How to Have a More Peaceful Mind in an Uncertain World?
In the past, due to various changes on the outside, I often felt anxious. Anxiety and unstable emotions consume our inner energy, which has a more significant negative impact on life. Having suffered a lot, I have been actively exploring various methods and learning to maintain a more stable and calm mind.
Gradually I realized that the trigger of unstable emotions might be external, but the reason is internal. A fluctuating mood would be more vulnerable in a changing environment. So only when our cognitive and self-consciousness improved, then can we enhance our mental status.
I share my exploration for more people to know it’s possible to have a more stable sense if we consciously improve our cognition and use unique methods to adjust one’s state. There are two paths to help us move toward inner peace. One is an external adjustment, focusing on lifestyle and behavior changes; The other is essential: cultivating our inner life.
Path 1 — The adjustment of your lifestyle
External behavior and lifestyle adjustments are easier to carry out in the beginning. Let’s talk about it first.
1. Keep a routine that fits your preferences.
Since the outbreak of covid-19, tremendous changes have occurred in the external world. Maintaining one’s daily routine helps keep a relatively stable feeling and will not make people feel excessively turbulent, increasing the sense of internal stability. Develop routines that match your life's and work's pace. Some people like to get up early; others are night owls and prefer to get up late. It would be best if you matched your routines with your habits. The key is to make life more rhythmic. For example, my family and I set aside a fixed time on the weekend to clean the room to ensure a clean and orderly new experience for the new week.
2. Keep exercising and get enough rest.
Most of the time, emotional instability has much to do with your physical health. If you rest well, your mood will naturally be better. When I was in a bad mood, I tended to bed early. The air will ease a lot when having a good sleep. At the same time, remember to exercise, especially during the epidemic. I increased the time of regular exercise every morning during the pandemic, which is the easiest way to maintain my mental state and health. Ensuring a healthy diet is a necessary part of coordinating physical exercise.
3. Get as close to nature as possible.
It is easy to have a sense of peace when we are in natural scenery. For example, running outdoors is good for health and mood. After outdoor activities, the tension will relax a lot. It is beneficial to go to the beach regularly. When you see the sea’s vastness and massive rhythm, your tension will be relieved immediately. Perhaps because we are more likely to feel personal insignificance at the beach, worries and discomforts are also reduced.
4. Give room for your moods.
Our mental state is dynamic. We need to respect our feelings fully. When you encounter problems, your emotions become restless, angry, or sad. These are all-natural. When you feel sad and want to cry, give yourself space to let these emotions flow out. Don’t deny them; just let them come out naturally. You can talk to family or friends about your mood. This process itself is a way of allowing emotions to flow.
On the other hand, don’t let your mood spread. You need to see these moods and allow them to flow, but don’t strengthen them, even let them spread endlessly. For example, you are angry and want to complain if you encounter something unfair. Let yourself see these negative moods consciously, but don’t power them. When negative emotions are promoted, they will continue to spread. The key is to be aware of your feelings. Then, let your inner consciousness dominate the behavior instead of being overwhelmed by emotions.
Individuals cannot control the ever-changing environment, but you can effectively manage your micro-lifestyle. Therefore, on the first path, the core is to improve your inner experience by optimizing your external lifestyle and behavior. You also need to respect your emotions and provide space for them.
Next, I want to focus more on the second path: maintaining a peaceful inner state through inner cultivation. The second path is more challenging to achieve but more indispensable.
Path 2 — The cultivation of your inner life
1. Find a way to connect with the world deeply
When we connect with the world meaningfully, we will have a sense of satisfaction and value. We are more prone to anxiety and restlessness if we lack a sense of purpose. Therefore, establishing a deep connection with the world is essential in our lives. When a person finds his/her mission, it will become easier for him/her to become self-consistent and harmonious internally. Knowing the meaning of life (You are more tolerant of everything.) and injecting vitality into it is the best way to connect with the world and avoid unstable emotions.
The person who knows his passion for life is more at ease with keeping a stable mind. During the bubonic plague in the early 17th century, William Shakespeare worked on writing and composed King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony & Cleopatra. On the other hand, more people have difficulty concentrating on daily life during the plague epidemic, suffering from inner pain and anxiety. The painter Edvard Munch didn’t just witness the Spanish Flu pandemic change the world around him; he had also infected. Instead of becoming one of its many victims, Munch lived to continue making great art. Once he felt his physical condition improved, he kept painting and recorded himself by painting. The Spanish flu's self-portrait shows a sick face of him sitting in front of a hospital bed.
For these two legends, writing and painting are their passion and the meaning connected with the world. When these deep connections exist, people are more stable at heart and are less affected by the changing external environment.
I read the article “How will you measure your life” by Clayton Christensen many times. Clayton mentioned he spent an hour every night reading and thinking and wanted to figure out his life’s purpose more clearly when he was a Rhodes scholar. When you meet the conflict choices, may it be better to reflect deeply on the meaning of your life. As Clayton said, “ without a goal, life can become hollow.” (Clayton,197).
Pandemic time provides us a pause to rethink our purpose in life. When encountering sudden changes in the external environment, I felt anxious and unsafe initially, like most people. After the initial emotional turmoil, I realized it was the right time to take a step back and reflect on my previous life. I thought about my interests and passions for life, which helped me identify future goals and directions more clearly. Moreover, through these in-depth reflections, my inner mind became calmer.
2. Develop a cohesive self
A cohesive self means your self has a centripetal force and a sense of tenacity, which can ensure that the various components of the mind gather inward to form a whole. Your inner self knew you exactly. Without developing a cohesive self, a person is like an environmental responder, caring very much about others’ evaluation and trying to adjust himself to match the best external identity. After forming a cohesive self, you are still sensitive to the environment. Changes in the background stimulate your reaction, but it is difficult to shake your foundation. Therefore, you can jump out of the environment to observe.
So, how do we have to develop a cohesive self? It is based on the feeling of “I am good.” This kind of narcissism is a kind of cohesion, which can glue together your various materials about yourself. Psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut pointed out that good parents understand and accept their children’s ambitions and narcissism, fully affirming the children and making them feel “I am good.” If you grow up based on the feeling “I am good,” you will have the confidence to meet different world challenges. An adult without the opportunity to develop self-confidence in childhood can still create this confidence through acquired cultivation. Primarily we need to learn to seek interpersonal support. Everyone’s self has its limitations, and its tenacity is also different. When you feel emotionally overwhelmed, it is vital to seek help from others. Forming a tenacious self continuously dissolves frustration and transforms it into self-strength while receiving interpersonal support. When you are a kid, you mainly get mental consent from your parents; when you become an adult, you get more emotional support from family and friends.
Besides that, the other three ways can help to build a cohesive self. First, have a correct view of time and space. People who tend to feel anxious always lack a practical sense of time and space. They tend to be worried because of the setbacks they encounter right now. It needs to know that you cannot achieve something now, but as time accumulates and space changes, the possibility of realization will increase. Second, look at the problem holistically, knowing that the setbacks encountered now are only partial setbacks, don’t magnify them and think that you are destroying the whole. Third, when facing an issue, please refrain from serious self-attack. Use various methods to appease yourself. It will help if you alleviate the shame feeling caused by frustration, and then it’s possible to make a more accurate attribution.
3. Improve cognition and strength mindfulness
In most situations, your suffering feeling may be the sub-product of your thoughts (we are prisoners of our thoughts), and your stick to your inner self. Especially when your inner self is intolerant, this thinking driven by “self” can lead to more negative emotions. Yes, we meet many challenges and changes in our lives; on the other hand, your “self” may exemplify these external changes, aggravating your worries and pain. For example, I used to worry about things that hadn’t happened yet. Or if I did not do well on something, I would attribute everything to personal problems. I believe you have similar suffering too. “Thinking is indispensable to us. It is essential for belief formation, planning, explicit learning, moral reasoning, and many other capacities that make us human.” (Sam,99). But as Sam Harrier said in Waking-Up, “Our habitual identification with thought — that is, our failure to recognize thoughts as thoughts, as appearances in consciousness — is a primary source of human suffering. It also illuminates that a separate self lives inside one’s head.”
In Buddhism's eyes, the so-called “self” refers to the “self” controlled by the outside and obsessed with all kinds of external pursuits. This “self” easily gets lost in a constantly changing environment.
To reduce the interference of self-illusion and meaningless thinking, we need to consciously observe the “self” at a certain distance and not be entangled by the “self” illusion. For example, when you feel anxious when doing something, in addition to considering objective factors, you should also consider whether the “ego” is causing trouble, such as high expectations of yourself, which intensifies anxiety. This anxiety is relieved when you become aware of the “self” fantasy.
Another effective practice is to strengthen mindfulness continuously. “Mindfulness is a technique for achieving equanimity amid the flux, allowing us to simply be aware of the quality of experience in each moment, whether pleasant or unpleasant.” (Sam, 89). Practicing mindfulness lets us escape self-obsession and avoid being trapped in the cage of thought. It does not mean we give up thinking, but it allows us to focus more on the present moment and remain completely open to the present.
Sum up
We cannot eliminate emotional dynamics changes in our inner minds. However, suppose a person is too susceptible to external to cause excessive emotional ups and downs. It means that the person is unstable and needs to bear more anxiety, which is unnecessary. These two paths can help people develop a more stable inner life in an uncertain world. Practicing the second way is essential for a more peaceful mind. Specifically, improving self-awareness, strengthening mindfulness, and finding the meaning of life are effective ways to achieve inner spiritual harmony.
Ultimately, we need to realize that human cognition and emotion are not separate. “The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about feelings.” (Sam,15)
Useful Resources
- Sam Harrier, Waking Up, June 16, 2015.
- Sam Harrier, Wake Up Application, https://wakingup.com/
- Clay Christensen, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” TEDxBoston, Jul 17, 2012
- Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, January 30, 2008
- Roger J. R. Levesque, “Cohesive Self,” https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_517, 12 August 2014.
- Judith Blackstone, “Meditation and the Cohesive Self,” https://realizationprocess.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cohesiveself.pdf, 02 Dec 2008.
Rui Yang is a product designer and design-innovation leader in the Bay Area. You can find Rui on Linkedin.
