What brings you peace?
Thank you for bringing this to my attention as I’ve been posting more about this lately on all my social accounts. While I love this question and it’s relevancy to my life lately, it’s even more encompassing than just ‘What brings you peace?”, but fundamentally, are we doing the things that make us happy AND feel peaceful?
I’ve always felt that I walked a fine line with these elements in my adult life. Keeping myself focused on the things that mattered even if I felt exhausted at the end of each day. But lately I’ve really been sitting back and observing how I feel after those full and busy days of doing the things I “love”.
Quick realization set in that I was burned out trying to do too many things that I thought I needed to do every day. Sometimes we try to fill all the empty spaces of our days with things that make us “happy”, which in turn leaves us with no real time to enjoy those peaceful moments.
For example:
- It makes me happy to do my job and do it well
- It makes me happy to run our homeschool for our kids
- It makes me happy to read, share what I’m reading on Instagram and interact with other readers
- It makes me happy to clean our house
- It makes me happy to run my author services business
- It makes me happy to do a lot of different things.
But in reality, it’s nearly impossible to do all those things in one day and not feel completely spent at the end of the day. Which is what I was observing with myself and is where I’m at right now:
Evaluating what the important things are that bring me peace, and also understanding the frequency of those things that I need in my life to feel peaceful at the end of the day.
When I took a step back and really looked at my days, the times I felt most peaceful was when I wasn’t burdened by deadlines of my own making and I was able to sit back on the couch reading. This included having my husband nearby as he was working on some things and my kids throughout the house laughing and playing. These are the moments when I feel peace. It washes away all the worries and exhaustion I might feel otherwise.
Another time when I felt the most peaceful was when I am doing some kind of family activity where we’re all together. Whether it’s playing a board game like Guess Who? or sitting around together at bedtime reading a story. All of the moments when I’m wrapped up with my husband and kids doing something together makes me feel peace.
What I’ve learned so far, and this is an ongoing journey is this:
What brings me peace is being at home with my husband and our three children, spending our days doing things as a group and also doing things individually, while taking it easy and enjoying life around us, within us, and all that comes with it.
Tips
If you’re actively seeking out the answers to what brings you peace, then I would recommend the following, depending on whether you prefer to write in notebooks or keep notes on your phone, either way is perfectly fine!
In a Notebook
Start by dedicating a page in your notebook to tracking things that bring you peace. As you’re going through the day and you have one of those “I feel really great right now” moments, open up to that page and leave yourself a little message about what you were doing and the time of day.
This will make it easy for you to compile a list of things over the course of a week or two that you can evaluate later on to determine the most important things to your peacefulness.
On Your Phone
Use whatever app you love best for taking notes and use this to track things that bring you peace. As you’re going through the day and you have one of those “I feel really great right now” moments, open up to that app and leave yourself a little message about what you were doing and the time of day.
This will make it easy for you to compile a list of things over the course of a week or two that you can evaluate later on to determine the most important things to your peacefulness.
Implement a Morning Routine
This is one I will forever struggle with as I’m not a very good morning person, even though I love my quiet time in the morning. But having some kind of morning routine of how to start the day that’s right for you, is a fantastic way to balance your mind set for the day and create a peaceful day just with a little routine in place. I’ve written more on morning routines if you’re interested in reading more about that.
Now it’s your turn – What brings YOU peace?
No matter what it is, finding that balance that brings some peace to your life is worth the small effort it takes to make it a reality. Find your balance by evaluating the things that make you really happy and carrying that forward as part of your day to day. Let me know in the comments what brings you peace or things you’re learning about yourself in your own journey to finding peace!
Looking for book recs…
Adventures in Literature 
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