“Peace I find on every corner, every bus stop, every home I visit in,
because I look for it.”

Charley Thweatt CD

Are you a PeaceSeeker? If not, you should be. Are you living a peaceful life? You could be. What if you, as one individual, understood that daily you play a role in world peace?

When I was young I wanted to change the world…
Finally, I realized that if long ago I had changed myself,
I could have made an impact on my family.
My family and I could have made an impact on our town.
Their impact could have changed the nation
And I could indeed have changed the world.

Individually, you and I can change the world. How? First of all, don’t try to change the world. Change yourself. Choose to be a more peaceful and loving person leading a peaceful life. Choose peace. One of Gandhi’s most popular quotes is that we must be the change we seek. If we want a more peaceful world, it is up to us. We must desire peace. We must seek peace everywhere we go and in everything we think, say, and do.

Webster’s Dictionary defines peace as a state of tranquility and quiet; freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions; harmony in personal relations; a state of mutual coexistence. Does your lifestyle reflect a peaceful coexistence in the world or…something else? Is your outer and inner life tranquil? Are your personal relationships harmonious?

Take a look at your life. Is there peace or …terrorism… in your daily life? Yes, terrorism – and self-inflicted terrorism at that. We terrorize ourselves with fear, self-doubt, overwork, guilt, deprivation, excessiveness, perfectionism, etc. Thomas Merton says the rush and pressure of modern life is the most common form of violence that we commit. “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is self-inflicted terrorism”. Maybe terrorize is too strong a word for some of us. Maybe some of us just don’t support ourselves, much less love and take good care of ourselves.

Over the past four years I have been facilitating a woman’s group. We call ourselves PeaceSeekers. Every two weeks, we took time out of busy lives to meet and support each other on how we could be more peaceful, loving, fulfilled women. We got back in touch with our true hearts and told the truth about what we really wanted, the deeper values of our lives. Then we made commitments to ourselves and each other to live our lives differently.

Where can you be more loving and peace-oriented in your life? And who around you could benefit from it? Become a PeaceSeeker. Make being an instrument of peace your main goal everyday, everywhere, with every person you come in contact with? How would that change you? How would that change your world? It would change everything.

Imagine a world where we are all in love, all the time, with everyone. There would be no wars because we wouldn’t fight. There would be no hunger because we would feed each other. There would be no environmental breakdown because we would love ourselves, our children and our planet too much to destroy it. There would be no prejudice, oppression or violence of any kind. There would be no sorrow. There would only be peace. Imagine this world.

Marianne Williamson

This is the only sane choice. And it is doable in your life- even in these hectic times – especially in your most hectic and crazy times. Not too long ago, I desperately needed to learn to be more peaceful in my life. On the surface I looked pretty good, but underneath there was chaos and fear and anxiety and insecurity. There was no peace. I wanted to be calm in my heart. I was tired of feeling terrorized. I started my own personal journey, my own search of how to be peaceful in the midst of a busy, chaotic, and sometimes disappointing world.

“We are all assigned a piece of the garden, a corner of the universe that is ours to transform.” My corner of the universe was my relationships, my home, my work, my current circumstances, exactly as they were. I had to take a hard look at my life. I had to take responsibility for what I was doing or not doing. I had to take responsibility for how I thought about everything. (Remember how we choose to think is critically important.) I had to look at how I was treating other people and myself. I asked the powerful question, “How would my life be different if being peaceful and loving were the most important thing to me?” I learned a lot about myself.

This takes a lot of courage because this requires that you change yourself – not others. But if you stop to think about it, we haven’t been able to change others anyway. This is about how “I” needed to be and what “I” needed to do in my little corner of the universe. Out of this personal process, a vision and guidelines for my life became clearer. I understood what I needed and I was deeply motivated. I became a PeaceSeeker. Now I seek peace and harmony everywhere I go and in everything I do and because I seek it, I am more likely to find it.

When you expect to find a parking space, you are more likely to find one rather than when you go into the parking lot saying “Oh, there probably won’t be a spot here for me today.” What happens is because you believe you will find a space, you will look harder and longer. The same thing happens when we enter looking for peace and goodwill. Because you expect it, desire it, seek it, you will look harder and you will be more likely to find it.

You will also bring more peace into the world. You will smile more and smile at others – which is a gift of peace. You will have positive thoughts about yourself and others which sends out positive energy. Energetically, it is a ripple effect – what you send out affects others. One exercise I ask my clients to do is to sit in the center of the mall, watch all the people walk by, cancel any negative or judgmental thoughts you might at other times have had about them and instead only send them loving blessings as a fellow brother or sister.

Believe it or not, this will change the world. It will certainly change your world. This is the only way we are ever going to change the world – person by person, thought by thought. We can ban all the bombs in the entire world, but until we banish the hatred and the lack of peace in our own hearts, they will be rebuilt. The change we are all seeking happens in our individual hearts, minds, and lives. By stopping the violence (no matter how big or how small) in your own life, you will be a peacemaker in the world.