Striking a Balance Between Inner and Outer Peace

As a yoga teacher, I'm always looking for bits of inspiration both to keep me feeling inspired and empowered and to share with my students. New Year's offers so much in the way of inspiration, motivation and challenges to uplift your current state of being and movement through life. When I read the invitation to "strike a balance between inner and outer peace" I just had to stop and ponder, how do you really do that and what does that really mean?

To me having a balance between inner and outer peace means to remember that ultimately I do not have the power to control external forces. Believe me the world would be quite a different place if I could and I bet it would for you too! But just because I can't change it or even because I really don't like a lot of what I see right now in the world doesn't mean that I can't have a level of peace about it. What I do know is that even though I can't control the world, what I do matters. What I do on a daily basis touches and influences life around me. So it's important for me to me to stay strong, to stay hopeful, to stay as positive as possible in hopes of at least tinting life around me in a more beautiful hue.

What we say and what we do matters. It colors the world around us. We may not choose what happens around us and even to us but we do have the opportunity to choose how we will react in relation to life's external forces. By cultivating internal peace and harmony we create a greater potential to channel that same peace and harmony outside ourselves.