10 Reasons to Make Inner Peace a Priority

10 Reasons to Make Inner Peace a Priority

Inner peace is the eternal quest for seekers everywhere. What used to be a rather vague and ephemeral concept has since been backed by modern science as a worthwhile quest towards accessing better health and happiness.

If you’re wary about the real-life importance of making peace of mind a priority, you’re not alone. The monkey mind is a cultural norm and, for most people, daily life consists of a constant stream of chaotic thoughts based in the past or the future.

Rarely do people make the space for presence and the experience of simply being. But when you do, you’ll be astonished how life can shift from tumultuous to serene, from judgemental to accepting. You can find inner peace even in the midst of external chaos.

1. Increased Intelligence

Perhaps one of the most popular benefits that inner peace can bring is the potential to grow your brain, literally. A study done at Harvard University showed that people who practiced mindfulness meditation (quick definition: accepting and paying attention to your thoughts and feelings without judgment) increased the thickness of their prefrontal cortex.

The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for regulating emotions, planning, decision making, and regulating social behavior. Just eight weeks of regular meditation practice also shows increased gray matter in MRI scans.

Turns out that seeking peace helps you gain greater intelligence and a stronger, healthier brain.

2. Rewire Your Brain for Positive Feedback Loops

You can change your brain and it’s as easy as being aware of the transience of every experience. Most people go into a fight or flight stress state at least a few times a day, but when peace is your primary pathway you can change that mental habit.

This is because our unconscious thoughts and worries (aka the monkey mind) engage the amygdala, the reptilian part of our brains responsible for keeping us alive in dangerous situations. When the amygdala is engaged we experience anxiety, tension, faster heart rate, and poor digestion, all things modern humans are very familiar with.

When peace is the primary pathway you can consciously comfort your amygdala with the assurance that all is well and the world is NOT ending. Because our brains are plastic and changeable you can change the tendency to activate the amygdala and remain calm even in the midst of chaos.

3. Grow Your Compassion Muscle

The Dalai Lama says that “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Yet often we’re too absorbed in our busy lives to experience wholehearted compassion for both ourselves and our fellow humans.

A study published in the journal Psychological Science found that the practice of meditation and the allowing and acceptance that comes along with it increases the internal experience of compassion. Another study showed this affects the brain even when you’re not actively engaged in meditation.

Ram Dass: Be Here Now, Awakening in the Moment

4. More Happiness

Shawn Achor, the author of the book the Happiness Advantage, describes creating your own happiness through mindful practices rooted in peace as a mere mental reprogramming of sorts.

“We are basically trying to find an undiscovered path that if walked once, makes us happy. The path is the synaptic connections in our brain. And then, because we enjoy it, we go along that path, hundreds and hundreds of times. Slowly a track forms and becomes very clear and easier to walk every time.”

The human brain has a tendency to emphasize the negative, breeding more of the same. But when peace becomes your primary objective and you hold that goal in mind, it’s entirely possible to increase your happiness merely by being conscious of that desire.

The power of positive thinking is well-studied and recognized throughout the medical community to be a powerful practice in achieving greater overall well-being. A large part of creating inner peace is letting go of negative self-talk and replacing those habits with gratitude. Even in a study where participants were challenged to focus on just three things they’re grateful for each day the results were promising for creating greater happiness and overall satisfaction.

5. Protection Against Age-Related Mental Decline

The brain that seeks peace in the brain that remains spry and sharp, regardless of age. One study showed even just 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation a day dramatically slows age-related cognitive decline.

The why behind this dwells in the first point, as the peaceful practice of meditation helps to grow the areas of the brain that typically dwindle in effectiveness with age.

6. Improved Digestion

Stress is inextricably linked to digestive health and, although it may seem boring to some, good digestion is essential for radiant physical health, energy, and mental health. The brain-gut axis is the biochemical signaling that takes place between the central nervous system and the gastrointestinal tract. The gut is a part of our nervous system and, in a sense, it acts as a second brain.

The reason stress affects digestion is because of specific biochemical signals which negatively affect the gut and even the bacteria that reside there!

When you’re primary pathway and response to life’s stressors is a desire to maintain peace and neutrality and you have the skillset to do that, your digestive health and your body’s second brain will be well balanced and give you the energy you need to live life to it’s fullest potential.

7. Increased Focus and Memory

A study of 48 students randomly assigned to either a mindfulness class or a nutrition class showed that the students who practiced mindfulness for 45-minutes, four times per week for 4-weeks were far ahead in the focus department than their nutrition savvy counterparts. The mindfulness students got better test scores in completely unrelated topics as well as improved their memory retention.

Psychological scientist Michael Mrazek of the University of California and one of the researchers involved in the study stated, “We found reduced mind-wandering in every way we measured it and improved performance on both reading comprehension and working memory capacity”.

By simply being present and allowing thoughts to pass that aren’t in alignment with our authentic selves we create neural patterns that enable full immersion towards the task at hand. This kind of focus and productivity is rare in a world full of distractions, but simply by being present and allowing, you can access it at any moment.

8. Enhanced Immune Function

The human immune system has a large burden to bear. It’s constantly fighting and protecting us from harmful foreign invaders and when we’re stressed out its burden becomes amplified.

Stress suppresses immune function and makes you more susceptible to illness. If you’ve ever had one of those months (or seasons) where you feel like you’re catching every bug there is, take a closer look and analyze what your stress levels were like at that point.

The good news is you can support your immune system by training your brain to boost it. The proof is in the pudding and it’s clear through a systematic review of various controlled trials that mindfulness, the energy of allowing and letting go of thoughts instead of clinging to them and their emotional imprints, has a dramatic effect on the immune system.

This review pointed out some very important immunological effects of mindfulness:

  • Lower levels of inflammatory markers
  • Increased numbers of the immune systems CD4 “helper cells”
  • Preservation of telomeres, the caps at the end of our chromosomes (whose degradation is also associated with premature aging)

9. Improved Mental Health

So many people suffer from depression and anxiety and the reasons for this are varied. The pharmaceutical companies would like us to think that it’s merely a chemical imbalance, but it’s clear it is much more than that alone.

Often, life becomes so overwhelming that the nervous systems’ way of defending itself is to just shut down or go into hyperdrive. The conditions that result from this can be balanced out when time and space is made for stillness, integration, reflection, and processing of thoughts and emotions with the intention to not become attached to them.

A meta-analysis looked at six randomized controlled clinical trials to see if mindfulness in conjunction with cognitive-behavioral methods (aka positive thinking and training the brain to stop the vicious cycles of self-defeating thought patterns) were effective at keeping depression at bay. The findings suggest that these techniques could reduce the relapse of depression in up to 44% of patients, which is basically on par with that of antidepressants.

Another meta-analysis of 47 clinical trials found that meditation can ease general psychological stress ranging from anxiety to depression and pain.

The journey towards greater peace inside of you can evidently diminish serious mental health problems that make greeting the outside world with openness so challenging.

10. Your Thoughts Create Your Reality

Bruce Lipton, a cell biologist and internationally recognized authority on how our beliefs shape our reality teaches that our genes aren’t set in stone. His research has shown that by changing your perception you can alter the activity of your genes. Gene programs contained within the nucleus of the cell can be rewritten through changing your blood chemistry.

Through stress reduction techniques like positive thinking and mindfulness, you can adjust your personal biology and potentially even heal your body from disease.

Lipton highlights that it isn’t so much the conscious thoughts that create these effects but the subconscious. “Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious control. So when you are trying to heal from a conscious level – citing affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy – there may be an invisible subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”

To get to the root of the subconscious beliefs you hold takes a systematic mental reprogramming and conscious awareness about the little thoughts that pop up for you and hold an energetic charge.

It is possible to rewrite your subconscious belief patterns and to be empowered in the potential that you have to create a vibrant life that is rooted in peace and unaffected by the chaos of the outside world.

With the right mental training strategies, you can effectively tame the monkey mind and find freedom from the very things which cause stress to show up in your life. When you train your brain to create new neural pathways rooted in happiness, you’ll be amazed at how that manifests in the external world and creates lasting freedom from mental strife. Inner peace is possible.



7 Ways to Protect Yourself from Negativity

7 Ways to Protect Yourself from Negativity

At some point in your life, you’ve encountered a negative person. It may be that you have a negative person in your life at this very moment, whether it be a spouse, family member, co-worker, friend or even a stranger. An encounter with a negative person can be emotionally taxing. These people can imprint their negativity onto you in such a way that may leave you feeling sad, angry, afraid, or completely drained of energy. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

As there are many reasons behind a person’s negativity, there are also many ways to protect yourself from that negativity.

There is a well-known idea that our thoughts are responsible for creating our reality. The more I thought about this, the more I saw the actions of negative people in a much different light. I started to think that it isn’t the negativity of the people that are bringing me down and draining my energy, but rather how I allow their negativity to affect my life. What I found is, by not allowing the negativity of others to impact me, the less I experienced, because I no longer attracted it.

Everyone is responsible for his or her own actions. It’s the negative person’s choice to be negative, just as it’s your choice of how you respond to the negative person. If someone says something negative to you, whether it be discouraging you on your goals and dreams, saying something disrespectful, or even making you feel less than what you really are, your first impulse may be to feel hurt, angry, or perhaps a sudden hatred toward that person. All of those are negative reactions, which subliminally enhances the negative person even more. Our bodies are reactors that radiate and transfer energy onto others. Even if we don’t verbally respond to the negative person, we still absorb their negativity into our psyche. Here are seven ways we can deflect the negativity and protect our own emotional well-being:

Use the Power of Affirmations

During a negative encounter, say to yourself, “I choose not to allow this person to impact me in a negative way.” Imagine a beautiful white light surrounding you as it creates a barrier to prevent the negativity from seeping through.

Know That You Are Not At Fault

If the negative person is making you feel discouraged or not worthy, know it’s no fault of your own. Usually, when one attacks our dreams, desires, goals, and ambitions, it’s a sign that they’re not where they want to be in their own lives. Instead of allowing them to transfer negativity onto you, try talking to them about why you want to pursue what you’re doing and even encourage them to reach for the stars, too.

Send a Loving Thought

We may have a random encounter with a stranger who has an unpleasant attitude or could’ve had a bad day and is taking it out on anyone they can. (Unfortunately, that person happens to be you.) Before engaging the person, imagine the beautiful white light barrier and silently use the affirmation, “I choose not to allow this person to impact me in a negative way.” This prevents absorbing the negativity the person is emitting.

Smile, be friendly, and stay calm. Sometimes, that’s all that’s needed to stabilize their mood. When the person is no longer in contact with you, silently send a loving thought to them hoping that their day will become better.

Think Something Positive

Often, an encounter with a negative person will leave lasting effects long after the initial encounter. Perhaps something happened with a person at the start of the day that really made you angry. As your day goes on, you keep thinking about it over and over again. You’re upset, and you can’t shake it from your mind. It’s these particular types of encounters that leave one feeling the most depleted of energy because the situation is on instant replay.

I’ve found the best solution is to shift the mind. If you keep dwelling on that negative moment, immediately think of something positive: something or someone that brings you joy, like a loved one, a pet, nature, a favorite movie or a hobby.

Trigger the Brain

Shift your train of thought by thinking about what happened in the last chapter of a book that you’re currently reading, or by mentally reciting the lines to a favorite song. This causes the brain to divert its attention and keeps the negative thoughts at bay.

Silence the Ego

You may feel the urge to fight or argue with the negative person. Perhaps you think that you’re right and they’re wrong, or you’ll feel better by standing your ground. It’s actually combat of the ego-mind: in most circumstances it only makes you feel worse, as all it does is fuels the fire for the other person. When they sense your anger, they feed off it by taking your energy. This gives them more power and leaves you feeling drained.

Withdrawing from an argument doesn’t make you weak, and you don’t need to prove you’re right. Ask yourself, “Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?”

Remove Yourself

Simply say “I’m sorry you feel this way.” If possible, either walk away or leave the room. Once out of sight, silently send loving thoughts to the person. You don’t have to absorb their anger. Dismiss it and let it go. Usually, the argument will naturally dissipate.

If these practices sound too easy, it’s because they are! The human mind thinks that every solution needs to be complex in order for it to work. Far too much time is spent thinking and searching for the correct way to solve negativity (or anything in the world, for that matter), when in fact each of us is made up of the very ingredients of a solution.

That solution is love. Radiate love. Be love. Love is what ultimately heals us all.

There will always be negativity in the world. It’s the Yin and Yang of life. If someone doesn’t like or agree with something that you did or would like to do, then that’s their conflict, not yours. What they think is right may not be right for you, and everyone’s entitled to their own choice. No matter how negative the opinions of others are or how you may be perceived by them, know this: you’re a beautiful, magnificent being and you’re so loved – and that’s the absolute truth.

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