How to Maintain Peace of Mind?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Could any of you please share your most effective methods of maintaining peace of mind in the face of adversity? By “peace of mind” I mean the absence of negative emotions such as anger, regret, boredom, fear, frustration, loneliness, envy, etc. I will start the discussion with one of my favorite techniques, which I call “elimination of judgments,” which can be very effective in alleviating frustration and anxiety.

Elimination of Judgments. One should always keep in mind that events are interconnected through the operation of physical cause and effect. Thus, apparently negative experiences can precipitate positive experiences, and apparently positive experiences can precipitate negative experiences. If one were able to go back in time and eliminate a particular experience, one’s entire life might change as a result, and whether it would change for the better or the worse would not be knowable. Therefore, one will generally never know whether an apparently negative experience is truly negative in the overall context of one’s life, or whether an apparently positive experience is truly positive in the overall context of one’s life. As a result, one should eliminate judgments with respect to whether any experience is truly positive or negative. Such elimination of judgments strongly promotes equanimity and peace of mind—before, during and after one’s experiences.

I look forward to learning about additional techniques to maintain peace of mind. Thank you for your time.

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Kicking Back

Usually helped by activities like taking a warm shower, bath, smoking weed, watching familiar shows that you love, Drinking a glass of water with a lot of ice, taking a walk, shooting the shit with someone with whom there is little or no tension…

The idea is to pleasure yourself into comfort, and comort is a good ally against adverse circumstances. So exciting pleasure misses the point.

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I find that the fastest and truest path to peace of mind is drugs.

I’ve tried all those corny plots of positivity and it just doesn’t work.

Chemistry preceeds thought.
People assume thought is caused by free will, but it’s not, it’s caused by chemistry.

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That’s one for the sig. Thanks, Danno.

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I’m hoping that someday someone designs a wonder drug that makes people smarter.
They already have some pills that can increase how rational and calm we are.
Thanks for dropping my Fausto.

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Peace of mind, would be death. It’s because your mind is never at peace, that you always enjoy further experiences.

Drugs, are medication. What are you talking about is Drug and Hallucinogens, like Mushrooms, or medication like antidepressants, as Prozac ?

The peace of mind, could be achieved, only by deleting desires. However, the only way you could possibly do this, is to stop being you, or simply by stopping to be therefore being dead or memory-free (Amnesia, brain damages …)

I think the best way to reply to your question is how to stop your (bad/good)experiences to influence your present day. Just need to consider that you shouldn’t regret anything you didn’t do purposely in a wrong way, and not being sorry for things you never intended.

I say “I am sorry” for bumping into somebody in the train, but I’m not feeling sorry, because I couldn’t avoid it, and I didn’t intend to bump into him, intentionally.

:exclamation: However your statement (described below)isn’t right.

The reason is that it’s the human mind (therefore brain matter) that create relations between events. Because an human brain is programmed to ‘fill the blank’. Hence, when you see the very common “optical illusions” like triangles that aren’t really there, and similar or related illusions, works very well because we automatically fill the blank space.

It’s a characteristic that is time,space,shape related.

We “create” bits of past memories that we don’t really remember, we create shapes out of silhouettes, we estimate distances…

Therefore, Cause and Effect are only a way to define your current space you’re living on, not a proof, not an obvious relation.

All of this, to say that there is no need or it’s not really possible to make your mind at peace, but just at ease with your current life. :banana-dance:

In french, there is an expression which says “Being an happy idiot”. The meaning, is that often, “simple” people, never worries, because they don’t have any decision to make as other “complex” people make decisions for them.
The same relation exist with kids.

Kids doesn’t have a dorsal brain structure, therefore they do not recognize “Reality” from “virtual” or " fiction" and they don’t “remember”. As you can’t recognize what’s real around you, you can’t recognize your own self in the world, therefore no “Real” memories, therefore no worries and no real image of itself.

So the way, to make your mind at peace, is to physically damage your brain, removing your dorsal cortex, and therefore be worry-free :mrgreen: or not acting at all, and live your life as a spectator, or being a potato.

Hopin’ in a fast answer :smiley:

First post yeah !

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And it’s not a bad one. Welcome, aresandoro. :slight_smile:

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By not touching/manipulating/controlling what you don’t like, such as anger, regret, boredom, fear, frustration, loneliness, envy, etc.

In other words, negative emotions and thoughts are inevitable as long as we exist/live and thus trying to avoid them will simply frustrate you, even more, creating secondary (and subsequent) emotions/thoughts of negative nature on top of the first one.

But you can’t stop touching negative emotions till all your desire/interests to do so is used up and worn out.
So, you can keep trying to reduce negative emotion, in vain, even knowing that it would rather increase negative emotion.

Negative or positive appearance/impression of given event depends on perspectives which is dictated by preferences and presumptions/beliefs. Things can appear very rosy by modifying preferences and beliefs.

However, anything aware inherits the biases and built-in tendencies of awareness and thus there is strong positive bias and (sort of) fear for uncertainty (and limits, impermanence, etc), in us.
Thus we cannot be absolutely positive as long as we exist/live, although things can be very pleasant in some states of awareness (especially compared to common human realm).

For the same reason, we cannot totally eliminate judgment because being aware is making a judgment about the state of awareness.
So, your attempt will fail, and you will see it if you continue it eagerly enough and long enough.
Usually, we can’t continue such effort with required eagerness and length.
Also, we are so good at deceiving ourselves that we can ignore and accumulate suffering while thinking that we’ve eliminated all judgment and related suffering.

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Duplicate OP here in case anyone cares.

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None of the replies so far has provided any effective methods for maintaining peace of mind. Do any of you have any methods for maintaining peace of mind that you would like to share?

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One thing that I do is keep my expectations really low.
I expect things like death and godlessness.

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frustration, and every other emotion is caused to due to conditioning of society, to me a good method is to understand the feelings themselves once i meditate i deduced that most emotional pain comes from anger when someone does something “bad” to me I say to myself I cannot blame a monkey for behaving like one, I look for the explanation of the event and see it as a simple cause and effect action, when I make a mistake i simply enjoy the challenge of solving it. It makes life alot easier I think. However, I never feel happy about anything, everything is neutral to me, so it might be a depressing way for some people.

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It’s strange how emotions force out certain kinds of mentalities and ideologies and thoughts.

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Dan and Victorel21, thank you for some helpful methods for maintaining peace of mind. Please keep them coming!