Peace, Nirvana or your Zen~Can you find it?

In this episode of Stand Up and Redo with Petra DeMusz, we explore what it truly means to find peace, nirvana, and your own personal zen in a world obsessed with appearances, validation, and the image we present to others. What if peace was never something you could buy, achieve, or perform for the outside world? What if it was something already waiting quietly within you?

Through personal stories, reflection, humor, and heartfelt conversation, this episode dives into the difference between superficial peace and soul-deep peace — the kind that comes from grounding yourself in something greater than your fears, your insecurities, your titles, your followers, or your reflection in the mirror.

Together, we unpack the idea that real peace is not found in perfection, applause, or pretending to have it all together. It’s found in authenticity, surrender, spiritual grounding, self-acceptance, and learning how to quiet the noise around you long enough to find something bigger to anchor to.

If you’ve been exhausted from trying to keep up appearances, searching for meaning, or longing for a deeper connection with yourself, God, or the world around you, this episode is your invitation to pause, breathe, and rediscover what truly matters.

Because maybe peace was never outside of you at all.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there. Welcome to Stand Up and Redo. In this episode, we're going to talk about Zen, Nirvana, Peace, all like really amazing words that I absolutely love. And I know a lot of you probably really like those words too, because we all are searching for that, right? We're all searching for our nirvana. We're searching for our perfect peace. We're in constant, like reaching for it, you know, the best that we can. Well, today we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about it in three sections. First, I want you to think about this. Have you ever felt completely at peace? Only then to have someone else tell you you're not? Oh my goodness, what if peace isn't what the world sees on the outside? It's something that you protect on the inside. Today I want to talk about finding your peace, your Zen, and how easily we can lose it. Or we just maybe have never even gotten to it, right? You feel like you're almost there, and then one little thing knocks you down. So when we start living from the outside in, instead of from the inside out, that's what's wrong. We can't do that. We have to work on our peace from the inside out. And here's an example of something like that. I'm gonna tell you something my brother once said to my mother. He told her, hey, you're supposed to hang the curtains, mom, so the pretty side faces out for the outside. And I remember thinking, isn't that interesting? That we're taught without even realizing it to make sure that everything looks good from the outside for everyone else who's looking in. But what about the side that we actually live with? What about that side that's inside of the house? What about the person behind the curtain, right? What about that person? So my mom used to always say to me, If I'd be bumping down the stairs to my bedroom, I'd be all happy. I'd feel alive, I'd feel amazing, I'd feel healthy. And then she'd look at me and go, Oh, honey, are you okay? You just don't look well. You look really pale. And I'd be like, What? Oh my gosh, I feel energized. I feel really healthy. What was wrong with me? So I started to learn to hide myself, to put a mask on myself. And it's not her fault. I'm not blaming my mom. I'm just saying that when she would point out that I looked pale to her, even though I felt so amazing on my heart in my inside, I felt healthy. I felt like a uh I just felt ready to go. I would run back up and throw some makeup on. Or got to be where I was like actually put makeup on before I came down from my bedroom. So she wouldn't even question what I looked like. Or what are we supposed to look? What does health look like to us? What does it look like? What do we do when people make us feel like we don't look good enough on the outside? We put a mask on, right? And it's so funny because I just got home from church and I was actually, my mom was visiting me from New Jersey. I live in Pennsylvania, and she's getting ready to leave. And as she was leaving, I gave her this huge hug and a kiss, and I said, Hey mom, before my makeup wears off, I'm gonna go do my podcast for you two. It's just like, wait a minute, this is an oxymoron here. But think about why we put the mask on. It's not because we're not well, but because we want to look good on the outside to match what others expect to see. And that's where we lose our peace because peace is not found in managing appearances. It's not found, it's in it's not found in proving what we should look like to the outside. It's what we feel like on the inside. And it's found in alignment. It's how you feel inside, and it doesn't have to anymore be validated by how you appear on the outside. I feel like that I think about two of my favorite um stories. One was Monster's Ball with Halle Berry, and another one was Wild with Cheryl Strait. And I think about these two women that were so damaged and struggling so much and had to find inner peace, and especially the wild, but it's a book and a movie. But if you watch it, she's so damaged on the outside and so much, there's so much pressure on her for appearances and being strong. But then she just escapes on the PCT trail and she finds her inner peace. I mean, I don't know if she truly finds her true inner peace, but she finds an inner peace in her that she can live with from experiencing time, healing from the inside out. So I also want to jump into pop culture a little bit more to share about the illusion of peace, other things that when I think about these things, I think about peace. My favorite movie, when I was younger, I watched it. I think I was probably in my 20s, uh, maybe my 30s. So there's this movie called Something About Mary. So take that movie, right? If you, if you have watched it, first off, if you didn't laugh, my gosh, it was one of the most, it was one of the most hysterical movies I've ever watched. But I fell in love with Mary, just like all these other people did, and all the guys on the show, of course, were all falling in love with Mary. And it wasn't because she was absolutely stunningly gorgeous, although she was very attractive. She just moved through life with this ease, this lightness. She was kind, she was grounded. She wasn't trying to impress anyone. She was just living her life joyfully. And because of that, everyone was drawn to her. And not because of her being perfect, because she wasn't a perfect person. Because she was at peace with herself, right? That movie was just hysterical. And there's another pop culture thing or movie that makes me think about like finding inner peace. And it was a series I just watched. I just recently watched it. It's called Pluribus. Oh my gosh. I loved the movie. I loved the characters. It was not a movie. I loved the series and I loved the character Carol in this series. At first I didn't like her. She kind of irritated me like for the first episode or so. And then I just started to fall in love with her. I'm like, this woman is just trying so hard to keep her peace or to even have the ability to find her own peace. And the reason she can't is because there's this alien invasion on the whole world. And the whole world, except for almost a dozen people or so, are taken over by this collective mind. That in this collective mind, there's no more conflict, but there's no more individuality, there's no more struggle. And at first glance, that almost sounds like peace, but it's not, because real peace is not the absence of difference in us as people. It's the presence of your identity, grounded and unshaken. Some people in the show fight to keep their independence, others surrender to it. And that's the tension we live in every day. She just fights to keep her own identity, her own peace. She doesn't conform. Do you conform? Do you feel accepted? Do you stay rooted? Do you work hard to protect your inner peace? Do you? Do you really do that? This last part is the most impactful part of this whole entire YouTube video. And this part is honest, honestly, I don't know what I would do without this part. The truth is this peace is not something that you create by controlling your environment. It's something that you receive when you anchor yourself in something greater. And I want to share this with you. I want to share this with you. Philippians 4, 7, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your mind in Jesus Christ. I love that one sentence. It's the peace that passes all understanding. I will never forget hearing that when I was a little girl and thinking, what is that peace that passes all understanding? I just want that. This kind of peace doesn't make sense to the outside world. It doesn't depend on appearances at all. It doesn't depend on circumstances. No, not even a little bit. It guards you. So here's another one to think about. Isaiah 26, 3. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. Peace comes from where your mind stays. It comes from where your mind stays, not where your makeup sits, which I kind of like my makeup right now, but in about two hours after I start doing yard work, it's not going to be there anymore. It's not where your image lands, but where your focus lives, right? And I have one more scripture, just one more to share with you. And this one is just really neat. It's John 14, 27. And I'm studying John right now, and it's just a really great uh book. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. The world gives us a fragile peace. A fragile peace. It tells us what we're supposed to feel like. We might not feel like that at all, right? It's a conditional peace. It's a quote: You look good, so you must be good. Peace. Oh my gosh. You look good, so you must be good. Think about that. Think about that statement. God gives you something deeper than that, something unshakable. God gives you peace that isn't about fixing how things look. Maybe it's about refusing to let the outside world tell you how you're allowed to feel on the inside. Maybe it's about turning the curtain around, right? Turning the curtain around, not for them. Turning the pretty side around for you, for you to see. Because the truth is, you can look perfect and you can feel really empty inside. Or you can look undone and you can feel completely whole inside. So peace isn't something you prove. No, it's something that you protect. And maybe today you start performing it and you live it. We all live it. Let's start living in peace. Thank you.