What does it take to stay mentally calm when life throws challenges your way? How can you train your mind to maintain internal peace despite external circumstances?
Inner peace can keep you emotionally balanced as you pursue ambitious goals. Through mindfulness, acceptance, and spiritual practices, you can develop the mental strength to handle life’s ups and downs with grace.
Keep reading to learn how to achieve inner peace with Ed Mylett’s advice from The Power of One More.
How to Achieve Inner Peace
To sustain an extra-mile life, Mylett writes that you must be able to pursue ambitious goals while maintaining inner peace—staying mentally and emotionally calm, even when facing challenges. You can’t control most of what happens in life, but you can train your mind to handle setbacks and challenges in a positive, rational way.
Mylett’s advice on how to achieve inner peace when facing stress and challenges includes becoming more mindful of your thoughts and reactions. He suggests that you recognize that both good and bad things in life are temporary and that you’re one small part of the vast human experience. This perspective helps you let go of attachments, embrace change, and manage your fears. For example, if you get passed over for a promotion, see it as one step in a long career, not the end.
| Accept Reality to Maintain Inner Peace According to spiritual teacher Byron Katie, the key to inner peace is accepting each moment as it is. In Loving What Is, Katie argues that your experiences themselves don’t cause emotional pain—only your resistant thoughts that judge experiences as wrong or unwanted make you suffer. These thoughts distort reality by focusing your mind on an imaginary narrative of how things should be different instead of how things are. For example, if you think “My boss should appreciate me more,” you may feel frustrated and resentful. But these thoughts don’t change your boss’s behavior—they only make you unhappy. Like Mylett, Katie also recommends being mindful of your thoughts, offering a three-step process to release resistant thoughts: 1. Write them down. Start by identifying something that’s bothering you, whether it’s a current problem, a past event, or a future worry. Then, write down simple, honest statements expressing how you feel. For example, “My partner never listens to me” or “I’m afraid I’ll never find a job I love.” 2. Question them to reveal whether they’re untrue and unhelpful. For each thought you’ve written down, ask yourself these questions: • Is this thought absolutely true? Look for any evidence that disproves your thought. • How do I feel and act when I believe this thought? Notice the emotions and behaviors it triggers. • How does this thought benefit me? Consider whether the thought inspires any positive changes. • How would I feel and behave without this thought? Imagine your situation if this thought never occurred to you. These questions help you realize that your thoughts may not be true, that they don’t serve you, and that you’d be better off without them. 3. Reframe your perspective until you can accept the situation. Once you see that your thoughts are causing your distress, not the situation itself, look for new ways to interpret what’s happening. Think about different perspectives until you find one that allows you to accept the situation. For example, instead of “I’ll never find a job I love,” you could try “I’m learning more about what matters to me in a career.” |
Find Inner Peace Through Faith and Prayer
Mylett also encourages finding inner peace by connecting to something greater than yourself through faith and prayer. He defines prayer as focusing your thoughts on your deepest hopes.
According to Mylett, your mind is constantly praying in a sense—thinking about your desires for your relationships, career, health, and so on. He suggests channeling this natural tendency more purposefully: Pray intentionally each day and focus on gratitude, instead of just praying when you’re struggling and need divine intervention. This increases your inner peace and ability to go the extra mile. He adds that, the more you pray for something, the harder you’ll want to work to achieve it.
| Prayers of Request and Gratitude In Seeking Wisdom, Julia Cameron describes two types of prayers that can help you increase the positivity and goodwill to support your goals: prayers of request and prayers of appreciation. First, make prayers of request to ask God for guidance or help. Cameron suggests you humbly ask for God to work with and through you, rather than just for you. For example, instead of demanding to achieve a specific goal, ask God to guide you toward the tasks that help you achieve that goal. God’s responses come in many forms—a gut feeling, a new opportunity, or an abrupt change. Cameron encourages you to accept the response, even if it’s not what you expected. Second, make prayers of appreciation to thank God for the people, events, and serendipitous moments that have helped you. Cameron says expressing gratitude brings you feelings of abundance that attract even more positivity to you. Start by appreciating the beauty of nature, like warm patches of sun-lit grass, to enter a state of awe. Then, expand your appreciation to the people in your life, miraculous events that helped you grow, and experiences of serendipity where things fell perfectly into place. Focusing your thoughts on what you’re grateful for, as Mylett advises, is a powerful way to increase your inner peace and motivation. |
