How To Master Your Inner Battle: Finding Peace in Chaos

There is a great battle that has been going on for years, no decades… okay thousands of years. It’s a battlefield filled with utter chaos.

It’s a clash of 2 very different worlds. And no, I’m not talking about Tom Cruise’s War of Worlds movie. However, the war between the Earth and some extraterrestrial power does echo what I’m speaking of.

I’m speaking of the war between your external and your internal world. This is a place where your thoughts clash with your actions. A great divide where the inner dialogue seems to drown out the external noise, and yes… it often makes you question your sanity.

You see, each of us—both you and I—occupy two worlds. We have the outer world, which consists of people, places, things, and tangible items. But we also have our inner world, which consists of our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and what some would call our intuitions.

The two worlds exist for everyone. But for some, one world outweighs the other in terms of turmoil. So how do we find that balance between the two worlds?

In this episode, we’re going to explore what causes the struggle deep within and how to turn these troubled thoughts from an enemy into an ally. Plus, stick around to the end as I’m going to share with you some powerful techniques you can use to gain a more peaceful inner being.

Be sure to like and subscribe, it lets me know you enjoy the content I’m making for you and helps other people find this video easier - that’s part of YouTube’s “inner world”.

What is our inner being?

When we compare the two worlds that we exist in, the outer world is a place we share with others, a thriving and shared community. But our inner world acts as an island… where only we experience the workings of what is going on inside. This is where we stand alone.

As a culture, we’ve learned to cope and manage what we experience on the outside. How to communicate, work, and live with others. But how do we handle what’s going on in the inside? When there is no one sharing those same feelings with us, we have to rely only on ourselves to manage those feelings.

In most cases, each individual has conquered their external world, yet their internal world remains shattered. It is easier to hide what is going on in our psyche than it is to hide what is going on externally. But when we suppress those issues going on inside of us it is only to our detriment.

So when we know we must address the work to be done internally, where do we begin?

What is our inner being?

We can escape our jobs at the end of the day… we can break up bad relationships we have… and we can walk away from people and places that do us harm. But when it comes to our psyche there is no escape…

By not facing our inner turmoil we can never be set free. Our quality of life simply won’t change. I believe James Baldwin said it best in his book ‘As Much Truth as One Can Bear.’ He went on to say, 

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Understand Childhood Psychology (Course Promo)

Ok, real quick. If you're watching this video then you’re probably someone like me who’s looking to find inner peace and inner balance. For me, there was no other way to start this journey other than going back to my childhood memories and how my early experiences shifted those inner worlds and shaped me. One of the recent revolutions in childhood psychology is the understanding of how children relate to their parents and how this relationship shapes the kids' perception of these 2 worlds we’re talking about, the inner and the outer.

So, how we attach to our parents and how our parents interact with us, we develop the so-called attachment styles. Your style might be secure, avoidant, dismissive, or fearful, and the majority of us pass on all the issues that our parents passed on to us to our kids. If you want to learn how to understand childhood psychology and raise securely attached children, or if you want to understand more about your own childhood and those inner worlds, I created an online program on understanding childhood psychology.

In the 12 lessons of this course, we explain how children attach to their parents and how these attachment styles define all their relationships throughout life. We deep dive into how children develop their sense of self and identity and how their mind works, from stimulus to perception, all the way up to forming mental representations, and how these representations manifest into actual behavior. I’m not going to go into more details as I want to get back to our video, but if you feel understanding childhood psychology can help you in your journey, follow this link here.

The First Step To Find Inner Peace

This tells us the first step toward mastering inner harmony is to stop denying it, ignoring it, and numbing ourselves to the many events that go on inside our minds. Sure you may feel shame or you may even be afraid of what addressing your psyche can mean. After all, the psyche is a scary place to explore.

Many times when our psyche goes untreated and uncared for, it is far too easy to fall into the pitfalls of addiction. Some turn to drugs, alcohol, or other sources to numb the pain and avoid dealing with the real issues.

But we’ve all seen how that movie ends… the hero can only drink so much to drown out the voices in their head. At the height of the movie, he must get clean, and face his demons, and then, and only then, can he be the hero he was meant to be.

Yet we know it is not as simple as Hollywood shows us. The road to inner harmony is a hard one as the longer we’ve denied that there is an issue the worse it becomes. Once we do begin the process of opening up we have to realize that yes, it’s going to be scary, we’re going to be freighted by what we find. But the suffering we’re going to go through in the process is just temporary.

But if we want to experience that inner growth, and push past the demons that have haunted us, we have to endure the process no matter how maddening it becomes.

Carl Jung shares what he experienced first-hand in his book. He witnessed many of his patients hesitant to get started due to fear of what they might find. He went on to write:

“When a patient begins to feel the inescapable nature of his inner development, he may easily be overcome by a panic fear that he is slipping helplessly into some kind of madness that he can no longer understand. More than once I have had to reach for a book on my shelves. . to show my patient his terrifying fantasy in the form in which it appeared four hundred years ago. This has a calming effect because the patient then sees that he is not alone in a strange world which nobody understands, but is part of the great stream of human history, which has experienced countless times the very things that he regards as pathological proof of his craziness.”

This teaches us that yes, while our inner workings are an island… we are not alone in them. For thousands of years, people just like you and I have gone through the same thoughts, feelings, and emotions within.

What Causes our Inner Battle?

Once we have taken that enormous step of actually opening up our psyche and facing it head on we find…  the issue.

For each person the issue or issues will be different… for some, it is a crippling anxiety of self-doubt… for others, it is a feeling of hopelessness and depression… and still, for others, it could be intrusive thoughts that handicap our every thought and move in life.

By identifying what is wrong we can start to find a solution. But if we start to ask ourselves the burning question ‘Why am I  the way I am?’ We can go down a never-ending Alice in Wonderland Rabbit hole that consists of self-pity, resentment, no clear answers, and yes probably a funny white rabbit that we ask all sorts of ridiculous questions to.

Instead, we must ask the question of what exactly is the root of our issue or issues. By getting to that root problem we can then devise a strategy to overcome our problems. And when I say overcome, I do not mean that our problems will magically go away. I mean that we’ll come up with strategies that help us see our problems as launchpads rather than challenges.

Here is where it gets interesting: When we are coming up with a strategy we must, above all, follow one singular criteria. The strategy must include a tangible degree of novelty. Novelty being the process of experiencing or encountering something different than what one has regularly encountered. One must do something different to see a different result.

Novelty also needs with it a real, tangible action. Be it physical motion or psychological exercises, it needs to be more than just simply talking about the issue.

By using real, tangible techniques and tools we can shift our inner being from one of turmoil to one of calm. By simply talking about the issue over and over again, we only continue the madness.

We must also keep in mind that the tools needed for each person will be different. When we think of healing the inner workings we tend to think of it as a physical fix. For example, if you broke your arm and your best friend broke his arm the process to heal it would be 95% the same. You would go see a doctor, you each would get it reset, and then you’d each be fitted for a cast that you would each wear for almost the same length of time.

But our psyches can’t be ‘fixed’ in the same way we fix physical injuries. That is because we came about that broken element in a different way and we have lived with it differently.

Our inner worlds may appear similar to others who share the same issues, but in reality, they couldn’t be more different.

Think for a moment about two siblings. Perhaps you have a brother or sister. Think about how you both were raised. Yes, two brothers just two years apart may seem to have identical environments, but they don’t.

One sibling is being raised as the older son and one is being raised as the younger son. That right there creates very different environments for them. Yes, they have the same parents but in many ways they were not raised by the same parents. Meaning that parents’ behaviour and raising skills are not the same from the first born to their second child. Yes, the kids go to the same school, and even eat the same food – but their dynamic in the world is very different from one another.

Therefore, even if they have the same inner issues, they can’t be treated the same. Carl Jung explained in his book:

“To speak of a science of individual psychology is already a contradiction in terms. It is only the collective element in the psychology of an individual that constitutes an object for science; for the individual is by definition something unique that cannot be compared with anything else. A psychologist who professes a “scientific” individual psychology is simply denying individual psychology. He exposes his individual psychology to the legitimate suspicion of being merely his own psychology. The psychology of every individual would need its own manual, for the general manual can deal only with collective psychology.”

How To Create Inner Harmony?

The psyche is a battlefield many struggle with, yet there is no ‘cure all’ for each issue. Sure we can turn to people for advice and try techniques that have been proven to help – but at the end of the day, each of our inner worlds is truly a different planet. We have to address each inner world as if it is another planet that hasn’t been discovered and mapped out yet.

Richard Bach said it best,

“If ever there were a manual written for “advanced souls” it would have to end with the following words: “Everything in this book may be wrong.”

So If we really desire to reach a level of mastery over our psyche we should experiment with various techniques that work on all three of the main forms of human experience.

Techniques You Can Use To Gain A More Peaceful Inner Being

So what techniques can you use to create that inner harmony?

When it comes to dealing with our psyche there are three elements to consider:

One - our behaviors

Two - our thoughts

and Three - our emotions.

They are all interconnected and if we train ourselves to guide one positively, we can see a ripple effect in the others.

In the ‘Human Change Processes’ book, psychologist Michael Mahoney tells us that,

“Behaviourists have favored behavior as the primary force in human experience and argued that changes in motor activity produce changes in attitudes and affect. Cognitivists have rallied around the primary power of thought and argued that changes in thinking produce changes in both behavior and feeling. The third group – variously called “humanists,” “experientialists,” and “evocative” therapists – have asserted the primacy of emotionality in driving the other two realms.”

Knowing this let me share two techniques you can use.

First, start by focusing on just one of the three elements. This could be your behavior, your thoughts, or your emotions. By compartmentalizing these you will feel less overwhelmed and can address one issue at a time. And just as I said before, one will have a ripple effect on the others, creating a win-win for you.

The second one might make you laugh… and honestly, it should. That is because the second one to focus on is… seeing the humor in our issues.

As we go on this journey of trial-and-error we will find what works and what doesn’t work, and even what really doesn’t work. Many people let the crippling fear weigh them down. But I challenge you to find the comedy where you can. It was once said, “We can only begin to live when we conceive life as Comedy.”

Being Greek, I can tell you that the reason why Greeks invented theater—that's tragedy and comedy, basically—was to distract themselves from unpleasant realities and civic engagement. Theater encouraged Greeks to “become more moral by processing the most important issues of the day,” through both tragedy and satire.

So make a pause here and think of how comedy and drama help you give meaning to everyday life events.

By taking this lighter approach you can come to terms with the fact that there is a way out, you can heal your traumas, and you will climb over that hill.

Just know that our psyche is an ecosystem and not a one-dimensional map. Yes, you may feel like you are going crazy but the great poet Robert Frost reminds us:

“If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.”