“You have everything you need for complete peace and total happiness right now.” ― Wayne W. Dyer
Your peace of mind is one of the best things you need to build and maintain. It’s not always easy. We live in the world that can sometimes feel very chaotic and strange, and other people sometimes act in ways that aggravate us. Here is how we can deal with this and maintain peace of mind.
Don’t respond to insults
The first good strategy is not to respond to insults, implied or explicit. If somebody says something negative to you, just ignore them. We might feel tempted to respond and try to set the record straight, but there is usually not much of a point in trying to answer.
Insults show that the person is escalating the conflict. If you reply, it will be only lead to more aggression, as insults tend to lead to more insults or other forms of aggression. Keep the peace and let whatever happens wash over you. Keep your peace of mind even if others are not keeping theirs.
Disrespect doesn’t reflect on you, but on the person disrespecting you
It might feel difficult to let go of an insult or another sign of disrespect. However, it helps to consider it as a situation that does not reflect on you. It’s all about the other person. Consider it: who do you judge more if a person is yelling or getting angry and the other one is calm? We usually don’t see the one staying calm as the one at fault or as the one doing something wrong.
You don’t have to respond. Using insults also means getting down to the person’s level and takes the dialog in a direction that can be difficult to manage in a calm way. When you get down to another level, you reflect badly on yourself, while being able to stay calm, walk away from the situation, and allow the person to show themselves as they are is more likely to reflect well on you.
Everything is a no unless it’s a yes
It’s tempting to interpret mixed signals in our favor: as yeses. We tend to think about things that others say as favorable to us, even if what they are giving us are ambiguous responses. This leads us to disappointment. It turns out that people didn’t agree to something or just agreed to avoid an uncomfortable situation. Then, the thing does not materialize, people don’t do what they seemingly agreed to, and we are disappointed. It’s frustrating and disrupts our peace of mind.
A better approach, one that protects your well-being, is to treat mixed signals as being no until there is a clear, unambiguous yes. There are many advantages to this approach. It helps you avoid disappointment and frustration, as you make better decisions. You don’t rush into things. But it can also enhance your communication because you don’t push people into anything or pressure them. You just give them the right to agree or not.
Leave the people who don’t cherish you
Some people are special. You will have many fulfilling and meaningful relationships. But there are others that just don’t work. You will disrespected or not appreciated. You worry a lot about the relationship or feel great deals of stress due to the problems in it.
Many times, the best thing to do for your peace of mind is to end or limit the relationship. Focus your energy on the relationships that work and that nurture you. You do not have to maintain ties that are constantly affecting your well-being. Sure, all relationships have their challenges or their difficult moments, for instance, when you have to take care of a person dear to you. You can’t expect to always have only pleasant emotions. But if the relationship is full of conflict, there is little point in giving it your time and your effort.
Take people at their word
We often can spend hours just wondering what someone meant when they said X or Y. We can try to decipher their hidden meanings or indirect hints. Whether they said no or yes, we might give a lot of our brainpower to just trying to see if they meant it. However, we can never arrive at the truth unless we ask the other person.
One of the best things we can do for our peace of mind is learn to take people at their word. If somebody said yes, then they meant it. If somebody said no, then they meant that as well. Unless we have really solid evidence that people were lying or didn’t meant what they said , we can just take them at their word and save ourselves the effort of worrying about what they might have truly meant.
