Are You Calm… or Have You Just Checked Out?
Peace is an interesting concept to me.
I used to think that peace simply meant feeling calm internally.
Every time I felt myself in something that wasn’t calm- I thought that I wasn’t peaceful.
In a sense that is true, but it runs so much more deeply than that.
That can also look like checking out, burning out, numbing out.
It looked peaceful from the outside.
But inside, I had disconnected from myself.
I felt calm- but I was not present.
I was simply ignoring, pretending- and ultimately, stuffing everything down.
Down to where?
It turns out- it was down in my unconscious energy where my thoughts ran without me. Where the feelings festered in my nervous system.
It left me feeling more lost than when I acted on my emotions.
At least then I understood it.
Everything looked okay.
Here, I felt like I was calm.
But internally I wasn’t.
The disconnect wasn’t external anymore.
There was nothing to blame.
There was nothing to change.
Nothing that I could see anyway.
But it was me that needed to change now.
I needed an internal alignment.
I looked everywhere for it but within.
I found a lot of temporary solutions but nothing created permanent change.
I read the books.
I listened to the podcasts.
I hit the gym.
I could tell myself all day that I was trusting the process, that things were okay…
But they wouldn’t stick until I started to live from within.
Until I started to understand it more deeply.
Until I let it be true.
I ran myself ragged looking for answers but I didn’t start finding them until I stopped running.
I found them when I slowed down.
I found them when I started breathing.
At first it felt incredibly uncomfortable.
Everything in me wanted to keep searching.
But I stayed.
I sat in the discomfort alone.
I cried.
I wrote.
I lightly stretched my body.
I used my sound bowl.
My crystals.
My breath.
I felt it all.
I let it out.
I let myself be me.
I didn’t search for answers.
I didn’t force anything.
I just let myself be.
Peace came when I started seeing everything from within.
When I stopped forcing answers- and I let it be.
Peace wasn’t about being calm. Sure- peace can feel calm, but to me, true peace is being honest about where we are.
True peace can exist no matter what is happening, no matter what comes our way.
Peace can exist through anger, grief, happiness, excitement and everything in between.
Because when I started living from within, I finally understood what peace felt like in my body.
I understood what made my body feel calm, aligned, and whole.
It was feeling the emotion- and then sitting with it before reacting.
It was processing why I wanted to respond in haste.
It was allowing myself to soothe before externally bringing it to the surface.
Most of my peace was interrupted by unprocessed emotions.
And the afterthoughts…
The things I should have done.
The things I could have said.
They ate me alive.
They left me in a never ending loop of feeling less than, disoriented, and feeling far away from my true self.
It left me questioning everything.
The less I abandoned myself by responding immediately, the more space I had to feel and understand myself from within. The less I doubted myself and the more honest I became.
It allowed my inner world and outer world to finally move together.
That’s peace.
That’s what I was looking for.
Reflection questions:
- When have you mistaken numbness for peace?
- When do you find yourself responding quickly in ways you wish you would have paused?
- When do you feel most like yourself?
- What pulls you away from yourself?
- What helps you find your way back?
Watch the conversation that inspired the reflection here: