Cultivating Calmness

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�Make inner peace your highest goal and you will probably never make another mistake.� � Brian Tracy

I heard this listening to an audiobook by my friend Brian Tracy when I was driving home from work a few days ago. I wrote it down at the next red light and put it in my little French Chic notebook when I got home. I have been repeating it to myself since I first heard it and it has been so helpful and comforting.

Getting worked up over little things always makes me feel awful and I know it�s not good for me, both mentally and physically. Now that I have taken on board to �make inner peace my highest goal', situations that I would have become quite annoyed with were simply smoothed over and I felt much better about everything afterwards even though �by rights� I should have been bothered about something.

In an instance where I feel myself becoming peeved over a minor annoyance, I repeat the saying to myself and instantly feel transformed. Inner peace is a wonderful thing to strive for and I�m going to use Brian�s saying almost as my life motto.

I was at the supermarket just before, and I noticed I was overcharged for two items. I went to the customer services desk and was told I was wrong. I was sure I was right but after querying them a bit more and them telling me I could ring the toll-free number for their head office to check it out, I said I trusted them, and left the store.

I had planned to call the head office once I got to the car �for my own peace of mind� to know if I was incorrect or they were. By the time I opened my car door I had been repeating my new mantra to myself and realised it wasn�t worth the $1.89 difference to me (even though I believe the saying that if you look after the pennies the pounds will look after themselves).

I could see me spending time on hold and getting myself all churned up talking to someone trying to prove I was right. It wasn�t worth it! Making inner peace my highest goal saved the day and I was calm as I drove home.

Last week I was reading about Kim Cattrell in an English magazine (Woman & Home, May 2013). She was being interviewed, among other things, about how incredible she looks for her age. This is what she said:

When I hit my forties I thought, �I can�t play a sexy siren any more.� Almost 20 years later, it�s still going on. I think that�s because I take care of myself, which includes dieting, exercising and minimizing stress. I joke that I�ve been on a diet since 1974, which is basically true. I like to eat, and my body type is not naturally this thin, especially at this age. So I do watch what I eat and drink but I�m not obsessive � it�s just a way of life. So I don�t have dessert after every meal � I just can�t do it. I have a big appetite, and staying on top of that is about knowing myself and saying, �I can eat that today but tomorrow I�m not going to.� And I�m always aware � from gaining and losing weight for parts � that the time in the gym trying to lose extra weight is really hard work! I always have that in my mind.

Apart from the fact that I was impressed with her honesty, I thought it was so interesting that she included reducing stress in her life as one of her keys to staying slim, healthy and youthful-looking.

You often hear celebrities talk about meditation and I even bought myself Meditation for Dummies which actually is a wonderful book. But I still would get all righteous and worked up over small injustices in daily life and the meditation book couldn�t fix that.

I always felt like I wanted everything to be fair. It was easy when I was the one who had to tell the truth, give back the wallet I found with $400 in it, own up to a mistake and all those sorts of things. But when it�s the other person who should be �giving in�, well, you can�t control that and it�s stressful when you try!

So as good as my meditation book was, it didn�t help me be calm in various situations. My �new life motto� does. It helps me see the truth and live a peaceful life. It applies to any and every situation that I have tested it on so far and I am very thankful that I came across it.