Inner peace is having a state of physical and mental calm even when confronted with stress. It is about finding serenity and happiness with the busy schedule, hectic lifestyle, and everyday stressors. The question is, “How” do you find inner peace no matter how difficult things get in your life? Having inner peace does not mean a problem-free life because we all face challenges.

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The Importance of Finding Inner Peace

Having peace of mind will result in many positive benefits, like having less anxiety, better health, and an overall positive attitude. According to the Kentucky Counseling Center, below are some benefits of finding balance in your life:

• Better physical and mental function
• Increased energy
• Less drama, fewer worries, less stress, and positive thoughts
• The ability to have a clear judgment when dealing with challenges
• Better sleep quality

How To Find Inner Peace

Everyone’s journey to inner peace is different. There is no one path, and everything does not work for everyone. For me, the Ah-Ha moment was when I started to let go of things. The term let go means to emotionally and sometimes physically detach yourself from anything that does not uplift you or help you become a better person. By reflecting on my life’s positive and negative aspects, I realized I needed to let go of three things that were negatively impacting me and taking up space in my head.

1. Let go of Expectations

I’ve realized that life does not always turn out the way I want it to. Letting go of expectations means you take full responsibility for your life and happiness. I stopped expecting others to meet my needs and instead learn to care for myself. I am grateful for the love and support, but I do not expect to always receive it. Some examples of expectations we have include

• You expect a specific event to go a certain way (e.g., a birthday or wedding)
• You expect a text reply right after you send it
• You expect your coworker to stay late with you at work
• You expect support and commitment from your family
• You expect your friends to want to go out when you do
• You expect your adult kids to produce grandchildren on your timeline
• You expect the situation to happen the same way it did last time

When our expectations don’t become a reality, we can feel discouraged, angry, frustrated, resentful, and unhappy. When we take away expectations from our lives, it forces us to learn how to react to people, events, and other opportunities when it doesn’t go as expected and catches us off guard. We are no longer driven by what we expect will happen – we’re driven by what is actually happening.

How to Let go of expectation: Losing anything can be hard to deal with and the process of letting anything go requires work. The steps to releasing harmful expectations of yourself and of others requires awareness, acceptance, gratitude, mindfulness and releasing resentment.

Awareness

The first step of any process is acknowledging it without attaching any judgment or guilt. This is a process between you and yourself and should be a judgment-free zone. Begin noticing during the day the emotions you feel when things are not going how you want them to. You can even write it down in a journal.

Acceptance

Acceptance does not mean giving up, but you have to realize that you cannot control every person or situation. The only thing you can control is how you choose to respond.

Gratitude

Practicing gratitude means reflecting on the things you are thankful for and looking at the optimistic side of the glass. Get a Gratitude Journal and start writing down what you are grateful for so you can reflect back on it when those old thoughts try to creep back in.

Mindfulness

The ability to stay present in the moment is one of the hardest things to do because it is constant. You have to always be mindful. What is helping me to become more mindful is meditation. When some think of meditation, they may imagine sitting cross-legged inside a yoga studio. But it can be as simple as paying attention to your breath while driving a car or praying. It’s about focusing your mind on gaining clarity.

Release Resentment

Resentment comes from recalling painful memories that can be real or perceived. The one thing I do know is that you cannot trust your memories. When we play scenes back in our heads, it is human nature to distort them according to the narrative we’ve made up. To deal with your resentment, you need to recognize whom or what you feel resentment towards, why you feel that resentment, the negative ways it has affected your life and what you learned from the situation. Once you have processed all that, you should be able to move on.

2. Let go of Judgments

Self-judgment and the judgment of others is toxic on every level. Judging and the fear of being judged often keep people trapped in an emotional jail. People constantly judge based on what they think is good and bad and feel the need to impose that on everyone, and it can also be self-inflicted. Letting go of judgments is challenging and requires repeated mindful practice.

How to let go of judgments: Judgments are often a form of invalidating others and/or yourself. One way of letting go of judgments is to change them into validating statements. Instead of saying negative things about yourself when you stumble, say to yourself aloud, “change takes time, and I need to be patient with myself to stay committed to reaching my goal.” You can do the same with others. Instead of saying “he’s an idiot,” say, “he is saying hurtful and horrible things, and he doesn’t know how to express himself healthily,” and remove yourself from the situation. Changing your mindset can make a difference in your inner peace journey.

3. Let go of The Past

It is pointless to live in the past. You can’t bring it back. Instead, find a way to change the narrative on it so you can stop replaying it in your mind repeatedly. You are where you are because of your past. Good or bad, you learned what you needed to know to get you where you are right now. You can’t go back, so where are you going? Let go of the embarrassment you may feel and focus on moving forward. Once I reached that conclusion, I could release a lot of past traumas I was holding onto that were playing out in my anxiety.

How to let go of the past: Letting go of the past requires deep soul work because you have to forgive those you feel have wronged you, including yourself. Those negative experiences can be used as a learning moment. Take time to reflect on the experience and write it down so you can get it out of your head and embrace the present. Keep yourself active by learning a new skill, find a fitness activity you enjoy or learning how to just be.

Cultivate your inner voice: Take some time alone and sincerely ask yourself what you want. If no one else was telling you what you should want—what would you want for yourself?