How to Find Inner Peace in an Uncertain World
There is a lot we do not know right now.
We can watch the news, listen to experts, follow trends, talk to friends and make educated guesses about what might happen next. We can even say, “The writing is on the wall.”
But we still don’t know how the story ends.
And that uncertainty is uncomfortable.
We are living through a time of world conflict, political division, economic questions, rapid advances in technology, changes in the workplace, environmental concerns and natural disasters. As I write this, the conflict involving the United States and Iran continues to affect everything from international security to energy markets.
Even if you choose not to follow the news closely, it is difficult to completely remove yourself from what is happening around you.
According to the American Psychological Association, 82% of U.S. adults recently said the world is changing in ways that are difficult to process, and 75% said they are more stressed about the country’s future than they used to be.
I think part of that stress comes from something very simple:
This feels unfamiliar.
And unfamiliar can feel scary.
When We Don’t Know What Happens Next
For many people in my age group, there have been certain moments in our lifetime when our sense of control changed dramatically.
September 11, 2001 was one of them.
If you were old enough to remember that day, you probably remember more than what happened. You remember how you felt when you heard the news.
The September 11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and changed the way Americans thought about terrorism and safety here at home.
Then came COVID.
Once again, so much of what we assumed was predictable suddenly wasn’t. Jobs changed. Businesses closed. Schools closed. People worried about their health, their families, their income and what would happen next.
And now we are experiencing another period where many people feel that decisions affecting their lives are being made far outside of their own control.
That’s the difficult part.
We don’t know what will happen, so we begin predicting what will happen.
And those predictions are rarely neutral.
We begin imagining what it will mean for our job, our retirement, our business, our family, food prices, gas prices, the environment, our safety or our future.
Before anything has actually happened to us personally, we can already be living emotionally inside the outcome we’ve imagined.
I Remember September 10, 2001
On September 10, 2001, I was working in recruiting for an independent agency.
I had a candidate who had gone through the interview process with an organization at Chelsea Piers in New York City. She was highly qualified, and I went to bed that night believing an offer was coming the next day.
It was a win for everybody.
She would have a new job. They would have a strong new employee. I would receive my commission, and so would the person I worked for.
Then I woke up on September 11.
Reality changed.
The offer didn’t come the next day. There were much bigger things happening.
For a while, the organization kept saying they needed to wait and see what happened. Eventually, they chose an internal candidate as they figured out how to move forward after everything that had occurred.
I could have resisted that decision for as long as I wanted.
I could have focused on the commission I lost. I could have said, “This shouldn’t be happening. She was the right candidate. They were going to hire her. I was supposed to have that income.”
But none of those thoughts could take me back to September 10.
That reality no longer existed.
At some point, the only useful question was:
Okay. This is what happened. What do I do now?
And that question is an important part of inner peace.
Resistance and Inner Peace Cannot Occupy the Same Space
One of the biggest obstacles to inner peace is resistance.
Resistance sounds like:
“This shouldn’t be happening.”
“Why is this happening?”
“This isn’t how this was supposed to go.”
“I need this to change before I can feel okay.”
You don’t have to love what is happening.
You don’t have to agree with it.
And you certainly don’t have to pretend that something difficult is wonderful.
But there is a difference between acceptance and approval.
Acceptance simply says:
This is the reality right now.
Once I acknowledge the reality, I can decide what I want to do with it.
Resistance keeps me fighting the reality.
Acceptance lets me respond to it.
That is a very different energy.
What We Resist Persists
From an energetic and Law of Attraction perspective, resistance keeps our attention focused on what we do not want.
And wherever we keep placing our attention, we continue feeding with our energy.
If I spend my entire day thinking, “I don’t want this to happen,” where is my attention?
It’s still on this happening.
I am still energetically connected to the very thing I say I don’t want.
Then I begin noticing more evidence to support it.
Another news story.
Another conversation.
Another prediction.
Another reason to worry.
And the resistance grows.
I’m not suggesting that you jump from fear into an affirmation that you don’t believe.
Sometimes we simply need a better-feeling thought.
“This shouldn’t be happening” might become:
“I don’t have control over this.”
That alone can change something.
Then perhaps:
“I don’t like what is happening, but I accept that this is the current reality.”
And eventually:
“What can I do for myself right now?”
Or:
“I can’t change what already happened, but I can choose what I do next.”
We’re shifting little by little.
We don’t need to force ourselves from fear into joy.
We just need to stop fighting long enough to see another possibility.
One Foot in the Past and One Foot in the Future
Here’s another way I think about this.
Imagine that you have one foot planted in the past.
That foot carries your experiences.
It carries your programming, beliefs and all the meanings you’ve created from what has happened before.
Maybe you’ve experienced financial hardship, lost a job, watched a business close or grew up hearing stories about not having enough.
Those experiences become part of the lens through which you see your life.
Now put your other foot in the future.
That foot contains the worry, doubt, fear and scarcity about what you think might happen.
But here’s the interesting part:
That future fear is being created from the foot that’s still standing in the past.
We think we’re looking ahead.
We’re often just projecting what we’ve already experienced onto a future that hasn’t happened yet.
What if I lose my job?
What if my business fails?
What if there isn’t enough?
What if this conflict gets worse?
Those are future questions being filtered through a past lens.
So I have one foot in the past carrying my programming and another foot in the future projecting that programming forward.
As far as I know, I only have two feet.
Who’s living my life today?
The Only Reality You Can Respond to Is This One
Five minutes ago is already gone.
You can’t go back and change it.
Tomorrow hasn’t arrived.
You can’t respond to it yet.
You can prepare, plan, stay informed and take reasonable action.
But you cannot live tomorrow today.
The only reality you can actually work with is the one happening right now.
And in another moment, you’ll have another reality.
Tomorrow, when it arrives, will become today.
Then you’ll respond to that reality.
This is where inner peace becomes a practice rather than some personality trait that certain people magically possess.
Inner peace is not who you are. It’s what you practice.
You practice coming back to now.
You practice asking yourself what is actually true.
You practice noticing when the story in your head has moved far beyond the facts in front of you.
You practice regulating your body when you feel yourself getting activated.
And then you choose again.
Inner Peace Doesn’t Mean You Stop Feeling
One of the misconceptions around inner peace is that peaceful people don’t have emotions.
They don’t get angry, or scared, or frustrated.
They float through life in some permanent Zen state while the rest of us are losing our minds.
I don’t believe that.
Emotions give us information.
Fear tells us something.
Anger tells us something.
Helplessness tells us something.
Overwhelm tells us something.
The goal isn’t to erase the emotion.
The goal is to become aware enough to recognize it and decide what you want to do with the information.
Sometimes you need to cry, or write in your journal.
Sometimes you need to move your body or have a conversation with a friend.
Sometimes you need to turn off the news.
And sometimes the feeling is telling you that you want to do something like advocate, volunteer, use your voice or get involved in your community.
Acceptance doesn’t take any of those options away.
In fact, I think it gives them back to you.
Acceptance Is Where Possibility Begins
When we’re in resistance, our world gets very small.
All we can see are the limitations.
There’s not going to be enough.
I’m going to lose something.
I’m not going to have a job.
My business won’t make it.
Everything is going to get worse.
Resistance keeps us staring at the closed door.
Acceptance allows us to turn around and notice that there might be a window.
Once I can say:
“Okay. This is what is happening. Now what?”
possibility begins to come back.
What can I do?
What opportunity exists here?
Who can I talk to?
Where can I contribute?
What choices are available to me?
How do I want to experience this moment?
That’s freedom.
I’m free to move about the cabin again.
The circumstances may not have changed yet.
I have.
I’m no longer locked into one story about what this has to mean.
Inner Peace Is Never Powerlessness
Acceptance does not mean surrendering your power.
You are never completely without choice.
There may be circumstances where your choices become limited. There may be decisions made by governments, employers, family members or other people that you cannot control.
But you still retain the ability to choose how you meet the next moment.
That might mean speaking up, or getting support from a counselor. You can join with other people or change direction.
Or perhaps today it simply means taking five minutes to breathe before deciding what comes next.
If you’re finding that the fear, uncertainty or mental loops are becoming difficult to move through on your own, talking with someone can help you get the thoughts out of your head, look at what is actually happening and begin seeing the situation from a different perspective. Spiritual Counseling can be especially helpful when you want to explore both the human experience you’re having and the higher spiritual perspective of what you’re moving through.
You don’t have to figure everything out alone.
Train Inner Peace Before You Need It
This is one of the biggest things I talked about in the companion episode of This Life or Something Better.
Inner peace is trained.
Think of it like a muscle.
You wouldn’t wait until you needed to lift something extremely heavy before you started strengthening your body.
So don’t wait until your world feels like it’s falling apart to practice inner peace.
For me, journaling is one of those practices.
I can get the thoughts, emotions and stories out of my head and onto paper. Sometimes I find the answer while I’m writing. Other times, I simply stop carrying the conversation around in my head all day.
Breathwork is another.
There have been times when I’ve set alarms on my phone simply to remind myself to stop and breathe for a few minutes.
I might stretch, or walk, or shake my body to release some of the tension.
And one of my favorite pattern interrupts is still:
“Is this really true?”
What part is true?
What part am I predicting?
What part is from another time in my life?
What is actually happening now?
The more I practice these things in ordinary moments, the easier it becomes to access them when I really need them.
Confidence comes through competence.
And competence comes through practice.
You Don’t Have to Wait for the World to Become Peaceful
You can ask the Universe for more inner peace.
But don’t be surprised if the Universe doesn’t respond by making your entire world peaceful.
You may be given opportunities to practice being at peace while the world around you is anything but peaceful.
That’s how you discover whether you’ve built the muscle.
Can I feel what I feel without becoming consumed by it?
Can I accept this moment without approving of everything happening in it?
Can I stay informed without emotionally living inside every possible outcome?
Can I recognize what I don’t control and then place my attention on what I do?
Can I keep both feet here long enough to actually live my life today?
The world may remain uncertain.
There will always be another change, another decision, another unexpected event and another reality to meet.
Inner peace isn’t a promise that those things disappear.
It’s the practice of knowing how to return to yourself when they arrive.
So perhaps the question isn’t:
“When will everything finally calm down so I can have inner peace?”
Maybe the better question is:
“How do I choose to meet the reality I’m standing in right now?”
That is where your power is.
That is where possibility begins.
And that is where inner peace becomes available.
If this topic is speaking to you, take the conversation a little deeper with the full episode of This Life or Something Better: How to Find Inner Peace in an Uncertain World
In the episode, I talk more about inner peace as something you practice, not something you simply become. I also share a simple seven-day practice to help you train your inner-peace muscle through breathwork, journaling, movement, and conscious regulation.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music and choose the platform that works best for you.