What’s Stealing Your Peace?

What’s Stealing Your Peace?

This week I had been challenged with an external conflict that was at its core, an internal one.

“I had to release my ex-husband to be the type of father he chooses to be, so that I can be the type of mother I need to be.”

Whenever I am faced with a conflict of personal choices in interpersonal relationships I stop and ask myself three questions:

1. Do these thoughts serve me?

2. Do they grow me?

3. Do they nurture me?

Many of our complaints or disapprovals of other people’s behavior can be boiled down to, “I don’t like their behavior because of what I perceive that it means to me…”

My desire to impose my plan for how someone else should live their journey left me feeling frustrated and helpless. Frustrated, because trying to address other people’s actions, no matter how foolish they may seem to us, is like trying to singlehandedly push a solid brick wall…even moving it one inch is mostly impossible.

Do these thoughts serve us means, do they play an essential role in us accomplishing self-love, personal peace and all-around abundance? If we did get our way, would our lives improve so much that we excel in areas we currently lack? Many times, the answer to that is a resounding NO! Getting people to act the way we want them to act only suffices for a moment, because if our personal peace is built on an outside factor having to change, then it will always be built on outside factors having to change.

This renders us powerless to the behaviors and attitudes of the very people we perceive to need to change. Sounds crazy, right?

Do these thoughts grow me, refers to do they provide me with deeper emotional intelligence, inspire those around me or boost my exceptional abilities? I had to wrestle with the hard truth: will entertaining these ideas make me a better mother? The answer was resounding NO! Neither myself nor my children benefited from this gnawing agitation I had allowed in my space.

These ideas I was entertaining completely conflicted with my personal truths, truths I have done years of hard work to establish and solidify. The truth that feels like home.

Do these thoughts nurture me means, do they feel sweet and lovable, cozy and warm, cuddly and soft? Or do they feel tight and rigid, frigid and callus, stifling and petty? Which of these descriptions would you prefer to feel? I don’t know about you but I want to love my thoughts and actions, be proud of them. I want my daughters to see me as a soft place to fall and to know that no matter how anyone else in their lives behave, mommy is grounded, full of love and exemplifies peace. This is the kind of mother I need to be for them. This is the kind of woman I aim to be every day.

So, people are flawed and so are you, big whoop! Old news, always has been and always will be. Other people’s flaws are not new discoveries and going on about them only contaminates our mindsets and our space.

What’s stealing your peace? If you can’t answer yes to any of these three questions, do yourself a huge, astounding and necessary favor: LET IT GO!

Love on yourself enough to release others to be who they choose to be, so that you can be the amazing being that you need to be…for you, your children and anyone who has the pleasure of being graced with your presence.

Love,

~Jameelah