“Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
What if peace of mind is the ultimate key to real progress?
It’s possible.
After all, a lack of peace of mind, could mean you are on shaky ground. With peace of mind, you grow a firm foundation under your feet and you take it with you wherever you go.
The beauty of choosing peace of mind as a priority is that you have control over it and it shapes how you show up and impacts all aspects of your daily life.
If you master your peace of mind, it will be your firm foundation for creating progress even as the world changes all around you.
In the book, Creating Progress in a World of Change, Dean Lindsay, speaker, author, and coach, shares how peace of mind is the ultimate key to create real and lasting progress in all dimensions of our lives.
John Wooden Defined Success as Peace of Mind
John Wooden, one of the greatest sports coaches of all time, made peace of a mind a priority. In fact, it’s how he defined his success.
Here is how John Wooden defined peace of mind:
“Success is peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
Well, Wooden has a way with words, but you can bottom line it to peace of mind is a journey of giving your best where you have your best to give.
And that path of success is available to anyone, anytime, anywhere – it’s your choices that capitalize on your chances.
Peace of Mind is the Most Strived For
Dean Lindsay introduces 6 Ps of Progress:
- Peace of Mind
- Pleasure
- Profit
- Prestige
- Pain Avoidance
- Power
They are effectively a by-product we feel from working towards our goals, as we strive for significance, pursue a higher purpose, and work to progress.
But of all the Ps, Lindsay says that Peace of Mind is the one that’s most strived for.
Lindsay writes:
“If I had to choose one of the Six Ps of Progress that was the most often strived for, it would be Peace of Mind.
In simple terms, peace of mind is acceptance and contentment.
Peace of mind means inner calmness, quiet mind, serenity, a clear conscience, safety, composure, contentment.
It also means an absence of mental stress or anxiety, a lack of agitation. (Sounds nice, huh?)”
Where Peace of Mind Comes From
Ultimately, your peace of mind comes from you. Nobody can create it for you. You create the experience of peace of mind for you.
While some things help or hurt your peace of mind,
So appreciate the external things that might help you feel a peace of mind, but be careful not to externalize your peace of mind, and depend on the world or your circumstances to be a certain way.
You find your peace of mind by focusing on what you control – your attitudes and actions – and letting the rest go.
Lindsay writes:
”Strong relationships offer peace of mind. Insurance offers peace of mind. Good benefit packages offer peace of mind.
Money in the bank offers peace of mind.
Good buzz in our industries offers peace of mind. Meaningful work offers peace of mind. Seatbelts offer peace of mind. Receiving top-notch prequalified quality referrals offers peace of mind.”
Forgiving Ourselves and Others is a Prerequisite for Peace of Mind
Forgiveness is step 1. You can’t have peace of mind, if you are holding onto grudges or hate or loathing. Forgive yourself, forgive others, and forgive circumstances.
Don’t make you life about your anger, or your resentment, or your hate.
Let that go.
It’s like advice from the M.T. A Sponsorship Guide for 12-Step Programs:
“I think resentment is when you take the poison and wait for the other person to die.”
Lindsay writes:
“Peace of mind may also relate to a state of being spiritual or having a sense of possessing enough knowledge and understanding to keep oneself positive and centered in the face of stressful stimuli and discord.
It is tough to feel peace when we are angry or upset.
Forgiving both ourselves and others, as well as letting go of grudges, are prerequisites to peace of mind.”
Believing that You Can Become Your Best Creates Progress in a World of Change
Things won’t always go your way. Bad things happen to good people. Life throws you curve balls.
But the big idea to keep in mind is that it’s now what happens to you.
It’s how you respond.
And that’s your chance to practice your peace of mind. You practice your peace of mind by working at getting better and by trying your best at the chances you’ve got.
Lindsay writes:
“Peace of mind does not suggest lack of awareness, Pollyannaism, or loss of touch with reality. Someone with peace of mind can be extremely aware and closely connected to the reality of the times.
Belief in ourselves and our abilities to make good choices despite any downturn or misstep offers peace of mind.
Knowing we are doing our best at becoming our best selves is, in itself, peace of mind. Believing we can create progress in a world of change sustains our peace with courage and conviction.”
Caring is the Vital Force That Keeps our Relationships and Businesses Alive
Develop priceless relationships to weather the storms. When you care for real, people feel it.
When you help people progress, whether in business or in life, you help create a powerful peace of mind, not just in yourself, but for others, too.
Lindsay writes:
”Peace of mind is the oxygen in the challenging world of business, especially in the area of customer service.
Sure, pleasure, profit, prestige, pain avoidance, and power are desired, too, but first and foremost, customers need the peace and confidence that only caring can provide.
Continually showing customers that we care, are knowledgeable, and are committed to their progress is the vital force that keeps our relationships and businesses alive.”
Our Service to Others Serves Us
You can serve others, while serving yourself, too. It’s called selfish altruism because by helping others, we help themselves.
But don’t look at relationships in terms of what you get.
Look at relationships in terms of what you can give.
When you focus on getting, people feel used, and they will take their relationships somewhere else.
But trust the process of selfless giving and it will come back to you in a selfish way – by earning you peace of mind and a sense of progress.
Lindsay writes:
”One of the major reasons we even wear the ‘Serve others’ hat is so we can wear the ‘Serve me’ hat later in the day.
Our service to others, serves us.
It helps to keep the personal benefits of providing unparalleled service front and center in our minds.”
We Always Desire the Best for Ourselves
You may not want to help others. But chances are you want to help yourself. And you can help yourself by helping others.
As Zig Ziglar put it, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”
Lindsay writes:
“There are times when we do not feel like serving customers, but we always want to serve ourselves. There are even times when the customer (who may be surly, rude, drunk) does not deserve our best.
But we always desire the best for ourselves.
Therefore, it can be helpful to remind ourselves of the role that earning and maintaining customer loyalty plays in our personal peace of mind and progress.”
We Reach Our Full Potential When Service Becomes Habitual
If you turn serve into a habit, you create a system for realizing your potential.
A very key aspect of this personal platform for potential, is your motivation.
When you empower your customers to make progress, you motivate yourself to be more, and achieve more.
Lindsay writes:
”When we lose sight of the personal motivation involved in this game (ok, I’ll stop) of quality service, we begin to disregard the concerns of our customers.
Unfortunately for everyone, this makes them unhappy, leads to legitimate complaints, and could easily end in our looking for some other line of work.
We reach our full potential when service becomes habitual.”
Be Progress
You can do things the way they’ve always been done. And you can certainly aim to fit in with the status quo.
But if you don’t want what the herd gets, then rise above it, and make a path of progress.
This is where you see things as they are, but you also see things as they could be, and you apply your special skills and abilities to transform the world around you.
This is how you graduate from the school of mediocrity into the school of your own, personal greatness.
This is how you live and breathe your own sense of progress.
Lindsay writes:
“Customer service is far too often a sticky slow web of surly, under-informed customer-service reps, reading in a monotone from a script.
Add to that the annoying on-hold music, outdated computer programs, and hard-to-navigate Web sites (none of which offer customers peace of mind or any of the other Six Ps), and you have the perfect Rx for customer disservice, also known as failure.
Customers with concerns are left feeling stressed and helpless, and with the belief that companies truly don’t give a hoot about their well-being.”
We are All In the Customer-Service Business
When you internalize the idea that every business is wrapped around a customer, or should be, you see how customers are really your epicenter of concern.
This mental model creates a very clear and very real idea that your service has a positive impact on others lives.
And that reminds you that whatever business you work in, that’s your platform and arena for changing lives, whether it’s the people you work with, or the customers you serve.
It’s those daily opportunities where you can practice your performance while you practice your peace of mind, as you make progress against your challenges and setbacks.
I like to remind myself of the quote by Mary Anne Radmacher:
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.”
Lindsay writes:
“Unfortunately, it seems that when an organization labels some of its professionals as customer-service reps or customer advocates, the rest of the organization assumes they are let off of the ‘customer care’ hook.
Not true.
We are all in the customer-service business. There is no other business.
In fact, there is no business without the customer.”
As Edwards Deming put it:
“The customers are the most important part of the production line.”
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