FINDING SERENITY

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FINDING SERENITY

By Sibyl McLendon

1. Look for it! You are never going to find something unless you are looking for

it in your life. You have to be open to the belief that you can be a serene

person before you can actually be one.

2. Believe that you deserve serenity in your life. If you have low self esteem

and feel that you do not deserve the best that life has to offer, then you are

putting up walls that only you can tear down. You will deny yourself serenity if

you don't think that you are worthy of it.

3. Serenity comes from within. You are not going to find serenity outside of

yourself. You create it from within yourself. Being serene has nothing to do

with your environment; you create the serene environment as the natural result

of finding it inside yourself.

4.Stop and think before you react! If you are merely RE-acting to situations in

your life without thought, you are stopping the serenity before it can manifest.

Most situations are only disturbing for as long as you allow them to be, and few

are really going to matter a week or a month from now, let alone next year.

5. Look for the lesson in negative situations. Things really do happen for a

reason, even if you can't find the reason right now. Ask yourself how you

contributed to the situation and what you can learn from it. Learn a lesson and

you can move on, fail to learn it and it is just going to keep reappearing in

your life until you do.

6.Establish serene habits. If you take time out for yourself and do

serenity-inducing things for yourself it is a lot easier to maintain the

serenity during the day. A candle-lit bath, meditation time, sitting in and

appreciating nature, listening to soothing music… these all go a long way to

helping keep you serene.

7. Try to weed out the people who cause conflict in your life. If you have

people who are creating negative situations on a regular basis in your life, it

may be time to reexamine their importance to you.

8. Realize that our past can dictate our present. People raised in a negative,

abusive and/or chaotic family environment, often seek out the same type of

people in their lives when they grow up. This is because we subconsciously tend

to gravitate to what we are used to, even if what we are used to is negative. We

feel comfortable in negative situations only because we have been exposed to

them so much. This pattern can be broken by the realization that it has happened

to us!

9.Wake up each morning and be thankful for the gift of a new day. Each day is

filled with opportunity for blessings, and we need to see that. If you start

each day with a smile and the expectation of blessings, you will end each day in

a serene and peaceful manner.

10. Spend time every night, before going to sleep, taking stock of the day.

Perhaps journaling will help you do this. Look for the small blessings that you

given and say thanks for them. Think about situations that you may have been

able to handle better, and resolve to do better tomorrow.

Author Profile: Sibyl McLendon, a Navajo woman living in the American Southwest,

is a personal empowerment coach for Circle Of Grace

http://www.circle-of-grace.com/ Sibyl can be contacted at

sibyl@...