Walking Peace Forward – Becoming the Peace
- Brainz Magazine
- Jan 19
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 21
Faye Lao is an Integrative Wellness Practitioner and Transformational Coach who combines intuitive insight, energy healing, and spiritual guidance to support emotional wellness and conscious leadership. Through her practice, and as a host on News for the Soul Radio, she creates sacred spaces for healing, growth, grief support, and soul-aligned living. Her upcoming show, Soul Unfiltered™, explores real, raw, and liberating conversations at the intersection of healing and spiritual truth.
What if your New Year’s resolution is world peace, beauty-pageant style, said with a bright smile, big hair, and loving idealism? And what if it turns out that peace is created the same way it’s lived, one silent, peaceful step at a time, for miles and miles and miles? This is an invitation to slow the stride, listen inward, and discover what becomes possible when peace leads your way.
January arrives every year with an aspirational kind of hope. New calendars. Fresh starts. Bold intentions.And an optimistic desire to already be better than we were twelve months ago.
For many conscientious people, January can feel more like a performance review than a fresh start. The busy mind reflects on, “What will I improve this year? What will I fix? Who do I need to become?”
It’s only January. Beneath all of that effort, there is fatigue, worry and a burned out nervous system from the year before. When life demands non-stop performance, the nervous system registers burnout, not motivation.
The body responds with anxiety, restless sleep, and other signals. Not because anything is necessarily wrong with us, but because many of us are absorbing the raw collective emotions of humanity experiencing sustained overwhelm and uncertainty.
That is nothing new.
But here is a question, can we shift in consciousness in a more life-giving direction?
Just imagine:
Can we transmute hate into love?
War into peace?
Indifference into kindness?
Fear into awareness?
Fear spreads quickly these days. It travels through headlines, social feeds, and conversations saturated with urgency. And while awareness matters, immersion in fear has a cost, It pulls us out of the present moment and into imagined futures that haven’t happened yet.
January invites something different, elevated consciousness, and a mindful stepping forward into present-moment awareness.
What if this season isn’t asking us to push forward, or perform more? What if the new year is an opportunity for us to come home to ourselves?
Just as we are.
Related: Chronic Fear and Stress
When stillness was the work
There was a time when my life slowed to a pace I had not planned for. That pace included a long season of uncertainty, a relationship that ended, a house that needed repairs, and many decisions that needed clarity.
My body felt it before my mind could name it. Sleep became restless. My heart would race. Blood pressure crept up. Motivation landed on the simplest goal: Stay comfortably merged with the couch.
Was I depressed? No. I was depleted.
Might you be experiencing similar energies? I want you to know this: Feeling depleted is not a personal failure. It’s your body talking to you. Sometimes it yells.
Eventually, I stopped trying to power through. I surrendered to stillness. I simplified my days, one task at a time, one decision at a time. I let myself do less with no apologies.
People are often very proud of listing an “ability to multi-task” on their resume. I’ve created a different resume skill. I advocate for myself the idea that less is more. I finally learned mono-tasking, my new favorite word, and a new way to protect my nervous system.
Doing too many things at once is overrated. How does one focus on quality? Where is the mindfulness in rushing toward burnout? And then, unexpectedly, something singular and small changed everything.
Related: Stillness
Finding stillness through inner child play
While boxing up books, I found a coloring book I’d bought years earlier and never opened. I had forgotten all about it. So, I thought, why not? I needed a little break from packing for my move. No big ambitions. No productivity goals. Just shiny glitter gel pens, and bright colors.
A simple, uncomplicated pause. It sounds trivial. It wasn’t.
My body responded immediately. Bright colors spread across my coffee table, pages opened to playful images of flowers and donuts. My mind stayed busy, but peacefully so. Anxiety softened. Sleep improved. My heart settled.
And I joyfully reconnected with my own inner child, long forgotten after being absorbed in an adult world. Coloring became my meditation, my way back into presence. A reminder that calm and contentment don’t always come from solving problems, but often from simplicity. This gentle form of color therapy softened my mind to help me make clearer plans for an upcoming move after selling my home.
Months earlier, a chapter in my life had quietly closed, peacefully, and without urgency. My divorce became final after 15 years together, on and off. We parted amicably and in peaceful understanding. My ex-husband drove away in a U-Haul truck stocked with homemade sandwiches, snacks, and cut fruit for his long drive. I just forgot his Diet Coke was still in the fridge.
Oops.
Eight months later, it’s still there. I walked back inside the house, and muttered to myself, “Some karma…” After he left, I had some energetic housekeeping to do. I claimed my home as my own again. I reset its energies. I wanted my home to heal and support love, peace, contemplation, and the next chapter I was creating for myself.
I also infused the home with love, peace, harmony, and joy, to welcome future buyers with the best of intentions for their happiness. Sometimes, stillness, held in love and peace, is the work.
Related: Healing Your Inner Child
Karma, completion, and the long way home
After long periods of stillness, movement eventually returns, but not the frantic kind. It arrives quietly, with clarity. For me, that clarity arrived through recognizing patterns. My life had moved in cycles for years, love, loss, separation, hope, reunion, and saying goodbye, often packed into U-Haul trucks from move to move.
Fifteen years with my ex, fourteen breakups, ten moves, four states, and four homes later, I stopped calling it coincidence. California, Utah, Wyoming, Missouri, Utah again and possibly California again. It’s the long way home.
There were detours. I am very patient. To be fair, so was the ex.
We had our own version of karmic absurdity: Groundhog Day, relationship edition. Contrary to popular belief, karma isn’t punishment. It’s repetition with an invitation to learn something more deeply each time. Like an actor filming a scene, if you miss your lines, you get another take, and another chance to hope you’ve learned them this time.
And hope isn’t foolish, just persistent. Awareness, however, is what allows us to recognize when a lesson is complete, and step out of the loop. Endings don’t have to be dramatic or fueled by anger and blame. Sometimes the most peaceful ending is gratitude for a lesson fully learned.
Peace doesn’t come from fighting for an outcome. It arrives when we stop resisting, and allow life to resolve itself. Karma lessons, I’ve found, can be gentle once freedom is claimed.
Related: Groundhog Day
12 laws of karma
Walking peace forward
I have been deeply moved and inspired by a group of Buddhist monks who have been walking across the U.S. in silence and meditation, step by step, completing a 2,300-mile journey for peace.
They do not preach or perform. They simply walk. With each day that passes, crowds of well-wishers gather to greet them in admiration and gratitude. Their presence alone moves people to tears, not because of words, but because of the lovingkindness and calm they embody.
They remind us that peace does not need to be loud to be powerful. It only needs to be lived. What we carry within ourselves ripples outward for others to feel.
You know you walk in peace when…
Energy settles.
Voices soften.
Drama pauses.
Honesty emerges.
Nothing needs fixing.
There are no judgments.
What if this season isn’t asking you to become someone new, but to live more fully as who you already are?
What if peace isn’t something to chase or earn, but something you embody each day? If you’re reading this, chances are you already walk this way. That makes you a WayShower, whether you call yourself that or not.
And step by step, breath by breath, we walk peace forward–
into our lives,
the people we meet,
and the world itself.
May we quietly bless all those who walk peace into the world, reminding us, without words, that love is strongest when it is lived.
May we honor them by walking our own paths in:
Kindness
Compassion
Peace
Love
and Light.
May we all walk peace forward together, in unity.
Related: Walk for Peace
If this message resonates with you, I invite you to stay in touch. Connect with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, or visit my website or email at fayeinspiredhealing@outlook.com to explore more resources and reflections. Let’s continue the journey together.
Read more from Faye Lao
Faye Lao, Integrative Wellness Practitioner • Radio Show Host
Faye Lao is an Integrative Wellness Practitioner, Certified Grief Educator, and radio show host who blends intuitive healing, energy work, and transformational coaching. She helps individuals reconnect with their soul’s wisdom after loss, life transitions, and emotional overwhelm. As the creator of Soul Unfiltered™, Faye shares real, raw, and sacred stories of grief, healing, and spiritual truth.
Learn more at fayeinspiredhealing.com or contact her at FayeInspiredHealing@outlook.com.
