How to Engineer Your Core of Peace

Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. (unknown)

Do you ever feel like you’re about to pull a Milton Waddams and start the building on fire?  Like every day is a series of fire drills, of running around frantically trying to squash one fire before sprinting on to the next? It’s no secret that this isn’t exactly the best environment for solid decision making.

So what can you do? Well, you may or may not be able to change the environment, but what you absolutely can do is get your mind out of fire drill mode, and into what Martha beck calls your Core of Peace. How you respond to situations depends on what state of mind you are in when you encounter them. Everything is handled better when you are operating from your Core of Peace. Everything seems to slow down. You can process what people are saying to you and be present for the immediate issue. You feel more in control. You make better decisions. Most importantly, you don’t feel like you’re about to run screaming from the building.

“Well”, you say, “that’s just awesome Jess, but how can I go about achieving this Core of Peace?” One way you can “engineer” your Core of Peace is through meditation, and luckily there is a simple and easy way to meditate, even at work.  What you are trying to achieve is a still and quiet mind. Since you might look a bit funny sitting at your desk in Padmasana with mala beads in hand, and since it’s tough to achieve peace when your cube mate won’t stop hacking and coughing, step one is to

• Find someplace quiet

Preferably go outside, although if you live in the Northeast like me this particular luxury is only available for about 3 months out of the year.  If you can’t get outside, try to find an empty office or conference room, or even your car. You may want to get some calming music, or you may want to enjoy silence, the rhythmic sound of highway traffic, cicadas, whatever relaxes you. The point is that you do not want any distractions or interruptions.

• Breathe

With your eyes closed, breathe in deeply through your nose (count to 5), then exhale slowly through your mouth (count to 5). I like to envision drawing the stress up out of my pores and muscles during the inhale, then blowing all of that stress out on the exhale.  Repeat until you feel your heart rate slowing.

• Quiet your body and your mind

To quiet your body, work slowly up from your toes, squeezing and releasing each muscle and body part, up through your legs, torso, and all the way up through your head. Don’t forget to keep breathing (you would be surprised how often we do).

To quiet your mind, you must clear out your thoughts. The more aggressive among us may want to think about pushing our thoughts out, while others may prefer to envision freeing them to drift away on their own. Sometimes the thoughts are persistent little buggers and just won’t lay off. A method I personally find very helpful in this situation is to watch them float by me like a ticker tape, not trying to manhandle them but instead trying to lose interest in them until they fade away. One of the most popular methods is to choose a word to focus on and repeat, for example, the infamous ‘Om’. If you don’t like ‘Om’, choose your own word but try to choose something “neutral” (don’t choose something like your spouse’s name which will likely bring up all kinds of thoughts).

• Keep this up for 5 to 20 minutes depending on the time you have available. Then, slowly open your eyes. Try to sit for a few more minutes before returning to work.

It is when you feel most tense and stressed that you really need to stop what you are doing and take a meditation break so you can engineer your very own Core of Peace. Ideally, meditation can be practiced daily and become a real habit, allowing you to walk around every day with enough Zen to calm even the most rabid manager.

How do you engineer your Core of Peace?