International Peace Day can become Peace Week, Peace Year...Peace Life!
1. Believe in Peace
Ask yourself how sincere is your desire for peace. The degree to which you believe in peace is the measure of your desire.
Imagine the headline "World Peace Begins!" Do you believe this statement can be true? You make it true, because world peace begins within you - within your inner world. Any other success you have in business, athletics or life starts with belief in accomplishing the goal.
You may ask, "How can I make peace?" An answer is, "How did you make peace with anything that had once upset you?" Did you communicate more clearly? Did you listen more carefully with an accepting open mind? Did you change your perception? Did you simply mature? Believe what you have done can be done again repeatedly.
2. See Peace for what it is
Ask yourself, "What is my picture of peace?" Then look carefully at what you painted. If you painted sunny days with no bumps in the road, you are not picturing reality. Life needs rain sometimes to grow and thrive. Rain makes potholes. Real peace in life goes beyond what happens on the outside.
3. Make Peace
Whatever happens on the outside just happens neutrally. You experience it, you feel it, and you have emotions related to the situations and happenings. Then you make what you want of all those sights, sounds, feelings and emotions as you turn them into thoughts and later actions.
You interpret the things that happen and the feelings that you have. You may feel angry when your child carelessly breaks the special vase that your grandmother gave you as he played catch in the living room. You get angry with him and you get angry with yourself, because you put a meaning in the vase that all your love and experiences with your grandmother exist in the vase and when the vase is gone, so is your love. You create the interpretation and create your fantasy reality to live by with that understanding.
4. Take steps to Peace
When upsets happen, step back. "Count to ten" (take a meditative moment), and look for the real life reality. Has your grandmother's love vanished with the vase? Perhaps you remember a time when you broke something precious that she had. She made her choices and that time, and you know what that choice is by the love or guilt that she gave to you. You now have a choice to make in this situation with your son. For example, I have a friend who, as a father, tells his daughter in similar situations, "That's OK. These things happen". Then he works with her to problem solve a positive outcome. He developed this ability by consciously focusing on being a peacemaker - choosing love.
5. Build to Peace on the big scale
Seemingly bigger issues, such as bombings in NYC, may feel like an overwhelming disruption to peace. Yet, as you practice inner peace in the small things around you, you develop your peacemaking abilities.
6. Choose Peace
Ultimately, you give meaning to everything. You have the choice to give meanings connected to opportunity or to victimhood. You choose. Meditate on this concept every morning and throughout the day. Listen to the Dalai Lama, watch Martin Luther King Jr., read wisdoms, walk in nature. Leave the TV, smartphones, cocktails, excuses, chocolate and other distortions alone for a while to give your mind a break. Give yourself the opportunity to see opportunity. Breathe. Just breathe. Keep breathing. Then know -- you can chose peace.