5 Ways to Make Your Life More Peaceful

This one seems like a 'duh' moment, but I forget to do this way more than I would like to admit. Granted, it has gotten a lot easier and becomes like second nature once you get the hang of it.

Essentially, whenever things start to feel overwhelming, or you can feel yourself getting really agitated take a deep breath in, hold it for a couple seconds and slowly breathe out.

Closing your eyes can help when you are overstimulated. Cutting off one of your senses can help to bring you back down and ground you.

Also, using your imagination can really help with this technique. Try to imagine every deep breath in brings in good feelings/luck/intentions, whatever. Every breath out releases any bad feelings/luck whatever it is you want to get rid of. It is pretty effective I think.

You can help anyone, your parents, siblings, cousins, friends, neighbors, even people you don't know. The act of genuinely helping someone can do wonders for your own mental well-being.

Helping others not only makes you a happier person, but it can also reduce stress. On top of that, it has been linked to lowering depression in some people.

I don't know about you, but anything that can help both people involved sounds like a win/win to me.  Not only is the person you are helping receiving something positive, but you are as well. Who would pass that up? Granted, you would need to continually help others, this isn't just a one and done kind of thing, but this world needs a little kindness these days. And it would put you one step closer to living a more peaceful life.

For other perfectionists, like myself, organization is a dream come true. I don't know about anybody else, but I am always looking at different organizational ideas on Pinterest and fantasizing about how I could use it at home. Anybody else? Just me? OK then…

Unfortunately for my perfectionist personality, I am also a creative type. Very disorganized. I am a serious conundrum. I want so badly to be organized, however, I seem to have the complete inability to actually put it into practice. That is, until I get so stressed out about the mess that I scream "Forget it! I'm cleaning this no matter what!!" And then I proceed to clean and organize my entire life, usually making a larger mess at first, but slowly it actually becomes organized.

By the time I am done organizing and alphabetizing everything I own, I start to feel this sense of pride and joy in what I have finally accomplished. Granted, it never ends up staying organized, but for that glorious short time, it feels great having a place for everything, and everything in it's place.

Now, am I telling you to have a mental breakdown and clean every nook and cranny like I do? Absolutely not. A small project will be just fine to get that peace you are looking for. A little organizing here, and little bit there, and soon, you will have more than you thought possible clean and looking pretty. This will then send those happy signals to your brain telling you that you did something good. And that my friends is what we are looking for.

Go ahead and try a little project, clean your desk or organize your dresser, or a cabinet. See how it makes you feel. You'll like it.

If you knew me at all, you know that I am the queen of procrastination. It's
unhealthy really. I pretend that I work best under pressure which is why I wait until the last minute to do anything. But the reality is that I just have a
huge procrastination problem.

So how could I tell you not to procrastinate? Well, in my experience, the few
times I have done projects without procrastination, I felt so much better. I
wasn't rushed, I could take my time and make sure things were perfect (which is another one of my issues, yay!). Generally speaking, I felt much better about everything I did when I didn't wait to do it all.

When you just go ahead and get things done, you are able to bring a little bit more peace into your life. I have had anxiety for as long as I can remember, and for some reason, I still waited forever to do anything. That always ramps up my anxiety, not sure why I continue to do that, but that is a conversation for me and a therapist I guess.

Enough with my rambling, my point is, don't wait for things to get done, just do them. Otherwise, they pile up and you become overwhelmed and then nothing gets done. Rant over.

Time to get a little cliché. Another sure fire way to live a peaceful life is to
forgive. I'm not talking about the religious aspect of forgiveness, although if
that is your thing, then by all means. What I am talking about is the personal aspect of forgiveness.

If you truly want to live a peaceful life, you need to consider what happens when you don't forgive someone. What really happens when you hold onto all of that negativity? Does it hurt them? Does it ruin their life? Does it keep them awake at night wondering what they could have possibly done to make you so upset at them? Short answer, no. Chances are, they are out there living a perfectly normal life not even thinking twice about how they made you feel in third grade when they took your last gummy bear without asking.

When you hold onto that energy, you are doing just that. You are bringing nothing but negativity into your own life. You won't truly feel at ease until you let it go. Forgiveness is never for the other person. It is for yourself. And
sometimes, its not even another person we have to forgive. It is ourselves.
Just like Elsa said, over and over and over and over in some of our homes….
"Let it go".

Honestly, if you want to live in the most peaceful way possible, forgive. Forgive yourself, forgive others. You don't need to forget, but you do need to forgive.