A Time of Turmoil, A Need for Peace
There’s no doubt we’re in a time of global uncertainty and political unrest. Open any social media app, flick to a news channel, or skim headlines, and the outlook is incredibly unsettling. Many of us find ourselves caught in cycles of worry, unable to shake the weight of what’s happening around us. It’s in times like these that nurturing our inner peace becomes not just a luxury but a necessity.
While we may not have the power to change global events overnight, we do have the power to shift how we respond to them. By turning inward and reconnecting with practices that ground us, such as tarot, meditation, and intentional disconnection from the noise, we can find solace and regain a sense of control. These tools remind us that even in chaos, there is a quiet place within us that cannot be shaken.
In this article, I’ll share simple, practical ways to step away from the turbulence and find your centre. From creating sacred spaces to using tarot for guidance, meditating to quiet the mind, and even disconnecting from social media, you’ll discover ways to restore hope and balance. Let this be your invitation to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the strength and peace that already reside within you. Finding Inner Peace Amidst Global Chaos: AKA How to Keep Your Shit Together When The World Is Losing The Plot.
1. Create a Daily Sacred Space
When the world feels chaotic, it’s more important than ever to carve out a scared space to ground yourself. A cushion, chair, or any comfortable spot can serve as your nest, and whether you take two minutes or two hours, the practice of disconnecting from the external to engage with the internal will bring peace. Calming rituals, music, incense, meditation, journaling—even something as simple as watching nature from a window, are daily peace practices we can all enjoy.
Tips: Light a candle, use calming scents like lavender, and keep your tarot deck or a favourite crystal nearby.
Affirmation: “I create peace within me, no matter the external world.”
2. Turn to Tarot for Clarity and Reflection
When the outside world feels uncertain, tarot can provide great insight and a sense of direction. Use your cards as a way to mirror your inner thoughts as opposed to predicting external chaos. Journal your thoughts, build your own spreads, or keep it simple with a single card draw if you’re feeling too overwhelmed to dive deeper.
Simple questions to ask include;
What do I need to know?
How can I find peace?
What personal strength should I tap into?
What should be my focus at this time?
Here are two tarot spreads to further explore finding inner peace and clarity.
The Peace Within Spread
This 5-card spread helps you reconnect with your inner calm:
Current Energy: What energy am I carrying right now?
External Influence: What’s draining or affecting me externally?
Inner Strength: What strength can I lean on?
Guidance for Peace: How can I nurture my inner calm?
Outcome: What will help me feel centred again?
The Anchor of Hope Spread
A 4-card spread to guide you toward hope and optimism:
The Storm: What challenge am I facing?
The Anchor: What can ground and support me?
The Light: What positive energy or hope is emerging?
Next Steps: How can I move forward with resilience?
Tarot is an ideal tool for reflective practices and finding resilience. It’s also a great way to find grounding as the action of looking at the card, studying the images, colours, or symbols, helps to focus a scattered mind.
3. Meditate to Quiet the Noise
Meditation, of course, is another practice that will silence the external clamour and help you to focus on your inner calm. Five minutes, fifteen, thirty; no matter the minutes, every time you sit to turn within, you gift your mind, body, and heart, wonderful healing.
Quick Exercise:
Sit comfortably and focus on your breath. Take two minutes to simply observe how it moves in and out of your body. When thoughts push in, tell them ‘later’. Return to the sensations of your breath flowing.
Visualize a soothing light surrounding you, shielding you from negativity. It forms at the crown of your head and lowers to wrap you in a cocoon of safety. In this bubble, only positive, light-filled energy can reach you. Anything dense is safely reflected away.
If you’re new to meditation, start with 3 minutes a day and build up from there. There are countless mindfulness techniques available online, so explore the options and gather together the practices that feel good for you. There’s no right or wrong, or one-size-fits-all, so make these practices your own to keep yourself inspired and excited to connect within each day.
4. Embrace the Power of Nature
Nature can be a grounding force amidst turmoil. When the barrage pouring from television, radio, your phone, or perhaps people gets too much, remove yourself from the chaos and step outside for some free nature therapy.
Walk barefoot on grass to connect with the earth. Pay attention to all the senses against your skin. Close your eyes and listen to the world around you. What’s the farthest away sound you can hear? What’s the closest?
Spend time observing natural cycles, like the phases of the moon, to remind yourself that change is constant.
Connect with water sources if possible; lakes, rivers, the sea. Dip your feet, picture dense energy flowing out through your soles and being safely absorbed and transformed into light by the water.
Walk amongst trees. Try to identify the different species, and build upon your knowledge of local flora. What about birds? Can you identify all the winged friends in your neighbourhood. If possible, set up a feeding station so you can spend a few minutes watching the birds feed.
5. Practice Gratitude to Shift Your Focus
Gratitude helps reframe your perspective from fear to abundance. When we focus on lack, fear, or any negative thoughts, they quickly becomes all we can see within our lives. If you’re struggling to feel hope, try the following:
Write three things you're grateful for each morning.
Every evening, reflect on the small joys you experienced that day.
Count your possessions. By this, I mean reflecting on the items that bring you joy, and how blessed you are to have these things in such abundance. For example; books, plants, clothes, photos, mementoes, crystals, tarot/oracle decks, pretty notebooks—whatever items give you a thrill every time you react with them.
Count your blessings. Reflect on the blessings within your life. This may be your surroundings, family, friends, health, abilities, pets. Dedicate space in your journal for these lists and add to them whenever possible.
Science has proven the power behind daily gratitude practices. Encouraging a positive mindset nurtures hope and optimism, and with practice, you’ll soon find yourself catching negative thinking and flicking it aside with ease.
6. Use Visualization for Inner Strength
Visualisation can help you feel empowered even in challenging times. Deep visualisation is a lovely practice when you’re nestled in a safe and comfortable environment, but often, feelings of overwhelm strike when we’re not at home. During my years working in corporate, I experienced moments of overwhelm, but learned how a quick visualisation had the power to get me back on track. Visualisations can be done at a desk, in the bathroom, while standing in a queue—even in a meeting (but don’t tell the boss I said that. . .)
When it’s not possible to close your eyes, try lowering your gaze or fixing it on a point. Picture yourself being cocooned inside a shield of pink, soothing light. Inside it, you can still hear and see everything that’s happening around you, but you’re held and safe inside this space, so chaotic energy can’t reach you. You can draw yourself into this inner sanctuary at any time—and in a matter of a few seconds. If circumstance allows, you can go deeper.
Box breathing can also be used as a calming technique. This involves gently inhaling for the count of four, holding for four, exhaling for four, and holding for four. One cycle is an inhale, hold, exhale, hold. Try it with three cycles to begin, and build up to six or eight cycles. This practice has been proven to calm the mind and easy anxiety.
7. Connect with Your Community
You’re not alone. Your thoughts, worries, doubts, and fears are being experienced by a multitude. Even if you’re not in a position to physically connect with a community, there are countless virtual groups out there offering support and guidance, including;
Virtual meditation circles.
Virtual women's’ circles
Workshops or classes
Online Support Groups
If you can’t find a space of connection, consider starting your own support network. Gather friends and create a supportive online or physical space where you can share openly and without judgement. It doesn’t have to be a fixed location either. It can be as simple as meeting over a coffee or sharing a walk. You may like to attend a workshop or class specifically centred on positive thinking or other mindfulness practices, but it can also be helpful to pivot away entirely from the topic by taking up a new hobby or learning a new skill to direct your thoughts towards something completely different.
8. Disconnect from Social Media to Protect Your Peace
The constant flow of distressing news can fuel anxiety and hopelessness. Often, we turn to social media for light entertainment, but end up being slammed with negative content that leaves us feeling drained. Or, we jump online to ‘quickly’ see what everyone’s saying about a situation, and end up falling into a spiral of doom scrolling. To protect your inner peace, take intentional breaks from scrolling to reclaim your mental space.
Steps to Disconnect:
Schedule tech-free time daily, such as mornings or before bed.
Use apps that limit your screen time if needed.
Replace doom scrolling with uplifting activities: reading, journaling, or pulling a tarot card for the day.
Affirmation: “I choose to protect my energy and focus on what nurtures my soul.”
With so much misinformation and fear-mongering online, it’s almost impossible to come out of a social media session and not feel overwhelmed. Gift yourself the peace of a few hours, or even a few days away from the noise. Focus instead on your reality, your sanctuary, your mind. Make a point of doing something you love each day, whether it be a hobby, a mindfulness practice, or exercise. I grew up in the pre-internet days, and believe me, there’s deep peace to be found in the disconnect.
9. Be Love and Give Love
Some people are born into this world as warriors and champions, ready to dive into the fray and fight for what’s right. They attend marches and rallies, bearing placards, and yelling slogans. Others hold less public-facing roles, working from behind screens to do their part. Then there are others whose circumstances inhibit any of the above, but they do what they can, when they can. Regardless of where we might fit anyway into one or more of these roles, we each have the power to make a difference from the second we roll out of bed in the morning—placards or no.
Be Love and Give Love is a term heard a lot within the spiritual community, and for good reason. When we meet people throughout our day; a family member, a friend, a colleague, a stranger on the bus, the bank teller, checkout assistant—whoever it may be, we can make a conscious decision to let that person know that they are seen. A smile, a hello, a comment on the weather (which is the most beloved icebreaker in Ireland), a ‘How are you?’ or ‘How’s your day going?’ is enough to let that person experience a kind connection. It may be the one thing they need at that moment, a small gesture of love that reminds them there are more kind, loving human beings out there than the news would have us believe.
Making a difference when the world appears to be losing its shit really can be as simple as Be Love and Give Love. Regardless of whether you’re polishing off your megaphone to attend a rally, or facing into a day at home with children, stepping into the world with love in your heart, and extending that love to others holds greater power than you may realise.
When you wake tomorrow, make a conscious decision to observe how you move through your day and interact with others. It’s not a Lovefest I’m suggesting, but an effort to sprinkle a loving kindness into your interactions. A smile here, a hello there, a recognition that the person exists, and that you see them, is enough.
The more love we put out into the world, the more it’s reflected. Like ripples in a pond, your kind gesture has the power to inspire another to offer the same to the next person, and so on, and so on. We can fight for love every day in our own little corner of the world with the simple act of Be Love and Give Love
In this challenging time, I hope these tools will help you to find peace and hope. Take small daily steps to build a consistent, rewarding practice, and remember to reach out to others if you need support, because you’re not alone; solace is all around us. If we can take a moment to disconnect from the chaos and observe, the peace we need will unfold.
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