7 Ancient Secrets To Achieve Inner Peace That Lasts

Ask almost anyone what they're chasing and, underneath the specific answers, you tend to find the same thing: peace of mind. We live inside an economy built around output, one that keeps shifting the ground under everyone trying to earn a living, and the pressure shows. Depression, anxiety, and stress-linked conditions keep climbing. And yet it's still possible to hold onto a calm center while the storm is going on around you. The question is how. What follows are a few ways to generate that peace in your own life, which has a habit of spreading to the people near you.

The path runs through old spiritual teachings, because peace is a spiritual principle at heart. Maybe you're thinking you aren't a spiritual person. I'd push back on that. We're physical creatures moving through a spiritual world whether we name it that way or not, which is exactly why people who'd never call themselves religious still stumble into these principles and feel the benefit, sometimes without clocking what happened. Since happiness and peace travel together, I'll frame this around steps toward happiness. Depression sits at the far end from happiness, fed by negativity, and negativity is a groove the mind slides into until you're willing to climb out. Real happiness, the kind people spend years hunting for, grows out of inner peace first.

1) Feel more. Spend more time feeling and less time thinking everything to death. Life isn't actually as hard as we make it; we just over-think and tangle up what could stay simple. Einstein put the secret of genius down to learning how to simplify, which is part of why geniuses pull off so much without appearing to strain. The flip side matters too. You don't want your feelings running the show, since feelings shift by the hour. That's the other extreme. What you're after is balance, because a lopsided life is where stress illnesses and the darker states (anger, anxiety, depression) tend to breed.

2) Learn to listen. An old proverb says a wise man knows when to be quiet. When nothing useful is coming to mind, silence is often the better move. Talking has a way of lighting fires with people who enjoy defending their beliefs against anyone who sees it differently, and you will not win peace from that crowd by announcing your opinion. Sit back. Let them talk. With someone who is hurting, the most you can usually offer is to stay there and actually listen.

3) Open your mind. Compassion runs through the spiritual and religious traditions, and yet it's a reflex for the devout to judge whoever stands outside their faith. Learning to accept that people differ, and to value what makes each of them their own, softens us toward views we don't share. Call it tolerance if you like: the willingness to sit with people who won't always agree with you. It yields far more peace than arguing, managing, and trying to bend someone into thinking the way you do.

4) Take action. Don't park yourself on the sideline and watch. Gandhi's line still holds: be the change you want to see in the world. One person really can tip something, so when you don't like what's in front of you, set the example and do what your conscience is telling you. The number of people who quietly fall in behind you may surprise you. Often the ones who end up leading are simply the ones unafraid to step out and do what's right.

5) Let go. Complaining about what's missing is another of our default settings. The surer route to peace, and the way out of depression and anxiety, is gratitude for what's already in your hands. Recognize that you're rich right now, in the present, and the chase after your goals stops feeling like deprivation; you start enjoying the walk itself. This ties into mindfulness, living in the present moment, which takes the air out of anxiety, since anxiety feeds on fear of what's coming. Depression, by contrast, is a refusal to release old wounds. So forgive, release, and keep moving.

6) Laughter. Proverbs again: laughter is good medicine. Finding the funny in a situation nudges up the endorphins, the brain's feel-good chemistry, and that lift leaves less room for the low and anxious moods. You smile more, too, which beats frowning, if only because frowning carves wrinkles.

7) Fear less, love more. More peace means less depression, less anxiety, and more compassion, and that combination pushes us outward, toward loving and serving other people, which is closer to why we're here than most of what occupies us. Viktor Frankl closed Man's Search for Meaning on the idea that we locate our own happiness by helping others find theirs. There's a line in the Bible I keep coming back to, in I Corinthians 13: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. Older versions use the word charity, and charity isn't charity at all unless love is driving it.

Peace starts as a spiritual principle, but once you have it, it knocks over the next piece and the next: love, joy, patience, kindness, self-control. With peace in place, there's more fuel left for caring about the people around you, and you live at a higher pitch of awareness. Others notice and want some of it for themselves. Anger, fear, and stress keep people pinned at a lower level, which is where so much mental illness lives. Grow more peaceful and more loving and the point of your life starts to come into focus. It's genuinely hard to stay depressed once you've gotten there. - Erwin Bishop