A simple technique for finding peace within yourself

It was a wonderful Saturday. Three meetings, intense conversations and activities. Physical exercises (a Qi Gong session) and prolonged periods of mental focus. Followed by Sunday with a meeting, and learning sessions. Further, listening to the recordings of three different teachers. They all spoke with love and shared knowledge, all made me feel interested. But, by the end of the weekend I was already feeling overwhelmed, empty, even anxious. There was too much learning, and nearly no space for rest. Finding peace within yourself was not an option.

Why was that.. shouldn’t I be excited about my personal growth and new information? Well, no. I was not. And in a blink of an eye I understood something, that changed my life.

Listen to your body

As I was lying on the blanket, I started listening to my soul and body, and heard what they were saying. The tension, anxiety were obviously toxic to me. Like a chemical drug or substance, they produced emotions in me that were not pleasant. You may say that I am a bit crazy, because such tension is present in the lives of most of the people alive today. So, it must be “normal” and ok. However, there is something called “adaptation”. If you repeat  something day by day, your body may adapt to it and you will sink into that reality no matter how unhealthy it may be to you. You will stop noticing that it is not good to you, because of the growing familiarity.

But… if you have a wide variety of experiences in your life, you know the emotions and feelings  the state of peace of mind, inner silence, create in your body. They are as different to tension, as night is to day. Overwork, tension of constant progress and peace, true silence of mind and heart, are to each other like Yin and Yang, in a famous feminine / masculine circle. They need each other, they form an entity that can support each other’s growth and progress.

 

Yin and Yang, finding peace within yourself

When you feel internal peace, feel it deeply, let it be

In my experience, on Sunday night, this is what came to me. I knew the state of inner silence. I had been experiencing it by that time for weeks. Tremendous sense of self-acceptance and trust, space and silence within, that sense of being enough, which help you choose whether something is really good for you. When you feel great internally, for no particular reason, you do not need the outer world to bring you the experiences that make you feel ok. And from that point, you choose with ease. I realized that something wrong was happening to me after hours and hours of external knowledge because I knew the quality of internal peace.

However, this is not what our modern culture expects

Our world is full of training, teachers and schools, telling you to learn and grow. Constantly. Just look on Facebook or Youtube, where the links to new training programs follow an educational video you just watched. But if you do it and digest too much, instead of helping you grow, finding peace within yourself, these things make you feel weaker and impact negatively your self-esteem. Why is that? The energy to learn or do the things we do not really need is not a grounded self-love and self-care, but rather lack of self-esteem and the feeling of not being enough.

A ship sailing across the ocean needs a solid structure and a forward motion. To sail it must be built well, otherwise it will sink. No forward motion will help. You are that ship in the ocean of your life. The way through life s in balance between what you know about yourself, sense of safety, everything that is familiar to you, and the new: experiences, learning, activities.

No growth without rest

Sabina Sadecka, a therapist, says, that there is no internal growth without a rest from growth. Too many webinars, training programs and self-growth books become toxic and very costly to a person digesting them.

I remember that the lessons I took part in on Saturday and Sunday were very interesting. Just like today. I had two classes, starting at 10am, and read a training manual followed by a video training by a great teacher. Yes, all of these things were and are of high quality, interesting and beneficial. Totally capturing my attention when reading, learning or listening. However, it is not the point. It is not whether something is interesting or not. But rather about the balance of time spent and you in all this. First and foremost, whether you have the space in all this to rest and appreciate what you are digesting. Finding peace within yourself depends on it.

The tension influences your ability to sleep as well. Read more about the crucial role sleep plays in your life in our article The miracle of sleep

Say “stop”

Today, it has already been too much. And I am saying: enough, time for rest, silence and doing nothing, or finding my own way.

If the information most of the time comes from the outside, as if help was always given from there and not your own, you will stop respecting your individual ability to see, understand, make mistakes, and find what you need. Your self-esteem and self-worth will suffer. Followed by the weaker sense of safety. All these things are self-made and find their silent source in your heart and soul.

Sabina Sadecka says, that “growth without control and deep meaning becomes an empty habit”. She adds “the energy to change, growth that we do not need is not a stable faith in the self and your future competence, but rather feeling ashamed, being defective and not enough.”

 

The simplest solution to finding peace within yourself

So, what is a way to finding balance and feeling good again? The answer is simpler than we may think. Finding peace within yourself happens if you allow yourself to stop, turn off your computer, stop reading and listening to new material. The reason that it works is not only based on the fact that it feels good. Further, it makes sense because your nervous system needs rest more than we think. To it, this is the time when vital work happens. Everything essential gets consolidated, your experience structured, recorded what we need to remember. Plus this is when the crucial cleansing of your brain cells happen through glymphatic system. All these life-saving activities happen when we rest and sleep, remain in silence, or during breaks at work.

Read more about the phenomenon of sleep and the real power of your mind in our article “Detox your brain“

Rest means longevity

Constant activities rob you of the tremendously pleasant and healthy to your body and mind rest. Rest means longevity. When we respect our desire to grow and learn, we will give ourselves time to rest, to fully appreciate what new we have discovered. Moreover, silence and time without the outer world telling us what to think and do (constantly), bring us our own uniqueness back. And this, is the silent spring of love.

Let me end this article with wonderful words by Bert Hellinger:

“What counts in the end? The love that stays. Which love stays? The love that does not apply any measure, the love before which everything may be as it is.”

 

Reference links

Bert Hellinger

“Pychologia” 1/2023 (Newsweek)