5 Activities That Promote Inner Peace and Tranquility
Would you like to achieve inner peace? Are you exhausted by the guilt, pain, and resentment you have carried through life? Are you tired of responding impulsively, negatively or overreacting? If everyone was being honest, they would admit that negative moods influence them sometimes.
It doesn't matter how sincere you are, these old habits die hard. They aren't harmless bad habits; they are stealing your joy. It all throws us off-center and ultimately, it makes you unable to effectively cope with life.
You cannot find inner peace and tranquility when you don't feel great. That means you need to look after every aspect of yourself, spirituality, physically, emotionally, mentally, and intellectually. Look after yourself and your body will respond in kind.
1. Meditate
The power of meditation cannot be underestimated. While experts may spend hours in meditation, you don't have to. Create a daily schedule that dedicates 10 to 15 minutes to meditation. Meditation is all about clearing your mind and learning to be present. As you meditate, your focus should solely be on your breath.
When you focus on your breath, it allows you to push everything else out of your mind. With every inhale/exhale, push negativity from your mind and embrace the inner peace and tranquility. Meditation is a great solution when you're feeling stressed out. It's something that you can do anywhere and everywhere, but make sure you dedicate that time to meditate quietly at home. Anything else you do is gravy.
2. Mindfulness
Mindfulness is not the same as meditation, though it's possible to practice mindful meditation. When you're mindful, you're fully present. You become completely aware of your sense of smell, touch, taste, hearing, and sight.
You can practice mindfulness when you eat, when you listen to music, when you take a hike. It's simply about engaging all of your senses to push everything else out of your mind. There is less time to worry when you're focusing on the reality, you're living in instead of thinking about what-ifs.
3. Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is an activity that promotes inner peace and tranquility, similarly to meditation and mindfulness. There are a wide variety of deep breathing exercises that you can use. However, there is one I prefer when it comes to promoting inner peace and tranquility. I imagine my breath as colors. I assign a color to positivity and one to negativity.
As I inhale, I see myself drawing in blue air, it's all positivity. When I exhale, I imagine a rush of black air being expelled from my lungs, it's all negativity. I inhale positivity and I exhale negativity. This simply adds an extra layer of stress relief to the deep breathing practice. The purpose of deep breathing to promote inner peace is that your mind is drawn to the process of breathing and it's life-enhancing properties.
Take a deep breath in through your nose, focus on your diaphragm and lungs as you do and hold it for a few beats before you expel it from your mouth. Repeat this five times.
4. Be True To Yourself
How can being true to yourself be an activity? When you are in harmony with yourself you will behave how you think and feel.
The problem comes in when you see yourself as one thing but are perceived as something else. You can use a notebook to keep track of incongruence. This is something you can correct if you develop self-awareness and try to act in line with your values.
5. Gratitude
If you want to promote inner peace and tranquility, then you need to focus on all of the positivity in your life. A gratitude journal is an excellent way to remind yourself of everything you love in life. Once you start writing out what you're grateful for, you will find it easier to see more positives. It's all about training yourself to be more aware of the positive things in life.