My peace is crucial to my sanity. This ties into my earlier topics on control and how I have no control over other peoples actions and decisions. I’ll cut to the chase right out here… I should ALWAYS be at peace. If at anytime I find I’m not, then I need to re-evaluate my motives and perspectives. I don’t have the luxury of entertaining resentments or harbor anger. For me it’s too much of a reason to give into my addiction. I’m sure you can identify where you’ve had such a horrible day that the only thing you want to do at the end of it is hit the local establishment for happy hour as soon as possible. That for me is not an option. So by maintaining my peace, I avoid the necessity to justify a drink.

Does being at peace mean I’m happy? Not necessarily, but generally it does. It’s quite possible to be sad, but at peace. So what is this “peace” thing anyway? For me, being at peace means my conscience is clear and I harbor no ill feelings to any person, place or thing. It’s probably best to use a few examples to explain.

Example One: While I’m driving down the highway, I get cut-off unnecessarily by someone going way too fast. My first reaction is to call him a foul word and get angry at him (I assume gender to make this easier). So what do I accomplish by this? I efficiently hand over my inner peace to a complete stranger who is probably not even aware of my existence (obvious by the way he just cut me off). What would be a better way to handle this? After the initial burst of emotion/adrenaline, I recognize it’s not worth my time or effort to even be concerned about his motives directly against me and just drive cautiously until any danger he poses is gone. In the mean time, I continue to enjoy the radio programming I’ve been listening to.

Example Two: It’s Saturday and the house needs to be cleaned. I hate cleaning. So I can either storm around the house in a funk making sure EVERYONE knows I’m cleaning, and build all kinds of resentments against everyone else in the house for their obvious lack of regard for my efforts in cleaning up all their messes… Or, I try to find the positive side of the task. I can take pride in the fact my home will be clean (which is ALWAYS a good thing). While cleaning, I put on some fun music and lose myself in it while cleaning (GREAT way to pass the time). Or I can even take it as a challenge to see how clean I can get everything. So instead of seeing this as a dreadful task and mumble and grumble my way through it, I find the joy in it and make my environment enjoyable.

Example Three: My boss calls me to his office and chews me out because the customer isn’t happy that our product keeps messing up and it’s all my fault despite the fact I only started working on the project one week prior. (These are all real examples, btw) When this occurred, my boss was actually yelling and cursing. While this was happening, my pulse increased slightly, but I knew not to engage back and point out how silly he’s being. Instead, I calmly pointed out the direction I would like to take to resolve the matter and told him I would get right on it. However, after the conflict, I was tempted to build a resentment towards him for being totally unjustified in his behavior. Thoughts of going back and telling him off came fast. Thoughts of quitting did too. None of these would have solved anything, however. Instead, I recognized that his behavior was exactly that… HIS. For whatever reason he has, he chose to react in the manner he did. I suspect he would have even wanted me to react in a hostile manner to justify his own actions, so by being calm it only made him angrier. Now on reflecting on that, I’m tempted to giggle. And therein lies the answer. I felt no guilt in having not done my job properly, so I there was no need to justify my actions. My conscience is clear and my inner peace intact.

The hardest time to maintain my inner peace is when my conscience ISN’T clear. That means I’ve done something wrong and need to amend it as soon as I can. In the event that I have to wait till the next day, I recognize that I’ve handled it for the moment and worrying about it until then won’t solve anything. And that is another culprit of disturbing my peace… worrying. And that I’ve already handled at the beginning of this, but to recap… By worrying about something from either the past or future, I’m not solving anything. When I find I’m worrying about an issue, I make a plan on how to deal with it, then let it go in the firm knowledge that when the time comes, I will handle it appropriately. In cases where there is a condition there is nothing I can do to repair it or amend the situation, I just hand it over to God and continue on until such time it becomes clear there is something I can do.

Recognizing and enjoying inner peace is only achievable by employing the third step in my daily life. Remember, I’m in control of my reactions. In the same way I have no control over other people, other people don’t have control over me. So it’s my choice to either have peace or resentments. And as long as I’m trying to live the third step, it’s only logical that I would choose peace.