Many folks go through life feeling uneasy about themselves. They may feel guilty for having hurt another person. Or, they may regret roads not taken. Some feel badly about not having achieved their full potential. But to be happy, you need to learn to be at peace with yourself, regardless of your past or where you are at in the present.
Being at peace with your past and with who you are (and aren’t) isn’t easy. After all, we all start out in life with so much potential. Every child starts out with the potential to do great things. And then life happens. We may make poor decisions, such as marrying the wrong person or choosing the wrong career path. Or, someone may hurt us, which keeps us from fulfilling our potential as we work through that pain.
So, while we each start out with incredible potential, life is not a straight line. Stuff happens. And due to the imperfection of life and our own imperfections, none of us achieves the incredible potential with which we began life.
However, if you want to be happy, you have to learn to accept that fact. You need to learn to accept your imperfect self, and the inevitable imperfection of life. Once you do so, you will get on the path to becoming at peace with yourself.
Below are ways to become more at peace with yourself. Follow these approaches and see your peace of mind and happiness increase!
Remember that No One’s Life Is Perfect
In order to be at peace with yourself, it helps to remember that no one has a perfect life. As the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “Into each life some rain must fall.” Realize that even people with seemingly perfect lives have problems and regrets.
For instance, many folks regret not having achieved their full potential in their careers. I was plagued with regrets about my career for many years. Over the course of my life, I’d moved a lot. And I’d taken off time from work when my daughter was small. And unfortunately, both those choices hurt my career.
But at a certain point, I accepted that no one’s career goes according to plan. Some folks lose their jobs due to corporate downsizing. And for others, life gets in the way. Some folks have to take time off to care for their children. Others have to take time off to manage health issues. So many things can throw our careers off course.
And our regrets aren’t limited to career regrets. Some folks regret their failed marriages or other broken relationships. Others may regret poor lifestyle choices such as smoking, drinking and overeating in their younger years. Not one of us lives life perfectly.
So, be at peace with your life and with your regrets. Realize that we are all human beings and are by definition “fallible.” Instead of beating yourself up over your past, realize that we all make mistakes. And accept yourself and your imperfect life, as we all must.
Realize that You Are a Work “In Progress”
Some of us are not at peace because we are perfectionists. We always want to do everything correctly. And we want to handle every situation perfectly. But realize that each one of us is a “work in progress.”
So, you shouldn’t be expecting perfection from yourself. Perfection is not attainable. Instead, what we each should be striving for is continuous progress. Every year, we should be becoming more emotionally mature, kinder, and more compassionate. We also should be advancing professionally with each passing year. And we should be striving to become more financially stable as time goes by.
For example, one of my personality challenges is that I can be controlling. That is the area of my life where I am continually striving for progress! As a result, I prefer my home to be very organized. If beds are unmade or things are in disarray, I get irritated. In addition, I like my finances to be in order, and I generally want life to hum along in an orderly fashion. The only way to achieve all of that is to try to control my circumstances and everyone around me.
But over the years, I have had to learn to be a little bit looser in my approach to life. On occasion, I’ve had to learn to turn a blind eye to an unmade bed. And given the cyclical nature of the economy, I’ve had to accept that sometimes my financial situation will not always be smooth sailing!
And with each passing year, I am getting better at following my favorite part of the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.”
So, if you want to be at peace with yourself, realize that you are a work in progress. And while you may have both personal and professional goals, don’t be frustrated if they aren’t achieved overnight. Instead, as they say, “enjoy the journey,” and keep working at getting better and better!
Remember that Bad Experiences Can be the Launchpads to Great Blessings
Often, we are not at peace with ourselves and our lives because we are sad about the bad things that have happened to us. And we look at others, and we think, “Why is that person’s life so great, whereas I have suffered so much?”
I will agree that many of us go through cruel and unfair experiences. And that is discouraging. But it is important to remember that those experiences often can be the launchpads to great things.
For example, this week I read an article about Christian Cooper. Mr. Cooper was thrust into the limelight in May 2020. He was birding early one morning in New York City’s Central Park, and he encountered a woman who did not have her dog on a leash. As a result, he reasonably asked her to leash her dog. The woman became upset, called the police, and falsely stated that Cooper was threatening her and her dog. The story made national news because the woman not only falsely accused Cooper of threatening her, but she also made clear to the police that Cooper was “African-American.”
Turning Lemons into Lemonade
That was a terrible experience fueled by racism, and I am sure Cooper wished that he’d never encountered that woman that morning. But good things can come out of bad ones. Recently, National Geographic hired Cooper to host a show about birding – his lifelong passion. And now he will share that passion with the world. His story is great example of how something bad can become the launchpad to something wonderful.
In fact, there are countless stories about how people take tough experiences and turn them into positives in their lives. And that should be encouragement for us all.
So, if you are not at peace with yourself due to difficult experiences from the past, try to find ways to transform those experiences into something positive. At a minimum, those experiences should inspire you to be kinder and more compassionate toward others, since you know from personal experience how hard life can be. But try to be even more creative than that and find ways to turn your hard experiences into the means by which you can be a blessing to the world.
If you are learning to be more at peace with yourself, consider following some of the approaches above. Decide to love yourself and the life you have had thus far. While your life may have been imperfect, and perhaps very hard, you have the power today to use your life experience to create an amazing life going forward. (To read about how to embrace the seasons of life, click here.)
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