Why Peace Still Feels Out Of Reach Despite Success

The Hidden Search We Don’t Know We’re On

Are you searching for peace right now?

It might not look like a formal search. You might not even know you're doing it. I didn’t.

For most of my life, I thought I was just doing what needed to be done. Working hard, setting goals and showing up with commitment and focus. That looked like the path to success and, somewhere along the way, to peace.

Only it wasn’t.

Looking back, I can see I was searching for peace all along. Maybe you might call that peace of mind, a sense of okayness or mental wellbeing. That quiet feeling that I was enough, that I had done enough and that I could finally rest. I, like many was caught up in the idea that success, once achieved would bring me to peace.

Chasing Peace Up the Ladder

That search showed up through my career for twenty year. I pushed myself forward professionally with enormous energy and determination. Even during my second maternity leave, with a baby and toddler at home, I was applying for promotions. I had just moved house, so a change in job location was needed. A sideways move would have been sensible, but I went for a promotion.

Every time, I thought the peace would arrive once I got there. I never said it like that at the time. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it back then, but through the lens I have now, that is what I was doing.

Then I reached the top of the ladder. There wasn’t really anywhere else to go. I had made it to that place I had always wanted to be and …

… the peace I had expected wasn’t there.

The fulfilment I thought would greet me like a golden ticker-tape parade complete with extravagant fireworks simply didn’t materialise.

From that place of disappointment, the thing that most made sense for me to do was to continue the search. If peace wasn’t going to be found in career success, maybe it would be in a new relationship found through excessive online dating, in my new hobby of salsa dancing or in ridiculous and exhausting social engagements. I found myself doing, planning and trying to control more and more until my poor body could take it no more.

One day at the end of March 2015, I walked out of my office completely burnt out and was ever well enough to go back. I was utterly exhausted and quite literally burnt out.

Even then, when I was on my knees, I still didn’t quite see the nature of the chase.

I had to spend years on the self-development hamster wheel before I finally saw this fruitless search for what it is.

Where We Think Peace Lives

The reason this endless search becomes so exhausting, and often painful, is because it’s built on a very believable misunderstanding.

If we think our feelings are coming from the outside world from what happens, what doesn’t happen, what starts, what ends, then it makes sense to try and control those things.

But we’re looking in the wrong direction.

From a 3 Principles perspective, peace of mind is not created by circumstances. It is not delivered by outcomes and not earned through effort. Our experience is not a product of what’s going on out there but a product of thought, in the moment.

How we feel is always a reflection of what we are believing right now.

When we forget that, we chase harder.

We overeat, overwork, overthink.

We push ourselves toward productivity, personal development or perfection.

We think that if we just do more, the peace will finally arrive.

When Even Personal Growth Becomes A Chase

This misunderstanding doesn’t just drive our careers. It has also shaped much of the self-development industry.

After my burnout, I got caught in it again. This time, through the world of routines and rituals. I discovered the “Miracle Morning” and threw myself into it like my life depended on it. That’s because, at that point, it really looked like it did.

Every morning, I journaled, meditated, affirmed, visualised, exercised. Not because I enjoyed doing those things, but because it felt like I had to do them and that I wouldn’t be okay if I didn’t.

Some of those practices still have a place in my life today. I meditate most mornings, I move my body, and I take time for stillness. But the grasping has gone, and the urgency has softened. I no longer see these practices as the source of peace but simply things that I enjoy doing. I no longer believe that my wellbeing depends on doing these things. There is so much peace in seeing that truth and it means we can enjoy the things we do in a much simpler way.

The truth is that the problem isn’t in what we do but in the belief that we must do those things in order to be okay.

The Diamond Beneath The Layers

There’s a metaphor I love, which I first heard from Michael Neill.

Imagine as your essence is a diamond which is solid, untouched and unbreakable. That diamond represents your natural mental well-being. It is your peace, clarity and calm.

Now imagine that diamond has become covered in layers of thought, stories, ideas, judgments and beliefs. Then another layer of thought appears in the form of personal development strategies, rituals, and routines designed to “help” you reach the peace that’s already there.

With each layer, the diamond is further obscured. We forget what’s underneath and so we start looking for peace in the very things that cover it.

From a 3 Principles perspective, what we can see is that peace is not missing. It is simply hidden beneath thought and the moment thought loses its grip, the peace reappears.

You’ve Already Felt This

You might have noticed this already. Maybe there’s been a moment when you were deeply caught up in something, and then, without trying, you just stopped. The noise fell away, you changed your mind and sense of calm returned.

I watched this happen recently in a conversation with someone older than me. He was frustrated about how young people swear a lot and getting more agitated as he spoke. Then, almost mid-sentence, he paused. I could see that something shifted. He simply said, “Let’s not talk about that.”

That shift wasn’t because of a strategy or a reframe. It came from insight or a moment of clarity. A natural falling away of unhelpful thought.

We all have those moments. The more we notice them, the more we begin to see the truth that peace returns not through effort, but through insight. Not through control, but through seeing.

Where Peace Really Comes From

So where does peace come from?

It doesn’t.

Peace does not come from anywhere. It is already here.

It lives beneath the noise, beneath the striving and beneath the need to prove, produce or perfect.

From a 3 Principles understanding, peace is our natural state. The only thing hiding it is thought, and thought is always moving. It is always temporary.

You don’t need to chase peace.

You don’t need to earn it.

You just need to see that it was never lost.

An Invitation

I invite you to slow down for a moment. Feel your feet on the floor and notice your breath. Let your thoughts do what they do and become curious about what is already here, underneath all of it.

Your peace is not waiting at the top of the ladder. It’s not in the next job or relationship or routine.

It’s right here. Always.

If this has resonated with you, I’d love to hear. Have you seen moments like this in your own life where peace returned the moment the thinking dropped?