Tag: inner peace

Creating Inner Peace – Boundaries Regarding Other People’s Feelings

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What boundaries have you set regarding other people’s feelings? What boundaries do you want to set right now?

In the first example below of accepting people’s choices I mention my mother being understandably worried about me. But the event also helped me set my boundaries regarding other people’s feelings. Earlier I talked about how at age seven I began not accepting guilt for mother’s feelings and fears. So, it took 10 years and this event to solidify the decision. I was gone for several hours and of course in this instance her concerns were quite justifiable. But what got triggered in me was all the times I felt her worries had been excessive. Throughout my childhood I felt she was afraid of so many things and I had decided I didn’t want to live a life where fear made my decisions. In a few more years I would take into account that there was a 40-year difference in our ages and that her mother had lived with and inflicted upon her even more fears. I didn’t want to take on her fears and I rejected most of them. But beyond that I felt that my mother tried to control me by making me feel guilty about her feeling worried about me. I had let worry about my friend’s condition that I could do absolutely nothing about cause me to make some poor decisions and I chose not to do that anymore. And this event at age 17 helped me put my foot down and quit feeling guilty about how someone else chose to feel.

Accepting Other People’s Choices

What choices have other people made that you have had to accept? Have you made peace with the situations?

I was given lots of examples for this one in my young adult years. Like I said, sometimes I was too honest and straight-forward; but that’s what I chose. My 13-year friendship with my best friend ended when she asked me what I thought of the man she was going to marry. She asked. I told her. She stopped talking to me and didn’t invite me to the wedding. Actually, they might have eloped. They moved to another state. He beat her several times before he hospitalized her, nearly killed her really. She eventually divorced him and returned to town. We tried to rebuild our friendship and even worked at the same place. But several tries over several years showed that our friendship was lost. But I had accepted that when she chose to stop talking to me after I answered her question. And again, even as I say I had accepted the loss of our friendship, there was still a tie between us. I dreamed about her being in big trouble just before her mother told me about her being in the hospital. I borrowed my mother’s car and drove into the mountains exceedingly upset. I ended up putting myself in danger with a poor choice. My boyfriend had told me about it being fun to coast down a hill in neutral. Well, I didn’t take into account that he had a manual transmission on his car and my mother’s car was an automatic with power steering. When you turn a car off that has power steering, you lose your ability to steer. And that’s not a good thing when you’re headed downhill toward a cliff. I did get the car turned back on and maneuvered safely around the corner prior to the cliff. I also quit worrying about my friend. But I don’t suggest this approach. I think I’ve already said that acceptance is a big part of creating inner peace. Acceptance of other people’s choices and how life unfolds.

Another example of having to accept other people’s choices occurred about a year later. In this one I had designated myself as a savior. This was also the case of a battered wife, but with children. I was so positive the woman would leave her husband. Without telling anyone, in my own mind I had decided how I, at the whopping age of 18, would take over the economy of the household. I would help this person get an apartment and help support the household until they were on their own feet. I was so excited that she would finally be free of that man. I had no idea that she didn’t see it that way at all. And then the person called and said: “It’s okay, he loves me.” Writing this, I realize that it’s still a moment frozen in my own mind that I need to let love melt and dissolve my attachments. I threw the phone across the room. I ran out the door and down the street at top speed. I ran as far as I could until I dropped exhausted on somebody’s lawn. I cried hysterically until I was semi-conscious. I have no idea how long I lay there, before I eventually got up and walked back home.

Finally, I realized that there was nothing I could do to protect this person. And worse than that, she didn’t even want protection. I had to find a way to come to a place of peace regarding the situation. It took years, even decades. I had to forgive her for making choices I didn’t agree with. I had to forgive myself for having expectations and opinions about what her choices should be. I had to forgive her husband for his behaviors. It was a lot of hard work. But it taught me that we are not here to live someone else’s life for them. Also, I recognize that her view of it all is completely and totally different from my own. People make whatever decisions they make and have to experience the consequences of those decisions. And it’s not for me to inflict my value judgment about right and wrong on their choices. I still do it all too often, but I do recognize it as fruitless. It only serves to muddy my own feelings.

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 – Peace With Death

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How have you made it through the important deaths in your life?

My dad was put in the hospital with advanced cancer on Memorial Day and died on Labor Day of the summer before my senior year of high school. I spent almost every day in the hospital room with him. I worked on a replica of the ship, the Mayflower. It was great therapy to have to concentrate on tying the rigging of the sails with a tweezers. There were some horrible events of well-meaning family members saying the most inappropriate things, like I’d have to take care of my mother after she went insane when my dad died. Or that my boyfriend couldn’t sit with the family at the funeral; but since I wouldn’t let go of his hand, there was nothing anyone could do to boot him out. The poor dear, I think I crushed his hand. I went into a state of shock for maybe three weeks, so there is a great deal I don’t remember. It never occurred to me that his lifestream wasn’t somewhere doing whatever it needed. I was mostly worried about how my mom and I would get along without my dad’s mediation between us. Also, my mom went to bed and wouldn’t eat or get up or anything. I skipped school to go talk to a priest to try to figure out what to do and came home to a cooked meal and a furious mother. She informed me that I was never to skip school again. Apparently, someone had called worried about me and mentioned that I had missed an important test. She never gave up on life again. So, both of us eventually found peace while missing my dad.

Creating Inner Peace – Not Getting Used

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When have you inadvertently been used to create a fight between people? When have you been aware of someone agitating a group, even if you are personally be used, and been able to stay out of it?

This goes hand in hand with not being manipulated. There are people on this planet who just flat enjoy creating problems. I was almost used to create a fight between high schools. Luckily, a level-headed adult stepped in to put an end to it in time. A group of teenage girls from two different rival high schools were put together for a slumber party. A girl from my school wanted to create a fight. I was known to be a calm easy-going person. So, when I came out of the restroom cussing up a blue storm about some girl from the other school that had peeked into the toilet stall that I was in; I had no idea that I would be used by the girl who wanted to start a fight. In a snap she took advantage of the situation to set up a kangaroo court. The trial and the girl who wanted to start a fight agitated things so fast. And I was so angry, it took me some time to calm down enough to recognize that the girl in the bathroom meant no harm. The girl who had peeked over the stall partition was SO frightened. It turned out she was innocently looking for one of her friends. It took me even longer to recognize that I was being used to create a fight between the two schools. Thankfully, one or more of the adults supervising the party stepped in and deflated the situation in time.

This taught me to be alert for these people who like to agitate. To be alert to when others are being used to create a fight between people. We see it in news items all the time where the media is trying to stir up one group of people against another group of people. I also certainly learned to monitor myself so I’m not again used for such a purpose.

Creating Inner Peace – Maintain Your Own Sense of Who You Are.

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When you do follow someone else’s lead, do you still maintain your own sense of who you are?

At the same time, I speak of independence from the larger group, I have to admit my attachment to my best friend since the time we had been five years old. I tended to follow her. She went to public school, so in ninth grade my father let me switch over to the same public school. She wanted to be part of a group of friends, so I was also friendly with them. In tenth grade she wanted to join ROTC for the guys, so I also joined. Even though I knew I would never ever be joining the military for the same simple reason of not wanting to be told how to act and dress. I did put up with the ROTC uniform on certain days and enjoy carrying the flag during parades and prior to football games. And the two military balls I attended were exquisite. And the guys were a nice bunch of people.

Creating Inner Peace – Being an Individual Within a Group

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How have you maintained your individuality within a group? How easily can you maintain your own ground when your family or a group or a nation is bent on actions, or infested with fear or anger, that you don’t feel comfortable with?

Even in a group we’re still individuals. I was aware of it during grade school and continued having being myself be a priority throughout high school. There is a consciousness that every society defines about what is acceptable and unacceptable, about what makes a person a success. It forms a sort of gravitational pull. Some call it a mass consciousness. For some people it’s not a problem. But some people spend some time pulling away from what is expected of them so they can find out who they are as an individual, who they are beyond what their society says they can be. The momentum of a large group of people can overwhelm the desires of an individual. Mob mentality is an example. We get a little more freedom from that gravitational pull, that group momentum, every time we choose to be a little different. And how can we express our uniqueness if we’re always trying to fit in with everyone else by being just like them? There’s a difference between harmony and sameness. Harmony in a song requires different notes, or it wouldn’t be harmony. Groups require variety in their membership in order for people to learn to be harmonious with each other.

Creating Inner Peace – Accepting Yourself and Others

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How honest are you with other people about being yourself? How honest are you with yourself?

Even in high school it wasn’t a matter of “fitting in” by acting or dressing like other people said I “should.” I accepted that my independence had consequences, prices I might have to pay regarding popularity. But I demanded my independence. That means I chose friends who were willing to accept me for me. That also means me accepting others. This I did on face value. That can sometimes be a problem if people are good fakers. For the most part, others were honest with me; because I definitely chose to be honest, perhaps sometimes too honest. I was a gentle soul, doing what I could to avoid allowing myself to be forced, doing what I could to keep from forcing others, allowing people to be. That doesn’t mean they didn’t laugh at me when I was thoroughly embarrassed, realizing I was sitting in front of the boy who had “streaked” naked across the court yard an hour earlier.

Creating Inner Peace – Our Opinions of Ourselves

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What examples are in your life of where you have responded to acceptance or rejection in such a way that bolstered your opinion of yourself? If you think of an example where you felt humiliated or degraded, do you now see a way to change any decision you might have made about yourself?

There were times I was out of sync with my peers, but I wasn’t really aware of it. We got to have a week of celebrations for our eighth-grade graduation. A swim party, a hay ride, putt-putt and a dance. We were putting in our suggestions for the music for the dance. This was 1971 and eighth graders liked rock and roll, Three Dog Night etc. So, my suggestions of more relaxing music like Petula Clark practically got me laughed out of the room. It surprised me, but I shrugged it off. Obviously, I wasn’t in the “popular” group. Luckily for me someone chose Bridge Over Troubled Waters. That was a long song to get to dance slow with the most popular guy in the school. I don’t know how I got to have such a treat, but I remember it as a highlight. A couple weeks earlier he stood up for me when I got accused of cheating on the history test, because I got such a high score. (If there had been a curve applied at the time, my score would have ruined it.) Luckily, my science project showed that my explanation of sleep learning was valid. It showed that short term retention of a lot of information was possible. It was probably reading the book out loud to record it onto the cassette tape that did it, more so than listening to the tape as I went to sleep. But nevertheless, I was exonerated. But a few months later I sure couldn’t have told you a single historical fact. For many months while writing this book I wondered why these events had significance in my life. I finally asked if it helped my attitude about myself. Humans tend to be social and being accepted or rejected does feed into our opinions of ourselves. But it is still our inner response to it that makes the difference to us. Somehow, I took two acts of kindness from the most popular boy in school as confirmation that, even out of sync, I was somehow OK. It just helped me relax into being me.

Creating Inner Peace – Purpose

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One purpose of creating inner peace within yourself is to have a reservoir to dip into when you are in aggravating situations. I’m able to just repeat the word peace quietly within myself and touch the depth of inner peace that I have so far created. It gives me a frame a reference to remind me I can choose my reaction and to remind me of the choices I prefer. Or if I do get overwhelmed in the moment, it gives me a head start for returning to the balance I have achieved. (I’ll post this as well as having added it to the Inner Peace page, just in case updating that page didn’t generate an email to the subscribers.)

Creating Inner Peace – Being True to Yourself

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What are some examples from your life where you stood your ground and others where you wished you had decided differently?

If a person doesn’t do something they know is wrong, just because other people are doing it; then the person doesn’t have to wrestle with the guilt they will inevitably feel. One time I helped bubble gum the house of a new child in the neighborhood, just because it was my best friend that wanted to do it. The father of the new child figured out who did it and made us clean it up. It is not fun to have to clean bubble gum off a wall on a hot summer day. But what I remember is the hurt in the eyes of that new kid on the block. They didn’t stay there long, so she never did get to really fit in. It could have been different.