The key to contentment is living in the moment

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. -Buddha

One the reasons that we are not at peace because we are not in the present moment. We are either lamenting over the past, worrying about the future or judging our present. Think about the moment that you are in at this minute. You are reading this article. The moment is (hopefully) peaceful. When is this peacefulness interrupted? It is when you break away from the moment and start thinking about the list of things you should be doing instead of reading? This is judging the present. Or is it when you start wondering about what needs to be done later. This is living in the future. Once you leave the moment, you are no longer feeling peaceful. When you start living in the future, you are no longer in the moment. When you are judging
the moment, you are not living in the moment, because this judgment is created by past appraisals. Living in the future causes anxiety. Hurt, sadness, guilt, and resentment occur when we live in the past. Here is the irony. Both past and future do not exist. The only thing that truly exists is the moment that you are in right now. Yesterday only exists in our thoughts; therefore, it is not real. The future certainly does not exist. If we really think about it, how healthy is it to be preoccupied by something that does not exist--the past and the future? How much time do you spend living in the past or future?

Think about your last vacation. Why do you think vacations are such pleasurable activities? It is primarily because you were in the moment. For example, if you traveled to an exotic destination, you were immersed in this newness. The unfamiliar sights kept you focused on the moment. Day-to-day, however, most of us experience something that shifts our attention away from the moment, such as a delayed flight or lost hotel reservation. But you can remain in that moment without judgment. You can accept that it is your reality that your flight was delayed or you lost your hotel reservation. You don’t need to go on vacation to practice living in the moment. Any activity that you are doing, even working or performing a mundane task
such as doing the dishes, can be done in the moment by focusing and staying present, and not letting the mind wander by thinking ahead or judging the moment.

The moment is precious because that is all we really have. The past and the future never truly exist. Ask yourself, are you frequently rushing through life, only focusing on the future? Are you frequently judging the present moment in a critical way? Are you frequently upset about the past? It is important to cherish every moment, because there is never any certainty that there will be another. You are probably thinking: Well, what do I do if the moment is terrible? It is important to keep in mind that it is you who are labeling it terrible. It is more appropriate to acknowledge the situation for what it is, accept it without judging, and decide what you can do right now to deal with the situation at hand. Judging your reality is only keeping you from finding peace within the moment.

Living in the moment is something that needs to be practiced with intention. You can start practicing it at any moment just by making the decision to be in the moment. You can choose to set aside a block of time to fully be in the moment—at work, relaxing at home, or on vacation—and then practice being in the moment by focusing on what you are doing. So, even if you are sitting and sipping a cup of tea, do not shift to mental auto-pilot, allowing your mind to race to the past or future, but rather focus on the task at hand. Be in your body, be in the experience. If you are taking a walk, focus on what is around you, feel your body, feel the experience. If you notice your thoughts drifting to something other than the present, just continue refocusing your attention on it. As you practice, it becomes easier. When a negative feeling arises, this is a sign that you are not in the moment, and all you need to do is to get centered and start again.

Protocol to self-empowerment

Nobody can hurt me without my permission. –Ghandi

Why is it that we believe others or external circumstances can hurt us? It is important to keep in mind that it is the thoughts we have regarding others that trigger emotions in us. It is our emotion that hurts us, not necessarily other people or external circumstances. What happens is, the dynamic that occurs in a relationship or how perceived situations trigger an emotional scar, which is why we take what others do to us so personally. It is important to take ownership
over our thoughts and feelings. Often times, these emotions, such as hurt, appear to happen so automatically, we do not realize that we have that second to make a choice and decide not to be hurt. Until now, no one taught us that we had a choice. However, once we have awareness of our thoughts and feelings, it is important to remember that no one can make us feel something that we do not choose to feel. This happens with conscious living. With it, we learn to stop and pause before the emotion occurs. If we feel hurt by someone, this hurt is not truly what is happening now, but it is merely the trigger for the hurt that has always been there. When we feel hurt by someone else, or by something that happened, we need to look inward to understand why that creates pain for us.

In relationships we often use past paradigms, thinking that we can predict what will happen in relationships. If we have been betrayed in the past, we will convince ourselves that the person we are presently in a relationship with will betray us. Because we are so afraid of the pain, we can often avoid or even sabotage relationships. We sometimes do not take advantage of present opportunities, because we are clouded by our predetermined thoughts and judgments. By doing this, we prevent ourselves from truly enjoying the relationship and getting close. If we enter into a relationship, we can also misconstrue others’ actions and words to justify our beliefs.

So, as you reflect upon the situations that currently cause you feelings of distress, here is a protocol you can use:
1. When you feel distressed: Pause. Take a deep breathe. Sit still.
2. Become very clear of your thoughts and your feelings.
3. Validate these feelings.
4. Feel them fully without acting on them.
5. Try to determine where these thoughts and feelings come from.
6. Can you challenge the thoughts and beliefs you have about this situation?
7. What is the negative result of your distress? Is this something that is not serving you in a positive way?
8. Can you let it go?
9. If not, why not? Continue exploring why you are holding on to this feeling?
10. If yes, what did you learn about yourself through this experience? Feel the release of the negative energy.

Healing from the past; the next steps

After we have had time to self reflect, the next steps to healing include validating our emotions and feeling them. Our emotions are so painful precisely because they were not validated very often during our developmental years. When our emotions are not validated, we don’t learn how to cope with them effectively, and we have a tendency to try to rationalize or avoid them. Our emotions are painful because we have not learned how to soothe ourselves. We then also neglect our emotions, which can overwhelm and control us. Do you remember what a terrible feeling it was when you felt something very strongly and then, when you shared it with someone else, they told you, “It’s not that bad. Get over it.” When your feelings are not validated, it feels as if they do not matter, which can make you feel as if you do not matter.

When we look back at our past, we use rationalization because we are looking at these events through our current “adult” eyes. Furthermore, we do not even always look at our childhood experiences and, when we do, we generally minimize them. To start the validation process, it is important to try to look at these feelings as if you were that child, looking at them in present time. Sometimes, when we consider our past, we think “It wasn’t that bad, however, in order to heal, it is important that you validate the feelings you had regarding those events. Think back as the child that you were and examine how you truly felt, and what you really thought about these experiences. Examine how painful, traumatic, dangerous, even unstable the situations really were. How did these experiences mold your emotional experiences? How did these experiences shape how you see yourself and your world? As adults, we can validate our own emotional experiences, even if they were not validated before. We can validate these feelings, after we have identified them, by saying to ourselves, “It was okay to be sad (or hurt, angry, disappointed, etc.

The next step is to feel those feelings—truly feel them. When negative emotions are experienced, we tend to push them away because we are either afraid to feel them or they are too painful. You need to understand that, at some point, those emotions will surface in some form or another. Sometimes, we try to avoid feeling hurt, but when we try to suppress the emotions, they can manifest at a later time as anger. When you start to feel your feelings, feel them with the understanding that soon you will them go. They do not have to be overwhelming, because you can control the process now that you know what you are dealing with. Feel the sadness, feel the anger, feel all the pain and, once you do, only then should you start to let those feelings go. When you feel these feelings, do not judge them, and do not judge yourself. Try not to allow your rational mind to stop this process.

After you have spent some time truly feeling your feelings, then you must ask yourself important questions: are these feelings valid, useful, or serving any purpose; or are your feelings causing you to feel sad, angry, anxious, or non-productive? Hopefully, you come to the realization that these feelings are not serving you and are preventing you from living a full life. Most, if not all, of our negative emotions are not serving us in a positive way. We can make the choice to let them go. We can also better let them go when we realize that the current pain we are feeling stems from negative emotions created in our past. It is usually when we get to the origin of the pain can we truly let it go. They are not serving us in our present, because they prevent us from truly being happy and at peace. If, after this process, you are still having difficulty letting these feelings go, you may need to re-explore the matter.

Who is in the driver’s seat; you or your emotions?

Many of us allow our feelings to control us because we don’t believe that we have control over them. If we can’t control our thoughts and feelings, what do we really have control over? I think that one of the reasons that we do not feel as if we can control our emotions is that we don’t truly understand where they are coming from. One of the reasons that our feelings are so painful, and can be overwhelming, is that they are somewhat ambiguous. You may have never thought how a thought or an emotion “works” and how they are created, or about their physiology.

According to the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the creator of the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, (a movie I highly recommend) our emotions, just like our thoughts, are created by the brain. The brain is built of tiny nerve cells called neurons. Neurons connect to other neurons and form a neural network. When neurons connect, they create a thought, which eventually imprints in our memory. The more we think the same thought, the more we reinforce this neural connection. This is a very important concept, because this explains why it is so difficult to change how we think and, consequently, how we feel, because our thoughts are actually “hard-wired” in the brain. We can think of our thoughts as habits, and to break a habit takes time and intention. If you practice stopping or changing a thought, the neural connections become weaker.

For example, say you noticed that you see life in a pessimistic way and you want to change that view. Every time you have a pessimistic thought, you need to stop it and replace it with an optimistic one. In time, you will weaken the neural pathways associated with pessimistic thinking and reinforce optimistic thinking, making the positive view more automatic. It is like learning a new dance step. When you learn the foot work to salsa, at first the steps are hard to perform. You have to learn each step separately and then consciously think about your foot work as you dance. But you reinforce the foot work by practicing until it is almost automatic. When you then hear salsa music, you do not have to consciously remember the foot work. Your feet just move to the beat. However, when you stop dancing salsa for an extended period of time, the connections in the brain weakens because you are no longer reinforcing it. When you try to dance, having quit after a significant amount of time, you will most likely need a refresher course or be more conscious of the steps, until it becomes automatic again. This is similar to how your thoughts connect.

When we interact with the environment, our brain assesses the information at hand, and our understanding is colored by past experiences, which is largely created during our childhood, which is also addressed in a previous blog; Healing From the Past. Because we learned about ourselves and the world through our limited experiences, our perceptions are not always accurate. As we grow older, we continue to use these inaccurate paradigms and to distort our reality because we use our past experiences to try to explain our present reality. When we assess our experiences, whether internal or external, these produce thoughts which then create feelings. We continue applying our old paradigms, which recreate these feelings of fear, hate, sadness, hurt, anger, jealousy, disappointment, restfulness and so many others. These emotions come from two sources; our unconscious, which are unresolved emotions from past experiences and our feelings based on appraisals of the present. It impacts how we react to and feel about our current experiences as well as what we think and feel about ourselves and others. These emotional scars create current pain because present circumstances trigger these feelings that hurt so much. Because we carry all of these emotional scars and dysfunctional thinking into our present, until they are made conscious, addressed and processed, they impact every moment of our lives and motivate our decisions. Because how we have viewed our situations in the past, color how we view situations in the present and we are not seeing things as they truly are, which create emotional pain.

When we assess our experiences cognitively, we then have an emotional response to what is occurring at that moment. These emotions are chemicals that are designed to imprint these thoughts into our memory. These chemicals are created in the hypothalamus which is located in the brain. The brain creates a chemical that matches every emotion that we experience. When we have an emotion, the brain assembles the chemical and then releases it into the bloodstream. There is a chemical for every emotion, such as anger, fear, jealousy, and love. Every cell in our body has thousands of receptor sites, and these chemicals attach to these receptor sites, which activates the cell and changes it. Each cell is alive and has consciousness, and it craves these chemical reactions. There are receptor sites for all emotions.

By experiencing a certain emotion regularly, our cell changes in that it creates more receptor sites for that chemical, similar to how our cells change due to psychotropic drugs, such as nicotine. We then actually become addicted to our emotional experiences. If you become angry everyday, your cells will eventually crave anger. This also explains how we get addicted to other people. We get addicted to love, for example, because we enjoy the biochemical reaction we experience, which is why we go through withdrawal when the relationship ends or we are not near them for a significant amount of time. Therefore, we can look at all emotional experiences as just chemical reactions in the brain, which may help in terms of processing and dealing with our emotions. They no longer have to be these scary, ambiguous things. If we learn how to change our thoughts, we can learn how to change our feelings, which takes times and practice, but can be done with intentional living. I bet you never learned this in biology class!

Healing from the past, the first step to inner peace

Inner peace is a topic that I have devoted a significant amount of time examining, researching and practicing. Whether we are consciously aware of it, we are all searching for inner peace because we all suffer. We all experience feelings of sadness, hurt, anger, anxiety, disappointment, frustration, loneliness, restlessness, resentfulness and emptiness. We also are affected by external sources such as; daily stressors, finances, conflicts within relationships, which all impact us as stress. All of these emotions keep us from finding peace within our souls. However, we can learn how to find peace within.

When we embark on this journey of finding peace in our lives, we first need to heal those conditions that ail us. Most of us live our lives without ever understanding our thoughts and emotions, however, these thoughts and feelings prevent us from finding inner peace. Most theorists agree that the experiences we encounter during our childhood create our emotional and cognitive foundation. During our developmental years, through the experiences we encounter, we react with fear, anger, sadness, disappointment, etc. These experiences shaped our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. As children, we created fantasies about why things happen. Because we learned about ourselves and the world through these limited experiences, these perceptions are not always accurate. All these factors create inaccurate thinking. As we grow older, we continue to use these inaccurate paradigms and to distort our reality because we use our past experiences to try to explain our present reality. When we assess our experiences, whether internal or external, these produce thoughts which then create feelings. We continue applying our old paradigms, which recreate these feelings of fear, hate, sadness, hurt, anger, jealousy, disappointment, restfulness and so many others. These emotions come from two sources; our unconscious, which are unresolved emotions from past experiences and our feelings based on appraisals of the present. It impacts how we react to and feel about our current experiences as well as what we think and feel about ourselves and others. These emotional scars create current pain because present circumstances trigger these feelings that hurt so much.

Because we carry all of these emotional scars and dysfunctional thinking into our present, until they are made conscious, addressed and processed, they impact every moment of our lives and motivate our decisions. We carry these cognitive and emotional blueprints into our adult life and if not examined, they stifle our ability to live fully. Because how we have viewed our situations in the past, color how we view situations in the present and we are not seeing things as they truly are, which create emotional pain. We come into current reality with preconceived notions and react in certain ways that are no longer serving us. The factors that influence our emotional reactions include what we experienced, how we coped with our situation, what support we received, how we interpreted these situations and so much more. If our emotional scars are not healed, we will continually be affected by them, which prevent us from finding inner peace

Therefore, the first step of discovering inner peace is to heal from our past, which means examining and understanding the past and how it impacts us presently. The healing process includes processing the feelings that create our suffering and letting them go. This first crucial step is self reflection because we are reacting to situations, as well as our thoughts, without understanding why we do so. Although we seem to think that we have power over our lives, we tend to overlook the power of our thoughts and feelings. They are somewhat controlled by unconscious processes. The more introspection you have into this dynamic, the more power you will have over your thoughts, feelings and actions and the less power unconscious motivators have over you. By stepping outside of yourself, this process allows you to get an understanding of your internal and unconscious motivators and the conflicts that lie within; your desires, dreams, fears and wishes. You can now start the process of change by identifying the origins of your suffering. This process starts by being more conscious of your true feelings and thoughts and taking a good hard look at your-self, truly and honestly and assess how and why you feel the way you do and how and why you have the thoughts that you have. Once you become more conscious of your thoughts and feelings, you can relate them back to their origins. By re-examining your past, you can see how it has shaped your present. Therefore, it is important to find that link to the past that explains why you feel and think the way that you do.

Journaling is an exercise that can start this process of examining the things that cause you stress. You can reflect on the stressors of your day and write about the thoughts and feelings you experience and how you react to the stressor. After journaling these experiences, it is important to understand the origins of these thoughts. It is important that when a situation occurs and you feel stressed, to stop, pause and examine it. Then, ask yourself what emotional scar is this situation triggering? After identifying your stressors, it is valuable to search for the trigger which originated it. For example, do you feel stressed because you feel the need to perfect? Where did this come from? Was it created because long ago you believed that only if you were perfect would you be loved?

Another self-reflective exercise you can use is to examine a current obstacle that you might be facing and ask yourself, “What feelings is this situation triggering in me?” and “What is this about me that I need to learn?” We can explore the obstacles that come into our lives to learn valuable aspects of ourselves. As mentioned previously, it is not the external factors that cause us pain, but the thoughts and the feelings these external factors triggers in us. When a negative feeling arises, the first step is to get clear on what the thought and feeling really is. When you have identified a specific thought and feeling, you can ask yourself, “Where did I feel this before?” “Why is this situation making me think and feel this way?” Therefore, it is important to start looking for the process that is occurring within you instead of the focusing on the external event and blaming it for causing you to feel a certain way. External situations such as other people, jobs, etc. cannot cause you to feel a certain way. These external factors merely trigger feelings within you that need to be explored. The thoughts and the feelings that you have are your own, they are not created by an outside source.

The last exercise that will be illustrated is to examine your life script. During our formative years, we create a life script. It is important to examine this because often times, we create an image of ourselves or a role that we decide to play and we play this role over and over again. This image about our self is usually inaccurate as it stems from the experiences from our past, not our present. Furthermore, this role can lead us to feel unhappy, frustrated and resentful sine we are not true to ourselves. Are you still feeling like that awkward child that did not fit in or felt inadequate? Or are you the helpless person who feels like a victim? Or is your role as the caretaker or the people pleaser? Oftentimes these roles are not productive and cause us stress and unhappiness. These roles prevent us from doing the things we want to do and keep us from being authentic and create pain and suffering. By first identifying this life script, we can start re-writing it. As we grow, these scripts usually don’t serve us in a positive way. When we start to uncover these processes, we can start becoming the author of our own lives. We can as adults, decide who we are and how we choose to live our lives. What is your life script? What role do you play? Why do you think you play this role?

Is the pursuit of happiness making us miserable?

The pursuit of happiness is a motto that most of us live by, but it may be that the pursuit of happiness is what is making us so unhappy. Let’s examine some of the inherent problems with the pursuit of happiness. First, happiness is a short lived phenomenon. You have probably said, “I would be happy if….I had a better job, made more money, lost weight, etc.” Now imagine obtaining that which you think would bring you happiness. Sure, you would feel happy. However, when you find happiness, it cannot be sustained; like any other emotion, it can only be sustained for a short while. When the “high” of the happiness wears off, you will still be left feeling sad, anxious, and lonely or whatever negative emotion that was plaguing you. Many of us use the pursuit of happiness as a way of distracting ourselves from our pain and no amount of money, fame, etc. can change it. Another problem with the pursuit of happiness is that we tend to search for it outside of ourselves. We think that someone or something such as a pleasurable experience or a material possession will “cure” us of our unhappiness. When we find the object of our happiness, the pain does not necessarily go away. Furthermore, what happens if you don’t get the job or find a better mate? You essentially give the power to an external force that may not exist. Your happiness is then contingent on factors that you cannot control. Seeking happiness outside of ourselves, gives external factors a lot of power. Additionally, the pursuit of happiness implies that it will be found in the future, which is problematic because it implies that it does not exist in the present.
So, what is the answer? Maybe we need to find a new philosophy; instead of pursuing happiness, maybe we need to find contentment in what is in the present moment. Although happiness is but a fleeting emotion, contentment and peace can be ever lasting.

Finding peace In the midst of adversity

It can be very difficult to find a place of peace when faced with adversity. We all know that approaching situations in a stressed and irrational way is not productive, not to mention how damaging stress is to our mind, body and spirit. We also understand that remaining centered and calm is critical during stressful times, but how do we remain peaceful even when things around us may be in utter chaos?
The first step in feeling at peace during stressful times is to approach the situation with a sense of empowerment. One can achieve this by first understanding that although we do not always consciously choose the circumstances that we find ourselves in, we have a choice in how we feel about them.

Stress is something that most of us believe is a normal part of life, especially when things go awry. We believe that we are victims to what happens to us, which is not very empowering. Most of us are probably feeling stressed on a daily basis and we usually do not even know why. No one, until now, has ever taught you that we have a choice in the matter. We usually forget that it is not the situation that is stressful, but the stress is in how we are perceiving it and then react to it. Events that occur in our lives are not stressful, but it is the meaning we attach to these events that causes distress. Because we can change our beliefs, we can change how we react to situations, which means that we can choose not be stressed. We need to take ownership over our thoughts and feelings, which is part of the process of empowerment. When we understand this, stress is not inevitable and we can choose to no longer victims of our circumstances. If stress is a choice, we can choose to remain peaceful and calm during even the most trying times because we are in charge!

However, often times, our emotional response is automatic, but we do have a moment to stop and pause and assess how we think and feel about the situation. Through practice, you can become aware of how you react to stress and learn how to slow down this emotional process. Next time you are encountered by a stressor, no matter how large it may seem, it is important to pause and ask yourself, “Why am I feeling stressed? What about this situation is making me feel stressed (or any other negative emotion)?” You may also want to ask yourself, “Is approaching this situation by feeling stressed productive?” The answer is almost always no. You may need to remind yourself, that there are other ways of handling the situation without feeling stressed.

Let’s look at some common thought processes that can occur that creates feelings of stress. If you lost your job, you can believe that this is horrible thing. You become stressed because you don’t want to accept your situation as it is. It is your expectations and desires, such as believing that you should have a job or that it is unfair to be laid off, that is creating stress. However, to feel empowered during this time, it is important to accept the present, which is what I call "radical acceptance." This means finding total acceptance for what is in the present moment. This does not mean that you do not try to change your circumstance, such as looking for another job, but it means that you can find peace within your present circumstances and begin making changes without the feeling of distress.

Next time, you are faced with a situation that causes you to feel stressed, whether it is anger, sadness, anxiety, etc. Pause. Take a deep breathe. Tell yourself that you are in control of this feeling and feeling stressed in not productive. Identify the thought that preceded the emotion. Once you start seeing the origins of stress provoking thoughts, you can start to realize that they are no longer accurate or productive and you can challenge and change this way of thinking. When adversity strikes, it is important to be centered and patient. The questions to ask yourself are “Am I going to allow external circumstances to have this power over my life? Am I going to allow this situation to compromise my well being? Am I going to lose sleep over this?” We can stop and think, "I have control here. I am not going to allow external factors dictate how I run my life."

Oftentimes, we learn our most valuable lessons in the face of adversity and instead of fighting it, you can learn to be still and wait for the lesson that is to be learned. Centering brings strength to reach within instead of getting caught up in what is happening outside. Training yourself to slow down is quite helpful in taking control over yourself and your life. When you learn to slow down, you take control of yourself, instead of letting external factors dictating how you should lead your life.

Ideally, once you have figured that stress is a choice, you can actually begin to live stress free. The next time something happens that triggers a stress provoking thought, you can decide if you are going to feel stressed or not. You will be surprised at how powerful you are going to feel!

Written by Christina Samycia, PsyD, psychologist, life coach, author and speaker. She seeks to inspire and challenge individuals on their path of personal growth through her work. She is an enthusiastic speaker and author of Discovering Inner Peace. She can be reached at (312) 285-5287, christinasamycia@aol.com, or www.inspirationalliving.org.

Living Life!

"Dance as though no one is watching you. Love as though you have never been hurt before. Sing as though no one can hear you. Live as though heaven is on earth. –Unknown"

This is one of my favorite quotes. It reminds me of a very important goal that I personally strive to achieve. The goal of life affirming living is also one that I guide my clients in achieving as well. Living in a life-affirming way is living whereby you are making choices that allow you to live fully and authentically, not based on fear. Think about the decisions that you make: are they truly positive and life-affirming, or are they created out of fear—fear of being hurt, fear of death, fear of pain, fear of the unknown, etc. When you start to think about the choices you make, you will find that you make many decisions out of fear, which keeps you from living fully and freely. Living in a life-affirming way is the difference between thriving and merely surviving. How can we possibly be happy and content, if we are making decisions based on fear? Fear prevents us from taking chances, living and loving fully and pursuing our passions.

Think about your daily experiences: you work, your lifestyle, your activities and hobbies. Are these things fulfilling? For example, if you know that you hate your job, identify the fears that are preventing you from making a change. Challenge them. Where did these fears come from? The key to living authentically is filtering out those other voices, the voices of fear, and finding your authentic voice. Even in our relationships, we are afraid of rejection, getting hurt, and abandonment, and this prevents us from taking emotional risks. These wounds motivate us to make choices based on self-protection or survival. It is important to remember that you own your feelings and no one can make you feel a certain way. Your wounds cloud your reality, and you make choices that do not allow you to thrive. It is beautiful to love as if you have never been hurt, because loving fully is living fully in the now, not in the past or future. So, what changes can you make today to live in a more life-affirming way?

My discovery of inner peace

I can remember the first time I had a glimpse of inner peace. I was running along the lakefront, as I do just about every morning. For several weeks, I had been contemplating the circumstances of my life. This day, in the middle of my run, something inside of me told me to stop and pause and look out at the water. At that moment, I found myself totally submerged in the beauty of the scenery. The water was such a deep shade of blue and the sky was so crisp and azure. As I lost myself in the beautiful scene, this feeling came over me—a feeling I had not quite felt before. I was happy; not an ecstatic kind of happy, but a peaceful kind of happy. Then I thought to myself, how can I be happy if nothing really happened to me? My life was still the same. I was broke, single and struggling to finish my dissertation, but despite all that, for just that moment, I found authentic happiness.

But it was better than happiness, I had found inner peace. For that one beautiful point in time, I was truly in the moment and the moment was perfect because I had accepted it for what it truly was. In that moment, I was not thinking of all the things that were wrong because, in essence, at that moment, those things did not exist. I felt that although everything is not where I would like it to be and I could accept it. I finally accepted my life exactly the way that it was and dropped the pain that stemmed from judging about how things weren’t at that point. I felt that the place that I belonged was right here and right now. I trusted that everything was going to be okay and that this place that I was in right at that very moment was part of my journey. Right then and there, in the middle of the bike path along Lake Shore Drive, I finally got it.

It was not the pursuit of happiness that I needed, which I had deluded myself to believe. I needed to feel peaceful. I needed to calm all those feelings inside of me that were driving me crazy. I needed to trust that I would be fine even in the midst of the mess that was my life. All I had to do was decide to let go of it; let go of what I thought my life should be, let go of trying to change things and let go of the pain. It was so simple, but yet so profound. I realized that inner peace is something that I had been searching for my whole life and I never quite knew it until one chilly Chicago morning. I knew I never wanted to release. Now don’t get me wrong, there was a long journey that transpired before this epiphany, but this, this was the pivotal moment. It was at that moment that everything came to together and I realized just how simple inner peace can be.

One lesson that I learned that has been so valuable is letting go of my expectations and desires. Our suffering is primarily created by our desires and expectations. Think about your current situation. List all the reasons that you are not feeling at peace. When you examine this list, most, if not all of the items on the list involve desires or expectations. We have expectations of how things “should be.” We have a picture of how our life should be, how our family should be, how others should treat us, how much money we should be making, what job we should have, etc. These expectations are what create our suffering because, frequently, our present does not resemble what we think it should. We become victims of the images we create and the thoughts that we have about how things should be, which creates un-peacefulness.

Inner peace is achieved when we lose our attachment to our desires and can see the reality in our current situation without judgment. You can find peace and appreciate what is instead of lamenting what is not. Letting go of expectations and desires can be quite profound, leading you to feel at peace with your present. It is important to keep in mind that you and your life are exactly how they are supposed to be at the present time. This may be a difficult idea to grasp during a time of adversity, however, it is important to keep in mind that there is a reason the universe has created the situation you are in right now. And instead of judging it, realize that at some time you will understand the lesson that is to be learned.
A thought to keep in mind, and something of which I continually remind myself, is, “My life is (or I am) perfect, with all of its (my) imperfections. I have exactly everything I need right now. My life is exactly how it needs to be at the present.” Once we let go of our expectations and desires, we can accept our present. This does not mean that we don’t do anything about our current situation. It means that we do what we can at the present time without feeling a negative emotion. Even during the most trying times, it is important to accept the present for what and how it is without judgment.

My wish for you is that you embark on your own unique journey of discovering inner peace and experience a breakthrough of radical acceptance that will change your life.