Inner Peace: Definition, Examples, & How To Find It

By Nathalie Boutros, Ph.D.
Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

What is inner peace? Learn what inner peace is, what it feels like, which of your favorite characters have it, and how you can develop it.

Inner Peace: Definition, Examples, & How To Find It

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People around the world agree: inner peace is fundamental to living a good life. From India to Italy, the United States to China, and the Amazon rainforest to Norway, surveys consistently find that people rate inner peace as essential for happiness, well-being, and a high quality of life (Delle Fave et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2013; Walker, 2015).

What’s more, religious traditions and secular philosophies from around the world all recognize that inner peace is central to living a good life and to obtaining spiritual clarity (Xi & Lee, 2021).

But what is inner peace exactly? What does it feel like? And perhaps more importantly, how can you achieve it? In this article, we’ll review what inner peace is and what it feels like. We’ll also discuss some ways that you may be able to harness a little inner peace in your own life.

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What Is Inner Peace? (A Definition)

Inner peace has been studied and written about for centuries in religious, philosophical, and academic contexts. Although the specifics may differ from definition to definition, a couple of themes appear again and again.

Generally, inner peace is defined as a low-arousal positive emotional state coupled with a sense of balance or stability (Cherif et al., 2022).

Low-arousal positive states are those calm and relaxed happy feelings that aren’t extreme or exciting. They include feelings of calmness, serenity, tranquility, and contentment, in contrast to feelings like exuberance, ecstasy, or euphoria. Low-arousal positive feelings come from within and may be more authentic, stable, and durable than high-arousal positive feelings (Dambrun et al., 2012).

High-arousal positive feelings generally come when you find yourself in favorable circumstances. Thus, they may change as circumstances change. You may feel thrilled when your crush agrees to go on a date with you or when you get a promotion at work. But, if the relationship or the job don’t live up to your expectations, your joy and excitement will quickly turn to disappointment and dread. In contrast, if you feel content with your place in the world regardless of your relationship or job status, changes in your romantic or professional life will not alter these feelings of contentment.

Inner peace means balance, equanimity, even-mindedness, harmony, and stability (Desbordes, et al., 2015). Pleasures are experienced and enjoyed without getting overexcited while pains are experienced without getting despondent. This evenness of temper may guard against dangers that come from excessive positive or excessive negative emotions.

Excessive positive emotion may put a person at risk of developing an unhealthy compulsion to consume, acquire, or strive, which may in turn lead to addiction, materialism, or ruthlessness. Excessive negative emotions, on the other hand, may lead to aggression, defensiveness, or dishonesty (Xi & Lee, 2021). Both of these extremes are to be avoided and inner peace means existing in a state of balance and stability.

We should say now what inner peace is not. The importance placed on balance and low-arousal positive emotions shouldn’t be taken to imply that inner peace means being indifferent, passive, forgoing joy, resigning yourself to a bad situation, avoiding all confrontations, or disengaging from the world. Inner peace implies an active state of mind and mindful engagement with the world in a way that is balanced and that maintains internal harmony and stability.

Video: Inner Peace: Definition, Examples, & How To Find It

What Does Inner Peace Feel Like?

In 2013, researchers from Taiwan and the United States explored the emotional components of inner peace and found that the following words best described the experience of inner peace for the 378 people that participated in their study (Lee et al., 2013):

Peaceful
Serene
Calm
At ease
Comfortable
Harmonious
Balanced
Settled
Content
Stable
Satisfied
Tranquil
Secure

Notably, these feelings of inner peace differ from feelings that have been called “hedonic happiness”. Happiness can feel intense and can be described as excitement, enthusiasm, exhilaration, or jubilance. These feelings are in contrast to the less intensely experienced feelings that make up inner peace. Notably, inner peace also encompasses feelings that may not even be called happiness. Feeling balanced, settled, or secure contribute to inner peace but may not be described as happiness.

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Why Inner Peace Is Important

Feeling settled, balanced, and at peace is important for its own sake. However, inner peace also brings other benefits. Psychologists and other researchers have used the peace of mind survey developed by Lee and colleagues in 2013 (Lee et al., 2013) to measure how inner peace relates to wellness and quality of life. Some of the advantages that have been shown to accompany inner peace include:

Increased life satisfaction and positive affect along with decreased negative affect, depression, and anxiety (Liu et al., 2015).
Better, more enjoyable dreams (Sikka et al., 2018).
Increased overall well-being and life satisfaction despite negative experiences and emotions (Demirci & Eksi, 2018).
Greater empathy and ability to listen as well as ability to relate to and connect to other people (Khayyer et al., 2019).

Examples of Inner Peace

In his 1982 book the Tao of Pooh, author Benjamin Hoff playfully introduces the ancient Chinese religion of Taoism to western audiences. Hoff presents the children’s book character Winnie the Pooh as an example of someone who lives according to the principles of Taoism (Hoff, 1982). According to the book, Winnie-the-Pooh has inner peace. Pooh accepts things as they are and finds contentment and joy in the simple pleasures of life, like pots of honey. He accepts setbacks and obstacles and does not get overwhelmed or upset by them. Pooh’s inner peace comes from his simplicity and his tendency not to overthink or overcomplicate things. Pooh is flexible and open. He adapts and lives in the world as it is.

***Spoilers Ahead for the television series The Good Place***
In the 2016-2020 television series, The Good Place, Jason Mendoza is a petty criminal who struggled throughout his life and never found success in any of the careers that he tried to pursue: DJ, dancer, entrepreneur, and criminal. Throughout the series, Jason grows and eventually finds inner peace, which he describes as a calm feeling, like the air inside his lungs is the same as the air outside his body. This description captures the sense of complete balance and harmony that is inner peace. With this state of complete inner peace, Jason lives in contentment and serenity, understanding the vastness of the universe and his place in it.

The video below reviews Jason’s journey to inner peace and how his character overall embodies enlightenment.

Video: Jason’s Journey to Inner Peace

Inner Peace Meditations

In the video below, Gen Kelsang, Buddhist nun and teacher, discusses happiness and inner peace. As she describes it, when happiness comes from outside, from the things that happen to you or from the moments that you experience, that happiness is not stable. Outside circumstances will always be out of your control, at least to some degree. As such, stable happiness can never rely on outside circumstances. True and stable happiness comes when you stop outsourcing your happiness to people and circumstances outside of your mind and instead cultivate happiness within yourself.

Kelsang goes on to recommend meditation as a way to cultivate a stable inner peace and happiness that comes from within. She defines meditation as concentrating on a peaceful and positive state of mind. Meditation doesn’t have to be formal. You don’t need to sit on the floor with your legs crossed, open palms gently resting on your knees, and eyes softly closed. You can concentrate on maintaining a patient, positive, and undisturbed state of mind in any position or setting. In the final minutes of the video, starting at around the 12-minute mark she guides the audience through a short meditation practice designed to help bring your mind to a state of calmness and peace that is completely internal and that does not depend on any outside circumstances.

Video: Bring Your Mind To Inner Peace

Therapies For Inner Peace

Practicing meditation and mindfulness has been shown to increase feelings of inner peace (Shapiro, 1992; Lee et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2015). Mindfulness is learning to non-judgementally and intentionally pay attention to the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Mindfulness training teaches awareness, an intentional focus on present-moment experiences, sensations, thoughts, and feelings. Mindfulness also teaches acceptance, a non-judgemental, objective view of all experiences. People are taught not to deny, avoid, suppress, or justify negative thoughts and feelings and similarly not to indulge or get lost in fantasy. Instead, practitioners of mindfulness are encouraged to nonjudgmentally observe their thoughts and emotions and accept them as they are. This focus on awareness and acceptance may enable an objective and broad view of the self and the world and may create a sense of balance and calm.

Mindfulness training is a part of many therapies including Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (Kabat-Zinn, 1982) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (Crane, 2017). Generally, these and other similar therapies are effective in increasing quality of life and decreasing symptoms of depression and anxiety (Hofmann et al., 2010).

How To Find Inner Peace

In a recent study, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 900 people in order to discover attributes and characteristics that underlie inner peace (Demirci & Eksi, 2018). Things that contributed to inner peace included:

Relationships and trust - Having social support, secure ties, and close relationships may help you find inner peace.
Personal virtues - People with more inner peace may be more likely to display characteristics like compassion, empathy, responsibility, flexibility, self-control, and optimism.
Social Virtues - tolerance, forgiveness, acceptance, and helpfulness may encourage inner peace.
Acceptance - How you position yourself relative to other people, showing gratitude, empathy, anti-materialism, conviction, and satisfaction may help you find inner peace.
Spirituality - Spirituality, religion, or faith may enable inner peace.
Optimism - Believing and acting in a way that expects positive outcomes may enable inner peace. Importantly, researchers have distinguished between realistic and unrealistic optimism. Unrealistic optimism, believing that highly unlikely events will happen, may encourage people to ignore risks and create expectations that may not get realized, which may then lead to unhappiness. For example, gambling may be due to unrealistic optimism which encourages people to take large risks and then be disappointed when things don’t pan out.
Nature - Spending time in nature may promote inner peace.
Physical health - Being in good physical health may allow people to maintain low arousal happiness.
Stable finances - Not having to worry about access to the basics required to sustain life may similarly allow people to remain content despite fluctuations in daily experience.
Physical activity - Exercising in ways that are appropriate to your talents, skills, and ability levels may promote inner peace.

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Habits For Inner Peace

You may be able to find inner peace by making changes in your life according to the findings of the above study. For example, you may feel more at peace if you nurture your relationships, cultivate empathy, forgiveness, spirituality, and optimism in your life, or if you take a walk in the woods. For the most part, these are all very broad, lifestyle- and mindset-oriented changes. You may also be able to cultivate inner peace by adopting new habits. Some habits that have been shown to promote the development of inner peace include

Gardening - People who tend a garden may have more inner peace than those who don’t, and people who garden more may have higher levels of inner peace (Perez, 2021). The physical labor of gardening may provide some beneficial effects of exercise. Gardening also involves connecting with nature. What’s more, gardening is a quiet and slow activity that is often contemplative, serene, and even meditative. Gardening may promote the development of patience since the growth of fruit, flowers, or foliage takes place over long periods. Lastly, gardening may teach you to let go. After planting the seeds, much of the garden’s growth is out of your hands. Your garden may encounter an unexpectedly frosty night, a hungry caterpillar, or an over-zealous gopher. Although a gardener may hope for a good harvest, she may soon come to realize how much is outside of her control. The gardener may realize that she needs to let go of expectations. This mindset may expand out of gardening and may encourage the development of a broader inner peace.
Meditation - Meditating may be a way to get close to the sense of calmness and stability that defines inner peace. Meditation, with its focus on objective observation and non-reactive acceptance of all experiences, may cultivate mindsets and states of being that are conducive to inner peace (Shapiro, 1992). One of the goals of meditation is the achievement of freedom from the ego and the development of a sense of harmony within the universe as it is.
Practicing gratitude - People who practice gratitude experience more positive effects including calmness and peace of mind (Liang et al., 2020). You may be able to increase your gratitude and your peace of mind by intentionally practicing gratitude by, for example, keeping a daily gratitude journal.
Yoga - Regular yoga practice may increase feelings of inner peace. Yoga may encourage mindfulness by encouraging awareness and acceptance of the body’s sensations and movements. Yoga also encourages a focus on the present, which may silence mental chatter and may encourage the development of inner peace (Chandran & Unniraman, 2019).

Is Inner Peace the New Success?

“Happiness is the new rich. Inner peace is the new success. Health is the new wealth. Kindness is the new cool”.

Entrepreneur and investor Syed Balkhi tweeted this back in 2017 along with hashtags for success, happiness, and ambition.

Rich, successful, wealthy, and cool - all things that most of us want to be. However, in this quote, Balkhi seems to be saying that rather than seeking riches, success, wealth, or coolness we should aim to have happiness, inner peace, health, and kindness. This quote elevates attributes that center depth and contentment and that stem from within over attributes that require external validation from outside. So, is inner peace the new success? This is fundamentally a question that each individual will have to answer for him or herself. Whether to seek stable contentment from within yourself or triumphant exhilaration from outside circumstances is a personal decision and there is probably no correct, one-size-fits-all answer that will work for everyone.

Inner Peace Quotes

“While there are no stirrings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, or joy, the mind may be said to be in the state of equilibrium (中). When those feelings have been stirred, and they act in their due degree, there ensues what may be called the state of harmony (和). This equilibrium is the great root from which grow all the human actions in the world, and this harmony is the universal path that they all should pursue” ― Zisi, Confucianist philosopher and grandson of Confucius.
“Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy and serenity.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh (1992) Peace is every step: the path of mindfulness in everyday life.
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” ― Siddhārtha Gautama
“When there is no desire, all things are at peace.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.” ― Dalai Lama XIV
“Nothing external to you has any power over you.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

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Final Thoughts on Inner Peace

Inner peace is contentment and balance that doesn’t change as outside circumstances change. It is related to but is not equal to happiness, the positive feelings that you have when good things happen to you and bad things don’t. Although finding inner peace may be a more difficult, more arduous task than finding happiness, the benefits may be far greater. Happiness is usually fleeting - the vacation ends, your new car gets dented, your new job becomes routine. Inner peace, which comes from within, doesn’t change as circumstances change. However, inner peace, unlike happiness, needs to be cultivated and developed through mindful living. By choosing to intentionally develop inner peace, you may discover a sense of serenity, tranquility, balance, and stability that is with you always, in your good times and in your bad times.

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References

Chandran, K. M., & Unniraman, P. (2019). Influence of yoga in achieving peace of mind. International journal of yoga, physiotherapy and physical education, 4 (3), 64-66.
Chérif, L., Niemiec, R., & Wood, V. (2022). Character strengths and inner peace. International Journal of Wellbeing, 12(3).
Crane, R. (2017). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: Distinctive features. Routledge.
Dambrun, M., Desprès, G., & Lac, G. (2012). Measuring happiness: from fluctuating happiness to authentic–durable happiness. Frontiers in psychology, 16.
Delle Fave, A., Brdar, I., Wissing, M. P., Araujo, U., Castro Solano, A., Freire, T., ... & Soosai-Nathan, L. (2016). Lay definitions of happiness across nations: The primacy of inner harmony and relational connectedness. Frontiers in psychology, 7, 30.
Demirci, İ., & Ekşi, H. (2018). Keep calm and be happy: A mixed method study from character strengths to well-being. Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice, 18(2).
Desbordes, G., Gard, T., Hoge, E. A., Hölzel, B. K., Kerr, C., Lazar, S. W., ... & Vago, D. R. (2015). Moving beyond mindfulness: defining equanimity as an outcome measure in meditation and contemplative research. Mindfulness, 6(2), 356-372.
Hoff, B (1982). The Tao of Pooh. New York: Penguin Books.
Hofmann, S. G., Sawyer, A. T., Witt, A. A., & Oh, D. (2010). The effect of mindfulness-based therapy on anxiety and depression: A meta-analytic review. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 78(2), 169.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1982). An outpatient program in behavioral medicine for chronic pain patients based on the practice of mindfulness meditation: Theoretical considerations and preliminary results. General hospital psychiatry, 4(1), 33-47.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York: Hyperion.
Khayyer, Z., Oreyzi, H., Asgari, K., & Sikström, S. (2019). Self-perception and interpersonal peacefulness: the mediating role of theory of mind and harmony. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research.
Lee, Y. C., Lin, Y. C., Huang, C. L., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2013). The construct and measurement of peace of mind. Journal of Happiness studies, 14(2), 571-590.
Liang, H., Chen, C., Li, F., Wu, S., Wang, L., Zheng, X., & Zeng, B. (2020). Mediating effects of peace of mind and rumination on the relationship between gratitude and depression among Chinese university students. Current Psychology, 39(4), 1430-1437.
Liu, X., Xu, W., Wang, Y., Williams, J. M. G., Geng, Y., Zhang, Q., & Liu, X. (2015). Can inner peace be improved by mindfulness training: a randomized controlled trial. Stress and health, 31(3), 245-254.
Perez, J. A. (2021). Gardening for Peace of Mind during the Covid-19 Crisis. Academia Lasalliana Journal of Education and Humanities, 2(2), 1-11.
Shapiro, D. H. (1992). A preliminary study of long term meditators: Goals, effects, religious orientation, cognitions. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 24(1), 23-39.
Sikka, P., Pesonen, H., & Revonsuo, A. (2018). Peace of mind and anxiety in the waking state are related to the affective content of dreams. Scientific reports, 8(1), 1-13.
Walker, H. (2015). Joy within tranquility: Amazonian Urarina styles of happiness. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5 (3), 177–196.
Xi, J., & Lee, M. T. (2021). Inner Peace as a Contribution to Human Flourishing. Measuring Well-Being: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Social Sciences and the Humanities, 435.

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