Tag: attitude

Creating Inner Peace – Decision To Find Peace

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Please take a moment to look at all your answers to all the questions so far; in order to see the foundation you already have, as well as areas you might like to work on. Do you feel firmly grounded in your decision to create inner peace for yourself?

Inner peace is a lifetime process and even when I didn’t know what inner peace was; I was still working on it. To encourage you to look at similar things, I wanted to give you a glimpse of what either disturbed my peace in my childhood or gave me gifts and/or tools to create and maintain it. And to give some baseline regarding what about my attitudes gave me a head start or had to be overcome. I hope you’ve been able to see the same for yourself.

In looking for events in my childhood to illustrate points of peace I had learned; I realized that it wasn’t events that gave me peace. It was decisions I made. And it’s not even specific decisions. Although, as I’ve illustrated, various decisions led to various bits of foundation that point towards creating an inner peace. It’s the one decision to find peace no matter what the events or circumstances are that will eventually make the difference. It’s a rather odd exercise to look at various points of our life and ask: “What did this teach me relative to building peace within myself?”

Creating Inner Peace – Clear-cut Sense of Responsibility

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What is your current decision regarding each person’s responsibility for their own intentions and actions?

I’m not saying I was not terrified as a child. I’m just saying that I didn’t also have the added stress of a mental quandary in some situations. The first time the monstrous men put a knife in my hand to kill someone was when they insisted I kill an older girl who had always tried to shield me. As soon as the knife handle touched my hand, I threw it with all my might and buried it in the shoulder of one of the men. They were momentarily shocked, then went berserk and made the other children pay dearly for my act of defiance. Then they made one of the younger men crush my hand around the knife handle and the younger man actually killed the child. By that time, I had shut down and was pretty limp anyway. Crushing my hand didn’t remove the responsibility from their shoulders. I’m not going to take on their perverse intentions as my own. It’s not even really stubbornness. It’s just a fact. Perhaps it’s a decision I made in a previous lifetime. But it’s a decision anyone can make in this lifetime, if they wish to.

Creating Inner Peace – Pre-made clear-cut decisions

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What decisions have you already made that would help reduce stress and drama for you in a traumatic or survival situation?

Except for expressing anger towards my mom, because so early in life I had made the decision not to cause harm; to the best of my ability, I avoided doing what the monstrous men wanted. I firmly felt that they were responsible for the harm they wanted to cause; and therefore, they had to perform the heinous acts they wanted me to do. The age old: ‘Hurt this other person or we’ll hurt you.’ Well, obviously they were going to hurt me anyway; so if they wanted that other child hurt, they had to do it or they had to physically force me. Of course, physically I was too weak to fight them, but to the best of my ability in my mind I refused to accept the responsibility they wanted to heap upon me. Having pre-made decisions was something that helped me have some semblance of peace. It gave me some bit of shield from accepting their responsibility for the many horrible things they did. Of course, some of their insidious desire to put the responsibility for their actions on me still did get through. But knowing that the desire to cause harm did not come from within me helped me sort it out easier when I had the tools to heal all the havoc they wreaked within me.

Creating Inner Peace – Emotion/Belief Tool

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Creating peace within yourself can be imaged by thinking of a stream when there are a lot of rocks for shallow water to flow over. It makes a lovely gurgling sound, but when you have deeper water and not so many rocks, it moves along without any sound at all. No ripples. No waves. Completely smooth and peaceful. So, you can relate creating inner peace to removing the rocks from a stream and letting it be deeper. And each of the rocks is an illusion or a fear or a misconception or a false belief. And they’re easy to remove. Well, maybe not so “easy,” but just take it one by one.

Here is a technique for looking at feelings and beliefs that I still find quite useful. You give the answers with a focus on self, without involving other people or outer conditions. It’s not a matter of looking at what you think something or someone has done to you. It’s a matter of looking at what you are inwardly doing to yourself. It’s meant to be a quick tool of a sentence or two per answer.
 
Generically a person can ask: What takes you out of peace? Write the first thing that comes to mind in one short sentence or phrase. Usually, I’m using this process because I’m aware that something has disturbed me. And so, an answer is fairly obvious. But when I’m just doing a self-check, two other things help that might be helpful to you if nothing comes to mind. Think of a recent event that triggered anxiety, anger or irritation. Or ask yourself what you think would make someone else lose their peace? Some people find it easier to depersonalize things. But remember the answer actually applies to you. It’s what you think.
 
But usually, a specific event has occurred to prompt wanting to walk thru this exercise. In this case the first question can be worded: “What event disturbed your peace?” So, begin with very briefly describing the incident in one or two sentences. Beware of going down a rabbit hole here. It’s very easy to get off on emoting and forget the purpose of this exercise, which is to see behind the outer situation and to see behind our reaction to it.
 
Identify the current feeling of non-peace. Here are a few potentials:
Anxiety? Unrest? Ill at ease? Irritation? Anger? Need for change? Fear? Worry? Concern? Powerless? Justified? Responsible? Righteous? Disappointment? Sadness? Confused? Bewildered?


Determine what belief is causing this feeling. Some potential sentence beginnings to choose from are:
People should be…
The world should be…
I didn’t expect…
This always happens…
This can escalate into…
I always hate it when…
I demand to be treated…
It’s unacceptable to…


Identify triggers. Briefly describe the event or circumstances that led up to this disturbance of peace within yourself.


Look at the drawbacks of allowing the cycles to continue.


Ask yourself if you would defend these feelings and beliefs.


Then ask yourself if you DO defend them.


Look at the results or consequences of harboring these feelings and beliefs.


If you’re willing and ready to surrender them, then create a short action plan using whatever tools you have. Create whatever works for you, here are some ideas:
Create a positive phrase or mantra that can be repeated daily to replace the belief.
Visualize placing feelings or beliefs or triggers in a purifying fire whenever they occur.
When a similar thought or feeling begins literally put your hand in front of you as if you’re stopping someone and say: Stop.
Figure a way to face a fear head on.
Create a visualization in which you experience the trigger you listed, but respond in a different way.
Ask for help.

Creating Inner Peace – General Attitude of Trust

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What attitude towards life do you have that has already or can set a foundation for inner peace?

A general attitude of trust is an important aspect of peace. And what I take away from this next event would help solidify that in me, despite the damage that the pedophile had and would do. This next incident happened when I was six years old and stands out as molding my attitude about life in general. We had a very serious car accident. My father, mother, brother and I were beginning a vacation. We had our gear on top of the station wagon so that the back seats could be down and my brother and I had room to play games. My brother is ten years older than me. Who knows why we chose Chinese checkers, which is played with marbles. Luckily the marbles didn’t hurt anyone. But the fact that they didn’t is part of what some said was a miracle.

Some terrible crosswinds caught the car and we were rolled over several times. My brother was strong and tall enough to brace his legs against the wheel wells. He put one arm around me and the other against the roof. He was my seat belt so neither of us went flying out the back of the car. In fact, I don’t think anyone had a scratch. The insurance company replaced the car and somehow, we were on the road again the next day. I put this event in here because at that young age I knew the situation was quite serious, but I felt quite safe. I came away with a sense of always being cared for. That sense has added to my general trust. It’s an attitude that no matter how it looks, it always works out.

As I’m writing this book, it shows me how important that car accident turned out to be. Well, not the actual accident, but what I came away from it with. Somehow the re-enforcement of that attitude of things always working out and me always being cared for set a foundation that may have been critical to coping with the devastatingly traumatic events that were to occur occasionally over the next eight years.

Creating Inner Peace – Feeling Good About Oneself

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When you look at your path through life, how do you feel about yourself? If you’d like to change your attitude towards yourself from what you grew up with, what can be an easy first step right now?

Unfortunately, on this planet there are numerous children who experience far worse than I did. I still maintain that it’s not so much what we experience as how we respond. And I don’t mean in the moment. I mean within ourselves over time. And I’m not suggesting any particular response to anyone. What helps a person reclaim a sense of well-being about themself is individual to each person. But I guess I do maintain that as far as cultivating inner peace is concerned, also feeling good about oneself is integral. Even as I say my peace, self-trust and sense of security were shattered; I walled off the emotions associated with this shattering, along with the memories of the various traumatic events. So, as I grew older, I wasn’t consciously aware of this loss. In the parts of myself that weren’t walled off with the trauma-induced feelings and memories; I was able to enjoy all the love and stability that my family and society afforded me. In one physical body there was sort of a parallel path of the child who grew to adulthood relatively normally and the abused child on hold waiting in the wings for healing. So, I didn’t grow up thinking of myself as abused. I grew up thinking of myself as well-loved, capable and normal.