Protecting your peace

 
First thing’s first! I know I had optimistically planned to post every Monday but chile, that timeline has proven too rigid for me. However – consistency will stick! Expect new blog posts somewhere around the 1 week mark every week.

Second of all. Today I wanted to share a bit of a mind fart on the topic of protecting one’s peace. It’s something that has been quite heavy on my mind recently, or at least had been until a nice chat with my mum some weeks back that settled me back to a peaceful reality. The truth is, there were some instances and occurrences in my life recently that had me rattled, to put it simply; that’s really how the topic of protecting my peace, especially in the age of the internet, came to the forefront.

So, what does it really mean to “protect your peace”?

When I go onto Google, the first definition I find is ‘a lifelong journey of removing things from your life, making changes, and developing skills to make yourself more at ease in your life.’ (Hearts Empowerment). It’s a little poetic, but – it’s definitely a definition that resonates with me.

The first time I remember actively taking steps to “protect my peace” was after a somewhat messy situation in the boy department back in my first year of university. Once I decided to dust myself off from being in the dumps, I deleted numbers, photos, messages and screenshots, and not too long after, I also went on a mass blocking spree across social media. The majority of my friends told me I had done the right thing, but I always remember one friend that told me taking those actions would be definitively ending any communication.

And, well… that’s what I was trying to do. Whilst it may seem extreme, to me, it gave me peace of mind when it came guarding myself from stumbling across something I simply didn’t want to see, and blocked any communication I didn’t care to receive either. It sped up the process of elevating back to bad b-ness, and ’til today, I encourage the same for anyone going through a similar situation.

Over time, the topic of protecting my peace has popped up and moulded over time like a shape shifter. The age of social media makes the idea protecting your peace ever present – as fantastic as social media can be, and despite how much the rise of the internet over the past 20 years has completely transformed our lives, it is hard to ignore the dark side of it all. The internet gives an entry point into your life for online trolls, creepy stalkers and unwarranted d*** pics. It’s also is where you can come to find everybody’s highlight reels – from the perfect relationships, sculpted bodies, shiny new 20th floor apartments and super casual designer bags in the 4 figures. I can’t say that I haven’t played my part in showing only the shiniest moments of my life on social media at times too, some of it fitting into the aforementioned categories…

For me most recently, it was consuming content from people that would be bound to put me in a funny mood. And it could honestly be people that I intrinsically did not have an issue with. It was doing the opposite of protecting any peace – it felt like I was constantly being thrown out of whack and needing to re-center. It was where my mindset was at the time.

I decided that protecting my peace meant putting myself first. Put yourself first – get comfortable with “hiding”, “unfollowing”, “muting” and “blocking” content that you find frequently turns your mood.

In the real world, it can mean distancing yourself from people or from situations that you find bring more negative feelings to you than positive. We only live one life, and I definitely don’t want to live one where I find myself in a red alarm state of stress too often. Being conscious of this, the protection of my peace something I’ve put more at the center of different decisions I’ve made over the course of this year – and it’s definitely made a difference.