Inner peace is accomplished by understanding and accepting the inevitable contradictions of life – the pain and pleasure, success and failure, joy and sorrow, births and deaths. Problems can teach us to be gracious, humble, and patient.
The more patient you are, the more accepting you will be of what is, rather than insisting that life be exactly as you would like it to be.
Compassion is something you can develop with practice. It involves two things: intention and action.
We take our own goals so seriously that we forget to have fun along the way, and we forget to cut ourselves some slack.
We take simple preferences and turn them into conditions for our own happiness.
If you want to be a more peaceful person you must understand that being right is almost never more important than allowing yourself to be happy.
My best friend, Benjamin Shield, taught me this valuable lesson. Often our inner struggles come from our tendency to jump on board someone else’s problem; someone throws you a concern and you assume you must catch it, and respond.
I used to be the type of person who would jump in and try to solve a problem without being asked. Not only did my efforts prove fruitless, they were also almost always unappreciated, and sometimes even resented.
Pascal said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
One of my favorite posters says, “Life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been a real life you would have been instructed where to go and what to do.” Whenever I think of this humorous bit of wisdom, it reminds me to not take my life so seriously.
While eating dessert, we ponder what we should do afterward. After that evening, it’s “What should we do this weekend?” After we’ve been out, we walk into the house and immediately turn on the television, pick up the phone, open a book, or start cleaning. It’s almost as though we’re frightened at the thought of not having something to do, even for a minute.
If we all based our love on our children’s behavior, it would often be difficult to love them at all. If love were based purely on behavior, then perhaps none of us would ever have been loved as a teenager!
Patience adds a dimension of ease and acceptance to your life.
One of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself is, “Do I want to be ‘right’ – or do I want to be happy?” Many times, the two are mutually exclusive!
Fortunately, there is an inviolable law in our emotional environment that goes something like this: Our current level of stress will be exactly that of our tolerance to stress.
Without getting too psychoanalytical about it, the reason we are tempted to put others down, correct them, or show them how we’re right and they’re wrong is that our ego mistakenly believes that if we point out how someone else is wrong, we must be right, and therefore we will feel better.
Most people have it backward. When they are feeling down, they roll up their sleeves and get to work. They take their low moods very seriously and try to figure out and analyze what’s wrong. They try to force themselves out of their low state, which tends to compound the problem rather than solve it.
The next time someone tells you a story or shares an accomplishment with you, notice your tendency to say something about yourself in response.
Mark Twain said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
I’m the first to admit that I always prefer approval over disapproval. It feels better and it’s certainly easier to deal with. The more content I’ve become, however, the less I depend on it for my sense of well-being.
Circumstances don’t make a person, they reveal him or her.