Sometimes life can be a little overwhelming and cause you to go a little crazy. Here are four ways you can be a more peaceful person.

1. Meditate

Mediation is a great way to relieve stress and become zen. In Buddhism, it’s essential that you are mindful when you do tasks during the day; for example, you should be mindful walking, breathing and speaking. When you’re mindful, you are in the present moment and breathing. Even when you’re angry, it’s very essential to meditate. When you’re angry, you need to be mindful and address your anger. The author Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that you say to your anger, “I’m aware that I’m angry, and I’m aware that anger is in me…Hello there, my anger, I know you are there. I will take good care of you, don’t worry.” This phrase is good to acknowledge your anger and realize you are angry and take care of it. Meditation keeps your mind tranquil and keeps your heart at peace.

2. Realize everyone suffers

It’s very important in your process to become more peaceful that you have compassion for everyone, even the ones that you believe don’t deserve it. Compassion for all is key to being peaceful, if you carry around hate for others, you in turn cannot be peaceful. Holding anger for people won’t do anything for you except make you have turmoil inside of you. The Buddha said, “Holding anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” This quote by The Buddha shows that you need to have compassion for all. Buddhism teaches that everyone suffers, in some way, no matter how big or small, they suffer. Because everyone suffers, there is no sense in being angry with them. You need to have compassion and not hold anger towards people in order to have peace.

3. Have compassion

Compassion is the key to all peace. Seeing things from other people’s angle is very important in your path to becoming a peaceful person. The goal is to have compassion for all beings, not limited to just humans. You must have compassion for all humans and nature. Everything in nature contributes to your existence, so you must respect everything, even down to the smallest plant. With compassion, you can see everything out of love and learn to value and appreciate everything in life. Compassion will open your heart and make you a more loving and peaceful person.

4. Nurture your anger

We all have anger inside of us and there is no getting around that. Anger is in all of us. The key to being peaceful is not pretending you don’t have anger; it’s realizing you do and nurturing it. You have to let your anger know you are there for it, like a mother for her child. Holding anger in or pretending you are not angry will only make it worse; it’s ok to be angry. It’s a natural feeling but it’s what we do with our anger is the most important thing. A way to end your anger is to be mindful and have compassion. We all suffer so we shouldn’t be mad at a person.  We need to have compassion for them.