In Peace
1) Honour Your FeelingsAvoiding, numbing, judging or stuffing down feelings can block peace. You may get a sense of temporary relief in the moment, but those feelings won’t have disappeared, and repression can lead to anxiety, addictions, numbing, and a disconnection from self. Obviously there are times not feeling your feelings and a level of repression can be a helpful coping or survival mechanism with traumatic and painful experiences, but in a more general sense, feeling feelings can allow for release and a restoration of peace.
I’ve no doubt you’ve experienced that deep sense of calm that comes after a big emotional release. Accepting and embracing whatever feelings are present can help them process and be freed.
Rather than repressing, trying to control, or judging your feelings, honour them and learn from them about what’s going on inside. What thoughts, beliefs, wounds or stories are be arising from?
Experiencing, expressing and processing your feelings (cleanly, i.e. not dumping them on another) brings healing and release. By this I don’t mean wallowing in them, indulging in them, or giving them undue attention if that doesn’t serve you, but to witness and allow without non-judgement.

2) Trust
Trust is an obvious ally to peace and anti-dote to fear that can so often stands in the way of  peace.
Trust in yourself. Trust in love, your love, and the love the universe has for you. Trust in your heart’s desires, visions and dream. Trust in your power as a co-creator. Trust in the positive outcomes of your wishes. Trust that you are on a co-creative journey and that there is love, help and guidance available to you in every moment. Trust that you are loved, more than you know, more than you will ever know.
Trust brings with it a sense of ease and faith, and lessens fear and any desire to control or have things be a certain way, allowing life to manifest in a way that more serves you.
If there is an area of your life you are fearful or doubtful around, lean into trust, get a sense of it, embrace it, let it support you.
3) Acceptance
Take a moment to accept yourself, life and others just as you/it/they are.
Acceptance brings peace and transformation. What you accept you more easily let go of and release; it’s what you resist that persists, and judgement only compounds what it judges.
Accept yourself for exactly who and where you are right now; the good, bad, ugly, light and dark, strengths and weaknesses…
Acceptance also helps you face, process and free feelings, and creates the space for love.

4) Letting Go
Holding on to anything, be that a person, situation, resentment, expectation of how things should be, the past, etc., can stand in the way of peace.
What can you let go of today for greater peace?
Perhaps it’s a belief, attitude, habit, emotion… fear, guilt, pain, righteousness, shame, blame, control, judgement…
Letting go of anything that doesn’t serve you. Doing so also creates the space for the new and what does serve.
5) Forgiveness
Forgiveness of self/others can be like a mind-body-soul detox that can liberate you from toxic emotions and draining attachments. Forgiving yourself can also help heal and release guilt and feelings of undeserving that can otherwise block inner peace.
There can be stages with forgiveness, as with grief. You may want to process feelings, allow time for healing, and so on. Trying to forgive through a wall of anger, for example, won’t work. Honour where you’re at in any process, and know forgiveness is always there for you as a healing gift.
6) Responsibility
Responsibility brings freedom and empowerment, with which comes peace. It can shift you out of victim mode, blame and resentment, all of which block peace. The more you take responsibility for your life, the more able you are to transform it.
When you blame and complain you remain the same; responsibility brings freedom and change.
You create or allow your experiences on some level, whether you are in aware of the hows and whys of that or not. You may never know why something happens or is happening, but you can still take responsibility.
Becoming aware of the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and choices that are impacting your self and reality can help you take responsibility.
7) Suspend Judgement
Judging others, or yourself, separates you from love and always stands in the way of peace.
Having an opinion isn’t the same as judgement. Being Judgemental has a harsh energy.
What you judge in another may be something you secretly judge in yourself that you have yet owned, buried or denied and are projecting outwards, or what you have yet forgiven another for in the past and a present-day trigger is pressing on that button. Use judgements to become more aware of yourself and any inner beliefs, repressed emotions, unhealed parts, areas to let go of, and so on.
The more you love and accept yourself, the less you will judge others and the more peace you will find.

8) Meditation
Meditation has so many known benefits mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically, and is an obvious peace ally. It helps your conscious ‘monkey mind’ to still, settling your energy, and bringing you back to centre. You can become more conscious of your body and emotions and whatever is going on within, bringing greater awareness and self-intimacy. You can connect to spirit and the sacred through meditation and allow in love and grace. Constricting energy and stress can dissipate, you can ground, connect to your heart, and be more open to truth and wisdom.

9) Know You Are Loved
You are loved by people in your world, by your Higher Self (the spiritual being that you really are beyond this life-time and your personality’s experience), and you are loved totally and unconditionally by the heart of creation, whatever name you hold for that. If you don’t walk a spiritual path, imagine there is a you within you that loves you totally and unconditionally. This love is available to you in every moment. Affirm your willingness to receive. The universe’s love has existed for you always. You may forget this love, but this love will never forget you.
There’s nothing you need do to win that love and nothing you can do to lose it either.
You are loved more than you will ever know, beyond reasons, beyond seasons, unconditionally, eternally, you are loved.
10) Love
Loving is one of the most rewarding life experiences. Love lies at the heart of who you are, and separation from it at the root of troubles and pain. Open to the love within, that love that you are, the love that you have for yourself, others, the world, and all that you love. Let it move through you, be felt and be expressed. Let it flow to where it wants to flow, within and without. Let it bring healing, restoration and wholeness.
♥ Aine Belton