How many times have you heard a prayer or wish for world peace? It's a nice-sounding dream, but it's unfortunately too idealistic to be made a reality. Many people do not realize that the only peace that exists is inner peace.

If this gives you an idea as to why many people are unhappy in the modern day, congrats, you're ahead of the curve. If this didn't give you any idea, then you're just like me and the vast majority of people.

We've been conditioned from a young age to seek external validation even more than is normal. It's only natural that we'd come to rely on external factors for a peaceful life.

Learning how to find inner peace is a journey unto itself, and telling you how to do that would take too much time. Instead, I'll be going over a few key instances that proved to me that the only peace that exists is inner peace.

1. Woken from wokeism

As the old saying goes, "Go woke, get broke." Going woke doesn't just break the bank, however. Going woke also breaks any semblance of peace in your life.

First, let's define wokeism very quickly. Put simply, wokeism is all the new-age ideas that support a way of living that goes against nature. For example, men being emotional, women being masculine, and there being five dozen different genders.

Whatever wokeism does, it's been proven by the woke people themselves that it doesn't improve the quality of their lives. In fact, it's been shown to make it worse!

I remember when I was in my red-pill rage days. I had such contempt and resentment towards women for all the horror stories I'd hear from men on the internet.

It was a very contradictory time in my life. On one hand, I wanted a loving girlfriend, and on the other, I hated women. I'd spend so much time watching videos on women despite hating them.

I never realized just how much time and energy I'd spent until I got out of that phase.

Once I got out, I noticed improvements in all my interactions, not just with women. I was happier, I was enjoying life more, and I still retained the valuable information I learned.

The key lesson I've learned from this part of my life is not to avoid the extremes, but to learn something of value from them before cutting them out.

I experienced two different extremes; the dark side of female nature, and the dark side of male nature. By immersing myself in both of these, I learned so much about how to navigate life. Once I had learned enough, I no longer connected with the red pill, so I cut it out of my life.

If something in your life is no longer serving to improve your life, then it's safe to cut it out if you can't find a way to salvage it safely.

2. Stone-faced in the face of yelling

I can say with confidence that you've experienced those moments when you're being yelled at and your blood starts to boil. It's ok, I've been there plenty of times myself. And yet, for all of those times, it led to nothing productive. I've since learned that inner peace helps with these scenarios by letting you save face by being stone-faced.

One of the key things I've learned about masculinity in my journey thus far is the importance of stoicism. There are a lot of explanations for stoicism, but the basic premise as I've come to understand is to stop worrying about things outside of your control.

In the case of a heated argument, being stoic means you stay calm even if they are screaming their head off.

I've been on both sides of this; the side of letting my blood boil, and the side of keeping myself calm and collected. It goes without saying that the better results came from when I kept myself calm.

It's also important to mention that this principle applies to more than just arguments.

One day, my little brother came home from school, telling me that he upset a girl he was dating. Rather than freak out over it, I chuckled, smiled, and asked, "What did you do this time?" in an amused tone.

He told me that he started ignoring her because he realized he wants a girl with a nice ass, and she had a pancake ass. This only made me smile and laugh more, which I would later learn helped him when his friends would confront him about it. By seeing that I didn't freak out about it, he figured that he shouldn't freak out about it either.

When faced with a scenario, ask yourself, "Would it help if I lost my cool right now?" If the answer is no, then don't do it.

3. Keep your energy inward

This is a concept I've tried multiple times to explain to my little brother, so I'm confident I've got a good hang of it now. Due to modern conditioning, we all grow up believing that it's the right thing to put the needs of others before us. However, this is wrong. There is no such thing as altruism; every action is fueled by selfish desire, and that's okay. 

Quite a shock to learn that selflessness isn't selfless at all. I was quite shocked myself when I learned this. 

The way I've come to understand it is instead of making it about them, make it more about yourself. Here's an example.

Say you approach a girl. She's cute, and she responds positively to your approach. You've got the green flag to pursue the interaction.

Most guys when in this kind of scenario will think things along the lines of, "Does she like? I hope she likes me!" Instead, you need to be thinking things like, "Do I like her? Is she really worth my time?"

Another example is if she's playing games. If you don't appreciate her playing games, then you have every right to tell her that you'll leave or to tell her to stop.

The fact of the matter is you don't know what's going on in their minds, but you do know what's going on in yours. Going back to stoicism, you can't control what's in their minds, so don't worry about it.

No deal is better than a bad deal; it's up to you how you define a bad deal.

By focusing on what you can control, you save yourself a lot of trouble by avoiding bad deals.

Keep your wits about you

By far, the biggest reason why men have so little inner peace is that they allow themselves to be pushed out of their peace. They achieve their peace, then they let someone or something else ruin it.

It doesn't matter what that thing is, if it ruins your peace then it isn't worth it. The drama it brings will only serve to wear you down in all the worst ways.

Guard your inner peace as if your life depends on it because your quality of life does depend on it.

- Karl