It’s Deanna at Confident Voice Studio and I hope you’re having a beautiful day.

Tia was a busy mom and a schoolteacher.

Her husband was a salesman that often had to travel for work and her kids were active in many extracurriculars.

No matter how hard she tried to simplify her life, it felt like something major was always going on.

One day, she complained to a friend that she was constantly overwhelmed by the chaos around her. “I just wish my life were peaceful,” she said.

Erin, Tia’s friend, encouraged her to stop looking at her life that way.

She said, “Being at peace is a choice. It doesn’t depend on your circumstances. You can choose to be at peace regardless of what’s going on around you.”

Like Tia, you may have a busy, hectic lifestyle. You may long for peace and calm and feel as if you simply can’t achieve them.

But peace isn’t merely the absence of noise or chaos.

Inner peace is an intentional decision you have to make each day.

Sometimes, even multiple times during the day!

There are many amazing benefits to making the choice to live with inner peace, regardless of what your life looks like right now. Here are just a few…

Benefit #1: Improved Health
When you’re allowing yourself to live in a state of constant stress, you’re putting your body and your health under a significant strain. Being chronically stressed raises your blood pressure, causes your body to produce too much cortisol, and makes you cranky.

But when you choose inner peace, your attitude and mindset aren’t just affected. So is your body. As your essence rests in the now, your blood pressure drops, your adrenals stop producing stress hormones, and you find it easier to be pleasant.

Benefit #2: Enjoy Better Sleep
Another benefit of choosing peace is better sleep. You’ve probably had nights where you spent most of your time in bed tossing and turning because you were worried or angry over a situation. Maybe you had control over this situation and maybe you didn’t. Either way, you lost sleep since you were experiencing a lack of peace.

But with inner peace, it doesn’t matter what’s going on. You can still relax and find rest. Not because your circumstances are perfect. But simply because you chose to let go of stress.

Benefit #3: Improved Relationships
Being at peace means you’re not trying to control what others are or aren’t doing. Instead, you create loving boundaries that give both of you the freedom to be who you are. That’s the beauty of choosing peace—you don’t have to focus on what others are doing.

Benefit #4: The Ability to Focus
Chaos can feel like you’re fighting fires with a squirt gun. Even if you do manage to get one out, the next one quickly becomes a blaze that feels absolutely overwhelming, and you wonder how much longer you can keep doing this.

Inner peace is a gift you give yourself. But it also gives you the gift of focus. Since you are no longer panicking over every fire, you concentrate on the ones that truly matter and you work on putting them out first.

Benefit #5: Release from the Past
The past can hold you prisoner. Maybe it was the hurtful words your spouse said to you or the heartache of a traumatic childhood. The truth is that you can’t always control what happens to you or what happened in the past.

But choosing inner peace means you can release the past. This doesn’t mean that you have to forgive those who have hurt you or that you need to reconnect with someone who was toxic. It simply means that you can embrace where you are now while acknowledging that something awful happened.

Benefit #6: Stop Focusing on the Future
Chaos often stems from a focus on the future. You’re constantly playing the what-if game and thinking of everything that could go wrong. You’re trying to be there when you’re firmly in the here. This creates stress and anxiety that you are choosing to carry.

Peace forces you to stop thinking about what could happen. It takes you out of the imagined future and plants your feet firmly in the only moment that you can control—the beautiful now.

In the movie Bride of Spies, Tom Hanks plays a lawyer defending a Russian man accused of being a spy during the Cold War. In the movie, he asks his client if he’s worried about being tried as a traitor. The client calmly says, “Would it help?”

Over and over again, Tom Hanks asks the question. But no matter how bad the circumstances, the client refuses to worry. Each time, he quietly points out that it simply won’t help him to fret over his situation.

It’s a good question to ask yourself when you feel you’re slipping further from peace. Ask yourself, “Is worrying about this work report helping me write it? Is fretting about my marriage helping it? Is being troubled over my health helping it?”

If the answer is a simple “no” then it’s time to commit to choosing peace!

Stay tuned for next week’s message with 6 more tips to make peace yours everyday.

Peace can be yours today, but you have to make the decision to claim it and choose to walk in it.