Another Happiness Ingredient = PEACE

As mentioned before happiness has many ingredients, one of them is peace. I am not talking about the peace between countries and nations, even though world peace would be a fantastic and idyllic event, no doubt about it. The peace I am talking about is the peace with ‘what is’. When we constantly argue with reality we will neither be at peace nor be happy.

Yes the world can be an unfair place and things don’t always happen the way you want them to happen, but arguing with what has already happened will not make you feel any better about the situation or yourself.

Most of the arguments arise only in our heads after the event. I am still a big offender of this; I am working on it though. You know the times when you have discussions in your head that will most probably never happen in real life. Or something happened and you play out how it could have happened if only…. (I am not the only one doing that, right?)

This is not living in peace with ‘what is’, and the best way to shut these inner arguments is by realising that you are having them in the first place. When I start the inner chatter and replaying of events, I now quickly remind myself that they are neither real nor important. We waste valuable energy every time we argue with reality.

I used to think that my boss should appreciate me more; and even though I might have liked a bit more positive feedback and recognition, the inner chatter arguing my points of why my boss should be more appreciative made me feel worse. It wasn’t that my boss didn’t like my work, nor do I know for a fact that he never appreciated me. The point is that I felt unappreciated but made it worse by whinging (Australian for whining) to myself that he doesn’t appreciate me. My thoughts made me unhappy. Fact was only that I didn’t see how much he appreciated me. And I told myself how horrible it is to work for him, whilst replaying events long gone of what I should have said and what he should have done.

You could find endless examples of this. “My husband doesn’t love me enough!”; “my mother hates me”; “my teacher always gives me bad marks because she doesn’t like me” ….

Your thoughts make you happy, and every time you have negative thoughts about who has done what, you argue with something that you cannot change or something that might not be real in the first place and will never come to pass.

This does not mean that we should turn a blind eye on incorrect behaviours, abuse or things that need attention. But instead of having the inner voice tell you all day that it was a horrible thing to happen to you, try and make peace with it. Ask your boss for a review, tell your husband you love him and wait till he replies with a ‘love you too’. Go and try to understand, why you are getting bad marks or why your mother behaves the way she does…. You might be surprised to see that it is nothing like the story you repeated over and over in your head.

I am working on this day by day, and it is not always easy to shut up the chatter in my head, but every day it gets easier to reason with what is and except it. Because every time I try and fight with reality- I loose. Time will not be reversible; the milk has been spilled, if you can’t change it- except it.

To inner peace