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.
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 Tools for Managing Overwhelming Emotions

Let’s face it – sometimes emotions get the best of us. Once we are triggered, it is tough to be in pain and not do something that essentially makes it worse. It’s much easier to numb the pain temporarily, but unfortunately those coping methods tend to have negative consequences. Basically, we get into the habit of choosing short-term symptom relief rather than addressing the core issue. You know what I’m talking about. How many of you have used alcohol to cope with your feelings of stress or sadness? How many of you ended up in much worse pain the next day or, worse, by the end of the night in tears in front of people you don’t quite trust?
Other popular unhealthy coping methods include: TV, drugs, sex, cigarettes, food, gambling, prescription pills, and the ever so popular sweeping-it-under-the-rug method. I must admit these methods are very tempting, but we all know how they end. What’s worse is that we still engage in these behaviors. Why?! Well for one, these unhealthy solutions work very well in the immediate. The second reason is that they are much easier to engage in and usually come with pleasure.
What are we hiding from, though? It’s funny, but when you think about it, we are only hiding from negative emotion. What’s an emotion? Is it going to kill us? Is it going to last forever? Sometimes emotions can feel that they are going to last forever, but the answer is no. All emotions crescendo and then dissipate. They imitate movement like a sign curve. Keeping this in mind would make it a lot easier to navigate our emotions. In order to deal with overwhelming emotions it is helpful to have a tool belt to reach for in times of distress. Here are a few of these less dangerous, and unfortunately, less fun, ways of dealing with these pesky negative emotions:
- Put it in perspective
Sometimes when you take a step back and think about what is really important to you, the problem that you think you are experiencing becomes very small. Ask yourself, “Will I still be in this much pain in one week? A month? One year from now? Will I remember this as significant? When I die do I want to remember this as something I spent a lot of time on?
Death is the ultimate teacher. Life is precious because it is limited. Nothing is worth sacrificing our happiness for. Nothing. It is impossible to control outside events that cause disturbance within, but it is completely in our control to either hang on or let it go. When we cling or feed the negative emotion, it robs us of our limited time on this planet. You are not your thoughts, your emotions, your body, or your things. Do not let death teach you this at the last minute.
- Engage in an act of self love
Many people understand being physically ill and respect it as painful. If you get sick, oftentimes your loved ones will tell you, “You poor thing. Go home and take a hot bath!” But there is a double standard when it comes to being in pain from emotions. If you don’t feel well emotionally, it can be tough to find an empathetic ear. We all get scared to share our emotions at times. We are ultimately afraid to hear, “Suck it up or get over it.” These words do more harm than good. If you are not feeling well emotionally, I challenge you to engage in acts of self-love as if you were physically ill. Go home. Take a hot bath. Sleep. You never know, it might make you feel a little better to take care of yourself. The idea would be to soothe with the 5 senses. Find activities that are soothing to your each of your senses:
- Sight: Look at the sunset
- Sound: Listen to relaxing music
- Touch: Get a massage or go to yoga
- Smell: Aromatherapy in a nice hot bath
- Taste: Eat something that brings up good memories or give yourself that treat you love!
- Put a time limit on it
When we are hurt it is so easy to get lost in the rabbit hole. In the rabbit hole we become the emotions and thoughts that are plaguing us. We ruminate and get lost in trying to solve a problem that is unsolvable. We feed the emotion by believing the catastrophic thoughts that come up like, “I hate him and myself for trusting him. He never liked me and was just using me the whole time. I never want to see him again. I am going to call his parents and tell them what a bad person he is.”
Instead of letting these thoughts come and go we might actually act on them. We feel so horrible that we avoid people, stay in bed for weeks at a time, drink too much, or eat too much. In order to avoid this, put a time limit on it. Tell yourself that you are going to think or talk about this problem for only one hour a day until it is resolved or you come to acceptance. Once the hour is over, choose an activity that is the opposite of the emotion you are feeling to change your mood.
If you are sad, listen to happy music. If there is anger, watch a comedy on TV. If you are stressed and tense, go take a yoga class. Everyone deserves a break from time to time. Do not let one area of your life that is causing you pain engulf your entire world. You have the ultimate control over your happiness.
- Let the negative energy pass through you
Negative emotion is just negative energy. It does not help to squash it down, numb it or avoid it. The only way, is to face it head on and allow it to pass through you. This takes some bravery on your part. You must allow yourself to feel the pain. There are some tools that can help while you do this. You can allow yourself to get the support you need. Oftentimes, it is very difficult to be vulnerable and admit to others that you are having a hard time. In order to move the negative energy through your body it helps to talk to another trusted person. You can also release the energy by exercising, writing in a journal, or simply relaxing your body and letting your preconceived notions of how it “should” be, go.
- Observe the emotion
You are not the emotion or your thoughts. You can take a step back and witness what your thoughts and emotions do when there is a disturbance. Watch the thoughts or self-talk get faster as they ask you to fix them before they become abusive. Watch the emotion crescendo and dissipate. Do not avoid. Avoidance makes the emotion and the thoughts louder. Allow yourself to have the emotion, don’t fight it, and don’t escalate it by falling down the rabbit hole and attaching to the thoughts. Eventually it will pass. You do not really need to do anything for the pain to subside. It will on its own.
By this, I do not mean that you should not deal with your problems. By all means take care of yourself and your responsibilities. Just do not make decisions when you are in a heightened state. Wait until the emotion passes and then solve the problem. You will be able to see much clearer once the intensity has lessened.
- Delay, distract, and then decide
This tool, created by Marsha Linehan, is useful in order to inhibit negative reaction to a negative emotion. Many times, if we make a decision in the emotion it will make it worse. Basically, any negative urge or craving lasts for about 20 to 30 minutes. Help yourself by delaying your reaction and any subsequent actions for 20 to 30 minutes with a distraction.
You can go to work, help someone else, go for a walk, take a break from the trigger, read, or watch a movie. Once the time is up, make a pros and cons list as to whether your reaction is worth doing. Usually you will decide not to react the original way you had planned. For instance, slashing your boyfriend’s tires out because he lied to you probably won’t seem like such a good idea once some of the anger has passed.
- Become aware of your physical and emotional vulnerabilities
Sometimes our emotions can get the best of us when we are not feeling well. Become aware of your triggers. Ask yourself if you have any physical or emotional vulnerabilities that are getting in the way of managing your emotions. Some of these vulnerabilities are: hunger, lack of sleep, injury, illness, stress, lack of support, crisis, past trauma, negative core beliefs, etc. If you notice that the current problem is escalated due to one or more of these factors you may want to try to take care of the vulnerability first in order to prevent and manage the escalation of your emotion.
Embrace Your Emotions
My wish for us all is to start viewing negative emotion as an opportunity to practice these new skills rather than allowing the emotion to be a threat to our self-concept or survival. We do not have to fight and we do not need to flee (run or avoid). I hope that one or more of these resonates with you, and the next time you are in the emotion, you can remember to pull this list out of your wallet. Remember that it will pass, it is ok to have the emotion, and above all else you don’ t necessarily need to do anything. Let go and let it pass through you, because it will!
If you would like to learn more please visit or contact me at Good Therapy San Diego.
This article was inspired by The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer