Peace  and health and love is every man’s prayer. Yet prayers, wishes and hopes need our help, too. If we want peace, we must be examples of that peace and foster it for ourselves. Without it, we are less apt to manufacture proper pathways of love.

Imagine more of us in the world taking better care to sincerely respect matters of peace in how we do things and in how we show ourselves to others. What if more of us stayed committed to such an approach? Health, love and a stronger happiness would be better experienced for the sake of all. Our everyday co-existence would become more fluid and more productive, too. When peace reigns in our heart, we naturally become wiser and more efficient in all things. Peace is a win-win.

True, being human is a messy business. All you have to do is watch the news. We are collectively imperfect. We are all flawed. But our job and primary purpose here is to take care and become compassionately aware that we not miss the mark. It is especially vital that we do this work of a kinder approach between each other even when the purpose doesn’t appear visible. A peaceful heart sees things more broadly and chooses to stay even for a larger goal. Relations can and do improve.

So here is a quick review with your own heart:

How do I make my life better apart from any action or event that has hurt me or offended or betrayed? Let go of how someone behaves or has behaved. Learn to have peace with things not being perfect and do not get attached to your outcome. In cases where you see that someone truly doesn’t have the character to make amends or that things can’t be changed, give it love and move on. How do you make peace? Continue to push out good and good will come back. Remind yourself to not indulge the sadness of what got taken away.

What if I am continually reminded of the injury? Then what do I do? You stay calm. And if my anger or sense of annoyance or despair creeps up? Welcome that most people’s anger is with themselves and not with others. Frustration is often more to do with the self-anger that you should have known better or not trusted, and yet you are human and things in life will happen. Life does rock even the kindest of us. No amount of protection we do can ever stop it and ever will. So a good counterbalance is to keep things happy in some meaningful area of your life and not overthink it.

A blame game, you see, even internally, of any he said and she said, is largely futile. It breaks your peace. It only exacerbates the what ifs and empty wishes and only hurts ourselves. When we care too much about what people are telling us, thinking of us, how they are approving or disapproving of us, and of people letting us down, we can spiral into a negative vacuum quite easily, too. Our only standard need be that we maintain our word anyway, revise it when we must, and stop living in fear as to how people react. When you take care to not disappoint your own standard and adjust and refine it along the way, that is a good thing because you are adapting yourself to satisfy the whole. You will always be unhappy and out of step with peace if you worry about someone else’s retribution or missteps. All you can do is give the opposite, meaning harmony and a loving resonance to things, and this gives you peace. It also gives your life balance.

That peace from the heart carries far is inarguable. The single greatest mistake we all do at some points in our lives, however, if not throughout it, is that we give this authority away. We break our own peace. So let us be wise in our learning. Let us each think more carefully of what we wish to recycle in a day. What you take in, you give out. What you give out, becomes a part of you.

When we recycle, we must recycle different materials. We tend to buy products that we can easily recycle in our homes and we avoid buying hazardous ones. Some of us go further and compost. Recycling helps “clean” our living space. At the same time, it engages us to watch our carbon footprint and be of ease to Mother Earth. And what of making our inner lives greener too? Wouldn’t peaceful thought and more peaceful action become a more sustainable way of living? And isn’t it rather beautiful to know that at every time you help heal yourself through something in a more peaceful and tolerant way, you also help heal those you love and others in the world while you’re at it? You offer everyone a better avenue to stronger happiness and health.

That is why it is a good idea that we each make choices that enrich our heart. If you aren’t a naturally peaceful person——the greater many of us are not unless we had it modelled to a high consistency when we were young— begin taking five minutes a day to cultivate something in your life which brings you peace. Maybe it is presence to an aromatic cup of coffee or tea. Maybe it is preparing and arranging store-bought flowers in a vase and appreciating the miracle of its beauty and simple joy. Maybe it is a quiet daydream or a smile of connection with a favorite friend or relative or your pet and the joy of presence this brings. Maybe it is five minutes of playful laughter or gentle breathing. Peace is a gift to the body, too, but it can’t arrive until we incorporate it as a language ourselves.

Peace is actually active. It is not passive. Peace has a body and it has a form. Recognize that peace is not about checking out from things. It is about checking in. More, it is about conscientiously finding your peaceful presence as you do things and through things. Peace is a skill set that informs your approach. It is about a calm connection of knowing with your own heart. It is a sensation that you can drop into whenever you need when done right and not because of an activity. Peace is a universal language. It’s a language we need to practice more and speak. Have fun flexing your peace muscles each day and finding the joy in building your body power that way.

Indeed, there are sweet miracles of peace to be found for us at every instant. Just look at the clouds. Or, smile to the purity in a clear sky. And though peaceful moments in a day are not that complex to find when you really think about it, it doesn’t appear by magic either. Nothing positive arrives without giving it some dedication and a loving bit of time. Give peace your time. Cultivate it as a gift to yourself each day, and regardless. When you do, you automatically raise your inherent worth. You raise the bar that we all get along. You lessen the power of a lingering and infectious bitterness. The world is discordant and disjointed as is. Peace changes our climate.

That is why I am making open-mindedness my new religion. In fact, peace need be the only true religion we each abide by. My prayer is that this peaceful truth broadens and informs each of us. Will you join me in a more peaceful heart shift?