5 Expert Habits to Find Inner Peace from Best-Selling Author Yung Pueblo

This is Expert Habits, a regular column in which thinkers, leaders, and other high performers talk about the habits and routines that help them live a better life.Yung Pueblo wants to be clear on something: “I’m not a monk.” Sure, in his lifetime he’s meditated for over 13,000 hours, but he still enjoys the drama and chaos of Love Island UK like the rest of us. The best-selling author’s philosophical thoughts on self-awareness, emotional healing, and mindfulness have reached over 3.5 million followers since he first started posting to Instagram in 2013. His digital presence has since grown into published works of poetry and prose, including the New York Times bestsellers Inward, Clarity & Connection, and The Way Forward. Now Pueblo, whose real name is Diego Perez, is releasing a new book: Journey: The Year That Changes Everything (Penguin Random House), a 365-day guide to finding inner peace.What exactly is inner peace to Perez? “It means that you have a good relationship with your emotions,” he says. “It’s that you’re able to feel your emotions without necessarily fueling the heavy ones..”Inner peace, per Perez, isn’t a final destination. It’s about recognizing negative feelings and using tools you’ve learned to acknowledge that they’re happening without allowing them to take over your life. That’s what Journey—which debuts on November 10—is about. The following habits are just a few of the techniques he’s developed to do exactly that. Below, Perez explains the creative benefits of walking, the value of daily gratitude, and why you should protect your own peace even when others around you are chaotic—the latter of which makes keeping up with reality TV that much more enjoyable.Remember that everything is impermanentYung Pueblo: “Oftentimes we have a relationship where we’re afraid of change and we need to realize that the universe that we live in, it’s totally founded on change at every level of existence—the atomic level, the biological level, the cosmological level. It’s because of change that we even have the opportunity to experience things. If our universe was static, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. So changing our relationship with impermanence and making it one where we actually get inspired to be more present. When we’re with our friends, with our family, with your mom, with your dad, you know that they’re not always going to be around. So the times when you are with them, to be ever more present, because you know change will happen at one point or another. Being able to have that presence just makes you have this ability to really enjoy some of the most beautiful parts of life.“When it’s a sad moment, you have to be like, ‘OK, this is not going to last forever.’ But also in the precious moments, this isn’t going to last forever, so let me be here in the moment.“Another way to look at it is that it’s defined by your relationship with change. So the more that you’re able to embrace change and flow with change, then your mind’s going to have less stress. But it’s probably one of the biggest challenges any human being can accept— willingly trying to change their relationship with change.”Be intentional instead of reactive“So much of our impulsiveness just comes from these lightning-quick reactions that we think are our nature. We think that they’re unchangeable, but the reality is that we can train ourselves to slow down to be able to ask: OK, is this me having an impulsive reaction right now? and then asking ourselves: Is this actually useful? Should I act this out or instead should I actually choose something that’s different than what I would’ve done in the past? And in the act of slowing down and being intentional, you just end up finding way better results. This is a real habit. You can learn that from meditating, you can learn that from therapy, but you can also just teach yourself the raw skill of feeling impulsiveness coming up and then challenging yourself to slow down.“I’m not going to jump to conclusions. I’m not going to say anything right now. Let me just check in with how I feel, what actually feels true to me, and then put forward something that I think is actually going to be helpful as opposed to just something that I later regret.“So if a friend of yours is telling you about something that they’re really mad about, they’re offering an invitation for you to be angry with them on their behalf. But instead I found that I don’t necessarily want to be angry, but I want to be able to hear my friends and offer support or a listening ear or whatever the situation is needed. At the same time, I can remain in my own energy while offering support to this individual. We get sucked into the energy of other people really, really quickly, but instead of getting sucked into someone’s chaos, for the past two years, what I’ve been working on is: Can I live in my peace and offer my peace as an invitation? They can join me in my peace too, if they want to, instead of me just getting sucked into their drama.”Be kind to yourself when your mood is low“We fall into self-analysis when we don’t feel good. It’s just the worst time for you to be analyzing yourself about what you’ve done right, what you’ve done wrong. Negative self-talk isn’t productive. It’s good for you to be honest with yourself, but honesty also can come with gentleness and with self-acceptance. But when your mood is low, it’s going to be really hard for you to be gentle with yourself. So one thing I realize is when I don’t feel good or I’m over-exhausted from too much work or too much travel or whatnot, that’s the time for me to just suspend self-analysis and just treat myself gently—be mindful of what I’m saying to other people too, and just let it pass.“And in the act of letting it pass, then you can do some more proper self-assessment because your best assessment is going to be when your mind is calm, not when it’s heavy.”Gratitude supports your mental balance“Life is a long series of ups and downs, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But in the down moments, we tend to look at everything with such darkness that we forget that we still have access to clean water, that we still have access to food, that we have a house over our head. A lot of people in the world don’t have that. Having gratitude for the basics and the fundamentals really helps reset the balance where if something went wrong at work, you’re going to be okay, you’re going to be fine.”Get up and walk“This is my recent favorite and it’s the newest habit that I picked up. You got to walk. You got to go for walks. Walking supports clarity, and I think it really supports creativity. I find that whenever I feel a little stuck with writing, just going on a 20- or 40-minute walk really helps to regenerate and create this new sense of clarity.”