The Importance Of Inner Peace

If you’re like me, the first time you heard the term inner peace was from an animated, talking turtle on the children’s movie Kung Fu Panda (Master Oogway). There was something so serene about the smile of the fictional character that I needed to know more.

 

Perhaps you already know that inner peace is a state of quiet calm. Inner peace is achieved in the mindthrough partial emotional a detachment and selective focus. Inner peace is important because it allows you to guide your life through conscious decisions rather than emotional reactions. Inner peace enables you to stop reacting to your environment and to really choose your actions.

 

Partial emotional detachment and selective focus seem like easy concepts when you say them out loud. However, these two concepts can be some of the most difficult mind-work that you ever embark on. Master Oogway attempted to introduce many people to the concept of inner peace, and he was dead-on in describing the concepts. For an animated character, he had some pretty important points to make.

“There is just news. There is no good or bad.”

 

One of the key concepts that Master Oogway tries to teach during the movie is a tenant of inner peace. There is no such thing as good or bad news, it is all just news. Successconsciousness.com highlights how slight detachment can allow you to look at information without reacting to it. If someone tells you something that you don’t like Successconsciousness.com suggests that you start by asking yourself some important questions.

 

·      Is the news important?

·      Why am I affected by the information?

·      Is it true?

 

If we react with the emotions first, these types of questions cannot be asked. If we don’t know whether or not the information is true, we cannot choose to use it. If the information isn’t important, then we can choose not to react to it at all. Finally, if we know why we are affected by the information, we can truly begin to understand how it pertains to us. 

 

Realizing that all news is just information and our reactions to it are within our control helps us achieve inner peace and guide our lives through conscious decisions rather than emotional reactions.

“An acorn can only become the mighty oak, not a cherry tree.”

 

Many times people who are struggling to find inner peace are struggling because they are fighting against nature and choosing to focus on their failures. Selective focus allows you to choose which elements in your life to highlight. It also helps you learn acceptance.

 

Tiny Buddha discusses how acceptance plays an important role in finding inner peace. Knowing that you cannot change other people or situations can greatly increase your satisfaction with the world. Just as you cannot make an acorn become a cherry tree, you can’t change things that are outside of your control. The only thing you can change is your acceptance of the situation or other people’s behavior.

 

Selective focus is choosing how you see things. Selective focus is also choosing what you spend your energy on. Daringtolivefully.com notes that when you take responsibility for your state of mind and stop giving power to others, you can choose how you feel. Tiny Buddha backs this up by noting that you are in full control of your thoughts.

 

Before researching inner peace, many people feel that their thoughts are outside of their own control. They are too focused on trying to get an acorn to turn into a cherry tree, so they cannot even conceptualize about anything else. Once you take control of your thoughts and focus on the benefits of the acorn tree your satisfaction and inner peace will increase.

 

Yes, there is more to learn about inner peace than something that can be taught from an animated turtle on a children’s movie. But, inner peace can be broken down into pretty easy concepts introduced in simple ways to people everywhere.

 

If you need more guidance than what Master Oogway provides, you can always seek professional guidance and counseling or spiritual counseling to help you on your way to finding inner peace. No matter how you get there, having inner peace will certainly serve you in your life.