Peace Within
Despite the constant attention and hype athletes receive for their prowess on the field, being an athlete is not nearly as glamorous as some make it look. To be successful as an athlete, you must learn to balance the rigors of relentless training and a pressure-packed season with schoolwork and attending to your personal life, or else you might be running the long and tiresome race alone, a feat that no one could possibly dare to pull off.
Most people see the grind externally, but many don’t realize the emotional pressure athletes experience from various relationships in their lives. Coaches, parents, fans, teammates, and friends all exert pressure on the athlete, whether intentionally or not. However, within the best athletes, the most prominent pressure is usually internal.
Nobody wants them to succeed more than themselves, especially the best athletes. You probably won’t last long in the sport if you don’t. However, this internal pressure handled improperly, can quickly wreak havoc on an athlete’s psyche and lead to burnout.
Internal pressure to perform is normal and healthy in the right doses. Without it, we wouldn’t have the motivation to do anything—no drive, no production, no life. We need that motor. If that motor runs awry, the athlete gets overwhelmed and their performance plummits. So, how do the best handle this internal and external pressure? They cultivate a state of peace.
The best athletes don’t live a life free from struggle, and their lives aren’t exempt from pressure. In fact, the higher you go, the more pressure is placed upon you. Either by necessity or training, they have learned to live with the pressure while maintaining their sense of internal peace.
To master the art of being an athlete, one must cultivate a sense of peace so that one’s external performance matches one’s internal state of being. When you achieve a state of internal peace, you find out that no matter what happens externally, you have everything you need to stay calm and do what needs to be done: perform and prevail despite the enormous pressure. Learn how to cultivate peace amidst the storm and watch your life take off.
In this article, I’ll walk you through all aspects of peace, what it is, why it’s necessary, how the ELITE practices this sense of peace, and how to develop the skill of cultivating peace despite a chaotic life. You’re in for a treat.
What is peace?
Peace is a state of internal homeostasis, a state of knowing that no matter what happens externally, you’re safe and content internally. Living a life where you’re free from struggle is boring and life doomed for dissatisfaction. You were built to fail, learn from that experience, and move forward. Things will happen in life, guaranteed, that you will not like. How are you going to respond? Are you going to shut down?
Peace is the practice of knowing that you’re not in control and that you’re becoming stronger through these challenges. You’ve been subject to them because God has something greater in store for you.
Another way to think about peace is through war. Wartime is when you allow your desires to control your behavior, creating a misaligned relationship between your Self and your body. The body desires certain things, just as a baby wants to eat candy or walk uncontrollably. The Self must recognize which desires are earthly and which desires are spiritual. The things we want most are not what we need most.
At peace, neighboring countries are cordially united. They can live in coexistence and positive relationship with one another, which allows both entities to thrive. For yourself, peace is when you, with your awareness of who you are and your ability to make decisions, live in a positive relationship with the events happening around you and the body that resides within you.
Peace is a sense of calmness, a sense of stillness based on the environment you have cultivated. It’s like gardening. If you don’t tend to the garden, the weeds grow. If you tend to the garden and nourish the plants with good soil and water, the plants will thrive. There will be peace in the garden.
“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level” – Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
What does peace feel like?
If you have ever found peace, you know it’s an experience unlike any other. Your mind stills, your body is calm, and your soul is joyful and content. During the chaos of the game, you find yourself in the zone, unaffected by the fans, the pressure of the coaches, or the game situation. You’re locked in and trust your work will come to fruition because you’ve seen it before due to consistent repetition and diligent preparation.
Vice versa, if you don’t prepare, you’ll walk into game day nervous and afraid. Walk on the field nervous and afraid against a team like Alabama and watch what happens.
I’ve experienced peace in my life, including now. Some days are better than others, but overall, I fully trust in God’s plan and know that I’m not in control. A sense of peace has overwhelmed my spirit, allowing me to walk in confidence. No longer do I need things to be satisfied, and no longer are stressful events like public speaking overwhelming. Instead, I feel the storm arise and reconnect to my anchor, providing peace and solace. My preparation has led me to this moment, and no matter what happens, I’ll survive and learn from the mistakes I’ll inevitably make.
Peace feels like a deep and unified connection to the source from which you came.
Why does peace help you thrive?
“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” – Psalm 23:4
How can this be so when so much goes awry in the world? For example, my phone dies, I finished the last episode of my favorite Netflix series, and my friends and I lost our Snapchat streak…. Truly, how do people survive?
We must have an anchor amidst the storm. We are guaranteed to die, and we are guaranteed to suffer. It’s the human condition.
We walk through life, and certain events go unnoticed, while some are attached to our psyche. If we can learn to let those events go, such as a chaotic home environment, overwhelming amounts of homework, an argument with a coach, being reprimanded by a coach, feeling the pressure from the team to perform, experiencing an embarrassing public speaking event, then those events don’t have to plague our behaviors anymore. They control our responses when we allow them to attach to our being.
How to cultivate peace
Cultivating peace can be difficult to master, but once you embark on the journey, you’ll never look back. Every step you take toward cultivating peace is not a step wasted, no matter how many times you lose it. When you realize you’ve lost it, you’ll find it again much more easily.
So, how do you cultivate peace? Here are three steps to instill peace in your life:
- Value it – You must decide that a peaceful life is more important than anything else. Does being ready for any situation, appreciating challenges, and thriving in the midst of a storm sound like it might pay off for you? Even if it doesn’t, with peace, will you be able to handle the storm?
- Sleep on it – A great day starts the night before. Want to cultivate peace? Sleep well. Go to bed earlier than usual. Turn your phone and TV off, be present with your family, and rest your mind. After just a few days, you’ll find that the stillness you find when you aren’t constantly stimulated is nice and refreshing. Then, when you wake up in the morning with energy, and you aren’t an emotional trigger waiting to go off, you realize how incredibly powerful that state of mind is.
- Plan it – Plan to take breaks, be outside, plan ahead for rest days and weeks, and plan for important meetings down to the minute. When you learn to think ahead and prepare, you aren’t constantly wondering what you missed. I lived like this for a long time, and trust me, it’s not worth it. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail and be anxious and stressed out. The only way it will occur is if you plan for it.
- Appreciate it – Daily, weekly, monthly, etc., practice reviewing how much peace you’ve cultivated and the difference you feel between living a peaceful life and living a stressful life. When you make this a habit, gratitude becomes your default, and peace becomes a normal way of life. If you continue to remind yourself of how grateful you are for this state of being, you’ll never go back, and your entire being will be changed into a person who lives.
Living with Peace
At its core, peace is experienced when we align our true selves with our actions and thoughts. There is no difference between what we need and what we’re feeding our person. Through
It’s being able to weather the storm, knowing the storm is building a more resilient spirit, and that through the storm, we are anchored to the Creator of the universe.
Can you get any better than that?
As an athlete, cultivating a state of peace does not mean things will get easier externally. Actually, they’ll definitely become more difficult, and that’s a good thing.
When the game is on the line, and your friends, family, team, coaches, and internal voice count on you to step up to the plate, will you be able to handle the moment? Can you find peace amidst the pressure? Instead of saying, “I’m nervous,” you’ll shout, “BRING IT ON!” They can’t stop you, no matter how hard they try.
Greatness will be a subsequent byproduct, the fruitfulness of a peaceful life.
Want to learn more about how to play, perform, and live with an internal feeling of peace? Schedule a free consultation by clicking the link below, or learn more about my coaching by clicking here.
