By: Imgbian Caleb

Your thoughts can be your biggest ally or foe for your inner peace. When you have control of your thoughts, your mind becomes your biggest ally. When you don’t have control over your thoughts, your mind becomes your biggest foe. Fear, anxiety, and constant worrying about what is to come can be too much for your mental health.

Inner peace is the calm and comfort you find within yourself regardless of how uncertain and chaotic your circumstances get. Inner peace has to do with the state of your mind, rather than what’s happening around you because your state of mind is the only thing you actually have control over. This can be done with constant practice and effort in trying to understand yourself.

How to Find Inner-Peace With Yourself

• meditate
• make journaling a habit
• accepting and conquering your demons
• positive self-affirmations
• be patient with yourself
• be conscious of the information you feed yourself
• spend more time in nature.
• be courageous and take risks

Meditate—Meditation is the act of being alone with your thoughts, focusing your mind on a single thought to improve focus and achieve inner peace. This can be done at your convenience, preferably upon waking up, so you can focus your thoughts on the aims and objectives that truly matter for the day. There are several reasons why you should meditate, some of which include

• understanding your pain
• lowering your stress level
• connect better with your mind
• better self-awareness

Make journaling a habit—Journaling has so many benefits to our physical and mental health. Journaling helps you connect with your subconscious mind and, as a result, you understand yourself in ways nobody else can. It helps to bring out your repressed ideas, weaknesses, hidden desires, instincts, and shortcomings, which helps improve your inner-peace. Journaling shares similar benefits with meditation; the only difference is journaling is expressive and written. Below are simple tips on how to get started journaling.

• Pick simple tools like pen and paper, writing in a blank doc on your laptop.
• Try free writing by letting it all out.
• Set a specific time, like when you wake up or before you go to bed. 
• Write whenever nobody understands you.

Accepting and conquering your demons—Societal norms can be pressuring and, most times, don’t smile at shortcomings like envy, hate, and anger, yet it is evident that these feelings reside in us. Even though mental health awareness has been given more attention in recent years, it is not shared worldwide. Being self-aware will help you in accepting and conquering your demons, which improves your inner-peace. Below are good and simple ways to accept and deal with our demons.

• acknowledge them and know their triggers
• make peace with them
• exercise when they come around
• learn how to tame them

Positive self-Affirmation—Practicing positive self-affirmations will help you whenever your mind is trying to play tricks on you. Tricks like having a negative perception about yourself or not feeling good enough. Affirming yourself and believing things like ‘’I am good enough’’ will help you keep going. Remember, even if or when you fail, it is a lesson learned. Below are scientific proven benefits of positive self-affirmation.

• better control of self-sabotaging thoughts and speech
• improved mood
• enhance self-esteem
• improve problem solving under stress

Be patient with yourself—Trying to develop yourself can be tough. Matter of fact, it is a lifelong process. The truth is, some days are going to suck and meditating, journaling, accepting your demons, and positive affirmations won’t work on some days. It’s okay to feel like shit. It’s okay to go through a rough patch. What is not okay is giving up on yourself. Having patience with yourself is important for inner-peace and key to understanding everything about yourself.

Be conscious of the information you feed yourself—We live in a digital age where access to information has never been easier. When surfing the internet, different ad pop-ups can redirect our attention to unnecessary information that can be harmful to our subconscious. Social media has its benefits, but it also has its disadvantages. Moderating your time spent on social media will do you a lot of good. Personalizing your feed and blocking harmful content will help you interact with like-minded people.

Spend time in nature—Mother nature is a very beautiful creature, and taking time to appreciate her will help your thoughts and creativity. Constantly spending time with nature helps you appreciate the little things, like humanity in its simplest form: cheerful people, sad people yearning for connection with one another, beautiful trees, green grasses, and different species of animals with unique features and colors.

Be courageous and take risks—Do something difficult for you. However, have it at the back of your mind that failure is a lesson learned and an opportunity to get it right the next time. Tell that person how you feel, love, be vulnerable when you find that person and be courageous enough to stay true to your values in a world which is full of different ideologies.

If you enjoyed this article and would like to start journaling, perhaps you can’t do it alone and would like to join supportive individuals to guide you through the journaling process. Look no further. Hit the link below to join a guided journaling session to reveal, heal, and process your overwhelming emotions. 

Begin Journaling Here

References

Borkar, N. (2017, February 24). Here are 7 ways you can battle your inner demons and bring positivity back in to your life. India times. https://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/here-are-7-ways-you-can-battle-your-inner-demons-and-welcome-positivity-back-in-to-your-life-271471.html

Mindful Staff. (n/d/). How to meditate. Mindful. https://www.mindful.org/how-to-meditate/

Kristenson, S. (2022, April 28). 9 science backed benefits of using positive affirmations. Happier human. https://www.happierhuman.com/benefits-affirmations/

Tartakovsky, M. (2022, February 22). 6 Journaling benefits and how to start right now. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-journaling#how-to-start