PEACE - BECOME WHO YOU ARE

This area is vast and encompasses aspects such as religion and philosophy, but also our outlook on life. So today we are looking inwards. Even if there is a lot going on out there, different thoughts chasing us and causing discord, we can always ensure inner peace ourselves. In a conversation, the topic came up that people often change under the influence of their environment. There can be many reasons for this. It is often other people, a relationship or a general mood that we react to. All too often, we make our own peace of mind dependent on external influences. This is where a healthy self-awareness is very helpful.

Self-awareness means “to be aware of oneself”. In seminars, I often hear the term 'authenticity' in response to the question of what values are important to you. This is a really beautiful value, because it describes the fact that I am and can be completely myself, just as I am - with my strengths and weaknesses, with rough edges and also with kindness as a valuable person.

So why do we sometimes lose ourselves and become completely different people?

We can ask ourselves the following questions:

• Am I me?

• Am I the way I want to be?

• Do I value myself?

  
  

The basic prerequisite for valuing other people is the ability to value yourself first. I am not referring to arrogance or narcissism. I mean a healthy awareness of living in peace with oneself. “Friends are people who like me even though they know me.” I like to use this funny definition of friendship. But today we can ask ourselves:

Do I like being my own friend?

If I were another person, would I like to spend time with me?

Do I like myself even though I know myself?

Perhaps these are a few meaningful questions for the contemplative period. If you are at peace with yourself, no crisis or negative external influence can shake you. Viktor Emil Frankl called it personal freedom, which arises when I consciously choose between stimulus and response. We can do this at any time, regardless of the situation, and Frankl had to prove this under the worst possible circumstances. We are much better off today and actually live in a very good environment. We are doing well and yet there is a lot of unrest and discord in our environment.

The motivating task can be:

How can I consciously change my own reactions in order to have a happy and optimistic mood? Can I be the person I really am?

Perhaps I ask friends and people who are close to me, or were once close to me, whether they still see me as the person I think I am. Internal and external references can help us to live authentically and find the peace that we actually always carry within us. Sometimes this peace is lost and we live a completely different life, a life that doesn't really suit us at all.

The reason for this is a lack of time for ourselves and a lack of self-reflection.