There’s a reason I have my own Life Coach and it’s because I know I have my own blind spots and she helps expose them.

But there is another reason I hired the Life Coach I did, Meredith Hooke, and that’s because she specializes in meditation, something I love but often let slip when I get really busy.

She kicks my ass in a very gentle Buddhist way wearing kid leather fur covered moccasins when it happens and I get back on track.

I had a session with her last week and I was telling her (code for ‘whining about’), how much work I had to do and I may have to cut the session short to get everything done.

‘It won’t get done’ she replied. There will always be something else that follows right behind that just has to get done too. That’s just life’

She knows my number one core value is peace. To me, to have peace of mind even when things are going to shit is nirvana.

‘You’re chasing peace’ she went on. ‘And you can’t chase peace because the more you chase it, the more it alludes you. The more you think the next completed task will allow you to relax the less chance of that truly happening. Other than maybe for a brief moment in time.’

And she’s right. You have to let peace come to you, you can’t chase it. The only place peace exists is inside your head. On the flip side, the only place chaos exists, is inside your head.

Similarly, the only time peace can exist is in the moment, not in the future or the past.

It’s the stories we tell ourselves that cause us suffering, not the events themselves (and I’m not including physical illness in that generalization – although even in these circumstances there is this truth to be found).

Of course the death of a loved one as I went through recently causes suffering, but we are the suppliers of the suffering with how we think about things.

I’m not saying an extreme event like that should be treated with a shrug of the shoulders and an “oh well, life goes on’ type conversation inside your head, that would be ridiculous.

But when we can grasp the concept that we decide how much and for how long we want to suffer it can be like a veil lifting.

We didn’t cut the session short and I still got everything done that I wanted to get done.

Largely because I wasn’t panicking, I was just concentrating on each task in order and feeling pretty damn peaceful about it, right there and right then.