How to Find Peace of Mind
The blessing of peace come from God
What gives you peace of mind? Without hesitation I have an answer: a clear conscience. When I fail God and the Spirit convicts me of a wrong attitude or action, I confess it (agree with God) and repent. I agree with Glen Campbell, “There’s no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.”
I endeavor to leave no unfinished business with God, first of all, and as much as lies within me, to live peaceably with everyone (Romans 12:18). If the Holy Spirit convicts me of being wrong or doing wrong, I thank Him, then endeavor to make it right. Adam Smith said, “What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” In the first place…
A clear conscience =
peace of mind
Peace of mind will elude you if you try to live up to the unrealistic expectations people try to put on you. Managing your own family is no small matter while on public display. Some go so far as to call it a pedestal or living in a glass house.
“The families of ministers ought to be examples of good to all other families.” I grew up as a PK (preacher’s kid), so I know the unrealistic expectations placed upon pastor’s kids firsthand. Learning to manage your home and family under constant scrutiny is difficult. My wife and I raised two PK’s ourselves and part of managing that challenging assignment was to play down the pedestal mentality that church people sometimes unwittingly placed on my daughters.
It’s challenging to live
ina glass house
I thank God for lay people who loved and supported our girls in their growing up years. Unfortunately, some PK’s resented the expectations foisted upon them by church people and they became rebellious. I wonder whether it was really against Christ or against being forced to live in a glass house?
The challenge is to have well-behaved children living in the zoo. The challenge of a pastor is to disciple his own kids so that when they are out on their own they still want to serve Christ. There is no higher success than this. Passing the faith along without the overwhelming sense that all eyes are upon you and your PK’s. I think we achieved this because both of our daughters are serving the Lord.
Don’t let the jerks get
the best of you!
Peace of mind also requires resolve not to let the jerks in life get the best of you. My Mom and Dad had a saying they often repeated to me when people said hurtful things to me: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me!” The truth is, however, that words hurt and hurtful words wound deeply.
I once heard Dr. Lowell Becker, M.D. speak to a group of ministers and he simplified for me what my response should be to the hurtful things people sometimes say and do. He said that more often we re-live than relieve the injuries we receive. To help us protect our self-esteem, Dr. Becker spoke of our “inside and outside basket.” I didn’t know I had one. And he didn’t bother to give us its location on our bodies, but we all knew exactly what he meant.
You have an inside
and outside basket!
In order to build healthy self-esteem, we must continually transfer to the inside basket. By an act of the will we must take it to the inside. We never seem to get enough in our inside basket. We need many positive, affirming things in the form of compliments and kindnesses to make us feel good and encourage us. Why? Because compliments dissolve.
“One of the commodities in life that most people can’t get enough of is a compliment. The ego is never so intact,” writes Phyllis Theroux, “that one can’t find a hole in which to plug a little praise. But,” she cautions, “compliments by their very nature are highly biodegradable and tend to dissolve hours or days after we receive them—which is why we can always use another.”
Such affirmations must be transferred to our inside basket; i.e., we must internalize them or they will evaporate. This is not to say we must strive for strokes or seek approval from others. We are not on a stage. If we are, we need to get off it and forget about fulfilling our high need to please others.
Positive things, inside;
Negative things, outside!
Be that as it may, the positive things that come to you which must be internalized before they evaporate, negative things go directly to your inside basket and must be transferred to your outside basket where they can disappear without doing damage to your self-esteem. Dr. Becker reminded us that it is the things we allow to get into our inside basket that literally eat us alive. These are the things that sink deep and disrupt peace of mind. They penetrate and cannot easily be shaken. When we allow them inside they do harm.
Err on the side of positivity
if you want to maintain peace of mind.
So Dr. Becker said the trick is to either keep them from ever getting on the inside, or to work hard to put them into your outside basket where they can vanish. Inside hurtful things materialize and grow like a cancer. It is very difficult to remove them from your insides even when you practice forgiveness often. According to the Losada ratio, “we need at least 2.9 instances of positive feedback for every negative feedback.”
Conflict disrupts peace of mind more than anything else. I have learned that tough conversations get tougher the longer you wait. We are doing no one any favors by avoiding “the tunnel of chaos” — conflict isn’t fun, but it helps us grow. Iron doesn’t sharpen iron without some sparks flying! Sometimes you have to have hurtful conversations with people in order to be helpful, but make sure your motives are right. If you’re saying something just to get it off your chest, don’t bother. It’ll backfire.
Genuine relationships are
full of grace and truth.
In put it differently, without grace, relationships have no heart. Without truth, relationships have no head. But when they are full of grace and truth, our relationships ring true. Then and only then will we hear the voice of God through others. President Ronald Reagan once said, “Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”
“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.” —Thomas Merton
