How to Find Inner Peace in a Chaotic World

1. Get Quiet

Sometimes the best solution is also the simplest . This is one of those times. How do you get quiet? Easy, start by turning the radio and television off and putting your phone down. As for the modern siren song known as the push notification, silence it before it leaves you mentally shipwrecked. Without these distractions, you’ll have more time to invest in activities that foster inner peace, like meditation. Practiced for millennia, the art of meditation allows practitioners to access heightened planes of mental awareness through silent, trance-like states of hyper-focus. Today, we replace this ancient tradition with the modern ritual of sneaking into the bathroom for five minutes of quiet time (don’t lie, we’ve all done it). Ask yourself, is scrolling social media on the toilet the most effective way to recenter? If this were Jeopardy, the correct answer would be, What is: not at all? While there are countless paths to introspective reflection, such as spending time in nature, it doesn’t matter which you follow to incorporate quiet time into your busy life. All that matters is that you do.

2. Get Physical

Have you ever noticed that people who exercise are happier than those who don’t? A 2020 National Library of Medicine study states, “Physical activity [is] significantly related to better life satisfaction and happiness in young, middle-aged, and older adults.” I’m not saying that spending eight hours a day in the gym is a prerequisite for inner peace. The entire idea is to remain physically active, which could be doing yard work each Saturday, going for walks after dinner, or participating in outdoor activities. Instead of going to extremes, focus on making incremental changes that improve your health, increase your quality of life, and bring about inner peace. For us, the gym is where we refocus our mind and recenter our soul. For years, it was where we went to get bigger, stronger, and faster. Since then, we’ve adopted a mindset that values optimal performance over peak performance, and it’s changed our life. Physical fitness is about making healthy choices, building positive habits, and pursuing progress, not perfection.