The Insanely Serene Manifesto
My passion is peace. Inner peace. Peace of mind. Serenity. I want to feel peaceful, solid, and grounded inside no matter what is going on outside. It’s my passion, and I love to help others who want the same. You could say I’m insanely dedicated to serenity. Insanely serene. Here’s my insanely serene manifesto:
The Insanely Serene Manifesto
I am insanely serene.
I constantly seek more serenity and inner peace, even though life happens, people drive me crazy, and I’ll never be perfect.
I love finding new resources, information, and ideas to try to increase my inner serenity.
I’ll do whatever it takes to become a calmer, more peaceful, more serene version of myself, every day.
Will you join me?
Here’s how to make the manifesto part of your life.
Overview
You’re ready to take another step on your path to inner peace and serenity. You want to be insanely serene. I’ve been on this journey for several decades and have discovered and created methods and tools to find and keep serenity. My goal is to help you get there faster.
Serenity is my passion. I’ve had enough inner strife for a lifetime and just want inner ease, calm, peace. I’ve learned that self-love is the foundation for peace in every other aspect of life.
Early in my childhood, I learned to stuff my feelings, and I struggled with depression and anxiety. I developed self-hatred and turned to romantic relationships for validation. But I always had a drive to feel better, to find a healthier way to live, inspired by my father who suffered from mental health issues but stayed optimistic and always looked for a way to heal. Even through my worst experiences, I sought help through a wide range of modalities, and did some healing along the way.
I really hit rock bottom when my codependence led me to a relationship with an alcoholic/addict and I shocked myself with the depth of my self-destructive behavior. But the worst point was when I finally got out of the relationship because then I had to face the real problem. ME!
Rather than being discouraged, I was instead intensely motivated to go to any lengths for my serenity. It was not easy, but I dug really deep, dredging up all the old hurts, wounds, and patterns that led me to my self-destructive behavior. I admitted it all, shared it, and let it go. I gained huge relief and was able to start fresh. I accepted myself fully, warts and all, and learned to love myself.
From that point, I met my now partner and have a healthy relationship, had a child later in life, beat breast cancer, and have been working for a decade to share my knowledge and help others to find their own inner serenity and peace of mind. Life keeps happening, so I always have opportunities to practice what I’ve learned and continue to grow.
My motto is “peace at any point” because no matter what is going on, you can find that inner peace and serenity to meet the challenges with grace.
This blog post has three sections:
- Serenity Inside
- Serenity with Others
- Serenity with the World
Each section offers guidance and an exercise to get you started on finding and keeping serenity in that realm. You can use the exercises to sketch out your ideas quickly or dive into more depth. If you want more information and guidance on any of these areas, let’s talk!
1. Serenity Inside
The first step to having serenity in all aspects of life is to have serenity inside. How do we do that? We work on getting to know ourselves.
For a long time, I lived in the insanity of constant fear and anxiety. To fix it, I sought to control everything and everyone around me to create an emotionally “safe” environment. Nothing I ever did helped me feel truly secure. Until I looked inside. When it was more painful to ignore the source of my pain and anxiety than to face it and perhaps let it go, I made the commitment to dig into myself to find the truth – the truth of what made me look outside for safety and happiness in the first place. Only then did I begin to find the roots of real serenity.
The key to achieving and maintaining serenity is a solid relationship with oneself. Some of us have this naturally, an unshakeable connection to, along with a belief and confidence in, ourselves. More of us have been disconnected from this self-knowledge. Instead we’ve turned to others – people and situations – looking for that connection, confidence and self-worth. And found no answer. No matter how many times we are reassured we are attractive, intelligent, or worthwhile, we find we still need more. We need everyone to like us – the people we know and those we have yet to meet. It becomes an addiction: looking outside ourselves for identity and meaning leads to more emptiness, yet we continue the pursuit, caught up in the illusion that just one more validation from others will make us feel worthy and deserving.
Only when we stop the cycle, and look within, will we have a chance to fill the inner emptiness. Coming to know and love ourselves heals old hurts, gives us a center to always return to, and establishes a foundation on which to build strong relationships with others and the world.
Use the exercise on the next page to ask and answer some key questions about how well you know yourself. You can write into the form here or use a journal to go into more depth.
Serenity Inside: Exercise
To love others well, we need first to love ourselves. Good self-esteem and the ability to care for ourselves is the foundation for healthy relationships with others. Here are some ideas for getting to know and love yourself.
Know Your Needs
What are your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs on a daily basis and beyond?
Understand and Manage Your Feelings
Can you identify, accept, process, and release feelings when they come up? Give examples:
Live Your Values
When you know your values, you can then align everything you say, feel, and do with those values.This is living with integrity. List some of your values:
Take an Inventory
When you know your strengths and weaknesses, and truly accept them, you can build on your strengths, and improve your weaknesses, all without beating yourself up. Start listing some of your pros and cons:
2. Serenity with Others
Having serenity in our relationships starts with inner serenity. When we feel at ease with ourselves, we are much less likely to be triggered into reactions by other people’s behavior.
The key to peaceful relationships is this:
Knowing where you end and someone else begins.
This means not only physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. You are responsible only for your thoughts, feelings, and actions. The other person is responsible for their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Beginning to create this separation between you and others removes the “hooks” or “triggers” of their behavior, because you don’t internalize it or take it personally.
I used to take on other people’s reactions and think I was at fault when they got angry or upset. I would say or do something that I hadn’t thought through, and then get very discombobulated if the other person reacted badly. There were two things going on:
- I was not clear on my intentions and motivations when I would interact with people, so I wasn’t coming from a solid sense of self
- When the other person reacted, I took responsibility for their feelings because I already felt badly about what I’d done or said
The following exercise is a way to sort out what’s your responsibility versus what is the other person’s, even if it’s a child or person with different abilities.
Serenity with Others: Exercise
1. Describe the conflict or situation that’s giving you discomfort or unease
2. What were your thoughts, feelings, and actions?
3. What were the other person’s thoughts, feelings, and actions (that they have expressed, not what you imagine)?
4. What was your motivation or intention for the interaction?
5. Can you take responsibility for your part in the situation and are you willing to do something differently the next time?
6. Can you allow the other person the dignity of their feelings and reactions without taking them on or trying to change or “make it better” for them, but simply acknowledge them?
7. Make a plan for the next time – what can you do differently?
8. Let go of expectations from the other person, just focus on feeling good about your motivation and goals for the interaction.
3. Serenity with the World
There is so much that happens in the world that we have no control over, yet causes us anxiety and stress. From environmental issues to political concerns, we could be in a constant state of fight-or-flight if we focused too much on these outside conditions.
So how do we find and keep our inner serenity when we are challenged with world events, news, crises, challenges, and other situations?
I remember when the events happened in Ferguson, and they were very upsetting. I found myself in a state of constant anxiety, so overwhelming I didn’t know what to do. It went on for days, then weeks and months. I was in a constant state of fear. I finally found someone to work with who helped me realize what was happening and what to do. She helped me see that my mind was stuck in “flight” mode as if I were actually in a physical crisis. I walked through these questions:
- Is the threat in the room at that moment? No.
- Imagine if it were – would you be able to respond? Yes.
- Visualize that response.
This exercise literally turned off the fight-or-flight switch in my brain. Because the crisis was beyond my control. It was not happening in my immediate vicinity: not in my control. It was in the past: also not in my control. If a threat did occur, in my personal space, I knew I would have the wherewithal to respond. Because I do have control over my thoughts, feelings, and how I choose to react.
The following exercise helps separate the things you have control over versus the things you don’t. Think of a situation that gives you stress, or several, and brainstorm the answers to the questions.
Serenity with the World: Exercise
Describe the Situation
What’s In your control? What’s not in your control?
Is the threat in the room with you?
If it were, would you be able to respond?
Visualize what your ideal response would look like
Summary
Serenity starts inside. When we know and love ourselves, we find a calm, peaceful center to rest in and come back to. That’s doesn’t mean life doesn’t happen or we don’t ever get thrown off. It just means we have a quicker way back to serenity.
When we have a solid sense of self and a core of self-acceptance, we are also more centered when it comes to relationships with others. Knowing where we end and someone else begins draws a line around our responsibilities and helps us allow and let go of others’ feelings. We can stay focused on taking the actions that are right for us with less worry about others, and less enmeshment with their emotions.
When it comes to relating to the world, the better we understand what’s in our control (our thoughts, feelings, and actions) versus what is not (pretty much everything else), the easier it is to let go of outside conditions and focus on what we can do to take care of ourselves through it.
