How to Find Peace of Mind When Facing Challenges
Learning how to find and maintain your peace of mind (not to be confused with piece of mind) is a valuable skill. When our routine is frequently giving us reasons to feel anxious, annoyed, worried and depressed, there are techniques that you can use to find a middle ground.
There is no one way to breakthrough onto a peaceful state of mind when things get shaky. But below you will find a list of practices that, when integrated into your day, will strengthen your resilience to withstand challenging times while keeping a better perspective and balance throughout.
Practices to Find Peace of Mind
Be Grateful
When you are focusing on being grateful, you promote feelings of wellbeing and train your brain to notice more things around you that you can feel grateful for. This provides better results when practiced regularly, which also applies to the other techniques.
For ideas on how to practice gratitude, read this other blog post and download a free copy of our gratitude prompts journal, below:
Journal
While you can use a journal for your gratitude practice, you can also use it to jot down your:
Thoughts
Concerns
Hopes
Dreams
Learnings
Highlights
Ideas
And any other things you would like to get off of your mind or process. Writing is a great tool for resolving internal mental issues and moving on. You do not need to go back and read these but you may if it moves you, or if you logged things for later reference. The goal is to put things behind and work through thought processes. Keep them private.
Share
We are social beings and many times, feel we can only share the good side of us, lest we become a burden. Our trusted friends and family members are, most of the times, grateful to be given the opportunity to help. They may not have a solution to your problem, but sometimes just sharing and allowing them to lend you an understanding ear helps more than we know. Allow them into your life to give you that support.
Don’t have anyone you can trust? Seek for professional help from a therapist or a counselor. If at anytime in your life you feel stuck and without options, it may be you need help seeing or accepting them. There are always options.
Trust
When we’re in the middle of a storm, it usually feels like it will never end. Remember that, this, too, shall pass. Trust in your ability to weather the challenges. No hardships are presented to you beyond what you can handle. Trust yourself, and trust the universe. Some challenges thrown your way may not be what you wanted, but may be just what you needed to learn and grow the way you need.
Move
Walk, exercise, added bonus if you can do so while getting some fresh air. It releases feel good hormones such as endorphins and reduces stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Sometimes going for a walk (or run) outside is the best prescription for finding your peace of mind.
Moving your body circulates stagnant energy, increases blood flow and boosts your mood. Physical exercise also promotes a healthier brain as you age, placing this practice amongst the most important for providing a functional environment to maintain your peace of mind.
Meditate
Meditating is like giving your mind a break from all the external stimulation that you face in your day to day life. It gives it a chance to restore, reorganize and reconnect. Here’s a good article explaining how to meditate for beginners.
If you find it challenging to find time to meditate, remember to simplify, and this applies to any of the tools in this list. Start with 5 minutes a day. Pick a simple meditation technique that is not difficult for you to follow. In time, meditation will allow you to go back to your center while not meditating much faster, once your brain will be so well trained in getting into that peaceful zone.
Set Boundaries
Probably one of the most challenging and important tools for protecting your peace of mind, especially if you are not into the habit of keeping healthy boundaries. If you notice your lack of peace coming from your interactions with others, it could be because of lack of boundaries. Are you the type of person that is extra generous with your time and your resources? Do people ask you for favors frequently without you getting anything in return? It’s one thing to be kind and helpful when it makes you happy to do so. It’s another when it’s making you feel resentful or you are acting out of guilt. Pay attention to how you feel after those exchanges. If these interactions are causing you to lose your peace of mind, it’s time to set some boundaries.
Disengage
While related to setting boundaries, I added this one because it can be of great help sometimes to just not engage in stressful situations. Today this sounds obvious to me, but it was not until recently that I’ve learned that, most of the times, I do not need to hang around in situations that are causing me stress. I step out of the argument, step out of the room, turn off the computer, disconnect from social media. If it’s to protect my peace of mind, I make it a priority.
Manage Your Expectations
A bit related to the trust technique, in the sense that you need to develop trust that the events happening in your life that are out of your control are somehow part of a bigger plan. It may seem unjust and feel painful at the moment, but in hindsight, it may make sense in the way it affected and directed your life.
Things won’t happen the way you expected or planned many times in your life. Trust that they will get you in the direction you are meant to be headed to, regardless, and let go of having full control on how they will get you there.
Conclusion
Although it may not happen at the snap of a finger, finding your peace of mind comes as the result of implementing some or all of the tools described above. Pick one or two today to start with, this is not meant to be overwhelming.
Do you know any other tips for keeping your peace of mind that has not been mentioned? I’d love to see it in the comments. Thank you!
