Escape The Pace^®

by Lisa Rickwood, BFA, CTACC

10 steps to creating peace and harmony with family

 “Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.”
 — William Hazlett

It’s a rainy, dark, Saturday afternoon and you’re commuting home after a frustrating afternoon of errand-running and managing two little children. Just when you think your mood couldn’t be any more miserable, your children erupt into a full-fledged fight while you’re on the highway.

You politely attempt to calm them down but this is futile – they’re punching each other in the head and screaming.

Suddenly, adrenalin courses through your veins – you feel pressure in your head and intense anger building.

“Shut up,” you yell. Without much thought, you pull your SUV over to the side of the highway and scream at your children. Clearly, you’ve lost it.

Who hasn’t felt anger at one point or another? Even easygoing, confident, relaxed people get angry and “lose it.”

When you feel like you’re losing control, you need to consider peace and harmony; this is the answer to making your life and the lives of others more manageable. This sounds great on paper, but to be brutally honest, it’s not so easy in real life.

How do you feel peace with a screaming, ranting two-year-old who holds you hostage in a store by throwing himself on the floor and ranting, “I hate you!"?

That really happened to me, and my son didn’t just throw himself on the ground once – he kept doing it over 30 times so I couldn’t pick him up and drag him out of the mall.

I stood there in the middle of the mall and calmly said, “Okay, we’ll leave when you’re done having your fit.”

I remember being worried about what people would think. You know – the new mom wanting to impress. (That changes once you have teenagers – you’re tired, frustrated and you just don’t care.)

I kept my composure even though I wanted to throttle my son. It was then, that I had an epiphany; freaking out would only make the situation worse. I had to be the adult, not a two-year-old.

As I stood in the open courtyard of the mall and let my son lie on his belly and scream, people walked by and noticed my calmness and made comments.

One woman said, “Oh…I’ve been there – it will get better!”

A man in his late 70s said, “Now I know why I’m glad I’m a grandparent.”

No one chastised me; everyone was sympathetic. I know the outcome would’ve been the opposite had I grabbed my kid, kicking and screaming, and yelled at him as I left the mall.

Before you dismiss me as being the perfect parent, you need to hear this other story.

One day when my youngest son was five years old, the phone rang and because I only had one phone in the basement of my home, and it wasn’t cordless, I had to go downstairs and talk.

I quickly snuck downstairs and knew I could only talk for a few minutes. A few moments was all it took for my enthusiastic son to take a bottle of dark purple Gatorade and chase our new, fluffy white Shiba Inu dog all through the house into every single room and leave a wonderful trail of purple dye on the carpet and dog.

Five minutes later, I walked upstairs only to witness a purple haze of Gatorade all over the house. That was it – I was on medication that already made me grumpy and this destruction of the carpet and the sight of a purple dog sent me over the edge.

I admit it – I spanked my son (I think the only time) and he hid under his bunk bed. I threw a plastic cup and it chipped my new tile in the kitchen. I cried and felt like running away and never coming back. Clearly, I was the worst parent on the planet and yes, the carpet had to be torn out, and the dog stayed purple for eight months.

I remember thinking, “If I can’t handle this, how will I handle it when my kids are teenagers?”

Fortunately with age comes wisdom (sometimes).

When I look back at the more serious things – having to go to the Children’s Hospital when my eldest son was 13 months old because he had a 30 minute seizure, the Gatorade incident was nothing.

I remember making a deal with God when my eldest son was in the hospital. He’d had a serious reaction to the Measles, Mumps, Rubella shots and suffered a half-hour seizure. Because of this, he stopped breathing and needed to be connected to a ventilator and later sent via air ambulance to the Vancouver Children’s Hospital. There, he had a spinal tap, a million shots, a zillion tests and luckily, nothing abnormal was found.

Sometimes we need to look at the big picture to find peace in our current circumstances.

Well…thank God I’ve had time to lighten up and not take life so seriously (most of the time), and to have patience and understand the importance of peace and harmony.

Now, I joke around a lot (life’s too short) and my sons think I’m funny; we have a very close bond because I’ve decided they’re more important than things, and most events in life are not emergencies.

How do you achieve harmony in a house with teenagers who come home late, don’t do their homework and constantly use words like: stupid, whatever and so forth?

How do you feel at peace when your credit cards are maxed out, your mother is seriously ill, you despise your job, you’re a single parent, your brother won’t talk to you and people cut you off on the highway?

It isn’t easy but you can feel peace and harmony over time.

The dictionary defines peace as a state of harmony, the absence of hostility. It also reflects the relationship between any parties characterized by justice, goodwill and respect.

Harmony is the agreement in feeling or opinion. It’s also the result of peace being practiced.

If you’re tired of chaos, confusion and stress, borrow these 10 tips to help you lead a more peaceful life.

1. Slow Down: It’s a challenge to feel peaceful when you’re racing around in a state of overwhelm. Just by slowing down your thoughts and actions, you can avoid saying and doing things that may cause tension and trouble.

2. Peace starts from within: Your thoughts control your actions, so if you think about adding more peace and harmony to your life, you may attract more of this.

3. Reconnect with those around you: Drop the BlackBerry, Palm Pilot, cell phone, laptop, iPod, etc. and spend more time paying attention to those around you. When you learn to focus on others, there’ll be less friction as you’ll give them your valuable time and get to know their challenges and interests.

4. Minimize the multi-tasking: You’ll experience more peace when you throttle back on multi-tasking. Whenever you split your time between one or more activities, you’re not really paying attention and something gets lost in the shuffle.

5. Get rid of the clutter: If you want to feel at peace, start by de-cluttering your home and office. You can’t feel at peace or have harmony in a room that’s overflowing with loose papers, a dirty kitchen, half-painted rooms and too many projects “on the go.” When you live and work in a clean, organized space, peace and harmony will come easier to you.

6. Don’t make assumptions or jump to conclusions: Some of our biggest challenges begin when we don’t have all the facts about something. Families will lose years of time they could’ve had together because of a misunderstanding which is usually triggered by not having all the facts and jumping to conclusions.

7. Agree to disagree: I have witnessed the worst fights in families because of our beliefs that family should agree with our thinking. It’s funny how our friends may have varying opinions of things, and we let it go because we like our friends, but if our family doesn’t think the way we do, it causes strife. We may not like the things our family does, but we should agree to disagree and respect their thinking – good or bad. If we “let the anger go” it will give us inner peace. In other words, agree to disagree and get on with life.

8. Take care of yourself: You won’t feel peace and harmony if you’re tired, overweight, out of shape, eating poorly, not taking time for you. It’s important to create a buffer – or balance between work and play. If all you seem to do is work and take care of others, it’s time to change that. Get out a pen, look at your calendar and pencil in a time to do what makes you happy. You might visit a spa, see an old friend, exercise, take your dog for a walk, play with your kids; it doesn’t matter what you do, just as long as it gives you enjoyment and helps you eliminate stress.

9. Spend time with peaceful people: All this advice is great but if you work or live with angry, bitter, negative people, you’ll find it a challenge to have peace and harmony. If you don’t have a lot of positive people in your life, seek them out. Join networks, read positive books and call your fun friends – find people who want to feel happy and peaceful.

10. Workshops, Books, CDs, MP3s and Coaching: To keep you inspired and harmonic and peaceful, invest in tapes, books, workshops – anything that resonates the feeling of peace and harmony and would help you stay in the moment. In a world that’s filled with stress and lack of peace, it helps to have tools to keep you motivated. Ask friends, search online and build a little library of material to inspire you. Get a friend, mentor or coach to keep you positive when you feel low.

Navigating in today’s busy, chaotic world isn’t easy, but adding a little peace and harmony can soften those rough, jagged edges in your life.

Lisa Rickwood, BFA, CTACC, is an accomplished visual artist, mother, retailer, coach and author of Escape The Pace: 100 Fun and Easy Ways to Slow Down and Enjoy Your Life, and co-author of Power & Soul: 42 Entrepreneurs Share their Secrets for Creating the Business and Life of Their Dreams. If you're feeling overwhelmed, drowning in too many projects or suffering from techno-stress, Lisa can help. For more information on how you can Master Stress for More Success visit: www.EscapeThePace.com and get Lisa's special report, 5 Critical Actions that Hurt Your Business and Life...and How to Avoid Them.

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