The world is a crazy place of late is it not? Wars, rumors of wars, political adversity, poverty, death and disease are in the news daily. Just turning on the television is enough to cause you to become stressed to the hilt. So, what do we do to bring serenity back into our lives? How do we get away from it all when we live with the daily threat of attack by terrorists and Ebola outbreaks that could come to our country?.
image from photoquoto.com
Serenity is not having no worries but rather the ability to soothe yourself when things are stressful and scary. I believe in serenity and believe in having a place in our homes where we can go to rejuvenate ourselves. The storms are still there, we just have to learn how to not let all the things going on in the world affect our serenity to the point of keeping us filled with angst.
Our lives are filled daily with choices and with those choices come consequences. We choose what we believe, we choose how we feel, we choose what we do and no matter our choices, we have to be willing to take the consequences that come from that choice. I learned a long time ago to not let others determine my happiness for my happiness lies inside of me. With all the trials and hard times I have been through, my happiness remains intact. So, if we are looking for serenity…for peace…then we have to realize that our choices affect our emotions. If I sit and watch the news all day long and listen to the terrifying rhetoric, then I would be tense and upset all the time. I choose to look at things with this thought in mind: what can I do to change things? And if I can do nothing and it is out of my control, then why should I stay upset?
Now, back to finding a place of serenity. I used to help people create serenity places in their homes. People come into our house talking about how peaceful it feels and we worked hard to create this safe haven that we live in that is a place of serenity. I learned a few things reading about Feng Shui and other serenity ideas and applied them to our home. And with much studying I learned things that would cut down on the things that increase our anxiety. Some of the things that I learned were that loud noise, bright lights, high or low temperatures etc all trigger our senses and then our anxiety rises.
These are just some hints and I hope that you find them helpful for it is tense times in the world today. Metals, glass statues and plants are great sound absorbers. Plants also give more oxygen in the room which in turn soothes the senses. And so we created a safe haven room in the house for people who had lots of brass, copper and other metal statues, glass statues and lots of plants and a lot of these were put in front of windows to block outside noise and along walls with rooms beside them. The windows had treatments that allowed light in soft hues and not bright sunlight. We created off set lighting so that the room was lit up but not with bright lights. If we needed brighter light to read we had small lamps near the seating. The walls were painted in soft hues and pastels and no bright colors for bright colors can affect the senses. Televisions were fitted with small speakers that sat beside the chairs so that the tv had no sound just the small computer speakers. That removed a lot of the loud noise. There were fans in the room to circulate the air to keep the temperature uniform. Keep thinking about your senses here. Lots of pillows were on couches as they absorb the sound too. This is a serenity room and the family members knew that this was a room to come in and be quiet. There were no dinners eaten in there…just a place to relax, talk quiet, sit in peace or even take a nap.
I find that when my senses are overloaded and I feel like I am about to fly apart, I lay down in my room of serenity, dim the lights, and lay there with nothing but the fans blowing. No television, radio or computer is turned on…just peace and quiet. I may or may not doze off but just laying there in the quiet helps calm the senses so that I can relax. The world is so hectic today and so many horrible things happening around the world that we need our spot of serenity in a world gone mad.
image from https://www.pinterest.com/b3ttyb00p/serenity-peace-love-life-yoga/
Many mothers used to say they would lock themselves in the bathroom and take a bubble bath to get some serenity but today that seems to be more the mother laying in the tub and all the kids and the dog or cat are outside the door calling to her. Try creating a serenity place in your home and see if it helps you find that peace in a world gone crazy.
Work The Dream 