The Ultimate Peace In Life

The Ultimate Peace In Life: How many times have you gotten upset because someone wasn’t doing their job, because your child isn’t behaving, because your partner or friend isn’t living up to his or her end of the bargain? Or when you’ve planned something carefully and things didn’t go as you’d hoped?This kind of anger and irritation happens to all of us — it’s part of the human experience.One thing that irritates me is when people talk during a movie. Or cut me off in traffic. Or wrongly park their vehicle which blocks other's way. Actually, I have a lot of these little annoyances — don’t we all? And it isn’t always easy to find peace when you’ve become upset or irritated.See, the cause of our stress, anger and irritation is that things don’t go the way we like, the way we expect them to. Think of how many times this has been true for you.And so the solution is simple: expect things to go wrong, expect things to be different than we hoped or planned, expect the unexpected to happen. And accept it.Let me let you in on a little secret to finding peace of mind: see the glass as already broken. So when the nice glass you bought inevitably falls and breaks, someday, you might get upset. But not if you see the glass as already broken, from the day you get it. You know it’ll break someday, so from the beginning, see it as already broken. Be a time-traveler, or someone with time-traveling vision, and see the future of this glass, from this moment until it inevitably breaks.Expect your child to mess up — all children do. And don’t get so upset when they mess up, when they don’t do what they’re “supposed” to do … because they’re supposed to mess up.Expect your partner to be less than perfect.Expect your friend to not show up sometimes.Expect things to go not according to plan.Expect people to be rude sometimes.Expect coworkers not to come through sometimes.Expect roommates not to wash their dishes or pick up their clothes, sometimes.Expect the glass to break.And accept it.You won’t change these inevitable facts — they will happen, eventually. And if you expect it to happen — even see it as already happening, before it happens — you won’t get so upset.You won’t overreact. You’ll respond appropriately, but not overreact. You can talk to the person about their behavior, and ask them kindly to consider your feelings when they do this … but you won’t get overly emotional and blow things out of proportion.You’ll smile, and think, “I expected that to happen. The glass was already broken. And I accept that.”You’ll have peace of mind. And that, my friends, is a welcome surprise.