15 Ways to Keep a Peaceful Heart and Mind (Hint: Choose one at a time to work on)
1. Choose to be happy
"Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be." - Abe Lincoln
2. Change your negative thoughts to positive ones - look back to understand how the negative thoughts formed, then LET THAT SHIT GO. And take on some different thoughts.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.33
“Remind yourself, "This is not useful": When you know that your actions, speech, or thoughts are not what you want, the suggestion is to repeatedly remind yourself that this anger (or other example) is going in the wrong direction, and will bring you nothing but unending misery. It can be as straightforward as silently repeating the words to yourself, "Mind, this is not useful; this is going to bring me nothing but more suffering, and lead me into greater ignorance of truth. Mind, you need to let go of this."
http://swamij.com/yoga-sutras-23034.htm
3. Recognize your strengths and use them to minimize your limitations.
Check out the Fly Lady
4. Know that you are perfect and whole right now.
Check out Deepak Chopra’s work on the Shadow
5. Hang with people who foster your growth, understanding and joy. Choose your own “right.”
6. Think about what you want to have and what you want to do. Then consider how those desires overlap into who you think yourself to be or who think you want to be. Feel that you are that, you have that, you do that. Create the feeling.
Then relax and breathe and say so hum for as long as you like and have time for.
7. Praise yourself and others. Be like the Bees who seek nectar and make honey - not like flies who seek filth and spread disease.
8. Know that you are a unique and beautiful miracle of creation. Be yourself.
9. What you feel (emotionally) in each moment is often a response to your thoughts about some past for future event. Bring your attention the present moment by using your senses (physically) - become focused on observing what you are sensing. What are you sensing? (a breeze? cold? heat? rain?) What do you see and hear? Feel your heart beat.
10. Know that you are love, born from love. The love and respect you show to yourself and others will be returned. Receive it. Receive love. When we seek and grasp for love we sometimes miss the opportunity to enjoy the way in which it is being offered to us.
11. Have faith. Vairagya/Abhyasa - Non-attachment and Practice
“Discrimination is key: To be able to do the practices and to cultivate non-attachment, it is necessary to become better and better at discriminating between what actions, speech, and thoughts take you in the right direction, and those which are a diversion (2.26-2.29, 3.4-3.6). This discrimination is both a foundation practice and also the subtler tool of the inner journey.”
YS 1.12-1.16 http://www.swamij.com/yoga-sutras-11216.htm
12. Recognize abundance.
Matthew 6 Do Not Worry
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[e]?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” - NIV Bible
13. Relax - if some people don't like you, that’s normal. Like yourself. If you can accept all of yourself, you can accept others. And if you accept others, you will have more peace.
14. Be confident. Courageously share your gifts with others. Try new things. We are often afraid to make mistakes which may hold us back from acting at all.
Be open to learning. Failing is always a door to learning. Often, the more failures we have, the greater our success in the long run.
15. Know that the only way you can truly fail is if you quit. Keep going. You may decide to redirect your path and that’s fine. Keep going. Be open to living and what life brings. Enjoy the ride.
