5 Ways to Protect Your Peace
If you feel like you are constantly rushing around putting out fires all day every day, chances are, you need to protect your peace. Protecting your peace is guarding your state of heart/mind.
It’s what allows you to know how you want to show up for your life and then positions you to choose thoughts and actions that align with that.
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ 5 things that you can do to protect your heart and headspace
Let me start off by saying, protecting your peace is a form of self-care and self-love.
Protecting your peace is creating and maintaining a healthy environment for growth. Protecting your peace means cultivating a safe space internally and externally where you can be productive rather than just doing things just to do them.
Here is the thing with peace -- it has to be pursued. You have to choose peace, create an environment for peace, and maintain peace. It doesn’t just magically happen, right? Life can be chaotic if we’re not intentional. We can easily be pulled in 15 different directions at once, especially with our phones, it feels like people have constant access to us and get to dictate what we’re doing and when you’re doing it. BUT THAT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE TRUE even if it feels like that’s the norm for most people.
Your peace is your responsibility and it’s your job to protect it from outside circumstances. Peace is an inner job - outside circumstances should not influence your peace. Outside circumstances totally influence our feelings, but peace is a choice - it’s how we respond to the circumstances.
Today I’m gonna share 5 ways that I protect my peace and that I think will help you protect yours too. And remember, protecting your peace is not selfish. It’s setting you up to show up well for yourself and for the people in your life.
5 Ways to Protect Your Peace:
01. Know what you want
You had to know this was coming, right? We’ve got to be clear on our vision (hello Key 2 to Husting Sanely) in order to create a life that reflects it.
It’s really dang hard to feel peace, when you feel like you are just going through the motions every day not really sure what you’re working toward or feeling removed from your purpose.
2 tools I use to help me get clear on my vision:
⋒ Journaling
⋒ Visualization
Journaling helps me to process my feelings rather than suppress them. I tend to bury my feelings by setting goals and focusing on achieving them rather than hammering out what’s going on in my heart.
Visualization sounds kinda wild but it’s not - it’s literally just imagining how you want something to play out. If you’ve ever prepped for a conversation or interview in your mind before having it, you’ve practiced visualization. It doesn’t have to be some new age-y practice - it’s literally just preparing for what you want.
When you’re clear on your vision, your in tune with what you want and your actions align with that which is a breeding ground for peace, trust me.
02. Have mindfulness habits built into your day
Okay, it’s no secret that I’m a follower of Jesus. My personal belief is that he is the source of true inner peace. That being said, I have habits built into my day that point me to God’s presence.
Doesn’t matter if you share my faith or not, it’s important for you to have “checkpoints” throughout your day to pause, check-in, and re-center to a place of peace.
For me, that looks like:
~ My morning routine
~ My lunchtime routine
~ My evening routine
I have activities built into each of these routines that cause me to slow down, breathe, pray, and re-center my mindset instead of just haphazardly plowing through the day. So for me it’s prayer, but however you get peace, make sure to weave that into your days as habits so that you are always pointing back to your source of peace.
03. Be hyper-aware of what you’re consuming and when you’re consuming it.
What’s going in your ears and your eyes impacts the way you think. Period. There’s no way around it. If you are constantly pelting your mind with panicky news articles or memes that are focused on self-deprecation how do you expect your mind to be operating from a place of peace?
What you’re putting in is what’s gonna come out. What you consume, creates the basis for your thought patterns, and your thoughts ultimately make up your life because they influence your actions.
Now I’m not saying to live in an oblivious bubble. But you do need to take ownership of who you give the authority to speak into your life. It would also be wise to have designated times to consume and designated times to let your brain breathe a little bit.
Some examples from my life:
During my lunch break, I don’t consume for at least 15 minutes. For 15 minutes, I am outside with no phone, no book, no iPad to watch YouTube...I’m just letting my thoughts be. Since doing this, I’m not kidding, I’ve felt SO much more peace in my life.
Maybe for you, it’s in the shower or while you’re driving or when you first wake up - you protect that time by not consuming.
I dare you to go through your Instagram list, podcast subscribe list, YouTube subscribe list, wherever you consume often, and PURGE THEM! Get people out of there who are not speaking truth and life, you know?
Protect your peace by being aware of what you’re consuming and how often you’re consuming it.
04. Turn as many notifications OFF on your phone as possible.
AND DON’T FEEL GUILTY FOR NOT BEING IMMEDIATELY ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYONE! I’ve talked about this on the show before but this legit changed my life. The only notifications I have turned on on my phone are phone calls and Voxer (the app I use to communicate with my team during work hours in case you’ve never heard of it).
I don’t have any social media apps turned on or even texts and definitely not email.
Honestly, I have at least 25 unread text messages at any given time, because I refuse to jump when they come in. I have designated times throughout my day where I check and respond to texts. The people in my life who have instant access to me BECAUSE I HAVE CHOSEN TO GIVE IT TO THEM, know to call me if they need me in the moment.
Another thing I like to do is put my phone in Do Not Disturb mode if I’m working on something that needs my undivided attention. Did you know that even in DND mode, your “favorites list” on your phone can still reach you? So just curate that accordingly. This is going to help you from feeling pulled in 20 different directions at once which is definitely a peace stealer.
You’re not going to be at the mercy of all the dings and buzzes your phone is putting out. You are in charge of your time and energy. Don’t let your phone fool you into thinking it is, okay?
05. Declutter your physical space.
A lot of the time, your external environment is a reflection of what’s going on in the inside. Our physical space really affects our internal space. If your home is a cluttered mess, it’s gonna be extremely hard to be there and protect your peace.
When we get rid of junk and make sure our homes are organized in a way that supports us instead of stressing us out, we clear up so much time and energy. We are spending less time cleaning or looking for things that are missing.
I don’t know about you but I can remember the teachers I had in elementary school who had tidy classrooms versus chaotic classrooms. Now I’m not talking about decor - I’m talking about functionality and cutter here. A messy, cluttered classroom was so distracting to me and I couldn’t learn well. Whereas the classrooms that were tidy, I was able to focus on what we were learning because I didn’t feel like I was going to be eaten by a falling tower of papers or workbooks.
Choose a weekend and make it a priority to declutter stuff you don’t need and then make the stuff you’re keeping functional. I’m telling you, it’ll help you protect your peace.
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 088 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to listen into this topic:
