The 5 Shifts That Create Inner Peace

Most people think peace is something we find. I don't.

I think peace is something we generate.

And if we want more peace in our lives (and more peace in the world) we need to rethink some of the fundamental assumptions we've been taught about ourselves and about life.

In this episode, I introduce five paradigm shifts that I believe are essential for creating peace, both individually and collectively. These aren't techniques or temporary fixes. They're deeper distinctions that change the way we listen, think, relate, and live.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

🌼 Why listening to statements as "truth" creates conflict and sufferin
🌼 How choosing which realities to endorse gives you greater freedom
🌼 What it means to relate to yourself as a multidimensional being
🌼 Why love is a way of being, not merely an emotion or thought
🌼 How stepping outside of right/wrong and good/bad creates peace 
🌼 The true meaning of acceptance and why it increases your effectiveness

Peace is not something that happens to you.

It's something you learn to generate.

And it begins with the paradigms you choose to live inside of.

👉 Join the Awakening Weekends:
https://theawakeningweekend.com

If you’re ready to move beyond understanding this intellectually and actually live it, the Awakening Weekends are where that happens. It’s a space to experience what it means to show up differently and leave a completely different impact on the people around you.

👉 Watch David’s free video on ending self-criticism:
https://endingselfcriticism.com

If this message resonates, this is the best place to go deeper. It will shift how you relate to yourself and everything else builds from there.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

DIY peace. Do it yourself peace. There are five paradigms that we must shift as individuals and collectively as a society if we want to experience peace and generate peace. Generate peace within and generate peace in our lives. I'm gonna just say what those five paradigms are now, and then I'll do an individual video on each one. But the five paradigms we must shift individually and as society are these. Number one, we must stop relating to suggested realities as if they're statements of truth. What there is to recognize is that every single time a human being speaks, every sentence a human being says suggests a reality. I live in Philadelphia, so a likely statement you might hear me say is Philadelphia is a great place to live. That simple statement, Philadelphia is a great place to live. As human beings, we've been trained to listen to those as assertions of truth. And when you relate to something as an assertion of truth, what you do is debate it. Is it true or is it false? Either way, you're stuck with it as an assertion of truth. If we can now train ourselves to listen to every sentence a human being says as a suggested reality, Philadelphia is a great place to live. That statement suggests a reality. And then we discover our power as human beings. And our power as human beings is to choose whether we endorse that statement or not. If we endorse the statement, we're saying, I'm gonna live my life consistent with that statement. If we choose not to endorse the statement, we're simply saying, I'm not gonna live my life consistent with that statement. A statement as innocuous as Philadelphia is a great place to live. Okay, but what about a statement like, my dad is closed-minded? You can begin to see the impact of if you choose to live life consistent with that statement, you have one life. If you choose not to live your life consistent with that statement, you have a different life. So being able to hear every single sentence a human being says, including the ones we say to ourselves, and get, oh, wait a minute. That's a reality being suggested, not a statement of truth, gives us our choice as human beings as whether we endorse or not. And that's where peace is. We get to give ourselves peace by choosing to live consistent with statements that give us peace. That's number one. Number two, a paradigm we must shift as human beings is that we must start relating to ourselves as multidimensional human beings. As human beings, we've been educated to relate to ourselves as the body and the emotions and thoughts and body sensations that go along with the body. There's no peace there because those emotions and thoughts and body sensations are often unsettling. But wait, what about being multidimensional? Just like the ocean is multidimensional. There's the water and there's the iceberg. It's all the ocean. The water, the iceberg, it's all the ocean. The iceberg is just the ocean in a solid form. Okay, well, there's the body and then there's the life in the body. There's the body and there's the consciousness in the body. You can actually begin to experience it if you pay attention to inhaling. Every time you inhale, you can experience life coming into the body. There's the body and the life that comes into the body. That Sanskrit term for that is prana. Okay. Where there's a lack of peace in the body, the life energy, the consciousness, the prana, is always peaceful. So if we can relate to ourselves as the prana, we experience peace and we can generate peace from there. Three, third paradigm we must shift. As human beings, you know, we relate to love as a set of emotions. I feel love or I don't. We relate to love as a set of thoughts. I think that person's great or I don't. We must relate to love as a way of being. There's ways of being we have as human beings. We can be generous or stingy, we can be tender, we can be cold. At any given minute, it's our choice. It's up to us. So there's no peace. If we relate to love as a set of emotions or thoughts, there's no peace because we never know if we're going to have them or not. They can come and go. We get to feel love and it's gone on a second's notice. The peace is in knowing that love is a way of being, we have a choice about we can be loving or not, and that's up to us at any moment of our lives. When we love or at peace. So when we choose being loving, we can give ourselves peace, and that's up to us at any given time. Next one is we must be able to step outside of the paradigms of right and wrong, good or bad. We got educated that everything is right or wrong. Everything is good or bad. They didn't tell us they were making the whole thing up. So now you and I think there is good and bad music. We think that. But if you examine music carefully, you won't find any good or bad in it. You'll find music that you call good or music that you call bad, or you won't find the good or bad in the music. If you examine the music, you'll just find sound vibrations. So whether something's right or wrong, is it right to do that or wrong to do that? Somebody says, hey, let's have a two million dollar budget this year, and you go, is that the right budget or the wrong amount? If you examine the budget, you won't find any right or wrong in it. You can say it's the right budget, you can say it's the wrong budget, but there's nothing in the budget about that. It's all in our speaking about it. So the question is, if I have a two million dollar budget, what life does that give me to live? What does that get me to deal with? And if I have a one million dollar budget, what life does that give me to live and what does that get me to deal with? And I have a choice. It's my life, and I can therefore, since there's no right, wrong, or right life or wrong life, there's no good life or bad life, I get to choose lives which give me peace. So we must step outside of the whole paradigms of good, bad, right, and wrong and get those are totally made up. We have a choice about the life we live, and rather than worried about whether it's a good, bad, or right or wrong, is worried about does it give me peace or not. That's the only thing to be concerned about. And the final paradigm is we must really discover acceptance in a new way. Most people think acceptance implies a condoning. If I say I accept something, I'm saying it's okay. So if my kid's on drugs, I'm saying it's okay that he's on drugs. And we're not gonna say that. That's a ridiculous statement. So we've got to free acceptance up from approval or condoning. Acceptance doesn't say anything's okay. Acceptance is having something be what it is. So if I say it's raining and I accept that it's raining, I'm not saying it's okay that it's raining. I'm simply saying it's raining. That's acceptance. It's raining. It's okay that it's raining is approval. It's raining is acceptance. And you notice the straightforward statement it's raining. That statement of acceptance that it's raining, lets me then interact effectively with the rain. Act intelligently with the rain. I can take my umbrella. Acceptance gives us power to interact effectively with somebody or some situation. And that gives me peace. When I can interact intelligently and effectively with something, it gives me peace. That's why that one's important. So those five paradigms giving up listening to things as assertions of truth and listen to statements as suggested realities, remembering ourselves as multidimensional human beings, actually relating to love as a way of being, stepping outside the paradigms of right and wrong, good or bad, and mastering acceptance. Those five paradigms, that's our access to experiencing peace and generating peace in our lives. I'll do an individual video on each of those. In the meantime, thank you for listening to this one. Also, do check out. I have an extraordinary program called The Awakening. It's a three-day program I offer in person and online called The Awakening. I've developed it to discover that crossroads where transformation and spiritual enlightenment cross paths. That's a place that has been unexamined. That's a gold mine for us as human beings when we can work at that crossroads of transformation and spiritual enlightenment. So, in my program called The Awakening, we go there and mine all the gold for our lives that's there at that crossroads.