By Udeme Archibong

A business executive, fifty years of age was found dead at his desk with a revolver in hand. The note he left behind revealed that tension and exasperation were “driving him mad” and he could stand it no longer, so he simply ended his life. A man left his wife and three children without telling anyone of his departure and whereabouts leaving his jobless wife to fend for his family and he returned about three years later.

He left for the apparent reason that he could not shoulder the responsibility of providing for his family and the way he knew to handle the situation was to run from his family. Everyone has a way of reacting or responding to the frustrations and troubles of life. In many lives peace and happiness are strangers to them.

A calm, serene and peace-full mind commands power and creativity, exercising sound judgment. With peace at the center you can wade off and dissolve crises efficiently from your life. The quality of your well-being hinges on the level of peace of mind you enjoy. Wellness is equated with peacefulness. A mind that knows peace is a life that lives in harmony with its highest values and innermost convictions that are based on correct, universal, timeless and self evident principles. A balanced life eliminates tenseness and floods the mind with peace.

Without peace of mind, everything else in life loses value. The enemies of peace of mind are fear, anger, doubt, guilt, resentment and worry. The entrance of stress is the exit of peace.  The habitation of negative emotion in the mind eliminates peace. When you detach yourself from negative people, situation and emotions you attach yourself to peace of mind.

To enjoy peace-full mind in a tensed and troubled world, you must pursue and enjoy peace in all your relationships: The start-up of a mind-full of peace is developing and maintaining peace with God. When you are grounded in the knowledge that God loves and accepts you unconditionally; He does not love you more because you are good and He does not love you less because you act badly. God’s love is always unchanging. It gives us a reassuring peace and frees us to develop lifestyle that will make God proud of us. Therefore, God’s peace floods our minds even in the midst of the storms of life.

Developing and maintaining a healthy relationship with self is a vital necessity in possessing a mind-full of peace. I’m in love with the questions Joyce Meyer poses in regards to relationship with self, “Do you enjoy spending time alone? Can you handle being with yourself or do you always need people and noise to distract you from the way you feel inside? Are you able to forgive yourself (receiving God’s forgiveness) when you make a mistake? Are you patient with yourself while God is changing you? How much time do you waste feeling guilty and condemned about things in the past?

Do you compare yourself with other people and struggle trying to be like them? Do you feel the need to compete with others and try to be good at what they are good at? Do you let the world’s standard of looks and body image become your standard? Or are you able to freely be the precious individual that God created you to be? To be at peace with yourself, you need to love and accept yourself unconditionally.

To have a mind-full of peace, you need to have stress-free relationship with people. You must understand that nobody is perfect, so don’t have unrealistic expectations of others and give allowances to forgive others. You must give people the freedom to be themselves, don’t clone people into your expectations and your own mould. You must encourage, love and accept people unconditionally if you want to have a mind-full of peace.

Practice staying calm and serene by thinking and visualizing peace-full situations. Take away the rush from your life and run your life with balance and moderation in all things. Ultimately, let go and trust God; maximizing the present and you will have a mind-full of peace in a troubled world.