On being a 'ground' of peace
Posted on February 20, 2023 by Philip Bennett, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Are you able to calm yourself and thus the world around you? We all dysregulate, but are you growing in your ability to regulate yourself and others?
In our best moments, we hopefully all long for peace in our relationships and world. A question we should ask ourselves is: Has my journey resulted in me being someone who increases or depletes peace in my immediate surroundings? If I am in relationship with another, am I a partner who when things go sideways my actions, and/or words escalate the tension or help reduce the storm? If I am a parent, do I escalate my child’s growing dysregulation, or do I help them re-regulate? At work, do I relate in such a way that I increase relational discord, or do I help others regulate themselves and engage with others in a similar manner?
If we want to be someone who disperses peace, we need to be at peace ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh used the image of a boat full of people in a storm. He asks us to consider what happens if even one person panics in the boat, “our quality of being is the ground of all appropriate action.” Don’t picture a large ship, picture a canoe, or better yet a paddle board. What happens if one or more persons (or dogs — ours are often liable to tip our paddleboards) stands up in a panic? If you’re the calm one you’re trying to talk the other(s) down because you know with certainty that you’re all in trouble if you lose your calm too. Yet how often when we’re relating to a partner, child, coworker, friend do we really not care if we capsize the boat at any given moment? This is how we should view each relational opportunity in our world. It is so much easier to keep the boat afloat than to try to repair the damage after we honestly just ‘don’t give a shit.’
If we are at peace and are able to think clearly (i.e. we’re not dysregulated ourselves in neuroscience terms, i.e. we still ‘give a shit’) then we are likely to move our world from dysregulation to regulation, but it all begins with our own regulation.
As a psychologist, I heard over and over again the term ‘bipolar disorder,’ and other diagnosis that essentially boil down to a human being who has not learned to regulate themselves well. Now I’m not trying to imply the person is bad, in fact in neuroscience terms what’s likely occurred is that they never had someone ‘in the boat’ with them, from infancy onward, who was able to help them learn to regulate themselves when they became dysregulated. As a result, the neural pathways to regulate are not strong. There are varying degrees of dysregulation, but the question remains have we learned to regulate ourselves? Do we care to regulate ourselves?
What happens when you close your eyes right now? Can you sense your breathing and heart rate? Are they deep and calm, or shallow and pounding? If you are around others and close your eyes, is there activity? What does the activity do to you? How is this different from when you’re out in nature, sitting on a rock and listening to birds? Mindfulness is all about helping us as individuals learn to regulate our own person, no matter what our environment. It doesn’t matter if we were never taught this, we get to ‘reparent’ ourselves — now. We can all rewire our brains. We can all learn to have a ‘quality of being’ which promotes peace in ourselves and others instead of dsyregulation. Acquiring this quality of being is so much better than needing cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, shopping, work, exercise, etc. to re-regulate. It’s all about our brains and how we’ve been wired.
The other possibility, i.e. chaos and dysregulation comes from when we honestly just ‘don’t give a shit,’ we ‘flip our lid’ or ‘blow our top’ just like the person / situation we’re engaging with that is threatening to dysregulate us. How often have you made this choice with a partner, child, coworker, friend, etc. and then realized it just wasn’t worth it. If you’re a mindful person, then most likely you feel regret every time you let yourself go. Peace starts with our own quality of being. Close your eyes and breathe deep. Try again. Is your spouse, child, friend, etc. still escalating and you’re starting to lose it yourself, again? Close your eyes and start, again. This is what mindfulness is — starting again. Attend to your breath. Calm your own heart rate. Start over.
Just like it’s so much easier to break trust than to rebuild it, it is so much easier in the long run to listen, and dialogue, than to flip your lid and then clean up the aftermath. Keep the boat afloat. It’s so much easier than trying to recover everything after you’ve tossed it all, including yourself, into the water.
Each of us can be a source and ground of peace. It’s our choice. It’s never a choice others make for us. We can’t ever blame others for our choice. We can blame others for our start in life (i.e. how we’re originally wired as children), but not for right now, and not for tomorrow. We may not have had much help so far in life learning to regulate, but now we can learn. If we struggle to make good choices we can learn to know ourselves, understand why, and then learn to be calm in the middle of all storms. Children flip their lids all the time and need help learning to regulate. Sometimes our world seems to be more full of children than mature, calm, regulated humans. In every moment, of every day, we can be someone who helps bring more peace or more chaos. It’s our choice.
