Protect your peace once you've found it

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Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter! It was a rough week for me, but there were a lot of moments for reflection and growth that I’m excited to share from with you today.

A few weeks ago, I talked about cultivating emotional intelligence and how peace is the mission. Some time last year, before quitting my corporate job at J.P. Morgan (who btw, are predicting a U.S. Recession 😨 ), I wrote about advocating for yourself, because nobody else will.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been telling you how it’s been great to be back in the gym consistently, and how I’ve been feeling great physically and mentally because of it. And as I spoke about last week, you have to appreciate when it’s all going right, because at any moment, it can start going wrong.

Well, this past week taught me that in the moments when it’s all going right, yes you have to appreciate it and soak it in, but you also have to build boundaries to ensure that the place you’re in is protected. You have to protect your peace.

Before we get any further, let’s take a moment for you to click the link to contribute to #TheLifeofJLOWE. It’s crazy that every week y’all see this and just ignore it! It’s free for you!

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Try thinking of “peace” like a plant

Remember a couple months ago when I told you about what it’s like to be a plant dad? You know, you plant a few seeds, then you take care of it week over week, month over month, and eventually they grow - but only with consistent love and attention?

What if we thought about “peace” like that?

Oftentimes, it has to start small, like by planting tiny seeds. Maybe you turn off notifications on the social media apps on your phone. Or maybe you start a meditation practice once a week. Usually, it begins with making a small change that you can think of as planting the seeds.

Just like any plant, now that you’re a plant mom or dad, you have to give it attention. I think about the concept of being a parent, and I always joke with my friends about the fact that once you have a child, it almost never goes away. You’re stuck with that thing for the rest of your life.

Well, same thing with your peace.

If you don’t take care of it, water it, feed it and love it, it’s not gonna grow properly, and it might even die. You have to keep nurturing it, and more importantly, you have to protect it.

Protecting your peace like it’s a garden

As my plants were growing, I wouldn’t dare put any of them somewhere that the elements or some animal could destroy them. I’d oftentimes put them in my backyard, which was gated off and sometimes even under a shade where they would have a bit of extra protection.

And why did I do that?

Because they’re fragile things, and without protection they can easily be stolen or worse, destroyed.

And I know you know what I’m gonna say now:

It’s the same thing with your peace.

How to protect your peace

Recently, I listened to a friend’s podcast called “Contemplations”, where she talked about the importance of setting boundaries. And simply put, that’s the way to protect your peace.

Set your boundaries, and respect them.

When you discover what it is that brings you peace - whether that be going to the gym, taking a morning walk or even just hanging out with friends - protect it. Block time in your life for those things, and make it non-negotiable.

If you want to go to the gym, nothing else can compromise on that time. If you want to hang out with your friends, make plans and stick to them. Set those boundaries on your time in such a way that you are able to control how consistent you are with the things that you value, and ensure that you prioritise those things too.

It’s incredibly important, then, to enforce those boundaries. Because as my friend said in her podcast, once you compromise on your boundaries - even if it’s one time - you’ll find that it becomes incredibly difficult to reset them. If you fail to respect them even once, you open Pandora’s box to violating them again.

Boundaries are the way to protecting your peace, and respecting your boundaries is the way to defending your peace from other people (the animals and the elements that we talked about 😆 ).

Conclusion

Once you’ve built your peace, it needs protecting.

The unfortunate thing about the world that we live in, is that you can do SO much work on yourself - taking care of your mental health, learning emotional intelligence and regulation or learning self-love - but that doesn’t mean that the people around you are doing that too.

Just because you have found your peace doesn’t mean that others have found theirs. So as a result, your peace is always at threat to being disturbed. The surrounding lack of peace is a threat to your inner peace.

There will always be people or scenarios in which you feel like the growth that you’ve had is being challenged. There will be scenarios where you will have to emotionally regulate like crazy, and scenarios where you might even lose your cool. Trust me, I got there last week.

But in those moments, you have to remember to protect your peace. Whether that means avoiding and cutting out certain people, limiting your exposure to a certain environment or blocking off time for certain activities, the boundaries that you set are the castle walls that protect your peace.

So if you’re on a journey of pursuing peace, think about what boundaries you need to put up, and make sure that you protect your peace. It’s not easy to defend, so understanding and maybe even writing down what your people limits, non-negotiables and other boundaries are helps so incredibly much in knowing when it’s time to be aggressive and intentional about enforcing your boundaries and protecting your peace.

Until next Sunday,

JLOWE