4 Daily Mantras To Remind Yourself You Can Maintain Peace And Sanity

Image via Unsplash/Beto Galetto

When it comes to finding some sort of peace and calm in our crazy everyday lives, it can often seem like an overwhelming feat to accomplish. There’s always something to worry and stress over. How are you going to please everyone? Why do things always seem worse than they are? When will things finally be the way you want them to be? Always a million questions and so few answers. When things get to be too much — or at least just seem like it, which is pretty often for the Generation of the High-Strung, there are a handful of things you can remind yourself everyday to put things back into perspective and maintain some sense of sanity. Although some of them are like taking a heaping dose of cough medicine — much more bitter than you expected — you’ll find that accepting things that are already true to be true can be surprisingly refreshing and surprisingly calming. Here are some daily mantras that, at least for me, help me to maintain a sense of peace and sanity.

You don’t “deserve” anything, so stop expecting things, for things always to work out your way.

I often find that the times that I’m the most unhappy is when I feel like I’ve been wronged in some way, when I feel like I’ve been done a disservice by life by some fall of misfortune that I just don’t “deserve”. The problem with thinking this way though is that feeling like you aren’t getting what you “deserve” can get extremely frustrating for you. Who says you really deserve anything? If things worked in a neat and orderly tit-for-tat situation, life would obviously be much simpler. But the reality is that good things happen to terrible people, and sometimes terrible things happen to good people. If you feel like you’re not getting what you want out of life, don’t blame an outside force for not giving what you think you deserve; no one is keeping score here. Find a new way to get what you want or change your goal; don’t throw a hissy fit. If you’re one of the lucky that has seen a very little share of misfortune and despair, consider yourself very lucky — because you know what? You didn’t really deserve that either. You’re just lucky your work beared the fruit you wanted.

Your life has NOTHING to do with anyone else’s, so stop comparing.

It’s human nature to find yourself comparing yourself to someone else. We’re quick to find a reason why we’re similar enough to someone else just to have enough of a valid point to put ourselves down for being lesser in some way, but we always struggle to find something mutually great in that same comparison. Why do we insist on always pointing out why our lives are more miserable than someone else’s? It doesn’t matter that your high school friend wasn’t the most attractive girl in school and somehow landed the rich, handsome millionaire, while you — who, of course, are much better looking — can’t find yourself on a decent date. Who cares if that guy who barely studied in business school is now a senior manager, while you worked your ass off and are still stuck in between promotions in corporate purgatory? Your lives literally have nothing to do with one another’s; this isn’t a game where all the seemingly right moves guarantee a win, so it’s only you who is miserable with all the comparisons. It might behoove you to focus all that energy on achieving your own goals, not dissing someone who has met theirs.

Stop chasing the love of the people who don’t have it to give to you.

How many times in your life have you found yourself chasing after the acceptance and love of people who you know just aren’t going to give it to you? And you yet keep on chasing. There’s something sick and addictive about rejection, and almost every person is guilty of indulging in it at some point. For some reason human psychology enjoys the roller coaster of emotions that comes with a pointless pursuit, and somehow we apply this behavior to our relationships and think it’s perfectly okay, but hello — it’s not. Some people, no matter how much you kick and scream and bitch and cry will never love you the way you want; they just won’t — so why subject yourself to that hurt and rejection? Realize it sooner than later (because there almost always are signs we conveniently ignore), and LET.IT.GO. If you’re lucky, even just one person in the world — your mom, dad, partner, friend, whoever — will love you like crazy, but you’ll probably miss out on it chasing the approval of someone who never had love to give you in the first place.

Happiness is in perspective, not the circumstance.

Sometimes life sucks. It really does. But the fabulous reality is that it can only suck for long before something happens that will make it suck less. Your life doesn’t have to change overnight; your problems don’t have to magically disappear, but nothing in life is stagnant. At some point in your day, you’ll find something to laugh about, and for that moment life will suck just a little less. On the flip side of things, realizing that good periods can also be temporary doesn’t have to be a pessimistic view on life. Finding some peace and happiness in your life means finding balance and harmony between what you can’t control: the outside forces, and what you can control: your perspective. There’s a distinctive gray area in between optimism and pessimism called “reality” that we often overlook and overjudge in people who have accepted it. There’s nothing wrong in realizing that good things follow bad, and bad things follow good — as long as you can detach your happiness and peace of mind from being dependent on the vicious cycle. Accomplish that and you can ride out any storm and always have yourself a sunshine-y day, no prob.