Inner Peace: The Missing Ingredient in Your Path to Fulfilling Life

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If you are like me, you may be in the crop of folks who deliberately turn off their notifications, especially when handling a demanding task. I wouldn’t say I do so all of the time, but most of the time, especially when I am trying to meet a tight deadline. Thursday, 21st of September 2023, was one of those days that notifications must be kept muted. 

As soon as I took my break and allowed notifications to rain down on me, I saw something that looked to be what I needed after such a busy and engaging day. I needed inner peace and tranquillity after giving my all, and boom, a YouTube post with the exact title: How to Achieve Inner Peace. The title was a bit long, so I wasn’t able to read it in its entirety. However, to my relief, I was able to see the one who posted this timely video: Claudine Onsongo, a U.S.-based Kenyan Healthcare practitioner who is dedicated to sharing life hacks based on her professional experience and daily living. 

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Because there are a lot of clickbaits online and everyone wants to be a YouTuber, I don’t always buy engaging titles and graphics. I look for channels and individuals before I click the notification bell.  This is why I didn’t miss such an educative post. You can learn a lot of straightforward life hacks, from healthy cooking to simple DIY wellness therapies, from Claudine’s channel.

On this very day, I was researching inner peace and how it can affect our performance in everyday life. We spend our lives looking for a lot of things. People try to find inner peace in things and status, but it doesn’t work like that. We work to secure a decent job that pays handsomely. We crack our backs to secure a space in a calm neighborhood, hoping to have the life of our dreams. We buy things to satisfy the spirit of consumerism or for the sake of keeping up with the Joneses, whoever they be. Unfortunately, when all this is said and done, we must still pursue inner peace. 

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So it comes out that inner peace is not a result of tangible stuff, flamboyance, or pursuit after vanities. Even your drink, or what is pleasurable, this side of eternity as served in taverns of pleasure and quick life, only creates a need for more and more of the same. Buddies of the glass cannot wait for the next drinking spree, and you could be waiting for your weekend getaway, be it sports, trips, hikes, et cetera. But all these do not give inner peace. After satisfying them, you need to find inner peace. 

How Do You Define Inner Peace?

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Inner peace is the peace that comes from the inside out. Kentucky Counselling Center defines it as the state of physical and spiritual calm despite many stressors. Inner peace defies stressors and the disappointments of life and helps you maintain your mental stability in stressful seasons.  It is not based on external abundance factors, material possessions, or temporal abundance. External achievements or conquests do not induce it. Instead, it springs from within and demonstrates itself through a clear conscience and security that defies any external disappointments. The mind is safe from cognitive dissonance (self-accusing thoughts) because one has not broken their ideals and promises. 

A person who enjoys inner peace in sufficient amounts is not perturbed by the things that worry average folks. If they can’t afford something they need, they take it easy on themselves because they didn’t waste their money somewhere and now cannot pay due carelessness. Instead, they accept that they cannot pay because of scarcity and can plan for it next time. The case is different for those who have been flaunting their financial muscles, have ended up being spendthrift, and cannot meet their due obligations. 

People with inner peace do not worry about failures or apparent losses. They have nothing to look back to and blame for their apparent failure. They did their best and can comfortably accept when it turns out that their best is not good enough. The case is different for people who expended their preparation time on issues other than what they were supposed to do to be ready when tested. 

As you can see, inner peace stems from a consciousness of right-doing and not merely success or achievement. As much as success or achievement cannot source inner peace, so it is that the two parameters cannot take it away on the reverse. As long as the mind is clear that you are not betraying your ideals or commitments, you are on the path to inner peace.  

The consciousness of right doing is the best medicine for diseased bodies and minds.

 —Mind, Character, and Personality. Vol. 1. P. 34

Why The Inner Peace?

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After understanding the path to inner peace, it pays generously to know the significance of inner peace in a person’s life. Here are some of the ways inner peace can be beneficial in your life:

1. Helps You Face Challenging Tasks

Inner peace will enable you to face challenging tasks confidently because you are not scared by fear of loss anymore. If things do not work out, you take it as it is, divested of your person.

2. A Useful Coping Mechanism

Failures and mistakes often break most people. This is because people attach their worth to outcomes and not realities. Inner peace will be there for you to comfort you and realign you towards the winning side by helping you to cope well with failures and losses. 

3. Realigns Your Priorities

Inner peace is an excellent recipe for anyone who wants to realign their priorities. Instead of being consumed in the transient tags of flamboyance and ownership, inner peace helps you to attach your worth from sources beyond silver and gold. It gives you an improved and safe yardstick of self-appraisal beyond many and abundance. 

4. It helps You to Appreciate People Over Things

Finally, inner peace will help you to value people over things. Because your peace is not drawn from what they can put on the table but who they are, it makes you an exciting person to relate with. You are patient to wait and see who they are, not what they have. 

Conclusion

Inner peace is a quality of mental settlement that stems from within. It does not result from external things or sources. Instead, it influences how we handle external matters—internal peace results from being at peace with yourself and living in harmony with your ideals and promises. Everyone who betrays their conscience makes it harder to achieve inner peace.