Inner peace is often hard to obtain and maintain, especially when you tend to be easily stressed. I am personally stressed by sound due to my autism. Despite the reasons that stress you, here is my guide to inner peace:
Self
Find satisfaction within your body. Exercise, develop, and maintain good health. Aspire to shape your body in a way that makes you comfortable within it and reduces the dominance of negativity you relate to it.
Atone for everything you find wrong in your doings. Ask for forgiveness and clear the hazards from past experiences for a purer future and more optimistic present.
Reach consciously to your thoughts and differentiate between thoughts that grant you serenity and those that disturb you and make you uneasy. Purge the latter and increase the former. Get to better know yourself and oppose all inner conflicts and disturbances using exposure to clean air, physical exercise, and naps, for they are the Medicines of Nature.
External Relationships
Be kind and compassionate to others. Forgive them for their mistakes, as you would want them to forgive you for yours.
Set boundaries with people who are toxic or draining. Don't be afraid to say no to requests that you don't have time for or that don't make you happy.
Spend time with people who make you feel good about yourself. Surround yourself with positive people who support you and make you laugh.
Give back to others. Volunteer your time or donate to a cause that you care about. Helping others can make you feel good and give you a sense of purpose.
Self-Care
Distinguish between the parts of yourself that are changeable and those that are not. Work to alter the former and accept the existence and state of the latter.
Get rid of tension in your muscles and tension that is created by a stressed mindset. Calm your body and avoid unhealthy postures in day-to-day life. Pay attention to your posture when you stand and sit. Much suffering is created by posture that is not healthy to the body.
Get enough sleep, eat enough food, and drink until you are full. Never skip a meal when you are hungry and food is available. Never waste hours of sleep for entertainment when there is work the next day, not even for entertainment.
Advice for a Better Life
Maintain your passions, but keep them within the realm of what is realistically achievable.
Learn to remember calm music and avoid as best as you can listening to dramatic music in your mind. When there is loud and uncontrollable noise from those who don’t care, use headphones.
Make sure you’ve done everything that is needed to be done in the house in the immediate range before you go out, least worries shall fill you in the External World.
Don’t inflict pain on yourself beyond the pain of exercise. Self-harm only causes suffering.
Avoid giving in to temptations, least you’ll become a slave of addictions.
Avoid guilt by thinking twice before you act. Restrain your passions when a punishment is in potential if they are to be loose.
Learn how to protect yourself at times of potential danger.
Learn the Art of Independence, at times where you may find yourself alone in an unpersonal, unintimate environment. Those who are independent are more fortunate even with those with financial and social fortune.
Show responsibility least you slip away and cause misfortune to either your self-image or to the state of others.
Don’t escape from those that can only temporarily delayed; death, solitude, and everything else which is uncontrollable.
Don’t sink into depression. Fight it as if it was a foreign oppressor.
Take your pills regularly if you are on medication. The purpose of medication is to keep you stable and serene. If they do not fulfill these roles, fight to alter your current prescription.
Go your own path when you find it the most fitting to you, and learn to accept criticism from those who disagree with the path of your choice.
Take your time and don’t rush just because others do it; everyone have their own pace.
Others
Don’t hold grudges against others, especially those who have left your world.
Avoid as much conflict as you can with others.
Seek the middle path when in an argument. Do not be angry on others just because they hold a different point of view from yours.
Respect others as you wish yourself to be respected.
Understand that other people are naturally separated from you, and a full, blind obedience is the Enemy of Individualism. Let go when it is their will to be, for everyone knows or should know how to rely, at times, on themselves. Understand that people are not possessions, for this age had mostly long begone.
Minimize your rivals, if not cleanse them as such. Learn to accept defeat in a competition without taking it personally. Friends and companions are not required, but mutual positivity is the most optimal in human interaction.
Appreciate positive feedback, but don’t crave it.
Take care for those who cannot care about themselves: youth, disabled and the tiny portion that truly deserves mercy.
Show tolerance for those who are different from the majority of your ethnic, religious, socio-economic or ideological origins. Such unnecessary suffering was caused in both sides by presenting a minority as an enemy just because they are outcasts.
Accept and respect those whose authority and dominance is legitimately grander than yours. If that dominance is not legitimate, i.e, not official or black-in-white, do not surrender for those who are in practice equal, if not inferior, to you. Understand your place in your society, and strive to change it if it’s not sufficiently justified.
Avoid persecution by not committing crimes and deeds which are considered immoral.
Develop your politeness for better harmony and stability in the External World.
And finally,
Realize that reputation is not under your control. Even if it is yours, is given you by others; entities whom you cannot control, but only influence to a different extents. Separate your self-image from your reputation, for the former is truly your own creation.
