Personal Peace Part 3 of 4: Stability in the Storm

True stability rests on issues more enduring than current matters.  Peace can be found in the storm, calmness can be felt during the fight, and security can be achieved in the heat of battle.  Fear, however, defeats peace because it rises out of feelings of isolation and scarcity; it destroys our perspective of security.  Anger also opposes peace as it manifests itself in a series of uncommunicated fears generated internally.  Hostility, wrath, and revenge are responses to this perceived fear.  When adrenaline does the thinking, our emotions will flow with the chemical tide.  Frenzied feelings of paranoia, anxiety, and trauma are easily imagined during such times.  This agitated feeling seems to be more the norm today rather than the exception.  Sometimes we become so extreme and fearful that we are offended or threatened over everything and anything.  We feel so insecure that we lash out in defense before even attempting to understand a situation.  All of this opposes personal feelings of peace.



Changing Lives One Word and One Touch at a Time

One of the greatest gifts we can offer a child is a feeling of security and safety.  How we communicate this plays a huge role in the child’s development of self worth.  I’ve been told that the majority of effective communication is non-verbal.  In other words my expressions, my tone of voice, my body position, and my movements all convey a profound message of their own.    Information that is read and interpreted by the listener either validates the words spoken, or stands in opposition to them.  All words must be confirmed by the body language or else doubt, misunderstanding, and hurt can result.   Words, both written and uttered, document the formal message, but they do not validate it.  The resulting conflict, from radically different messages, both verbal and non-verbal, confuse the process.  Just as words with multiple interpretations and varying cultural constraints can confound the communication, non-verbal messages compound the setting even more.