There’s nothing more powerful than a person at peace with themselves. Being at peace with yourself gives you more control over yourself and how you react to the world. External factors won’t affect you as much, because you prioritize your emotions and well-being and don’t dwell on the things that don’t matter. 

Finding inner peace is a personal experience, and peace means something different for everyone. You may not even realize that you aren’t truly at peace with yourself. There are several ways to find peace within yourself, and not everyone will achieve peace in the same way. Being at peace with yourself can mean:

• Feeling secure about yourself
• Being mindful 
• Finding the ability to let go

No matter how you achieve it, inner peace is a state of being that empowers you to live the life you want, and feel good about it. 

Why Being at Peace With Yourself is Important

Before talking about what it means to be at peace with yourself, you must understand what happens when you aren’t at peace. Sadly, many of us already know what that feels like.

These days, we live fast lives, as we think it makes us the most productive (however, some suggest the opposite). We fill our days with activities, a lot of work, and even too many people that it’s difficult to keep up and find any time for ourselves – let alone peace. This leads to disorganization, stress, and clutter within our lives and ourselves. When our minds are cluttered, it’s difficult to visualize the path that lies ahead. This can result in experiencing:

• Anxiety
• Depression
• Distress
• Constant agitation
• Tiredness

Unfortunately, many people are more familiar with this hectic state than with finding peace, and it’s even become normalized for some places and situations. You can’t change external factors easily, but you do have a level of control over what happens within yourself. The things you do dictate your state of mind, and so if you do positive things, you’ll think more positively.

You can assess a situation, react reasonably, and move on. We’re all capable of being at peace with ourselves. We just need to learn how to access that peace. Experiencing peace starts with telling yourself that you deserve peace.

The effect won’t take place overnight – it takes time and patience to achieve a peaceful mind. That’s where perseverance and consistency come in. You have to seek out peace every day until it becomes a natural state of your being. That said, the result is worth the effort.

When you have peace of mind, everything else falls into place. You might feel:

• More comfortable with yourself
• Better preparedness for whatever life throws at you
• More confidence in your day-to-day life
• Increased compassion for yourself

The good news is that you don’t have to live a trouble-free life to be at peace with yourself, which we already know is impossible. Instead, you can change your outlook on your troubles in life and allow them to take up less of your energy. If you master this, then you’re on your way to living a life where being at peace with yourself is a regular occurrence.

7 Steps Towards Being at Peace With Yourself

Achieving peace with yourself isn’t as hard as you might think. It does require a conscious effort and the will to want it, but beyond that, it’s easy to achieve by implementing a few habits into your life to instill a new mindset within yourself. 

Know That You Can’t Control Everything

The first step in your journey towards being at peace with yourself is to understand your limitations. We always want the ability to control every aspect of our lives, but that isn’t possible. The desire for control and the fact that it’s unfeasible leave you at war with yourself.

To experience inner peace, you have to know when you can no longer control the things around you. Often, external factors of our lives, such as people and events, are beyond our control, but we fixate on them to the point where we become exhausted, and our mental health becomes negatively affected. 

Instead, focus on within, as one of the only things in the world that we can control is ourselves (although we even have our limitations when it comes to that!). Listen to your mind and body to figure out what you desire and how you can achieve it within the realms of the outside world. 

This is one of the most difficult habits to change, and it could take time before you truly see yourself succeeding at it, but it’s a key step in getting closer to being at peace with yourself.

Be Your Own Cheerleader

Just as we cannot control the external factors of our lives, we also can’t rely on them for everything. If you aren’t finding something, such as happiness or peace, externally, look for it internally. 

Appreciating yourself plays a key role in finding inner peace. If you seek validation from others and don’t find it, it can fuel the war inside yourself. You may start to think that you don’t deserve validation, which harms your mental health.

You’re probably already able to recognize what others do for you and appreciate them, so it’s a good idea to extend that validation to yourself. Whether you achieve a milestone or simply make it through the day, show yourself some appreciation for getting through life as the complex being you are. 

Appreciate your body’s strength for taking you to the places you need to go. Appreciate your mind for helping you make the right decisions. Appreciate your hard work throughout the day. There’s no end to where self-love should stop.

Imagine Who You Want to Be

If your peaceful self is your ideal self, it’s a good idea to start visualizing what that person may look like.

Finding inner peace often requires you to go through a transformation. Transformation doesn’t mean completely changing yourself. It just means picturing the version of yourself that is at peace with who you are.

To better understand the most peaceful version of yourself, list your good qualities. Then, list good qualities that you think aren’t currently your strongest. These qualities may include:

• Patience
• Kindness
• Compassion
• Empathy

Listing off these characteristics makes your journey towards inner peace more concrete and gives you something to work towards.

Dedicate Some Time to Yourself

If you spend your day surrounded by people, it’s easy to neglect your own needs and forget who you are. Even if we spend a lot of time alone, many of us become so caught up with the tasks we need to complete during the day that we don’t have enough time to appreciate ourselves. 

Solitude can benefit your happiness and well-being and foster peace within yourself. Spending a little bit of time by yourself each day gives you a chance to reflect, recharge, and reconnect your mind and body — two actions that contribute to peace of mind. 

Spend this time alone doing things that you enjoy and that bring you peace. Carve out some time to add some one-on-one time to your routine. This may include activities such as:

• Meditating
• Going for a walk 
• Reading a good book
• Cooking 
• Enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning

Learn to Forgive

Forgiveness is one of the most important elements of being at peace within yourself, but it’s also one of the hardest to execute. 

When someone is unfair or hurts us, it’s easy to hold onto that pain and resentment. However, this does more harm than good and can hurt our mental health. As much as you may not want to forgive, forgiveness is the key to learning to let go of that pain and move on with your life.

When you forgive, you don’t do it for the other person. Forgiveness is part of your healing process. Even after you forgive, you probably won’t be able to forget the hurt or how it made you feel. You might still feel a negative emotion or two, such as pain and anger. However, with forgiveness and peace, you can better handle these emotions. 

Finally, don’t forget to extend that forgiveness to yourself. We’re often harsh on ourselves for our mistakes and carry the weight of them around with us for years, to the point that it feels like it’s a part of us. This doesn’t have to be the case. If you forgive yourself, you lift that weight off yourself and make more room to find peace within yourself.

Practice Gratitude

It’s so easy to list the things that are wrong with your life and overlook the things that are going right. Minor things such as getting stuck in traffic or getting the wrong coffee order from the coffee shop distract us from the good things that happen to us daily. Learning how to practice gratitude is a key part of being at peace with yourself. 

Start by recognizing the little things in your life that do go right in everyday life. Something as simple as waking up in the morning is something to be grateful for. Be grateful when it’s a sunny day, when you have a smooth commute, or that your body allows you to get through the day. 

Practicing this awareness and gratitude reframes the way that you perceive the world, which in turn improves your mental health as well as your relationships with others. Try to practice gratitude with every aspect of your life to fully experience the benefits of contentment and drive you towards being at peace with yourself. 

Be Patient

Lastly, achieving a peaceful state won’t happen overnight. Becoming at peace with yourself requires patience. 

Your friends and family may not be on the same journey of inner peace as you are, and you may find that it affects your relationships at first. However, this doesn’t mean that you should feel discouraged. Inform your loved ones of the journey you’re taking, and that it may require you to slow down. You’ll find support from the ones that truly matter. 

What’s more, you shouldn’t be stressed if it seems like those around you are moving at a faster pace in terms of their journey to peace. Others may seem to be in a happier place than you feel at the time, but you can’t tell anyone’s full story from the outside. 

When you find that you’re at a point where you’re going to lose patience when confronted with a situation, take a breath before reacting to it. This helps you control your emotions, keep your composure, and encourages peace of mind. 

Being at Peace With Yourself Begins Within

Being at peace with yourself is one of the most powerful states you can be in. When you attain a true state of peace within, you become more content with both yourself and the world around you. 

But the journey to inner peace isn’t a quick one. If you want to experience being at peace with yourself for the long term, you need to put in a conscious effort to change a few of your habits. That said, the consequence of truly being at peace with yourself is that you live a fulfilling life at your own pace, where you have more control of your happiness.