Day 29 – Make Peace With Your Oldest Enemy

“Having inner peace means committing to letting go of self-criticism and self-doubt.” ― Sanaya Roman

Day 29 – How To Make Peace With Your Oldest Enemy

If I had a straight and easy answer to this question I would win the Nobel Prize. 🙂

However, as abstract and complicated this might seem, everything we’ve done so far on this challenge was meant to bring us in tune with our gut feeling, and to being in peace with ourselves.

In those seconds or minutes of alignment with our most inner selves, there is nothing but peace. Or joy. Or love. Or light. Everyone experiences this differently but these are the words that are mostly used to describe it.

Once we are in touch and centred, we can taste, even briefly the inner peace and love we are all made off.

The challenge is to get back to this state as often as possible throughout our days. Thus we can observe any discomfort or irritation that comes in and dissolve it before it becomes a way if “insane living.”

How To Do This: 

• Put aside a few minutes for this. Sit comfortably and breathe deeply a few times.
• Close your eyes, scan your body and notice if there is any tension. Breathe into that tension and when you are completely relaxed, say to yourself, in your mind or out loud:
• “I totally accept and approve of myself now.”
• Notice the sensations in your body. You might notice a deeper level of relaxation.
• Repeat it a few times and keep noticing your body.

There might be some thoughts coming out: “yeah, I accept myself but I will relax after I lose those extra pounds”, “after I get that promotion or that raise”  or “after my business gets better”.

Notice these thoughts and recognise them as your judging voices. They all mean well for You, they want You to have a better life, a bigger income, a growing business and so on.

But if we fail to accept ourselves in the Now, even though we did not yet achieve what our Voices want us to do, we can never relax.

And instead of focusing on what we want to achieve from a place of relaxed acceptance, our energy gets dissipated on fighting with what is.

From my experience there are so many levels of self judgment and an equivalent number of levels of acceptance.

For me, this process feels like peeling an onion. I discover one layer made of one voice of judgment, I work with it through acceptance then I discover another one. So I keep peeling, layer after layer.

So that’s my take on today’s exercise. Here’s yesterday’s in case you missed it. I would love to hear how the exercise was for you. Share in the comments bellow.

With all my love,

Raluca

PS: Tomorrow’s the last day of our challenge. Thank You for being part of this, for your comments and contribution to our learning together. You are awesome!

PPS: I leave you with John Lennon’s “Imagine” that I simply love 🙂