow.

As the Rumi quote says, the wound is where the light enters.

• 

However as Maya Angelou once said:

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” 

• 

Allowing someone to bully, manipulate, minimize, or hurt you in any way is not part of God’s plan for you… not even for the sake of your personal growth.

You don’t need that drama, girl!

• 

To be absent from drama is to be present with PEACE.

I wish you a year of peace, ease, and release. EASE is my word this year and I’m ready for it!

What is something you will release to find inner peace? Share with us in the comment section below.

Founder of the Positive MOM® and creator of the S.T.O.R.Y. System: a blueprint to craft and share powerful stories that will transform your results and help others do the same. Dr. Elayna Fernández is a single mom of 4, an award-winning Storyteller, Story Strategist, and Student of Pain. She’s a bestselling author, internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, and 5x TEDx speaker. She has spoken at the United Nations, received the President’s Volunteer Lifetime Achievement Award, and was selected as one of the Top Impactful Leaders and a Woman of Influence by SUCCESS Magazine. Connect with Elayna at thepositivemom.com/ef and follow @thepositivemom. To receive a gift from Elayna, click HERE.

Want to support the Positive MOM blog?

The mission of the Positive MOM blog is to help moms break trauma cycles, find peace, and feel emotionally whole, so they can practice supportive parenting and create a positive and healthy environment for their children. If you found Elayna’s content valuable, please consider donating a love offering to enable her to keep creating content and helping more moms worldwide. Donate HERE.