Increase Your Peace

My Mother and I had a really good conversation the other day. We discussed how as you get older, your life should become more peaceful, and you should have far more grace when it comes to the way in which you handle situations. It may seem that the opposite is the case with the way reality TV glorifies grown folks fighting, but it still rings true that as your age increases, so should your peace and grace.

This year I’ve made an intentional effort to improve the quality of my life. Just last week I was sitting in my loft and I thought to myself, “My life is really peaceful. I am happy.”  There was a time in the past where I wouldn’t have been honestly able to say that.

There were certain things in my life that I had to change, replace, add or take away on my personal journey to peace and grace.  The first step was being brutally honest…with myself.

I know that I do well under pressure, which is fine every now and then, but overall I had to replace procrastination with planning.   My lack of advanced planning often led me to be reactive to situations, so I had to replace that with being proactive.   Being reactive often came with a lot of emotion. I had to replace the emotion with logic. Emotion usually leads to drama, so once I got rid of that, the drama decreased and I became ready to increase my peace. Increased peace leads to grace. When you are peaceful and happy, you handle situations far more gracefully.

I was reading one of my favorite authors, Robert T. Kyosaki, the other day and he said that in order for him to make meaningful and lasting change, certain parts of him had to die. For example, in order for him to be rich…the poor man in him had to die. In order for him to be healthy, the fat and lazy man in him had to die…

What part of us needs to die, so that the new and improved version can be born?

This week I challenge you to think about the habits and behaviors in your life that you can replace, change or eliminate in order to increase your peace and grace. Take it one day at a time…and take it from me, the end result is well worth the work.