Steps To A Healthy Inner World

How does one get an inner world of peace? How can we know inner harmony and contentment? This is hard since we live in a world that is filled with things we cannot predict. People will hurt us even when they do not intend to hurt us. Sometimes people do intend to hurt us. Circumstances are difficult and change is hard. Even success can create stress. So how can we have an inner world that is healthy and not filled with a lack of ease. How can we find inner peace?

The first step is to establish a proactive and realistic faith. This step is composed of two steps. One is the careful construction of a realistic world view that gives us expectations about life that are within the limits of what we will experience. This means for instance that our world view must understand that we must be satisfied with being headed in the right direction instead of thinking that we can obtain perfection. If we trust in a world view that lacks reality our inner world can never know any peace since we will not be able to embrace the real world in which we live. The second part of this faith is that it accepts 100% responsibility for what is said and done. There is no blame shifting here but an acceptance of moral responsibility for our actions.
My belief is that the only world view that is 100% realistic is the Christian perspective. In this perspective as we experience moral guilt because of our sins we can also know forgiveness because of the sacrifice of Christ and his victorious resurrection. Now, many will disagree with me at this point. But we must fact the truth that our inner world is impacted by the world view we hold at core to be true.

The second step towards inner harmony is to keep the end in mind. Most bad decisions are made because we deny the long term destructive outcome of what we are doing. When we ask if we would like people to talk about this decision at our funeral, then it places it normally in a sane light. What type of legacy do we want to leave behind. By doing this we come to be people of principle and character. We stop taking short cuts and we have greater peace with our conscience. This ability to know that we are acting in accord with what we know to be our most wise and noble view helps us to have peace day by day. From a Christian perspective this is lving each moment with the judgment seat of Christ in view.

Finally, as we decide how to dedicate our time and energy we do this based on what we believe is the most valuable and critical issues of our life. Instead of spending our time on what is least important and least urgent we seek to invest in what is most important. As we do this then much of the urgency leaves our lives. What emergancies can be avoided are avoided. The others are accepted within the context of a life plan and mission. This allows the small problems to remain small.

These inner disciplines reinforced with prayer, journaling, self talk, meditation, bible reading, and transparent fellowship begin to build within us the habits that lead to character. As our inner self grows stronger and more stable then we know inner peace and harmony. May each of us seek for this mature growth of our inner selves.