Strategies to Find Peace and Tranquility
Life is full of stress, struggles and setbacks. We all face these setbacks in one way or another and it’s not easy. However, the normal challenges of life can affect some people’s mental health more than others. For those people, finding peace and tranquility can be difficult.
So, how can we face setbacks without letting them affect our health? The following strategies will help you find inner peace and tranquility when life gets hard.
Have patience
When things don’t go your way and you get frustrated, it can be very stressful. And if things go differently than you were expecting, you can feel out of control.
In these cases, being patient is essential. Patience is a form of tolerance. It’s important to know that these setbacks aren’t permanent.
Tolerance and patience are vital to smooth out differences, particularly in relationships.
Being patient doesn’t mean letting others walk all over you. Instead, it involves assertive but empathetic communication. Patience makes it easier to set boundaries and also lowers your chances of being manipulated. It’s an essential quality that gives us the ability to not take things personally and to use our experiences to learn and grow.
Fill up on optimism
When hardships occur, it’s easy to feel disappointed and sad. Our automatic inner dialogue becomes negative and we become trapped in a spiral of negativity. However, the more we give in to this negative conversation with ourselves, the worse we feel and we can become pessimists.
In these cases, optimism is like a ray of hope that allows us to believe things aren’t that bad after all. Therefore, it’s important to change the way we talk to ourselves in order to counteract those irrational thoughts and be able to have a positive talk with ourselves and about ourselves.
Be thankful
When we face challenges in life and things don’t go as planned we can feel sad and depressed. This keeps us from recognizing the good things that are also in our lives. We need to value what we have and adopt a grateful attitude. This is a choice you can control.
Make a list of everything you can be grateful for, without thinking about what you don’t have, are lacking or have lost.
When you’re grateful, you feel good and the feelings of guilt, hopelessness and dismay are reduced. You’re more cheerful and have more energy to carry out the challenges in your day-to-day. Also, gratitude improves your bonds with others and makes you appreciate life more.
Avoid perfectionism
Perfectionism creates excessive expectations and promotes disappointments.
When you create standards that are too high and unrealistic, you make yourself vulnerable to stress. It’s good to establish goals and aspire to more in life, but you have to keep perfectionism in check.
Perfectionism offers the promise of control and makes us think that bitter outcomes like failure, rejection and disapproval can be avoided. However, the truth is that sometimes these negative outcomes can’t be avoided.
Setting higher goals makes it harder for us to achieve them. We are much better off when our desires to chase excellence are adaptable and flexible, instead of having rigid expectations.
Cultivate forgiveness
Forgiveness is a way of moving forward. When we cultivate this value, we feel better and are able to live a happier life.
Life is full of disappointments and setbacks caused by situations beyond our control. We’re surrounded by people that have harmed us. If we get hung up on the pain, we can’t be happy and move on with our lives. Nonetheless, we have the power to free ourselves from the prison created by anger and sorrow.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting what happened, thus allowing it to happen again. It’s about focusing on your strengths and finding inner peace. Furthermore, you should learn to forgive yourself and leave guilt and sorrow behind.
