The Opposite of Anxiety: What It Really Means to Feel Calm

Summary

Podcast Summary: Emotional Badass with Nikki Eisenhauer
Episode: The Opposite of Anxiety: What It Really Means to Feel Calm
Date: March 9, 2025
Host: Nikki Eisenhauer, M.Ed. LPC, LCDC

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Nikki Eisenhauer dives deep into understanding and embodying the true opposite of anxiety—calm and peacefulness. Drawing insights from a writer's guide to emotion, Nikki helps listeners, especially highly sensitive people and trauma survivors, identify, practice, and cultivate peace as a learned emotional state—not an accidental one. She breaks down peace into its physical cues, internal sensations, and mental responses, explaining why it can feel unfamiliar or even unsafe for those used to chaos. Throughout, Nikki dispels myths about tranquility and provides actionable ways to practice, embody, and trust actual calm.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Emotional Vocabulary & Patterns

• Challenge for HSPs and Trauma Survivors:
  Many are quick to describe negative emotions but struggle to articulate or even feel the positive ones, including peace.
  • “I didn’t ask you how you don’t feel. Could you tell me how you do feel?” (03:23)
• Peace as a Learned State:
  For many, especially those who grew up in chaos, peace is not familiar or accessible. It’s not “something that just falls out of the sky” for the lucky, but requires intention and practice.
  • "I used to think that peace was something I could only have when everything in my life lined up... That's such a sad trauma response." (05:33)

2. Defining Peacefulness

• Definition from Resource Book:
  • "A state of calm that is devoid of strife, agitation, or commotion." (04:15)
• Personal Invitation:
  Nikki urges listeners to consider their own definition of peace and if they know how to access it, noting most people are experts at accessing stress rather than calm.

3. Physical Signs of Peacefulness

• Some Key Cues: (06:00–12:00)
  • Relaxed posture and loosened grip
  • Soft face and ready, genuine smile (“smile for 20 seconds… that informs our neurobiology” (07:30))
  • Unforced laughter
  • Deep, satisfied breaths
  • Openness in posture and demeanor (arms draped, fingers laced behind head, swapping tense stance for ‘sashaying’ like “a cool guy pose” or “New Orleans sashay”)
  • Easy, flowing movement and speech; warmth in the voice
  • Enjoyment of human connection even in basic interactions

4. Internal Sensations & Emotional Practice

• What it Feels Like Internally: (13:22–17:37)

  • Slow, easy breaths
  • Slack muscles, loose limbs, sometimes feeling drowsy or light
  • A feeling of “nothingness”—which, for trauma survivors, can be disorienting (“My system … did not know it wasn’t familiar with peace.” (14:52))
  • A steady, calm heartbeat
  • Cultivated trust with oneself

• Practice Over Time:
  Peace becomes easier the more it is chosen. It's an ongoing, empowering process.

5. Mental Responses to Peacefulness

• Indicators and Challenges: (20:37–28:45)
  • No urge to fill silence—able to sit peacefully with others
  • Connection to life and reduced loneliness
  • Living more in the present moment, rather than escaping into the future
    • "When we're peaceful, we're living in the moment. We're not in the past, we're not in the future." (24:46)
  • Ability to delight in mundane daily tasks (like dishes) and everyday experiences
  • A true desire for everyone to have such peace:
    • “A desire for everyone to experience such peace, to feel peace from a youth where I almost never did. It’s an emotional lottery.” (28:45)

6. Long-Term Effects and Escalating Calm

• Positive Outcomes of Practiced Peace: (29:03–33:30)
  • Lessened need for worldly possessions (contrasts with consumerist culture)
  • Choosing positive, like-minded people for company
  • Growing spiritual or philosophical interests
  • Desire to maintain a positive status quo despite life’s ups and downs
  • Lifestyle changes to accommodate new, calmer beliefs (e.g., moving to a quieter location)
  • Becoming more embodied and aware of the body (not just “a head cut off from the body”)
  • Engaging in hobbies and creative interests—happy, light art is as valid as “dark” art
  • The possibility of escalating from peace to real happiness

7. Suppressed Peacefulness: Why We Resist Calm

• Common Suppression Patterns: (33:31–40:41)
  • Equating feeling peaceful with “just being tired”
  • Maintaining physical tension or “stiffness in posture” as a vestige of survival mode
  • Mistaking boredom for a signal to self-sabotage (not recognizing peace)
    • “Boredom is one of the main triggers to relapse. ... You might not know how to do peace.” (38:05)
  • Using inauthentic body language (trudging vs. bounding up stairs) to match inner disbelief in peace
• Congruence as Empowerment:
  • Practicing peaceful body language and outward cues can reinforce internal peace—just as frowning or hunching can reinforce negative states.
    • “That’s the wisdom of smiling on the outside, even through tears. That’s how I recognize and acknowledge this feeling, but I don’t want to be congruent with this feeling. This is empowerment, y’all.” (40:41)

8. Final Take-Aways and Encouragement

• Peace Doesn't Mean Flatlining:
  Human beings are meant to feel a full spectrum of emotions. The goal is not never to feel stress again, but to create a more peaceful default and know how to stabilize oneself when life is turbulent.
• Empowerment Through Peace:
  • “Our feelings don’t fall out of the sky. They relate to our thoughts. They relate to our body language, how we move, how we think.” (40:42)
• Call to Action:
  Nikki invites listeners to intentionally practice and normalize peace, and suggests resources for those who want further guidance.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Emotional Blind Spots:
  "I didn't ask you how you don't feel. Could you tell me how you do feel?" — Nikki Eisenhauer (03:23)
• On Peace as Learned, Not Luck:
  “I believed that peace was something that just sort of fell out of the sky, that lined up for the lucky ones, which meant I was just screwed in the peace department. That's such a sad trauma response.” (05:33)
• On Physicality and Peace:
  “Smile for 20 seconds… that informs our neurobiology. That's like sending a memo from the outside of us… our brain chemistry gets the memo.” (07:30)
• On the Surprise of Peace Feeling Foreign:
  “It really shocked me that I had to consider for my own betterment... that my system just did not know... wasn't familiar with peace.” (14:52)
• On Trusting Yourself First:
  “So many people coming from childhood abuse think that they're supposed to work on trusting others... The real hack is in cultivating trust with ourselves.” (20:13)
• On Living in the Moment:
  "When we're peaceful, we're living in the moment. We're not in the past, we're not in the future. And this can be practiced now." (24:46)
• On Peace as Motivator:
  “A desire for everyone to experience such peace, to feel peace from a youth where I almost never did. It’s an emotional lottery.” (28:45)
• On Boredom as Blocked Peace:
  "Boredom is one of the main triggers to relapse. It's not stress... it's 'I'm bored.' My theory is ... you might not know how to do peace." (38:05)
• On Empowerment & Congruence:
  "That's the wisdom of smiling on the outside, even through tears... This is empowerment, y'all." (40:41)

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Timestamps: Important Segments

• [00:26] Introduction; Emotional awareness and vocabulary for HSPs
• [04:15] Definition of peacefulness; inviting personal reflection
• [05:49] Reframing peace as accessible rather than accidental
• [06:30–12:30] Physical signs and external cues of peace
• [13:22–17:37] Internal sensations and self-trust
• [20:37–28:45] Mental responses, present-moment living, everyday joy
• [29:03–33:30] Long-term benefits, peace and lifestyle, self-development
• [33:31–40:41] Suppression of peace, incongruence, and how to shift habits
• [40:42] Final encouragement, empowerment, and invitation to practice peace

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Episode Tone & Style

Nikki’s tone is empathic, validating, hands-on, and gently humorous (“If there was a stressing Olympics, a lot of us would qualify for gold, right?” (05:15)). She uses direct address (“y’all”), relatable analogies, and consistent encouragement rooted in her personal experience as an HSP/trauma survivor and therapist.

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For Listeners: If you find peace difficult or unfamiliar, this episode guides you through recognizing, practicing, and allowing calm to become not just a fleeting accident but a familiar, trusted emotional home.

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For More:
Visit emotionalbadass.com/peace for additional support and resources on cultivating peace.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, welcome to the show. This is Emotional Badass, where moxie meets mindful. I'm your host, Nikki Eisenhower, life coach and psychotherapist. And on today's episode, I'm discussing the opposite of anxiety. Hello, y'.

[B]

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Welcome, new listeners. If you're new to me and this show, I'm going to use a resource that I've used a handful of times over the years on this show. It's one of my favorite books to help us understand emotion. One of the things that's very important to me in helping people heal, helping people discover themselves and discover more peace. I help people leave survival mode and cultivate thriving mode and learn how to live their lives outside of the chaos that they experienced in younger years and have more peace. Something that I noticed in the first few years of my career, particularly with highly sensitive people, is that if I say, hey, how are you feeling? If we're feeling bad in any way, it is very easy. It is simple for us to acknowledge I'm anxious or I'm depressed or I'm a upset or I'm stressed out or I'm tired. Now, in all honesty, that's because a lot of us have had probably more than our fair share of those emotions, which means that we have practiced with those emotions. We have spent a lot of time and energy. It has, even though we don't like this, become a comfort zone. So if I'm with a highly sensitive person and they're good, and I say, hey, how you feeling? Nine times out of ten, what they'll say to me is, hey, Nikki, I don't feel anxious. I'm not upset, I'm not depressed. And I look at them with regularity now and say, awesome. I didn't ask you how you don't feel. Could you tell me how you do feel? And almost every single highly sensitive person, myself included, at a point in my development would sort of sit there stumped. Very smart people, people with massive vocabularies. This is such an indicator, a clear indicator to me that when we spend so much time and headspace trying to figure out what's negative or what's dark or what's heavy, we get used to what is negative, what is dark, what is heavy. So as I use one of my favorite resources, if you're watching me on video, if you're on YouTube or in our Patreon, the emotion, the SARS, you can see the book I'm holding up. It is not a therapist book. It's not a self development guide. It is a writer's Guide, A Writer's Guide to Character Expression. The authors are Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. And on today's episode, I am going to break down peacefulness. Now think about how you might use this in your own life as a tool. I'm not connected to this book. I don't get any kickback if you buy this book. But this is a book that can really help you understand your emotion if you're raising kids, if you have difficult family members. And the more that we understand about emotion, you know, this thing that anybody with high empathy and sensitivity definitely feels and we never got a class in, we're going to go over peacefulness. This is going to help us understand the physical signs. That's why I love this book. It breaks down the physical signs, the internal sensations, mental responses, cues of acute or long term effects of any emotion and how it might escalate. So let me take you through peacefulness in today's episode and see what comes up for you. There's a lot of different things that may surprisingly come up. So go on this ride with me through peacefulness, y'.

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So peacefulness in this book is defined as a state of calm that is devoid of strife, agitation or commotion. So there it is. We get so used to describing things in what they're not that we don't have the flow, the ease, the familiarity with what things are, even in this definition, a state of calm that is devoid of strife, agitation or commotion. So I want you to think for a minute before I go into this. What is your own definition of peace, of peacefulness? Do you know that emotion? Do you know that state? Do you know how to access it? I know you know how to access stress, right? If there was a stressing Olympics, sad but true, a lot of us would very much qualify for the gold, right? Well, I don't want to qualify for that gold. I hope you don't either. I want to get the gold and things like peace. I used to think that peace was something I could only have when everything in my life lined up, was flowing, was a win and was easy. I really thought, I believed like I believe the sun comes up in the morning. I believed that peace was something that just sort of fell out of the sky, that lined up for the lucky ones, which meant I was just screwed in the peace department. That's such a sad trauma response, y'.

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So if that's what you think peace is, I'm so excited to have you here to offer you a different definition of peace. And A different way for you to walk towards peace. So let's break down these physical signs, these physical signals of peacefulness. We know the physical signals of anxiety. Let's get to know the physical signals of peacefulness. A relaxed posture. Check in with your posture right now. Is it relaxed? Could you allow relaxing it more? Even if not all the way, one degree, two degrees. A relaxed posture. Smiling, grinning. I have a card in my Patternscapes deck. I've made a deck recently, and one of the cards invites you to smile for 20 seconds. Because that informs our neurobiology. That's like sending a memo from the outside of us, the edges of us, our skin, our exterior. When we smile for 20 seconds, our brain chemistry gets the memo. It's as if the outsides of us say, hey, insides. The forecast today for this mind, this body, this spirit, this being, this soul is light, is happy. So we can do this work from the inside out. And sometimes y', all from the outside in. So smile even if you feel super cheesy, even if you feel super ridiculous. That's just the critical voice. Don't let that sucker decide your life. The things you're willing to explore, experiment with and expand. There's no harm or foul in smiling for 20 seconds from now on, every day for the next week and experimenting with what that might do for you. So we can smile. We can grin. Our fingers are loosely clasped in one's hand, so we're not gripping right. This is the physical manifestation of what letting go is. Where we're soft instead of constricted. Closed eyes, the head tipped back. It's like a physical way for us to express, I'm safe here. I'm peaceful. This is an easy energy. We have softened features that imply the feeling of calm. We might nod in others in greeting. That says to me that we're not trying to disconnect and keep our eyes on the ground and not connect energetically with people from a place of peacefulness. We can do that with ease. I'm a Southerner. That's a simple Southern smile. Hi. Hello. How are you? That's human connection in its most basic form. And when we feel peaceful, I believe we feel it a natural quality to relating in such a way. We might lean back, an arm hooked over the back of a chair, a literal leaning back. We might take a deep, satisfied breath that's more than just trying to breathe. When we feel tight or constricted or anxious, it's like an easy depth, an easy satisfaction as we breathe. If that's foreign to you try right now. Take a breath with me. Allow yourself to feel satisfied in that breath. You're allowed to breathe deeply. You're allowed to feel peace. We might use a friend's shoulder as a shelf or our elbow. So when we're peaceful, we may have an ease in actually leaning on our friends as sensitive people. I think we think a lot about that in terms of leaning on, in terms of emotion. But as a physicality, we lean on people when we're more peaceful. Reasonable touch within the human population is. Is natural. It feels right, it feels easy, and we don't overthink it. An unforced laugh. Few things are as awkward as somebody forcing laughter or trying to force ease, right? It just doesn't work, doesn't come across. So an unforced, natural laugh, of course, right? No wonder it's so hard to find lightness or ease or laughter when we're stressed. A state of peacefulness lets us get there with ease. Sparkling eyes, a weightless gaze. We might whistle or hum these little cues of okayness. You have ease with joy. So whatever you're experiencing from a state of peacefulness will have more joy. Instead of that strife. We might stretch like a cat. Big, good morning. Stretch full bodied, from tips of your fingers overhead to tips of your toes. A warmth in our voice, right? If we're edgy or agitated, that certainly comes out in our voice. So we can sense peacefulness on the voices of ourselves and each other. We might lace our fingers behind the head. That's very open, right? We have an openness to life when we're peaceful. Then open demeanor, fluid movements. We flow in mind, in body, in relating, in ease. That's the frequency of peace. We might loop the thumbs in our front pockets while standing. Kind of like a cool guy pose, right? Chill. We have an easy walk. We're unhurried now. From New Orleans. It's one of those New Orleans words. We don't walk, we sashay, y', all, because we don't rush. And we're getting where we're going in our good old time without stress. I sort of love that visual of that Southern sashaying archetype. We have a wandering gaze. We can take in random things because we're not rushed, we're not hurried. We're not so in our heads that we're missing that bird over there or that interesting cloud shape up there in the sky. We're able to actually be present and take in our world. We have unhurried, unpressured speech. We can contentedly take more Time to complete tasks. That might be a big one for highly sensitive people contentedly taking more time to complete tasks. I'm slow like molasses, doing things like the dishes, y'.

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And when I'm not rushing and I'm in this peaceful state, it is almost like some kind of spiritual practice. I'll take that back. It's not almost. It is. It's like as if me and that mug that I'm washing with the warm sudsy water is all that exists. That's peace. So different than my traumatized younger self's version of peace as something that I couldn't have, I wasn't allowed to have. It wasn't real to me. It wasn't available. The dishes used to stress me out. Another thing on my to do list, when I feel raw and exhausted, never getting to the end of that to do list, the peace is not in the situation, y'.

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The peace is in how we process, how we move through, what we allow. How do we allow peace if we grow up getting messages that peace isn't allowed? Well, with great intention. That's why you're here today, listening, right? So let's get into some internal sensations, okay? Internal sensations of peacefulness. Slow and easy breaths. So if you're having a hard time in life right now, you can slow down your breath, deepen it, and notice what happens. It's okay that whatever dilemma or problem that's at hand isn't sorted yet. Do you believe me? Are you willing to believe me? Are you willing to incorporate this idea into your wisdom that. That you're allowed to dial into peace even when things aren't how you want, even when they're difficult in whatever circumstance. I say yes. But I can't say that for you. This is where you are tasked with empowering yourself to choose. Over time, that choice gets easier. Over time, that choice becomes who we are. Then we don't even have to keep choosing it. It's just there. It's normalized to us. We have slack muscles, loose limbs, might even yawn and feel drowsy. We can have a lack of tension and stress that almost equates to a feeling of nothingness. That's a big deal. If we consider trauma recovery, it seems that it would be super logical, right? That all we've ever wanted is peace. If we come from chaos. Totally logical. It really shocked me that I had to consider for my own betterment, my own self development, my own getting out of survival mode, that my system just did not know it wasn't Familiar with peace. Now that sounds like hyperbole, sounds like exaggeration. But from the moment I was born, I did not have a lot of safety and security. And there was a lot of constant upheaval even in the moments that were objectively the safest. I was already so traumatized that I was bracing for the next stressor, which meant I didn't get a lot of time in the presence of peace. And this single moment I was in, my mind would run into the future and my body would feel its stress trying to figure out future things that was normal to me. So in making choices to make my life simpler and easier and healthier and let go of dysfunctional dynamics that never did serve me, I had to admit, and it was hard that my system that had always just craved peace, didn't know how to do it. And the second that piece made sense to me, my brain would take me to a stress state. The practice stress state in me, which wasn't my fault. It was just what shook out. It was as if that part would get frightened and go, hey, I kind of. I kind of know what to do with stress because we've always had it. I don't really know what to do with peace. It's a hard thing to understand within ourselves. To people that have had less trauma in their lives, it might be a thing that makes us feel alienated because it's hard for the average person to understand. We even struggle to understand it ourselves. We judge ourselves, we say things to ourselves like peace should be the easiest damn thing in the world. What is wrong with me? Instead of wow, if peace is hard for me, that's really a commentary on how my life has been to this point. Let me work with myself with patience and kindness and practice into peace. I can teach this body and mind peace. We are very grateful to have Air Doctor sponsor this episode, y'.

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Do you hear that? That's code [e-mail] for 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year. Get delicious ready to eat meals delivered with Factor. This offer is only valid for new Factor customers with the code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that support us when we're Peaceful One of our internal sensations is a steady, calm pulse and heartbeat. We feel a sense of ease within ourselves. We're not waiting for the other shoe to drop. We also have a cultivated trust inside of ourselves. So many people coming from childhood abuse think that they're supposed to work on trusting others others. The real hack is in cultivating trust with ourselves. I'll say it like this to you so you can see it outside of yourself through my story. Why would my inner child ever trust me truly and deeply if she's looking up at growing up me going, this lady doesn't even know how to be peaceful. Whenever we start to get peaceful, she starts to get real squirrely and makes us stressful. Why would I trust that? That's the same old stress I've always lived in. Why would my inner child trust grown up me if I don't have a cultivated state of calm and peace available to me? We're not robots. We're human beings. I'm certainly not advocating or suggesting that you or me or any of us could or ever should or would be able to have some sort of flatline. That's not a healthy relationship with our emotional selves. It's not a healthy desire. We're not supposed to be the Switzerland of human emotion. Constantly we get to go up and we get to go down, but we get to work on having an easier, more peaceful default setting number one. And we get to hold some space for ourselves that help ourselves find more grounded peace. Whenever life just shows up and sort of discombobulates us, shocks us. I don't have to play semantics with you. Sometimes life really does feel like it shows up and sort of knocks us around a little bit, pulls the rug out from under us. We get to have tools that stabilize us so that we don't get lost in the stressor accidentally practicing stress muscles instead of peace muscles. The goal is never to become neutral or flat. The goal is to be able to have more of a sense of control and more peace so that we have a better sense of being able to work with our emotions and guide them instead of our emotions just sort of taking over. And we have panic attacks that make us feel entirely out of control. So here are some mental responses to being with others with no need to fill the silence. Can you do that? It's an interesting check in, isn't it? Can you just be next to somebody with peace or do you feel an anxious pressure to fill the space? That might be a very sneaky little spot where our people pleasing shows up. And if we don't have a cultivated relationship and permission towards peace, we will jibber jabber through a peaceful moment. Just because the silence and the stillness is so foreign and awkward to our system. We feel a connection to life, y'.

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We're living through a great loneliness epidemic. I can't tell you to go to the friend store and pick up some really good models that are exactly what you're looking for. Building friendships as an adult, one of the most unforeseen, hardest things, big time struggle to do as very busy adult. We're no longer smushed together in schooling or running around in the neighborhood meeting kids. It's different to form relationships as adults. So if we're lonely and we nurse feelings of loneliness, what's wrong with me? And we let the critical voice grab that we're practicing more loneliness, building into desperation. It's really true, y'.

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When I'm peaceful, I'm peaceful with me. And I do feel more grounded and more connected, more connected to my life, more connected to the grounding Planet more connected to every other seeker that is out there trying to figure out this life, live a good life and bring more peace. I even feel more connected to my ancestors, not just the ones that are directly in my family tree, to all of our ancestors, everybody that has ever lived, breathed, died, we're nothing but this Earth floating around in this big giant galaxy. Easy to feel scared and lonely, to be able to practice peace, to feel more connected. That's how we self care around modern loneliness, y'.

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Another mental response is having no desire to be anywhere else. See, if you grew up in a home with a lot of tension, doesn't even have to be like what we think of as like a classical abuse. If we grew up with tension, part of how we survived was we looked forward because the present moment was so crappy, was so outside of our control that to survive we practice. Aha. I won't be in this present moment because it's crappy. I'm gonna put my mind forward. There were seasons of my youth as a teenager where I would just rock and repeat. I'm going to be 18 one day and when I'm 18, I'm out. When I'm 18, I'm out. When I'm 18, I'm Out. I left at 17. So I made that happen. Didn't mean it was easy. But when that is practice, when that is the lived experience again and again and again and again. In our youth, we don't realize that we're practicing never being in the present moment and looking forward. So when things are good, we don't just luxuriate in the goodness the way we expect from our logic. We actually leave the goodness of the present moment. Our system doesn't have the muscles to be present in this way. They're atrophied, they're shaky. So they don't want to be in this present moment. They want to look forward. It's a very sneaky way. We can actually feel very sad and very depressed because here I am in this good life that I fought so hard for. If I've survived a lot and I don't know how to be in it, I run forward. I've run away from this present moment. It's a very sad thing for my inner child to see me doing right. So when we're peaceful, we're living in the moment. We're not in the past, we're not in the future. And this can be practiced now. We also avoid topics of conversation that will kill the mood. I wonder if that hits any bells. For any of you listening, have you done this? Or do you know somebody that does this? Everything's swimming along, socializing is going great, and then somebody just up and sticks their foot all the way in their mouth from the outside looking in, it's like, why? Why did you do that? It may be somebody that doesn't know how to ride that frequency of, hey, everything is pretty good right now and it's okay to stay where it's good. We delight in the mundane, everyday tasks. I mentioned the dishes earlier. If you've never experienced delighting in the mundane, that might sound like a load of crap to you. I promise you it's available. It is a skill. It is the way that monks live their lives. You know, they think that our American way of eating, where we're watching tv, we're sending a text, we're petting a dog, we're telling the kids something is so mindless and distracting. When we're present, we're not multitasking so much. A monk eats food in this peaceful state. They pay attention to each bite. They luxuriate in each bite. They're not in the past rehashing. They're not figuring out what's coming next in the future. They're present. This may be a sneaky reason why so many in our culture overeat and over indulge. So peace and presence, when you start to really look at how it plays in our lives, when you start to really look at how does peacefulness play in our lives, how does it connect to everything else about me? We could be amazed at how much goodness can come out of intentionally bringing more peace into our lives. The last mental response I'm going to share with you today is a desire for everyone to experience such peace. When I first read this, it really choked me up. I teach peace and I teach boundaries, y'.

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And that could not be more true. That might as well say in this book, hey, Nikki, this is for you. A desire for everyone to experience such peace, to feel peace from a youth where I almost never did. It's an emotional lottery, y'.

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It really is like winning the emotional lottery. Of course I have a desire for everyone to experience such peace. And I just cannot abide that so many people may never even know that they can practice peace, no matter how hard their life circumstance, no matter what they're living through. I hope that that comes across in this episode and everything that we put out. So guess what happens when you have long term peacefulness. So if you were writing a character in a book. That's what this book is written for. These are cues of acute or long term peacefulness, a lessened need for worldly goods. Think about that in relationship to American consumerism. In our culture, acute or long term peacefulness brings a lessened need for worldly goods. It's very interesting to think about another cue, choosing to spend time with positive or like minded people. This rings true for me. When I was the most depressed, the most dysregulated is when I spent the most time with the most unhealthy people in my life and people who didn't value very much of what I do today in respect of my hard earned peace. Of course, I naturally choose to spend time with positive or like minded people and I won't use my power of choice to choose to spend time with people that aren't. Here's another a growing interest in spiritual or religious philosophy. If you're listening to this show, is this the only self development thing that you do? I doubt it. Look at your own life as you feel more relief. Maybe that's the first time we start to talk about peace is through relief. Doesn't that spurn you on? Doesn't that inspire you and motivate you to go, oh my goodness, there is some, some peace and goodness available in this world that younger me just didn't know. Fuels are seeking spirits. We have a desire to maintain a positive status quo. That's true empowerment, y'.

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Instead of letting every little thing that doesn't go our way throw us, upset us, anger us, frustrate us, raise our heart rate, raise our cortisol levels, we maintain a positive status quo. Picture any vision of the archetype of monk that you may have in your consciousness. No matter what, they just maintain this super chill vibe, right? If Chicken Little ran right up to a monk and was like, the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Monk would likely go, I guess the sky is falling. The wisdom of peace, his main principle to live by even if and when the sky is falling. Here's another thing that happens from short or long term peacefulness. We actually change our lives, our lifestyles to accommodate new beliefs. This is where we grow into maybe recycling, maybe moving to the country. I have to admit, the desire for more peace is what got me out of the city and into the Rocky Mountains. We don't just accept what's wrong in the world. We're able to sort of see those things, know their wrongness, do what we can do towards righting them, but we still cultivate and maintain Our hard earned peace under the wisdom of my upset will do nothing for this issue. But I'll have more energy for this issue if I stay peaceful. This is a big reason why I do not get behind anger and lashing out at people and shaming people in the name of any activism. We have a desire for more natural living. Look at your own life as you've walked your own self development path. Do you find yourself gravitating naturally towards what is more natural? Interesting to think about, huh? We also have an increased awareness of one's body and what goes into it. So that's interesting. A lot of people who listen to the show have post traumatic stress symptoms. A lot of that can be summarized in feeling like a head cut off from the body. So we talk a lot in post traumatic stress recovery of becoming more embodied. We're so heady in our culture, even separate from trauma, childhood trauma, we can't go anywhere. So where do we go to our heads to the future? We rethink the past, but we don't stay present. I often hear people saying, well, how do I get more embodied? How do I get out of my head and into my body? And a hard truth is that when I say, well, you practice peace, that doesn't have enough bang to it, right? It's quite the leap to understand if I practice peace, that's the space, that's the stillness and the quietness where I can get to know this body. You wouldn't go to a heavy metal concert to have deep conversation to get to know someone, right? Well, if we're living in this energy of go, go, go, go, go and our minds are overthinking in a way that is as loud as heavy metal. How do we listen to this body? How do we actually relate to this body? So how do we become more embodied? One of the answers is we get more still. We practice peace. We also engage in new and satisfying hobbies and interests. It's so true. I think what's common is for us to think about like a, like a tortured starving artist that is in so much depression and so much pain producing their art. It's a way that we glorify pain. It's certainly true that archetype exists. But a truth you don't here glorified as much is that as I got more peaceful, I became more prolific with my art. And my art is happy. It is bright. Another assumption, another archetype of the the pained artist is that the art that's coming out of them is so dark, right? All that darkness that needs to come out. Sure, there's a time, there's a place, all of that is valid, but it's not all there is. So you don't have to sit down and have a hobby or an art form that brings the darkness out of you. Unless that helps you. You can also use a hobby. I have a couple people right now that have taken me up on going to improv. That's them on their healing journey. Opening up to lightness and laughter, to presence and peace, to a new hobby. Peacefulness may escalate to happiness. You ready for that? Are you allowing yourself to believe that you can be happier than maybe you've ever been before? Or do you limit yourself because of a lot of hardship? Do you tell yourself the lie? I don't want to get too excited about that because then I'll get too disappointed. What if we could get peaceful about getting excited in a way, and also more peaceful if we happen to become disappointed? Peace can be quite the tool. Paired with so many different things. Here are cues of suppressed peacefulness. It's interesting, isn't it? Why the hell would somebody suppress their peacefulness? Well, you might not know that it's okay. You really might not know that it's okay in a deep psychological way. Subconsciously, you might resist it like I did. So here's a cue. If you might be suppressing peacefulness or love somebody who's doing this, you might just claim that being calm means you're simply tired. See, I can be like bright and warm and exuberant in my energy. I think you can see that over video. But if I'm calm, that's kind of dialed down. People may look at me and go, nikki, what's wrong? Are you okay? I don't want to go. I'm tired and sort of dismiss my own hard earned peace. I want to be able to verbalize for my own self to hear and for them to hear. No, I'm just very peaceful right now. If that's the truth. Another cue of suppressed peacefulness. We might force oneself to maintain a slight stiffness in posture. That's almost like our inner psychology going, hey, maybe our inner critical voice. What do you think you're doing? You're going to be peaceful and like in public. You really think that's safe? Is that okay? Are you a lad? You better be at least, I don't know, 20, 25% stiff. You better be on guard at least a little bit. Do you hear the survival mode in that? Not every place that we are is A battlefield, y'.

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Our nervous systems, our minds, they really are trying to protect us. That's the consequence of too much hardship, too much struggle without enough resiliency. Period. Another suppressed peacefulness cue. Pretending to disengage because of boredom. This is a big deal in addiction recovery too. Believe it or not, boredom is one of the main triggers to relapse. It's not stress, it's not getting fired, it's not somebody breaking up with you, it's not having a sick kid, it's I'm bored. My theory is that if you're bored and that leaves you to destructive behaviors, destructive thoughts that bring you to destructive behaviors, you might not know how to do peace. What a self fulfilling prophecy. What an impedement to sobriety, to getting some real momentum on some healthy days and months and years so that you can use your energy to hit your life goals to live instead of to sabotage. Very interesting that boredom is one of the biggest triggers, isn't it? So here is the author's writer's to choose verbs carefully. The meaning of a sentence can be altered through the words used to describe action. Readers will see a character who trudges up the stairs as being in a different emotional state than one that bounds up them two at a time. When you feel lower down, you can do a lot to draw yourself up and out to a more positive state, a more peaceful state, a more living life state. Or you can use physicality to cultivate that sort of dragging up the stairs energy. We want to watch for congruence. See if I'm feeling peaceful. It is awesome, beautiful, allowed, healthy for me to let that peacefulness be congruent with my face, my behaviors, the way I go up and down the stairs. But if I feel funky, if I feel low, if I'm feeling critical of myself, if I'm feeling anxious, if I'm feeling depressed, I don't want to let my body act that out with congruence and just stay in that state. That's the wisdom of smiling on the outside, even through tears. That's how I recognize and acknowledge this feeling. But I don't want to be congruent with this feeling. This is empowerment, y'.

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Our feelings don't fall out of the sky. They relate to our thoughts. They relate to our body language, how we move, how we think. The risk for sensitive people is that we're feeling led well. But I feel bad. Therefore everything in my life should go through this lens of feeling bad, right? No, that brings you congruent with funk Part of healing, part of self development, part of maturity is learning what to allow within ourselves and what to resist, how to guide ourselves towards goodness and how to guide ourselves away from the suck. It's easy to get sucked into the suck, right? So we get to use strategies that help us get away from that suck and move towards the light. If you are interested in learning more about peace, consider setting up a call with my team to see what's right for you at this time in your life. Visit emotionalbadass.com peace to find out more or click the link in the description now. No matter what, I hope that you allow yourself to believe in the possibility of your cultivation of peace, light and love. I'm an emotional badass, you are an emotional badass and together we are where moxie meets mindful light and love. And I'll see you right here next time for a brand new episode. Till then, take care of and allow peace. I'll see you right here next time for a brand new episode. Bye bye.

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