I don’t really understand what this phrase means from a tangible perspective in my life.

Protecting your peace means making your emotional, mental and spiritual health your priority. It requires us to think deeply about our values and what’s important to us and making decisions from that place.

That’s from a google search, I don’t have that kind of insight. But what are my values? What is important to me? I find so much frustration and anger rising up lately in my day to day experience which then turns into deep depression where I find no joy in anything.

Emotional / Mental / Spiritual… these are three things that I tend to place into the same category however breaking down each one might help me to understand why they are different. I’ll use Google’s AI responses here to help flesh this out.

Emotional health refers to how well we accept and manage our emotions, cope with challenges, and navigate life’s ups and downs. Stoicism helps with this emotional health aspect, it helps to regulate my emotions through rational thinking.

• Self-awareness: Understanding and recognizing your own emotions. 
• Emotional regulation: Managing and expressing emotions in a healthy way. 
• Resilience: The ability to bounce back from difficult experiences. 
• Coping skills: Developing strategies to deal with stress and challenges. 
• Positive relationships: Maintaining healthy connections with others. 

Mental health is more than just the absence of mental illness; it’s a state of well-being that allows individuals to cope with life’s stresses, realize their abilities, learn well, work well, and contribute to their community.

While mental health encompasses emotional health, it’s perhaps larger than that one feature. I have some mental illnesses like anxiety and depression that do have an impact on my emotional health, and while stoicism may not be the answer for all of my mental health challenges, it can be something that keeps me more centred and not let those illnesses take me into places where I don’t want to be.

Spiritual health is a vital component of overall well-being, involving a sense of purpose, meaning, and connection to something beyond oneself, whether it’s a higher power, nature, or a belief system.

This is something very lacking in my life. I grew up in a semi-religious family, I was never particularly connected to Catholicism or Christianity… it felt restrictive and, to be frank, trite. I didn’t like a faith telling me what I was allowed to do and not do as well as telling me what I should be feeling about something. It all felt very silly and I was embarrassed to be connected to the church as I was. I was guided by my morality and my impulse control lead me to say a lot of things that I would relay over and over in my mind.

As I got older, I distanced myself further from religion and relied more on my own morality to be my guiding principle as best I could. I was still of weak character though and would do things that I did not feel good about out of sheer cowardice. But I felt that religion was a tool of people in power to motivate others to action. I had trouble separating spiritualism from religion.

I feel that I am lacking in spiritual health and have been for a long time. Having purpose and meaning, I can’t find anything in my life that I feel is my purpose. I’ve lost all meaning in my life. I have no focus, no drive, no connection to anything. For a while I felt that I was doing ok in that regard however right now… there’s nothing there. I’m void of purpose. But why?

So when it comes to protecting my peace… protecting what I have with each of these elements, what am I protecting? Protecting my emotional health means not allowing someone to manipulate my emotions or manipulate me to not believe what my own emotions are telling me. Maintaining healthy boundaries, which I do not currently have with my kids or my girlfriend.

Protecting my mental health means avoiding exposure to unfavourable conditions that would detract from it. And that would include abusive situations that would possibly reinforce existing issues or beliefs that I already have about myself.

Protecting my spiritual health necessitates me finding some kind of guiding principle or purpose. Or just recognizing that I have one (if I do) and staying true to it.

Must think.