Peace is found in letting go

Peace is not something that finds you. You find peace. It's not something that's earned, it's something that's found, it's something that's cultivated by removing all your attachments and your yearnings for something more than what is. When we yearn for things that are temporary, when we become attached to things that are temporary and that are fleeting, we lose our access to peace, to that divine feeling of certainty, peace and wholeness. I think there's a quote from Buddha that says the root of all suffering is attachment, and in particular attachment to everything in our external world. You come into this world alone and you're going to leave this world alone, but you're also not alone. You're also one with everything. You're one with everyone. You're one with the divine, with the unseen plane, that which you cannot see, the infinite field of information. We suffer when we become attached to things in order to give us our peace. Yes, things are nice. Yes, relationships are nice. Connection is nice, friendship is nice. But the most important connection that you have is your connection with yourself. I guess I had to learn that from a really young age. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, it's what my soul chose, that I couldn't rely on the people around me to bring me stability and wholeness and peace and meet that need for me. That's something that I had to do on my own. And if you've been through a lot in your life, especially in your younger years, you know, there's a lot of pain in that, but there's so much blessing in that as well. And that you figure out that you're the one who has to go create your own happiness and your own fulfillment. At the end of the day, you need to be comfortable in your own energy without needing anything outside you. One thing that I've always been told is that I've always been able to keep my head even in uncomfortable or disruptive or chaotic absolutely soul destroying situation situations. I've always been able to remain calm. And that comes from having kind of an inner compass that can't be swayed by the external. And that's something we can all tap into and create for ourselves. You know, I've had periods in my life where everything was falling apart and there was nothing but chaos and destruction. And I hated where I lived. I hated the people I was around, I hated my job, I hated my life. But I still found time to create peace within the circumstances that I hated. Because peace is something that is within you, it's not something that's outside you, it's not something that's just earned or given to you. It's our natural state. But we come here and we start playing this physical game and we begin to lose that state of consciousness. So God is the highest form of consciousness, and Heaven is the kingdom of God. Heaven is just a state of consciousness. It's a state of mind. So it's something that is created from within. And it's true what it says in the Bible, when you seek that first, then everything else will be added onto you. Because I remember for years in my life, I would be in just chaos and frustration, looking outside me for the answers. And I just kept making time for the things that I needed to make time for in order to bring myself back to that energy. Here's the thing. No matter where you're at right now in your life, you can tap into inner peace. By letting go of your attachments in the external world, you can create that feeling. It's found inside you. When you slow down and sit down and take a few deep breaths, and you do that consistently, you will find that that feeling has been inside you all the time. And the problem is, if you don't prioritize that, you could wind up, yes, bringing about the changes that you want to bring about having the life that you want to live, living your dream life, but you still don't feel that the only reason you really want something is because of how you think it's going to make you feel. If you were just handed the thing that you want, but you didn't go through the process of getting it, it probably wouldn't be as appealing to you because you wouldn't have the same emotions attached to it. So when you place things and goals on a pedestal above how you're feeling, and you don't prioritize that, what can happen is you just get into this cycle of I'll be happy when I'll be happy, when I'll be happy, when you're gonna get to the thing that you wanted for your whole life, and you're gonna maybe be happy for three minutes, maybe half a day, and then your sights are already gonna be set on the next thing, and you're gonna spend your whole life putting your happiness on something that's years ahead of you and it's never felt now. And the thing is, it can only be felt now. You can't feel a future feeling. You can only feel a feeling now. So this literally happened to me. I basically manifested everything that I've ever dreamed of ever since I Was young. Ever since I was a child, I was picturing living the life that I live right now, being in the relationship that I'm in right now, having the career that I have right now. And I was thinking, when I get there, I'm gonna have peace. Peace. When I get there, I'm going to be so happy. When I get there, I'm never going to feel bad again. And that's just not true. That is just not true. Because I got here and I didn't feel peace. And that sent me into a spiral because I was thinking, if this doesn't do it, then what will? And that's when I realized the peace comes from me, not the thing. It comes from the meaning that you're giving things in your life, and it comes from your relationship to yourself and to the divine. I'm not saying you're gonna be walking through life singing Kumbaya, never suffering. But you have to take the suffering and take the lessons that come with that and not dwell and wallow in them. Expect that so long as you're growing, you're going to suffer. You're going to have to go through cycles of transformation if you're going to keep setting goals. Suffering is one of the ways in which growth happens. It's one of the ways in which you are built into the person to be able to access what you've been asking for. We create more suffering by resisting the lessons in our growth and by looking at things with a perspective that is a victim mindset rather than just taking the lessons and moving forward. My first awakening, if you want to call it that, was after my most intense period of suffering. It was after my first breakup where I was putting all my hopes and dreams into this relationship. As you do with your first love. You just think, oh, my God, this is it. We're gonna get married. And then that ended in such a devastating way. I was dealing with. It was like five awful things happened at once. I had separated myself from all my friends. My mum got sick. So I was basically at home completely by myself. Felt so alone and felt like everything was just ripped from me that I was so attached to. And then something happened. I had about a week or two of just that intense period of just depression, anxiety, hopelessness, despair. And then one day I just woke up and I was like, okay, I'm 21. I'm not gonna spend my whole life devastated over this relationship that didn't work out. When you know the potential for me experiencing even better than that, it's still there. So I made a bit of a commitment to myself at that time to really figure out how I was going to create peace for myself regardless of everything else going on around me. And I wrote on my whiteboard in my room, this is kind of cringe, but it really got me through this time. It was when you can't find the sunshine, be the sunshine. And I read that every day. That was like my first ever mantra. I read that every day. And I was like, okay, okay. Even if everything around me is. Even if I'm not getting what I want, even if, you know, my ex has moved on already, which he did. So that was what I was trying to deal with, that I was like, that's not going to affect me and how I show up in the world. Because I knew on some level that that's what mattered the most. And I knew if I just embodied the version of me that I wanted to receive back from others, eventually I would receive that. And that is what would create those feelings within me that I was looking for in other people. When I became the person who was loving, who was playful, who was passionate, that was reflected back to me in my life. So that started down my whole journey of pretty much awakening. I learned about yoga, meditation, everything. But one of the first things I really did to start building that connection with myself was journaling. So I've been journaling now for seven, seven years, pretty consistently. And it is beside meditation, the number one thing. If you're lost, if you're confused, if you don't know who you are, it's the number one thing that's going to bring you back to yourself. I think we don't realize how much access we have to all of these tools to help us let go and help us detach from all the things we're so addicted to and help us reconnect with ourselves, journaling being one of them. And a lot of people are scared to journal because they're like, I don't know what to say. But when you get into a routine of being able to speak to yourself, understand yourself, you know, process what's going on with you, it becomes very natural. And it's something that will stand to you for your whole life. You don't need to set any rules. You literally just need to sit down and speak to yourself like you're speaking to a friend or write whatever is in your mind. And that just unlocks something within you that can't really be found in anything else, which is. Which is self awareness. And once you have that, then you're going to understand what you actually want in your life, what you want. That's not coming from needing validation or not coming from any of your external attachments, but it's what you truly want for yourself. And when you figure that out, then you can start designing a life around that. And that is going to be one of the biggest things that brings you peace. Because there's a subconscious kind of way. When you're living your life miles away from your true expression and your authentic self, you're essentially denying your authentic self from actually coming through and expressing what they want to express. And that creates just an underlying feeling of almost self betrayal. And it's very difficult to find peace in your life if you know all the actions that you're taking physically are miles away from what's actually true to you. So to begin knowing what you want to even do, you have to first know yourself. So that's why journaling is probably one of the most powerful things you will ever, ever do. Because the self and, and your expression is always changing. Like it's something that rather than thinking, I want to get something out of it, it's just something that you want to bring in and do for pretty much your whole life. And it doesn't have to be every day, but it's always something that ebbs and flows. Most of us have, like our minds are so full because the world is so noisy. And you don't realize that all the thoughts in your head, all the beliefs that you have, you probably just pick them up off other people. So they're probably not even yours to begin with. And those are the reasons that you're acting in a way that's bringing you so far out of alignment that you don't even know what you want. So when you start writing stuff down, that's gonna help you decipher what yours and what's not, what to let go of and what to bring in when you figure out the stuff that is in alignment with you and the stuff that you want to create don't sit on your creation. The world we're living in is a very consumption oriented world. So we're always watching stuff, we're always consuming information. And when you have an imbalance of consumption and expression that leads to a feeling of almost depression. Because you're having all these ideas and inspirations and things, but you're not actually expressing them, you're not actually sharing them. And your expression, the things you create are essentially just a development and a furtherance of who you are. Okay? They're a part of you. When you have an idea for something and you know it's coming from your intuition and you act on, doesn't have to make logical sense, but that's gonna open up a path that your logical mind never really could have placed, planned for. But it's going to be a path of synchronicities, of alignment, of opportunities that are just going to make sense for you. If you don't know exactly what it is that you're supposed to be doing, that's fine. But just get into a habit of having awareness in different periods of your life what your priorities are. First you need to know what your values are. Then you need to figure out from that what you should be prioritizing. Because when you physically write down number one is this thing, number two is this thing, number three is this thing, then you can design your days in a way that actually aligns with you. And that's going to naturally bring you into a state of alignment. When you're running around doing things to please other people, or doing things not knowing why you're even doing them, that takes you out of alignment. But it's very hard to know what to do when you don't have clarity. This is always going to change. Like for example, sometimes your priority might be creative work, might be writing, might be reading right. Other times it might be executing, recording, you know, working on a project. Other times it might be slowing down, relaxing, seeing friends. So you need to get very clear on where your priorities are are. Because it's going to make it so much easier for you to live a life that brings you fulfillment and brings you peace. You can also, once you know your values and you know your priorities, set boundaries. And this has been the hardest lesson for me to learn. I have been so obsessed with coming across as, you know, nice, as kind, as generous as giving that I have in business and in other situations ended up in a pattern where I over promise in the beginning and I over deliver in the beginning only to realize, you know, after growing up over a few months or over a year, that I physically cannot keep delivering that without hurting myself on some level and overworking myself and everything just goes going to shit, basically. So I've had to get so comfortable with setting boundaries that protect my peace. And it's not a selfish thing to do. If you're trying to grow and have an impact and help other people, you need your boundaries because your boundaries protect your energy, which allows you to show up better in the world. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to whoever it is you want to reach in this world, whoever you want to have an impact on, to keep, to set boundaries and to keep the boundaries in place and not allow people to cross them. The discomfort that you feel when you're reminding someone of a boundary is so, so tiny compared to the discomfort that you feel when you live and continue to live in a way that's betraying your boundaries. You're not going to find people peace if you keep holding resentment over every little hurt. Everything that's happened to you in your life, you have to start accepting everything that's in your life and everything that's happened. It doesn't mean it can't you what you have to continue with it. It doesn't mean you know you have to keep it the same. It doesn't mean you approve of what happens, but you have to accept that it happened. If you look at the scale of frequencies of different emotions, at the bottom, you've got like fear, then you've got anger, then you've got courage. And then way up at the top, right before you, you hit like joy, happiness and enlightenment. Right up there, right before you can get to those emotions is acceptance. So you really, really can't access joy, happiness, peace, enlightenment until you reach acceptance first. Acceptance for the good, acceptance for the bad. Acceptance for the fact that you know you can control nothing in your external world. You can only control you and how you show up and how you feel. Acceptance of the polarity of this world, the good and the bad. Acceptance of the, the fact that everything is temporary. The things that you love are temporary. The things that you hate are temporary. The acceptance of everything, even the darker parts of yourself that you don't like is what sets you free from your attachment to those things. Because it's usually you're telling a story and you're attached to a story about the things that have happened to you and about your suffering that is serving some parts of you in some way. So parts of you, if they've ever felt neglected or unheard or hurt, they feel like they need a story in order to be seen and heard. But when you accept everything that happened, you can let go of that story. Even if it's serving parts you that were hurt, it's still limiting you. You deserve to not have that thing or whatever happened to you hanging over you, tainting your experience of life, because it essentially still has power over you, if that's what you're allowing. So you journal so you know yourself and you know your patterns. You find acceptance you figure out your priorities, you figure out your values, you figure out your boundaries, and then you start living by those things. Don't take on terms and conditions from social media or from people. It's your terms and conditions that are going to bring you peace. This relationship that you have with yourself, these values that you have, this life that you're designing in accordance with your true nature and what you truly desire is what matters above anything in the external world. And when you live your life that way and you detach from physical things, using physical things and goals for your value, and you find your value in this process, in showing up as your authentic self, as your most embodied self. As you wish to show up in this world and you let go of chasing, you let go of the outcome, the outcomes just naturally come to you. Your character and how you're showing up is the most important thing. And that is going to be the thing that brings, brings you fulfillment and brings you peace. Even if you want to create something that other people haven't approved of or that isn't the normal thing to create, it's not trending. If you feel like it's right, then it's right. You don't have to keep explaining yourself. If you want a million dollars, you don't have to explain why you want that, you just want it. If you know, honestly, genuinely, if you know yourself and you know that that's what's true to you, then you don't have to explain it. Doing what feels intuitively right to you is reason enough. When you blindly just follow your intuition and you ignore the logic or what other people think or what other people say, you're essentially following the path to become the character that God wanted you to be. And that's going to bring you more peace than any external thing ever will.