I love feeling at peace.
How about you?
It makes me thing about the Buddhist festival in England this summer. I spent both weeks doing two volunteer jobs.
One of those jobs was to help out in the takeaway salad bar. It was a blessing for me because I got to work alongside Gen Dawa who’s an amazing teacher and chef. He’d also been the chef for the 4-week retreat I was on at the beginning of the year and I’ve been admiring him ever since.
To give you some context, there were about 3,500 people at this festival. Most people ate at the main food tents and a smaller number would come to this salad bar or to one other hot meal station next to us.
There were a few days where hundreds of hungry people were in line to get food from this station.
Because we opened maybe 15-30 minutes after a teaching, there was a very short time to prep, put some of the salads together, and get everything tidied up and set out. And, Gen Dawa was dealing with a lot of newbies like me who had no clue what they were doing and some not so savvy in the kitchen.
And, he always held his peace.
Everything worked and felt fun and joyful. Even times when it seemed we’d have no more food, some would miraculously appear without any sense of panic or tension.
It made me reflect a lot on what life was like before I began training my mind. How I could feel so much pressure at work and stress over things that in the grand scheme of life weren’t important.
I didn’t know I had a choice to hold my peace because I was so familiar with not doing that.
So, I’m sharing here a few tips here if you’re up for familiarizing your mind with peace.
3 Tips for Holding Your Peace
1. Know it’s ok if you realize you’re not holding your peace.
We can be extremely hard on ourselves can’t we. When you judge yourself, feelings of stress, guilt, anxiety can grow bigger. What happens is a double whammy on your bad feelings.
It’s 100% normal to not hold your peace. It happens to everyone. What is radical here is to accept the fact that you’re not holding your peace. And, feel proud you noticed you weren’t holding it.
2. Decide that you want to hold your peace
You can try all kinds of things to calm yourself down in stressful situations. However, if you don’t make a firm determination to hold your peace, those will not stick. So, I’d encourage you to spend your effort focusing on convincing yourself of the benefits of holding your peace and the shortfalls of not doing so.
You’ve got to feel this in your heart or it will not work. This is definitely a step I missed for a long time and I sense you’re much wiser than me.
3. Find peaceful people and spend lots of time with them
I spent loads of time in the kitchen with Gen Dawa which can be an extremely stressful place. And, no stress. None. Only good food and good feelings. This was a wonderful and effortless training for me.
Ask yourself: who is someone you find to be peaceful and how could you spend more time with that person. Just in normal everyday situations. This is an easy one because you just experience the experience and you learn.
Practicing these three tips on holding your peace will start training your mind to react in a different way to stressful situations. You’ll find some peace. And, as you noticed, some are quite easy maybe just not so often thought about.
You can start applying these today in any area of your life where you feel you’re not holding your peace or even in a situation you’re anticipating. Make a firm date with yourself to reflect on these and how you can start practicing.
Put it in your calendar. Seriously.
What’s the tip you’d find easiest to put in practice now?
Glad if you’re willing to share with me or on the blog. And, I can share more with you personally.
Peace.
Jennifer
