Personal Peace Won’t Come by Way of People-Pleasing or Permission
By: Crystal Jackson
Tags: Mindfulness, Mental Health, Covid 19, Self, Psychology

Personal Peace Won’t Come by Way of People-Pleasing or Permission

Exploring personal peace during a global pandemic.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I’ve come to believe that maybe personal peace isn’t something we need to fight for. Maybe it’s something we walk toward instead. At first, uncertainly, but then with surer steps as we become more comfortable with our truth and more accepting of our vulnerability.

Why did we ever think it needed to be a fight?

I look back at my life and realize that the times I felt like I was fighting for peace, I was usually embroiled in conflict with others. Trying to honor my own knowing while trying to appease others landed me in deep conflict with myself. I couldn’t do both, but I somehow felt like I had to. I thought that making peace with everyone was my job, that pleasing others was a part of my responsibility as a human being.

I spent a lot of time apologizing and explaining. I spent even more time trying to negotiate with others, as if I needed anyone’s permission to live a life that honored myself. Finding peace did feel like war because I was fighting other people’s judgments, my own truth, and everything in between.

But I didn’t need to fight, not ever. Actually, I needed to do the opposite. I needed to surrender.

I needed to give up the idea that anyone else would ever fully endorse my decisions and my life. I needed to make peace with the fact that honoring myself didn’t mean pleasing others and that I could try to either please everyone or please myself but never both. I had to surrender this idea that everyone would stay and support my journey and accept the fact that there would be relationships I would outgrow and leave behind.

Peace was never meant to be a street brawl. My personal revolution wasn’t a battle I needed to fight. I’ve come to believe that maybe surrender, acceptance, and vulnerability were the essential parts of peace. I had discounted all of them as weakness and waded into one argument after another, trying to hold my ground but losing more of it with each fight.

But in the stillness of a paused life where normal has been thrown out the window along with days of the week and schedules, I am coming to understand how surrender, acceptance, and vulnerability create a peace that feels like peace, not war.

I am surrendering to the idea that I don’t owe anyone apologies or explanations for being who I am and living a life that honors that knowing. I am accepting my own truth with an open and happy heart, ready to live deeply committed to honoring myself. I am accessing my own vulnerability as I admit to discomfort and grief and a softness that takes nothing away from my resourcefulness, capability, or courage.

There’s something about having our lives turned upside down that creates space for the thoughts we might normally sweep aside. I don’t want a street brawl or a melodrama. I don’t want arguments and explanations. I don’t have any apologies to give. I’m just sitting with a deeper truth and finally understanding that no one is going to give me permission to live it — because no one else can.

In Psychology, the fight I was feeling has a name. It’s called cognitive dissonance. It comes when our actions don’t align with our thoughts and beliefs. I was spending so much time trying to justify my life that I wasn’t really living it. I was spending time trying to negotiate room for my choices with people who would never understand or accept them. When I stopped trying to hold peace talks with everyone my decisions ever upset, the cognitive dissonance disappeared.

Lately, I’ve been feeling more at peace than I have in a long time, which seems odd when I consider how much anxiety I have about the world as a whole. I’m anxious about this global pandemic, but I’m finding personal peace about my choices. Maybe it’s because I have some time to consider them, or maybe it’s just because a crisis of this nature brings our priorities straight to the surface.

I want peace, but I don’t want to live my life pleasing everyone else while I dishonor what I need and know. My life needs to be lived on my terms. This is true of all of us. We’re the ones who make the choices, and we’re the ones who live with the consequences. While others may think they know what we should do and who we should be, they don’t have to live with the dissonance when we try to live a life that doesn’t align with our own internal compass.

In this stillness, I’ve been creating a life that honors me. On some days, I reach out and talk because I need that connection. On others, I’m quieter and more contemplative. I have days of action and days of rest, and I’m finding my choices are more intentional.

I’m looking back at a life that felt like fighting for everything I’ve ever had, and I realize now that some of that life did take a phenomenal amount of work and effort. It wasn’t easy, but it’s been rewarding. But that was effort, not angst.

But some of my life felt like a fight because I went against my own knowing or tried too long to keep the peace at my own expense. At every point in my life where I lacked peace, I was living from a place of expectations. I was following the shoulds rather than respecting what I knew to be true for me.

The peace didn’t come from everyone finally getting behind my choices with a dramatic show of support. Peace came when I made my choices without sitting around and waiting for anyone else’s approval. It came from acting from my own best interests and understanding that doing so would equally support the people I love. A happy, healthy me allows me to be a better mom, a better partner, a better friend, a better worker, and a better human in general.

Peace isn’t a fight. It’s not an argument where we wear our voices out trying to justify how we feel and who we are. Peace is a white flag. It’s walking toward what we want. It’s being who we are. It’s not dramatic. Sometimes, it doesn’t even make a sound. It is that feeling that shifts into place when we choose to live from our center and honor ourselves.

Normal means nothing, and there’s plenty to worry about. Staying safe and healthy, feeding our families, and balancing our budgets is work enough. Giving ourselves permission to be who we are and feel the way we feel shouldn’t take the energy of a fight. It shouldn’t be a fight at all. Instead, it should be a calm knowing, an acceptance, and surrender to our truth.

Peace comes to us quietly, without a fuss, when we stop prioritizing everyone else’s feelings over — and at the expense of — our own. We can get back to the business of shaping our lives amidst chaos with one less thing to worry about. Dissonance disappears, truths rise, and peace arrives.