It is not the world around us that creates our peace, but how we keep ourselves, or how we create peace within ourselves. If our locus of control is outside, in what is happening in the news, in social media, in other people’s lives, then anxiety will increase, not decrease.
Leadership – self or others – starts from within. Certainty is not about not being swayed by anything, but about not being driven out of yourself by anything. We can always choose our reaction to what happens.
How to get the inner arc right? What has helped me the most, apart from the classic walking-meditating-breathing, is to ask myself, what in me is responding to this? What needs to be noticed? What is the need and how can I provide it for myself?
Very often I come to the conclusion that it is just a part of me that is raising its head, but it is not ME. The psyche functions like a well-integrated but complex software system with several different programs or sub-personalities running at once. Each program is activated depending on the situation and the data stored in the past. For example, if the system senses a threat (either real or reminiscent of a past unpleasant experience), an “Inner Child” – a mechanism that reacts according to patterns inherited from childhood – may be triggered.
However, there’s another part of you – like a senior administrator or system administrator – that can spot that a ‘program’ is upset and counterbalance it. This is the part that can analyse the situation, understand the context, and react in a conscious way.
We all have contradictory processes inside us – it is the diversity of thought that allows for flexible adaptation to different situations.
It is not a question of one part being “wrong” and the other “right”, but of whether a conscious “administrator” can balance the system, so that decisions are based not only on the automatic responses of old programs, but also on current conscious judgement.
Internal support does not come from external control, but from the ability to be present for yourself. Once this is in place, there is no need for constant external change, outside security, etc. to maintain balance. It all supports, but it does not decide your peace. Peace is internal, there is never a peace that is only focused on the external. The inner arc is in place, or I can find peace if I can be in the position of observer to myself and do the work of self-direction with various subconscious programs. At least in my case this has given the best results 🙂
