Open any news app on any given morning and the list is familiar.
Conflict somewhere in the world. An economy wobbling. Prices rising. A new threat to worry about, a new crisis to follow, a new reason to believe that these, above all others, are uncertain times. Scroll a little further and the personal version begins. Your job, your health, your savings, your children's future. It can feel as though the ground itself is moving.
And somewhere in all of that, you're looking for peace of mind.
I respect that search. It's one of the most important things a person can look for. But I've come to believe that most of us are looking for it in the wrong place.
The list of reasons to worry changes from year to year, sometimes from week to week. There has never been a time without one. And yet in every era there have also been people who lived with a remarkable steadiness in the middle of it. They didn't have better news. They had found somewhere else to stand.
How do I find inner peace in uncertain times?
Stop looking for peace in certainty, because certainty never lasts. Money, status, control and approval all change eventually. Inner peace comes from recognising what in you doesn't change: the steady awareness underneath your shifting thoughts and feelings. That steadiness is always available, whatever is happening in the world.
That's a big claim, so let me explain what I mean.
Why doesn't certainty bring peace?
Because nothing in the world stays certain.
Most people link peace of mind to certainty. If I can just make enough money, I'll be safe. If I have enough influence, enough status, enough people who love me, then I'll finally be able to relax. So we work very hard to build walls of certainty around ourselves.
And for a while, they seem to work. Then something shifts. Money comes and goes, sometimes dramatically. Power moves from one place to another. People's feelings toward us change. Status, perhaps the most fragile of all, can vanish overnight.
It's not bad luck when this happens. It's the nature of the world. What's born eventually dies. What's made eventually wears out. Everything that appears will, at some point, disappear. Trying to find lasting peace in things that are by nature temporary is like trying to rest on a wave. It works until the wave moves, and the wave always moves.
The uncertainty we try so hard to avoid isn't an interruption to normal life. It is normal life. Fighting it is like fighting the weather. And the more energy we put into building certainty, the more frightened we become when it inevitably shifts, because we've staked our peace on something that was never going to hold still.
What in us is temporary, and what isn't?
This is a distinction I come back to often, and it's changed how I live.
Almost everything in my life is temporary. My circumstances. My thoughts, which come and go faster than I can count them. My emotions, which shift from moment to moment. Even the whole personal reality I live in, built as it is from those thoughts and feelings, is always changing.
But underneath all of that, there's something that doesn't change. The awareness in which all those thoughts and feelings appear. It's there when you're anxious and there when you're calm. It was there when you were a child and it's there now. It doesn't get older, it doesn't get shaken, and it doesn't depend on the news.
Most of us have never paid much attention to it, because our attention is taken up by what's moving. But it's there, in every moment, quietly steady. That's where peace is. Not in controlling what moves, but in recognising what doesn't. I find it easy to put my trust in that, in a way I never could with anything that changes.
Why does looking within feel so hard when life is chaotic?
Because the mind is very loud during uncertain times.
When things feel unstable, thinking speeds up. We plan, predict, rehearse, worry. Every scenario gets run, then run again. And in all that noise, the quieter steadiness underneath is hard to notice. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's just being drowned out. A little like the sky on a stormy day. The clouds can be thick and dark and moving fast, and the sky behind them hasn't changed at all. It's simply harder to see.
It's also buried under older things. Many of the fears that flare up in uncertain times are much older than the present moment. A child who grew up in an unpredictable home often becomes an adult who experiences any uncertainty as danger. The news triggers something that was set down long ago. That's why anxiety is always about the future, and why the same headlines leave one person calm and another sleepless.
You are not broken. You are buried.
What does steadiness feel like when you find it?
Quieter than people expect.
It isn't a high, and it isn't a withdrawal from life. People who live closer to that steadiness still care about the world. They still act, plan, vote, help. But they do it from a calmer place. The headlines don't knock them over in the same way. They can hold uncertainty without being consumed by it. They're often more useful in a crisis, too, because they're not spending half their energy on their own alarm.
On our stories page, Marko Mladenovic wrote, three years after working with me: "I am still in such a peaceful, blissful, joyful state." The peace he describes didn't come from the world becoming certain. It came from somewhere steadier, and that's the kind of peace I'd wish for anyone reading this.
How can I notice what doesn't change?
This practice is a walk, about twenty minutes, ideally somewhere you can move without much to navigate.
As you walk, notice everything that's changing. The view shifting with each step. Sounds coming and going. Thoughts arriving and leaving: a worry, a plan, a memory. Feelings rising and falling. Don't try to stop any of it. Just notice how much is moving.
Then, about halfway through, ask yourself a simple question: what has been here the whole time?
Not a thought. Not a feeling. The one who's been noticing all of them. The awareness in which the walk is happening.
Don't try too hard to find it. It's not an object. You can't grab it, and you don't need to. Just rest your attention there for a few steps, the way you might lean against a wall. Then keep walking and let the question go.
Most people find that even a few seconds of resting in that steadiness changes the quality of the rest of the walk. That's a small taste of the peace that doesn't depend on circumstances. It's also closely connected to how to be present.
Where can I begin to rest in what's steady?
With the question of who you are beneath everything that changes.
The free masterclass Who Am I? is built around exactly that question. You can't have peace of mind in the sense of a mind that never gets shaken. But you can find the peace that's underneath the mind, and it's been there all along.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.