The first misconception he discusses, is the assumption that we need to be doing something right now, always, in every minute. \u201cThis is an incredibly subtle belief that most of us don\u2019t even realize we are holding onto\u201d, he says. The need to be constantly productive is ingrained in our minds from an early age, and it grows into an endless race as we mature, creating a lot of tension within us. Fishel says that giving-in and letting go of this sensation that there is always something that needs done will enable us to enjoy what we do. The world is full of potential, and there has always been and will forever be things to do. For eons, billions of people have not always done all that\u2019s needed, so really, you too can calm down and release this illusionary belief that you are the only one who\u2019s really responsibility for doing everything. One of the phenomena tightly linked to the need to be active all the time, is the illusion that if only we were to finally get our goal, we would then be able to relax and be happy. This is a big misconception, because one of the most powerful patterns in the human mind is our adaptability. Once we get used to a certain situation, its uniqueness fades away. This means, that our achievements or material assets can only be effective for the short run. Yet, understanding and accepting the fact that it is an endless race can get us out of the loop, enabling us to live without the tension it generates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another belief that we hold on to, although it can cause us much tension, is that if we express our emotions authentically it would mean we are weak. Fishel says that we undergo a process of emotional restraint because of this belief, intended to hide away our internal state for good and for worse. We fear society will condemn us if we reveal our vulnerability. \u201cThe irony in this,\u201d he explains, \u201cis that as everyone is dealing with the urge to be authentic, those that actually do so are often met with respect and admiration\u201d. And they are more peaceful, for two reasons: they have one less social anxiety to deal with, and they are not suppressing a basic psychological mechanism. This greatly relates to the next belief we should free ourselves from: \u201cIf people knew the real me, they wouldn\u2019t like it\u201d. In truth, our emotional expression and our personal perception of who we are join forces together, to form an interface that we continuously perfect just to garner the recognition we want from society. But this choice on our part taxes us heavily \u2013 with anxiety. Self-denial is an exhausting activity, which robs us of our mental faculties. When we hide a certain aspect of our personality, we are generating inner-tension, just as the water flowing along in a river creates pressure on the riverbanks or a dam. Opening the floodgates of this dam would release the pent-up tension and let the river flow free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fishel describes several other beliefs of this kind, and one of these that should draw our attention is the perception that the path to real inner peace requires immense effort, and an unrealistic feat for the average person. \u201cMany of us feel that we are far from inner peace, and we idolize those who seem to have found it\u201d, he writes. We perceive inner peace as an exhausting journey, but \u201cwhen you stop striving [for inner peace] so aggressively, you will start to see the calm you\u2019re looking for. It is this process of turning your beliefs upside down that becomes the journey in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n These changes in our perception derives from the worldview of Buddhism. Eric Barker, the Braking Up the Wrong Tree<\/a> blogger, believes there\u2019s a complementary side that can be found in Stoic philosophy. In a post linking between the two, his ideas correspond with Fishel\u2019s, and he presents additional principles that can lead to inner peace. The major difference is Barker\u2019s emphasis on the impact that inner peace has on our discretion and ability to make sound decision. When we are anxious, he claims, \u201cwe rarely do the smart thing\u201d. And that\u2019s why, when we worry, the first question we should ask ourselves is \u201cIs this useful?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is classic Stoics. The ancient Greek philosophy had looked at challenges in a binary way. Whenever something disturbs our peace, we are faced with two options: there\u2019s either something we can do about it, or it\u2019s out of our control. If we can do something about it, the Stoics would say that there\u2019s nothing to worry about \u2013 because we can do something about it; and if there\u2019s nothing we can do about it, then again, there is nothing to worry about \u2013 because it\u2019s just not up to us. Barker expands on this notion, to also explain what occurs in our brain. It\u2019s all about \u201cus\u201d, he says, \u201cnot our thoughts\u201d. While we don\u2019t have much control over the thoughts we may have, which can suddenly rise up from our subconscious or be sparked as a reaction to an external event, the way we handle our thoughts speaks volumes about who we are. We are what we do with our thoughts \u2013 because we have the power to filter them or reject them completely. \u201cThe ancient Stoics believed that you are just your reasoned choice, because that\u2019s the only thing fully under your control\u201d, he explains, \u201cSo those worried thoughts aren\u2019t you. The decisions you make regarding them are\u201d. There is an ironic loop here that is quite amusing: because we have no control over the things that worry us, then there really is no reason to be worried about them in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another hurdle on the road to peace, is our sense of entitlement. It\u2019s a slippery slope: \u201cYou feel you\u2019re entitled to something; reality doesn\u2019t bend to your expectations \u2013 and boom\u201d. To develop stable peacefulness within us, we have to exchange our sense of entitlement with the question: \u201cdoes the world owe me this?\u201d Many of us live in a world of unprecedented democratic freedom and affluence, in which the conversation about rights and privileges has been risen to the level of sacred. And, as often happens when a school of thought is so prevailing and beneficial for people, the water starts pouring from the pot. The term \u2018my natural right\u2019 is quite laundered by now. By definition, a person\u2019s right cannot be something natural. Take for example the Cobra snake, who is undoubtedly part of nature but couldn\u2019t care less about your \u2018natural right\u2019 to live if you go about disturbing it. So, if the ultimate, basic \u2018natural right\u2019 to live can be taken away from us in a flash, your personal sense of entitlement can be waivered, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we spend our life feeling that people, or society as a whole, owes us something, we are bound for a journey filled with disappointments. We then have to face these \u2018disappointments\u2019 on a daily basis, but for some reason continue to upkeep our feeling of personal entitlement, and this builds great tension within us, just like a boxer in the ring that\u2019s always on the lookout for the next punch coming their way. To avoid constant beating, we have to leave the ring of entitlement, abandon it completely, walk away. Barker says that the \u201cFamed psychologist Albert Ellis<\/a> (whose work was inspired by the Stoics) led a war against the words \u2018should\u2019 and \u2018must.\u2019 Anytime you use those words, you\u2019re probably in for some unhappiness because you\u2019re saying the universe is obligated to bend to your will. Good luck with that\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marcus Aurelius, one of the most prominent Stoic philosophers, claimed that \u201cVery little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking\u201d. This notion corresponds with Fishel\u2019s idea about chasing achievements, fame, and fortunes. Here too, we touch on society\u2019s \u2018chasing after\u2019 culture, which inevitably brings you down when you participate in the race. It\u2019s an endless run from one station to the next, and each time we think we\u2019re finally there, we discover it\u2019s just a mirage and we\u2019re off again to the next stop. At some point we realize that all these \u2018destinations\u2019 are just illusionary, but we still soldier-on any way, going along with the flow, because that\u2019s what everybody else does. It creates a dissonance within us, since we know we are able to stop and get out of the loop, but don\u2019t actively decide to no longer be out of breath in this meaningless, endless race. Another aspect that Fishel raises, which is also backed by Barker, is authenticity. As he explains, we have to be and live the best version of ourselves every single minute. \u201cWhen you act like your best self, you end up showing people what you\u2019re really like\u201d. This, as explained, leads to the leveling of the pressures internally and externally, which calms us down and regulates our emotional system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, it\u2019s pretty clear there\u2019s so much we can do to reach inner peace on our own, by using our thoughts alone. All we really need to do is challenge some of our more fixed beliefs about ourselves. Inside each and every one of us, is that person sitting under the coconut tree sipping a shake and gazing out at the ocean. Our role is to remove anything that\u2019 s blocking this person\u2019s view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If we were flung far into some tropical island, spending our days on the beach under the shade of a coconut tree holding a shake in our hand, it would probably be pretty easy to reach a state of inner peace and be tranquil. The challenge is to maintain this mental being even when the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,9,18],"class_list":["post-552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-brain","tag-meditation","tag-zen"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":678,"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552\/revisions\/678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/peace-of-mind-inner-1.jpg\")
zooco \/ shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eol.co.il\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/peace-of-mind-inner-2.jpg\")
haveseen \/ shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe world doesn\u2019t owe us anything<\/h4>\n\n\n\n