Recipes For Inner Peace

In 2005 I was involved with a wonderful group of people in the development of a peace conference in Calgary. We called it “The Art of Peace Leadership.” One thing that we all agreed upon was that peace starts right here – within each one of us. Until we have a sense of inner peace, how can we hope to spread peace? Easier said than done. How do we find inner peace? How do we even recognize what it is? How can we feel peaceful in the midst of the pressures and demands of our families, our work, our communities in a world that appears so chaotic and angst-ridden much of the time?

As I mused over these questions, my latest book began to emerge. Recipes for Inner Peace was the result. Through the pages of Synchronicity over the next six issues, I will share a taste of these recipes with you – and invite you to respond with your own.

The book is the story of two people seeking their own sense of inner peace in their own way. One of them, Jenny, feels stressed and responds by eating more desserts than are good for her, missing the irony that stressed is desserts written backwards. Jenny goes to see a coach, who helps her to listen to her own inner voice, the one that is authentically hers.

Serge, the other main character in the book, is a loner. He feels out of place in his work environment, in his community of friends and even in his family. How can he develop a real relationship with anyone when he feels so uncertain about himself?

Then there’s Nicolas. He’s the coach who provides the recipes for Jenny, who in turn passes them on to Serge.

Here’s your first recipe for inner peace. It’s called Listening Power: how you get to listen to yourself. It comes with a blueberry crumble and some soul food, in the form of halibut with kale and ginger (there’s a real food recipe at the end of each chapter).

RECIPE FOR LISTENING POWERn(Give yourself at least twenty minutes in a quiet space where you can relax and concentrate. The recipe only works when you make it!)
Ingredients

1 Set a contract that you will listen to yourself.
2 Focus on what’s important right now.
3 Ask yourself what you mean. Connect the dots.
4 Summarize the essence of your meanings. Look at the overall picture.
5 What do you do with this? Decide upon your best action.

MethodnThe first thing to do is the most important and the hardest for many people. It means that you have to give yourself permission and the time to attend to yourself. Remove any distractions, make yourself comfortable. Relax. Make a contract to listen to what is going on in your head and in your heart.

Second, ask yourself what’s important for you right now. There may be many contenders. Make your best effort to focus on one of them, knowing that you can look at the others later, and trusting that whatever you focus on will turn out to be the most important and will almost always have a direct connection with everything else anyway.

Your third stage in this recipe is to ask yourself some questions about what is really going on for you. Sometimes it helps to imagine that you are your own interviewer, or your own guru. You will see how you have all the wisdom you need already within you. When your inner guru asks the questions, you are able to answer them.

Next, go over what you have been thinking, hearing and understanding and make a summary of it. Write things down. Or draw them. It’s like connecting the dots of your thoughts and seeing what you have.

The final stage is to ask – and answer the question – what you want to do next. If you don’t know, you have not fully engaged yourself in the process. Go through it again. Each time you do, it will be a deeper experience until clarity emerges for you.

The whole process is made easier and more effective when, instead of listening to yourself, you have someone else listen to you. It’s not easy to find such a person, which is why there are counsellors and coaches who do it professionally. But if you do have such a gem in your community of contacts, invite him or her to go through Listening Power with you. The book is designed to be used as a tool for community engagement. When people actually listen to each other peace and understanding happen. n