No One Is Going To Claim Your Peace For You

No One Is Going To Claim Your Peace For You

You’d think with something as important as inner peace would come with instructions as to how to find it. And maybe that’s been the problem. We think we’re supposed to be looking for it as if it’s out there somewhere, elusively eluding our efforts to find it.

Peace isn’t something you find. It’s something you claim. 

Peace is a decision gift-wrapped in self awareness and discernment. I don’t have to engage, respond, react, nor participate. I don’t have to defend, deny, explain, nor justify.

I need not allow myself to get sucked up in a vortex of contentious hostility.

Yet I often do until I realize what I have done.

“Is this worth my peace?” I’ve learned to silently ask myself. 

It almost never is.

My peace is my decision. It is an intention. It is always an available option, in every moment, always worthy of me prioritizing and protecting it. 

When I remember it’s not something you find. 

It’s something you claim.

Photo by Nathan Fertig on Unsplash

Maybe You Should Pick Yourself First?

Maybe You Should Pick Yourself First?

It was a one-sided conversation, but sometimes that one side can tell you everything.

Standing in line at the grocery store is always longer around the holidays. It’s part of the tradition. Along with the obligatory crying baby, many in line kept themselves busy by scrolling through their phones waiting for the convoy of overstuffed shopping carts to eventually make their way to the cashier.

One woman in line was deeply engaged in what seemed to be a rather significant phone call. In this age of indifference, having personal conversations in public spaces has become rather ordinary. And this was a very personal conversation.

It was evident that this woman was having some sort of relationship issues. And the disdain and self-loathing radiating from her words indicated that this was not the first relationship she’s had issues with.

“I know how to pick ‘em, don’t I?”

You could feel her pain in those words, a pain I sensed she was very familiar with as history appeared to be repeating itself once again.

Maybe her problem wasn’t who she was picking. Maybe the problem is who she wasn’t picking.

Herself.

Relationships don’t come with instructions, do they? You kind of have to figure them out on your own. Ideally, though, you’d try and figure yourself out first. Traumas, those intentionally and unintentionally inflicted, can often instead send us down the path of looking outside of ourselves for what we can Continue reading “Maybe You Should Pick Yourself First?”