Finding Inner Peace in a Busy World

Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Stop.
For just a moment.

Advice of which I need to remind myself of often. Life moves fast. Days are packed. Hours are full. Work piles up.

Wake up. Go, go, go. Sleep. Repeat. Sometimes, the STOP button is missing (or at least the PAUSE button) in our lives.

A few days ago, I was feeling so overwhelmed with my "To Do" list that I emailed Steve at work and told him that I thought I had just experienced a little anxiety attack. Lucky for me, I have a husband who knows exactly what it takes to calm me down and walk me through the stress-out reasons until I feel like I have a grip on my peace of mind again. Whew!

While it can seem that "lists of priorities" only include what must get accomplished in a day and not that silly little thing called our "peace of mind," it becomes imperative to remember that the POM concept might just need to be #1 in order to ensure any efficiency in other areas.

Funny how different our society is nowadays as compared to just a few decades ago. While technological advances (emails, texts, phones glued to us at all times, the internet at our fingertips wherever we may be) make us more productive, perhaps we need to refocus the constant output of activity and reflect back INWARD more often.

Steve and I reveal our ages when we tell our kids stories of "the old days" when television only offered the "main network" channels and woah, when MTV came along, it was like this alternate universe way off on channel 23.  Or that Atari was state-of-the-art and there really weren't Wii, PS3 and XBox options when you made birthday present pleas. We actually had to SIT at the phone in our rooms with the curly, coiled cord if we wanted to talk to our friends and COMPUTERS? Pshhhh...we typed our English papers on typewriters (with White Out in the wings).

Yes, life was different then. But it was also fantastic. I can only smile when reminiscing about warm summer nights as a teen with my bedroom window open, just listening to the quiet (yes, you can do that, right?) and the ripple of the water in my parents' swimming pool; or sitting on Steve's parents' patio listening to CDs (you thought I was going to say cassette tapes, huh?) and no computer to monitor multi-opened-tabs, email messages, friend requests and tweets.

It's not that I wish to return to the less sophisticated days without all of our modern conveniences, but I do wish to focus on that simplistic mind set again. I like being productive, I really do.  It's essential to a degree, it keeps me on track and it sets an example for my children. But I also appreciate peace: peace of mind, peace and quiet, inner peace. That simple serenity that can come from stepping back from "it all" and enjoying an element that doesn't cost us a thing: tranquil silence. Time to ourselves. Time to think and just BE.

Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Stop.
For just a moment.

**I made this sign to hang on my computer monitor (hence the STOP LOOKING AT ME line) from time-to-time.  Feel free to print it out yourself (click on image to go to larger screen) and cover your computer or TV.**

Sign to Hang On Your Computer or TV From Time-To-Time - Click & Print