My Secrets to True Happiness and Inner Peace

I read about this in a journal, called Unbothered, that I was working through in late 2020. It’s a daily journal and part of each day is checking in with yourself and writing things that you are grateful for in your life. At that time in my life, I wasn’t grateful for much at all. And honestly, I hated waking up each morning.

So I had to find really simple things to write. I’m grateful for a hot shower after a long day of work. I’m grateful for a roof over my head when it’s pouring rain outside. I’m grateful for the heat in my home when it’s 20 degrees and snowing.

Writing these simple things started to prompt my thinking towards gratitude. It was the beginning of a drastic shift in my mindset. For example, there are people sleeping outside under a bridge tonight, in the freezing cold, while I’m laying here, nice and warm in my home, curled up beneath my down comforter. Is my life really that bad?

The answer is no. In fact, I could have it a lot worse! So why am I complaining? Why am I feeling so miserable?

I was lacking gratitude.

Unbothered prompted me to practice being grateful for the things I did have in life – every single morning. At the same time, I was having a lot of trouble sleeping. So I also started using the Calm app at night to help me fall asleep. There was one specific sleep meditation that’s called “Falling Asleep With Gratitude” and so I started to listen to this each night to fall asleep.

Now I’m practicing gratitude, not only first thing in the morning, but as the last thing my conscious remembers before falling asleep. And after a month or so of doing this on a daily basis (you must be consistent with this) I started to notice a shift in my mindset. That my thoughts were shifting automatically to this feeling of gratitude every morning when I woke up…without having to reach for my journal. So now rather than thinking and worrying all the time about what I don’t have, I’m automatically thinking and focusing on what I do have, but most importantly feeling grateful for everything I do have.

And this one thing created a major shift in my mentality, my personality/attitude, and my interactions with others in daily life. But specifically in my “self talk”. You know, that voice that’s always inside your head…lying to you. Telling you how shitty your life is. How unattractive and boring you are. That you’re not good enough. Blah, blah, blah…

All bullshit lies we all tell ourselves in our minds, that are really not true at all. But now I’m finding, through my daily practices, that this voice is changing. It’s becoming quieter and quieter. I’m drowning this voice out and replacing it with a new voice. A voice of gratitude. One that’s kinder to myself, and to others.

But this did not happen overnight. It took a few weeks to start noticing a chance. And a few months of consistency in this daily practice, to actually make it stick. To hardwire this new voice into my brain.

The Science Behind Gratitude (and How It Can Change Your Life)

Which leads me to my second secret…

Through all my reading and research in neuroscience and psychology, I’ve learned that consistency is really the secret to reprogramming your brain. It’s the only way to make something truly stick. And I can’t remember the exact timeframe, but I think it’s something like 3 months of consistency in any given practice, in order to make something permanent in your life.

So when it comes to changing your brain, especially that voice inside your head – which you’ve created, developed, and molded over so many years of your life, you need to think differently on a consistent basis.

What’s happening inside your brain, from what I understand, is that you’re creating new neural pathways and connections inside your mind. You’re essentially waking up new parts of your brain or using new parts of your brain. Sometimes parts that you’ve never used before.

The Neuroscience of Behavior Change – Helping patients change behaviors by understanding the brain

What’s that movie with Scarlett Johansson??

Lucy – I had to look it up quickly. She takes this drug and suddenly her brain starts to turn on more and more, until she’s finally accessing 100% of her brain power. Yeah, creating new neural pathways kind of feels like that.

Research shows that on average humans only utilize about 10% of their entire brain capacity. So when you’re creating new neural connections in your brain, you’re starting to unlock that other 90% (or so I think) that you’ve never used before. The parts that have been locked away in a dark closet for your entire life. To me this is super interesting, but I’m secretly a nerd so…of course I did some research. Also in love with ScarJo….focus!!

The problem I’ve always faced is that I’ve never been consistent. I’d always try something new, whether it be a workout, diet, hobby, etc, I wouldn’t see results quick enough, and I’d quit. I’d give up. I’d get angry that “this wasn’t working” and that “I’m wasting my time on this new dumb thing” and I’d quickly slip back into my old habits.

Once I realized this about myself, I started questioning this behavior. WHY could I never stick with anything (diet, exercise, hobby, new business practice, etc) for more than a month (at the most)? Why was I giving up so easily?

Then I heard a quote from Tony Robbins. He said:

“We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and underestimate what we can accomplish in 10 years”

This is when I made the decision that I was going to start trying things, and actually stick with them for at least 3 months. That’s my new minimum time frame. And if I feel like this new thing is right for my life, I extend the time frame to 1 year. Which leads me into my next topic.

Another problem that I’d run into consistently (joke here – I guess the only real consistency in my life was problems) is that I was racing all the time. I was in a constant state of rushing around to get things done as quickly as possible.

In my work life, this led to a ton of mistakes, or pushing out shit work. Just garbage…that I wasn’t happy with or proud of at all. And producing shit work was making me really unhappy. It wasn’t feeding my soul, sparking my creativity, or challenging my abilities. It was just shit work.

In my personal life, I was rushing as well. Running around from place to place, person to person, always with a mission or task that needed to be completed in my mind. Never stopping to appreciate life in general. Rarely stopping to have fun. Or when I would occasionally slow down, I’d constantly get blamed, guilted and shamed for “not working” or “doing something stupid” that wasn’t approved of. So, I’d run right back to work.

When I finally did give myself the time and space to slow the fuck down, I learned through psychology and reading, that slowing down, and doing nothing, IS actually productive. That it’s required in order to recharge your batteries. Just like you need to give your muscles time to rest and recover, you also need to give your brain time to shut down. Time to recover. To recharge and reboot. If you don’t you’ll run yourself into the ground and experience burnout (this is NOT fun at all).

Not slowing the fuck down, for so many years, led me to burnout. It took years to catch me, but once it finally did, it hit me like a fucking freight train. And once I finally put a name to what I was experiencing (burnout) I could start to take action and again reprogram my brain from the constant “GOOOOO” message I was receiving, to “slow the fuck down”. Stop. Take whatever time you need to recharge. Don’t burn yourself out again.

This was really hard for me to do. After years of being a workaholic, to suddenly stop overbooking my schedule, to stop working 12+ hours a day, nights, and weekends felt unnatural to me. But I wasn’t used to this, so of course it felt unnatural.

And because it felt unnatural, here comes that voice inside my head again, telling me I’m wrong, I should be working, I’m wasting my time, I’m not reaching my full potential. Again, all bullshit lies to keep me in this constant state of “GOOOOOO”.

And quite a few times, it took my therapist actually talking me off a ledge for me to quiet that voice in my head. But I stuck with this. Long enough to see results. And once I started seeing results, I knew my therapist was right. I’d proven to myself, even though it felt unnatural at first, that slowing the fuck down was exactly what I needed.

How to Reduce Stress by Slowing Down

In this fast-paced world, where everything is accessible at your fingertips, in an instance, how in the fuck can we possibly slow down? How can we not worry about that bill we need to pay, our next paycheck, our completing the never ending list of todo items?

For starters, try turning your phone on “Do Not Disturb”. Not silent, or vibrate, but Do Not Disturb. This prevents you from jumping to your phone to answer that call, text message, or constantly checking in on your social media notifications (I actually turn these off on my phone).

What you’ll find is that when you are no longer constantly distracted, you have a lot more time on your hands. The question then becomes, what are you going to do with your time? And more importantly, how can you shut your brain off? Because even with your phone shut off, your brain is still running at 100 MPH.

And because you’ve conditioned yourself (trained your brain) to constantly check your phone, this might actually create anxiety for you at first. But trust me, this absolutely works. You can always call that person back. That text message can wait. Your social media feed will still be there when you’re ready to check back in. But you have to push through any initial anxiety and prove it to yourself.

You have to stop yourself from constantly feeling the need to put out fires. But that also means retraining certain people in your life, and setting new boundaries with them. Making yourself unavailable during certain times. And only making yourself available on your own terms.

This may sound like a shitty thing to do, because there are probably people you really care about. So you don’t want to leave them hanging, right? But I think of it this way: I can either show up as my anxious, nervous and scrambling self, or I can show up as the calm, cool, and collected self. I much prefer the calm, cool, collected self. Because I show up as a much better person, and I can be much more helpful to the people around me in this state, versus the stressed out, anxious, and high strung version of myself.

9 Surprisingly Good Reasons to Turn Off Your Smartphone

In order to be the cool, calm, and collected version of yourself, you need to master the art of shutting your brain off. You need to control your brain, not have your brain controlling you.

This is where meditation comes into play for me. And I practice it in many forms.

Sometimes I’ll throw on a chill ass playlist (usually slow EDM without words) and just let go. Allow myself to get swept away by the music.

Here’s my brain melting playlist.

For me this literally feels like a brain massage. It gets me back to that super chill and calm state of mind – the state of my highest current self. The state where my anxiety, stress, frustrations, and negative thoughts simply melt away. I’ve written an entire article on music therapy here.

Sometimes I meditate with an intended purpose. It could be just to shut my mind off. This is sitting in silence, closing my eyes, and repeating some mantra (ex. be still, be present) and focusing on my breathing. After a few minutes I get myself into a state of calmness and peace, where I can simply “observe” my brain activity. There are thoughts that come into my head, but I’m disconnected from them now. They become passing thoughts, almost like pieces of paper flying by in a light breeze.

Reparenting is another purposeful meditation I’ll do – focusing on specific memories, or moments in time where I needed my parents but they didn’t show up for me. And I’ll replay those moments, but this time I’ll show up as my current self for that little kid who was lost, disappointed, sad, scared, alone, angry, whatever. I show up as the parent for my younger self and give me (as a kid) all of the support, love, kindness, help, etc that I never received from my parents. This has been extremely helpful for me in healing from childhood trauma.

There are a ton of purposeful and guided meditations you can do to help you in any situation in life. From dealing with grief and loss, to releasing anxiety, to simply calming your mind and being present. Which leads me to my next secret.

7 Ways Meditation Can Actually Change The Brain

The only way to truly enjoy life is to be present. But this is so tough, because being present means forgetting about the past and not worrying about the future. It requires you to stop your brain, to stop moving, stop scrolling, to step off that hamster wheel, to live right here, and in this exact moment in time.

Normally once I’ve shut off my phone and I’ve gone through a meditation (or three…haha) I’m already in a present state of mind. Now I can find inner peace in life. And for me that’s alone time. Away from all distractions, conversations, todo lists, etc. Just me – observing the world around me.

Observation – that’s really the key for me to keep me in a present state of mind. This started for me with spending a lot of time in nature. Away from all technology and people. Just me, in nature. Hiking a trail or sitting by a river or lake (one of my favorite things to do) and just observing.

Listening to all the sounds around me (not people talking). Noticing the different colors, the breeze and the motion it creates in the trees, or the ripple effect across the water. Nature is extremely healing to me and creates an enormous sense of serenity and inner peace.

And I’m finally at a point where I don’t necessarily need to be alone to switch my brain into observation mode. I’m now to the point where I enjoy testing myself in social situations to see if I can get myself there on command. I practice in coffee shops, book stores, restaurants, and bars.

For me, this observation mode is interchangeable with being present and in a peaceful state. I actually have a trick, a “tick” if you will, to help me switch on this mode. I snap my fingers. It’s a physical action that I’ve associated with this state to trigger my nervous system into switching on my present/peaceful self. It’s like hitting the reset button for me. I forget exactly where I read about this, but a lot of times it works for me. Not always. But I’m learning to control it much better.

How to Find Inner Peace and Happiness in the Chaos

“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” Proverbs 25:28

I don’t read the bible at all, but this quote definitely resonates with me.

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Another one from Stoicism (more inline with my beliefs today) is:

“He is most powerful who has power over himself” – Seneca

I reflect back to the times where I had very little self control. Where I was a robot, being controlled by my own stress, anxiety and depression. Combine this with heavy drinking and I always had a cocktail for disaster. Because drinking impairs your abilities. One of these abilities is self control. That’s why I’m really careful when I drink these days. Now that I’ve found self control, I don’t like to impair or potentially lose it.

The time in my life where I had very little self control, okay, most of my life leading up to this point, I was stupid. I was foolish. I did a lot of dumb shit that I’m not proud of. All stripping me of my happiness and inner peace.

So finding self control for me was a crucial step in finding happiness and inner peace. And today, maintaining that self control, on my own – without anyone having to watch over me, is really important to me. It makes me feel good. It helps me to continue liking the person staring back in the mirror.

But I’m only human, and sometimes I still slip. Much less today than in my younger years. But it still happens. I’m learning to be okay with it once in a while. Sometimes I guess I need to completely let go. And there is the right time and place to do that. Normally around close friends or family. But in public, I’m really hard on myself about it. Because I don’t want to be the guy who’s shitfaced and out of control anymore. But when it does happen I have to own it and take responsibility for it.

The Philosophy Of Stoicism: 4 Lessons From Antiquity On Self-Discipline

Just like emptying a laundry basket, or the trash can, I’ve found that I often need to empty my brain (sometimes it can resemble a trash can…haha). I do this with what’s called regular brain dumps. It’s literally just writing – whatever I’m thinking, no matter what the thoughts are, just dumping them onto paper. And I don’t even need to form complete sentences, or worry about grammar or spelling. I just get the shit out of my head.

All the negative thoughts. All the impulses that have led me to make terrible decisions in the past. All my struggles, worries, frustrations, stresses, etc. All the times when I’m feeling overconfident and egotistical. All the times when I want to do something harmful or destructive. Sometimes I just want to punch some people in the face (I know you’ve been there too).

These brain dumps help me get all of that shit out of my brain. Then I can start to dissect these thoughts, reflect on them, process them and find peace, resolution, or solutions.

This is extremely liberating for me. Because I no longer need to keep thinking, ruminating, or stewing over the same thoughts. And sometimes as soon as I get the thoughts out of my head, the answers become clear. Other times I need to let these brain dumps sit for a few days before I have an “ah-ha moment”.

How to Untangle Your Mind with a Brain Dump

As a side effect of my own struggles and journey to “healing my brain” I’ve become highly interested in psychology and neuroscience. For me I’ve found an enormous amount of peace and solitude in understanding not only myself, but other people. It’s helped me answer the “why” behind so many situations and circumstances in my life. To find peace and closure from the past. To let go of the anger I was using for so long to hide all of the other bullshit that was buried beneath.

And as I understand more and more about psychology, I’m learning that I can be in much better control of my own thoughts, responses, and emotions in my present life. That I’m no longer reacting in situations where the old me would normally lash out in anger, frustration, or bitterness.

That I can see through people’s typical facades and fronts. That I can understand people’s actions and responses better. That I can approach people and situations with a much clearer state of mind.

Understanding psychology to me is like seeing the world through a whole new lens. And I’m not using it to judge anyone or make myself feel better than anyone else. Or win some status game. Fuck that shit!

We’re all equal. We’re all struggling with different things and trying to find our own paths in life. I’m using my knowledge to better understand situations, interactions, friends, family, and new people I meet.

And sure, I use it as a way to protect myself. Knowledge is power. “And with great power comes great responsibility” (thanks Uncle Ben).

Having the wrong people in your life can really fuck things up. So in that sense, yes I use psychology to figure out who’s right and wrong for my life. Again, not from a judgmental standpoint…that’s not who I am. But from a place of understanding that I clash with certain personality types. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not right or wrong, and neither are they. We’re just different. And that’s okay.

Why We All Can Learn From Studying Psychology

Which leads me to my next secret…

I’ve found so much peace in accepting people for who they are. Not judging them, not belittling or looking up or down on anyone, but truly accepting without trying to change anyone. We cannot control anyone but ourselves. And change is fucking HARD enough for myself. Trying to change anyone else…forget it! That’s not what I’m about.

I want to accept people for who they truly are. Beneath the facades and small talk. I’ve always valued deeper, more intellectual conversations with people. These are the people I’m closest with in life. For some reason people always feel comfortable opening up to me about things they are struggling with.

And I’m totally cool with that. Because those are the conversations I actually enjoy. And I always found it natural to accept most people for who they are. Not to look at them as broken or less than me. But to enjoy the common thread of life that we share together…struggle, pain, loss, difficulties, trauma, etc.

But for a long time in my past, I carried a lot of anger, sadness, disappointment and frustration towards certain people – specifically family members. For a long time I was judgemental and blamed others for the injustice they’d done to me.

My evolution of acceptance, specifically directed to the people who were hardest to accept in my life, came through a better understanding of psychology. It was a whole new feeling of freedom, happiness, and inner peace once I was able to find acceptance, understanding and even compassion/empathy towards these specific people.

How to Practice Acceptance – Explore the benefits of acceptance and learn how to do it more often.

There’s only one person I compete with these days. It’s the man staring back in the mirror. For so long I felt the need to compete with everyone. This guy was better than me. This person had more than me. This person just got X, Y, or Z. Now I need to run out and one-up them. I need to get more business. I need to outperform him or her.

Once I realized how insane this thinking was, and how draining it was on my soul, I finally began to let go of this mentality. And it took a while, that’s for sure. Because I was so used to operating like this. So again, I need to reprogram my brain.

And once I shifted my focus to competing with the man in the mirror, things started to change for me. More doors started to open. New opportunities found their way to me. I began to attract certain things in my life that I’ve always wanted, and worked so fucking hard for, but was never able to obtain. No matter how much struggle and effort I put into it.

As I began to make myself better, I started to see the shift in reality. In the people around me. In my friends, my family, my conversations, business relationships.

By simply focusing on myself, and competing only with myself, I was able to start creating better, performing better, building better relationships with other people, drawing better, creating better music, designing better, enhancing my skills, learning better, understanding better.

But it took all of the previous steps in order to remove all my limiting factors, to regain control of my brain, including my thoughts, actions and emotions, to finally stop competing with everyone else and only focus on competing with myself.

Compete With Yourself And Root For Everybody Else