Finding Peace

It’s 8:00 a.m. on a beautiful, crisp Sunday morning. We’ve just climbed the first long mountain of the day. My body feels great, and the wind is softly blowing in my face as we roll into a long, winding descent. I take a deep breath and feel peace.

Whenever I have a moment like that, I try to bottle it up. Riding my bike has given me many of these beautiful moments. Finding them off the bike, in the “real world,” has been much harder. Probably because life is not a constant endorphin shower.

So how do I create more of these peaceful moments?

I used an old Charlie Munger trick and looked at the lives of great humans. People from our time and throughout history whose lives seemed meaningful, courageous, or worth studying. And the pattern was hard to miss: hard work, blood, sweat, and tears wherever you look. Nothing worthwhile seems to get built in a state of constant bliss.

And that’s okay. I think life should be electrifying.

Still, I got sidetracked by the spirit of our times and started to believe money was the thing that would unlock peace. But looking at the cycles many of my wealthy friends and clients go through, I can see that money is mostly a crutch. Peace does not come from outside. It comes from within.

There’s also a strange phenomenon I know well: working on something hard that truly matters makes you feel alive. For most of my life, that has been the key that unlocks my sense of peace.

I need a tough challenge to feel fully engaged. Ideally, it sits just beyond my current skill level. I need to stretch, learn, and rise to meet it. Once I figure it out, or at least know I can, I feel a deep inner peace.

Why?

Because in those moments, I believe I can handle anything.

But if I look deeper, I can also see that this is not real peace. At least not all of it. Part of it is a coping mechanism. Peace that comes only after effort still has a condition attached to it. Peace without effort feels suspicious to me.

So what is real peace?

In my case, it begins when I stop trying to deserve it.

That is hard for me.

Turning my phone off helps. Sitting on my favorite bench and looking out into the wilderness helps too. At first, the mind fights back. Hundreds of thoughts. Restlessness. The urge to get up and do something useful.

But if I stay there long enough, something softens.

The breath gets deeper. The mind settles. And I start to feel that strange, unfamiliar gift:

the stillness of being okay.

Right here. Right now.

— Flo