Where is the peace?

You keep reading about inner peace, but where is it?

The few times that you have glimpsed it were temporary and it soon disappeared again. Where did it go?

The seeking of peace requires constant courage. It requires you to be prepared to make yourself vulnerable over and over again, because it requires you to tell the truth. Not in great outpourings of your innermost feelings and insecurities, but moment to moment honesty and authenticity.

Let me tell you - most people are pretending. They are pretending to be in control, that they are happy, that they don’t make mistakes and if you are committed to the idea of being someone who is peaceful, who tells the truth and is calm in the face of life’s vicissitudes, then you will have to be the one who tells the truth.

And other people won’t back you up.

Do you understand? You will say, I am nervous, I am unsure, I am afraid, I am sad … and other people will not join you with a “me too” Sometimes they will look at you as if you are mad.

But what is the alternative? Do you want to continue to be guarded, hidden, quiet? Is that where peace truly lies?

You know the answer lies in something very different: in the calm acceptance of your whole self, with all of its strengths, delights, fears and insecurities and the bravery to admit them out loud instead of hiding them away.

In the courage to be a speaker of AND sentences: I am brave AND I am nervous, I am strong AND I am in pain, there is joy AND there is sorrow.

Because this is a true life. And only a true life will bring you peace.

Breaking Promises

If you make a promise to your mother, or your child, to anyone you love, you don’t break it do you? Not unless you have a really good reason and it’s completely unavoidable.

So I ask you why you find it so easy to break the promises you make to yourself. The class you were going to do, the better food you were going to eat, the early night you were going to have. You know the things - yours will be unique to you, but they tend to be the vows you make to yourself when you are at a low ebb, when you see the light of how to help yourself and you pledge to make things better so that you can feel better.

Then you abandon yourself again.

I wonder why you, who would not do this to anyone else, continue to do this to yourself.

We get these little messages sent to us from time to time, these little whispers. You need more sleep, they say, you need some time alone. You need to do some yoga every day. You need to say no to that person next time. And we think we are going to do them. We really mean to do them.

Then life intervenes - things get busy, other people need your attention, you spend two hours looking at your phone.

I ask you, dear ones, to write down the promises you make to yourselves and to be as honourable towards yourself as you are towards your beloveds.

Don’t you want to feel happy and well? To burst with health and generosity? Don’t you want to smile at the world and have it smile back at you?

Start keeping your promises.
See what happens x

Advocate for Happiness

I’ve been thinking about what makes us happy.

I’ve been thinking (and there is nothing new to you about this) that what makes us happy is time, room to breathe, hanging out with the friends and family that we love, letting our minds wander in free space without the intervention of screens or technological platforms of any kind, good sleep, good books, nourishing food, regular exercise of one kind or another and being in nature.

Therefore we need to reappraise what we mean when we talk about prosperity - true wealth is not an affluent life, but a happy one. As humans we should not be proud of our riches, but proud of the quiet, contented joy of living a good life.

Therefore the idea of economic growth is an outdated concept and we need instead to focus (at an individual and a national level) on personal growth, which is to do with knowing and valuing our own worth and integrity, which is to do with good relationships (with ourselves, with others, with nature), which is to do with having enough, not having more.

I’m not advocating for a hairshirt-wearing life of sanctimonious self-denial. That does not bring happiness. I am advocating for a careful life of gratitude and choosing wisely. Choosing wisely what you buy and who you buy it from, how you spend your time, how much exercise you get, what you look at on your phone and how often you do it.

How might the world - education, health systems, working environments - look different if this was a shift that we all made?

And this is what we do here, in this tribe of ours: we advocate for happiness. It’s what we encourage and celebrate in each other. When we are pulled too far one way (work, no time, exhaustion, headache, stress) we make space to draw back across to the other side (breath, peace, moving slowly, gentleness), so that we learn how to spend most of our lives in quiet happiness, helping and serving in our communities, thankful for this simple and healthful practice that changes us for the better, basking in gratitude for what we have, who we love and who we are.

Long may we continue.
So grateful to know you x