The Wars We Carry: Why Peace Begins Closer To Home Than You Think

Hello and welcome to the Dr Sam Collins podcast. You might be able to hear birds chirping outside my window, which is very nice. Reminds me of growing up when I was a little girl. I remember waking up to birds chirping. I don’t think we hear enough birds chirping these days. Anyway, today, what are we going to talk about? I’m becoming more interested, much more interested in peace, freedom. than approval. The older I get, I wish I’d started this bit younger to be honest, but as I get older, so my advice is don’t wait till you’re older.
I find myself saying things that I probably wouldn’t have said 10 years ago, 20 years ago, maybe even five years ago, maybe even two years ago. Not because I don’t care what other people think now, because I do care what people think, but I don’t really let it hold me back anymore. I’m more interested in moving forward on my purpose and my mission and the things that I believe are important in the world than having everybody approve of me.
So that’s pretty liberating. And I’d love for you to have that kind of liberation as well and maybe not wait till you’re 55. If you’re older than 55, okay, don’t worry about it. You can still start. I think we can still start anytime. It’s like just getting started. I think that older women are going to radically change the world anyway, along with everyone else, all right? So let’s not make this about age, but I can’t stand that there’s still ageism out there.
When I believe that the older that we get, the wiser that we get, and the less we give a shit about what everyone thinks about us, we become so much more powerful. For much of my life, I have edited myself. Have you done that? I’ve wondered, what should I say? What should I not say? What should I keep private? What should I make public? What sounds a bit too ambitious or too emotional?
Or a big one for me, what sounds too idealistic and not facts-based or not data-driven? Or what might sound a bit sort of angry or feminist? And so I’ve constantly been editing and rewriting myself. I’ve had big ideas. for a very long time, probably since I was a little girl, about how I think the world should be better. I was that little kid that was always saying to her parents, it’s not fair.
And my dad would say that I was quite irritating, that I would constantly say that. And it’s quite amusing to me now that one of my children constantly still says to me, that’s not fair. And I say to him, you’re a feminist. and to which he just says, I don’t care. But he’s going to be the one who is going to change the world, I think, because he’s so rebellious. Love it.
Anyway, so we all hear these voices in our heads, which tell us that’s too much. You’re going to sound ridiculous. That’s too grandiose. What will people think of you? What if people don’t like you? What if you don’t sound intelligent? So if you have those kinds of thoughts in your head, and you think you’re the only one. I’m telling you right now, you’re absolutely not. We all think like that because… Why do we think like that?
We think like that because we grow up like that, we’re socialized like that. There’s loads of research that you can look into about how we think, why we think and the rest of it, how the brain works, neuroplasticity of the brain, da da da da da. There’s so much. Question is not why do we think like that. The question is, is it helpful? And if it’s not, what do we want to do about it?
Because I think that a lot of that thinking really holds us back from making any kind of real difference. Even if we’re thinking, who am I, who are you to make a big difference in the world? Well, why not? I couldn’t try my best to make a difference to one person. It’s got a ripple effect. So.

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I think that we have, do you have those sort of inner voices that can be a conflict in your mind, sort of like the little angel on the shoulder and the little devil on the other shoulder, and they’re sort of trying to fight it out most days. And we have this most amazing amount of thoughts that go through our brains every day, like thousands and thousands and thousands. And the next day we basically repeat.
We’re on repeat. So we think the same things every day. And so if we’re walking around thinking things like, I’m not very good. I’m not good enough. And then the other side, no, you’re good enough. I’m not very good. I’m good enough. You know, it’s just like this battle that’s going on and this conflict between who you are and who you could be really between what you know and what you say, between what you want and what other people expect you to want.
And that’s a tough one. especially if those people are your parents, or your siblings, or your friends, or your work colleagues, or your boss. And they’re saying, oh, you should do this, you should do that. And you’re like, not for me. And I think that we sort of go along with it, don’t we? I remember my dad would say to me, because no one in our family had ever gone to university, so it was a really big deal that I was sort of heading in that direction.
And he said that I absolutely must. at university do a proper subject and proper subject was defined as accounting or any other type of finance, law. I think law was allowed, finance was allowed. I think that was by it. I think he talked at one time about me becoming a dentist, which was just ridiculous because no, just no. But I went along with it because, well, I thought he knew what he was talking about.
And I think he probably did know what he was talking about from his perspective, but that was so not for me. And I actually didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I ended up doing a business studies degree because I thought it’s a good old, my logic was this is a good all rounder with lots of different topics and I could pick one I liked. And I had a secret plan in my mind that one day I’d have my own business.
Cause I saw my mum and dad working for big organizations and didn’t like what I saw. So this is my little secret plan. But I remember he said to me, business studies is for people that don’t know what they want. And I thought, all righty then, but I still did it. All right. So wars or conflicts can be inside our own minds. And what I’ve discovered is that we can have a truth inside us.
And then there’s a version of us that perhaps we present that is more acceptable. socially acceptable, family acceptable, organizationally acceptable, whatever it is. And what I’ve discovered and what a discovery it’s been is when I put myself or more of myself out on the table, especially the warts and the failures, very little of what I feared actually happens. So when I wrote my first book, Radio Heaven, which is basically all of Sam’s failures in Dirty Laundry all in one place up to that date.
I mean, there’s more since then, right? But I wrote it because, well, lots of reasons. It’s got lots of good stuff in it. And I thought it would be useful from a sense of authenticity and talking about failure and how to get back up again because… There’s been so much out there about success and it’s all very polished and I just didn’t think it was really true or actually not that helpful.
So what I realised is the world doesn’t come to an end when you become more at peace with yourself and it can actually be very liberating and quite revelationary, not just for yourself but for others as well because Literally, everybody that reads Radio Heaven that comes back to me and says, I read it, says to me, it’s really weird. I felt like you were writing that for me. And I was in the same situation as you or I had that same scenario.
I had a difficult husband or I couldn’t figure out what to do with my life or whatever it was. And I just think that… That was great, really, because it gave people permission that they could be themselves too. Now, look, the book was never a bestseller particularly. Went to the top of the charts on Amazon, but I don’t think that’s that difficult. Some people understood it, but lots of people didn’t. Lots of people were, what’s that all about?
She called her dirty laundry out and they didn’t like it.

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Point was, I felt less divided in myself. I felt more at peace and it stopped me fighting myself quite so relentlessly. And I was really quite good at that. So I want to talk today about war and peace, big topics inside ourselves, but also around us. So I am going to include some references to intimate partner violence and armed conflict. So, you know, please listen with kindness to yourself. And if any part of what I talk about reflects your own situation, your safety matters more than anything else.
All right. So it matters more than keeping the peace or completing this episode. So before I talk about peace in the world,

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Let me share a little bit more about the woman speaking to you today. Not my polished biography and not the list of all the achievements. It’s a bit more truthful, fuller and truthful than this. And I’m telling you this because one thing that happens a lot, particularly when I’m running conferences or even when I did the first podcast series that was interviewing other women and in the second book I wrote, Rebellious, which was more stories of other women as opposed to myself, I had the same feedback over and over and over again, where women would say to me, oh my God, the women you know, they’re amazing.
They’re not me. I wouldn’t be able to do anything like that, to say that over and over and over again. And it really upsets me because, particularly with the book Rebellious and in my conferences, I never have anyone famous. All right. There’s never, I’m a big, I’ve got a bit of a, um, I can’t, I’m not, what is it called? Like when you’re not attracted to, or aversion. I have a bit of an aversion to like the super famous polished experts.
And so I want what I call like everyday extraordinary women. And so my speakers at my events, nobody really knows about them. I’ve just found them or they found me or we. connected on LinkedIn or they’ve come to, often they’ve come to an event, they’ve been sitting in the audience and they’ll tell their story and, oh my God, that’s an amazing story. And so then I’ve shared it in the book or the podcast or, or, or, or you’ve had it wherever it is, a conference speaker.
So, um, what happens is that we look at others, particularly, let’s say other women, and this could be even a famous person. I mean, maybe you look at I don’t know, Malala or Michelle Obama or, you know, someone, you know, like these phenomenal people. And you look at them and you think, well, she can do it because she’s Malala or she can do it because she’s Michelle Obama or she can do it because…
And she’s much more, she’s just more capable, she’s more, she’s naturally confident, I hear that a lot, she’s naturally confident, she’s much better connected, she’s got more money, she’s brave, she’s not afraid. all these other things, we make it all up and we say, well, then she can do it, but I can’t. Rather than we saying, if she can do it, maybe I can, which is a much better question to ask because we look at our own sort of private reality and we compile all the reasons why we can’t do what she has done.
All right. So, and one of the reasons I think that this does happen is that We’ve got so many images of perfection out there. It’s only when we really maybe dig into the Malala story or dig into the Michelle Obama story that we go, okay, they come from humble, ordinary backgrounds, or they look like me or whatever it is that we kind of really understand it. But it’s not often that we see people who have done phenomenal things standing in front of us. bearing all of their warts and all.
It’s almost like, that’s too much. Why would you share that? They’re going to be open to criticism or whatever it is. So I thought I’d do a little bit of that today, just because. And for those of you that don’t know me at all, or maybe you don’t know me very much, let me share a couple of things. So at this point today, I am 55 years old and I worry about getting older.
A lot these days, actually. I can feel the imminent 60 coming. I’m married to the most amazing man. My second marriage, first marriage, was totally dodgy. And we’ve been together 20 years and he is 20 years older than me. And I worry about him a lot. I worry about him dying. I have to say, I do. I worry about his health all the time. Even though he’s healthy and everything, I just worry about that a lot.
I’m a worrier, more than I usually admit to anybody. I’ve got three children and our family life has not always looked the way I imagined it to. It’s certainly not the perfect look. Two of my kids have significant additional needs. One of them lives with a very serious mental illness and the other one has quite extreme learning differences, which is, you know, sort of a nice way of putting it some days.
One of my children is adopted and is currently in care because their needs became just greater than we could safely manage and that is extraordinary painful, painful to say out loud. And to say out loud publicly is something I have never done until this moment. All right? So, you know, ready for all the compassion and all the judgment that can come with that. There are days when I do not feel like I am a good parent, a good wife, a good sister or a good anything really.
And there are days when I wonder, when I’ve… Wonder and wonder whether I’m just failing all the time, all right? I’ve got a diagnosed anxiety disorder, which you might be able to hear a little bit here, and I’ve lived with that most of my life. And I overthink, and I imagine everything that could go wrong, and I mentally rehearse it over and over again. I am highly likely to be dyslexic and dyspraxic.
My children are, and I’ve never done the tests, I’ve done the online tests. But I read everything backwards. I get numbers and words back to front. I’ve nearly failed my O-level English exam. I don’t like writing. I can’t do maps. I find driving hard and I fall over all the time. Ridiculously large amounts. I have a very tricky relationship with space and time and coordination. It’s quite chaotic. I used to have a boyfriend actually years ago.
He’s still like, check. the way as we were going somewhere. Especially if we’d had a couple of drinks, he’d be like, okay, just watch, there’s a step there, just watch that, he’d be like clearing the way for me. Ah, I haven’t had the most usual of lives maybe. Or maybe it’s more usual than we think. When I was in university in my final year, my mother died by suicide. Sorry if that is difficult for people to hear.
I was 21, such a baby, I thought I knew everything. But you know, interestingly though, I don’t know if I would have done what I do now if that hadn’t happened because it led me on a whole new path. I don’t think I ever would have done because I love my mum so much. I don’t think I would have gone and travelled as much or lived in different countries or any of those things.
So hopefully she’s looking down going, good job. I don’t speak to my dad. And I don’t speak to my sister. So there you go, dysfunctional family all round. I was putting up with relationships with them for so many years, which were, I’m going to say, toxic at best. And I know we’re meant to love our family and we’re meant to find all the ways to keep those family relationships intact. And I didn’t, and I feel quite actually weirdly proud of it.
And… so liberated and free as a result. So yeah, there are relationships in my life I’ve not been able to repair and quite frankly, I don’t want to. Also, I’m the main earner in my family. So yeah, like I can’t just do what I would maybe love to do, which would be to travel around the world and speak to women and have BBC or CNN follow me as an amazing documentary of all the fantastic women there are doing. activists work around the world and I’ll do that for a few years.
I can’t simply abandon what I do because I’ve got to pay the bills and I’ve got to help keep my family, you know, food on the table and the rest of it, all right? So if you’re in that situation, I don’t want you ever to think that you can’t do purpose-driven work because I love what I do and maybe I can find a way to go travelling around the world and have CNN follow me and still get paid for it, right?
Anyone who knows anyone, give me a call. Many days, I feel too old and too tired. I’ve got a dodgy knee, so even with that dream of… I can see myself in a little wheelie. And sometimes, a lot of times, the suffering and injustice in the world, it just overwhelms me. You know, when I open the news in the mornings, I’m not expecting good news. I’m like, what terrible thing has happened today?
And what idiot at the top is making it happen? But the other part of all of this is I started Aspire, my organisation, when I was 29. And 25 years later, it’s still here. It survived recessions, upheavals, family crisis, heartbreak, mistakes, me bringing on people that didn’t work, didn’t like me, team, so much, you know. and my own periods of doubt. I have written two books, as I’ve talked about, whilst failing O-level English almost.
I live in the most gorgeous part of the world, in California, pretty close to the ocean, so I can drive to the ocean whenever I want to. And this was one of my greatest dreams when I was a little girl growing up on a council estate in Farnborough in Hampshire in England. I had an uncle that lived in Los Angeles and I just thought it was the coolest thing. And I would see these sort of pictures of California and I’d say, one day I’m going to live there.
And I had like, bless me, I had a little glass on the, you know, like jar thing. Probably was like an old jam jar or something like that. I’d washed out and it was on the shelf. and I would put pennies in it because I would say, that’s my fund for going to California. And everyone would just placate me like, oh, yeah, whatever. And well, here I am. So there you go.
All right. And I do love what I do and who I work with. I care so much about it and I’m constantly trying to evolve it. And I know that I’m very, actually very good at what I do. I might not be the most brilliant podcaster, but I’m brilliant in events. When I’m live in person with people and I’m not a brilliant writer for the books and everything But you know, I want to get my work out there more broadly than people that can come to my events.
So I try my best But I’m also anxious and complicated and tired and highly imperfect All these versions of me are true just like you. I’m not either struggling or successful I’m both I’m not anxious or courageous. I’m both I’m not flawed or capable. I’m both. I’m all of those things. And so are you. And I’m not telling you this because my life is unique. Far from it. In many ways it is highly privileged and I don’t want sympathy or applause.
I’m telling you because you do not have to wait till your life is all tidy before you begin.

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You don’t have to resolve every war in your head, silence every doubt, or become a perfected version of yourself before you are allowed to put yourself out there, before you’re allowed to contribute, before you’re allowed to be part of something bigger than yourself. We don’t have the time to wait for you to do that. There’s so much happening in the world. that you are already contributing to and you can contribute more to.
For the last few years, and I think I got inspired by this by Oprah. I heard that Oprah asks a question and then whether it’s in prayer or something when she asks, what is it you want me to be doing or what does the world need me to do or something like that. And I got inspired by that because I thought, Well, that’s a very sort of purpose-driven question rather than, what do I need to do today?
Asking what is it that the world needs me to do today? What does the world need from you right now? So for much of my career, you know, as I’ve been asking that question, it was about coaching women, running events for women, writing the books, et cetera. And these things still matter, but They’re really vehicles to an overall vision or purpose, all right? And increasingly, I’ve been exploring and drawn to something deeper, my own inner why, my why factor.
Why do I do this? Why is this important? And what is it I believe? And these are some of the things I think that once we connect to them, they give us sort of this unlimited energy almost.

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to be able to live with more freedom and more peace and more compassion. And that’s really what I believe the world needs right now. More freedom, more peace, more compassion, more reconciliation, more justice, more understanding, more light in the dark. And whereas there seems to be so much increase… division everywhere, whether it’s in our heads or in our homes or in our workplaces or in our communities or between countries, that we start to understand how we bring more light into that space.
And I strongly believe that it is women that are going to lead this. And we need to find more vehicles for how we do that. My vision is not to help individual women succeed or to create more women leaders for the sake of it. It’s to help actually create a more peaceful, just, compassionate, flourishing world with women as active architects of it. And I think this is a very different proposition because it’s not this company or this organization or this country.
Women should be leaders. It’s more this country needs women to be leaders. And for me, there’s a difference where it’s more of a calling that the world needs women to lead in this peaceful, just, compassionate and flourishing way. And that’s not to say that there aren’t many men that get this too, but I believe that it will be women that will lead the way in this respect. Now, when you hear the word peace or when you hear the word war, your mind, you know, maybe you immediately go to nations and armies and the devastating conflicts that have been happening and are continuing to happen across the world.
There are so many right now, I think we’re almost becoming sometimes a little immune because it’s just too much.

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So these realities must never be diminished by metaphor, but conflict also enters your life much closer to home. Think about it. So it could be an argument with your partner that keeps returning because neither of you feel completely understood. It may be a relationship in which you love somebody but find living with them quite difficult at times. It may be a neighbour. you know, whose behaviour has turned your garden into a place of tension rather than rest.
It may be your child or teenager whose needs you just don’t know how to meet. You love them ferociously, yes, but there are some days that every conversation becomes a negotiation, an explosion or a retreat. You read, you ask for help, you blame yourself, you feel bad, you try and do something else, but you still don’t know what to do next. It might be the fight you can’t write about, you can’t speak about and you can’t explain without worrying how your family will be judged.
It may be the version of events you edit because the full truth feels disloyal or shameful or just too complicated. Now I know these conflicts. I know what it is to love someone deeply. and still be unable to repair everything. I know what it is to make a decision for the safety of others and then question it constantly night after night after night. I know what it is to keep functioning professionally when your heart and your soul is somewhere else.
I am a very close acquaintance of guilt and shame. I know none of this is the same as armed conflict. An ordinary family difficulty is not the same as abuse, but conflict close to home can occupy your mind, exhaust you, exhaust your body and divide you from yourself. So perhaps this is where peacemaking becomes real. Not in pretending your family’s perfect. I don’t know any family that’s perfect, do you? I mean, one of the reasons I came off Facebook is because…
There were so many perfect pictures of perfect families and I was just like, no, every time I look at one of these, I feel bad. So I’m not going to, no, just no, not anymore. So yeah, not that we have to take responsibility for everyone’s behaviour, but asking what’s yours to own? What boundaries needed? What can’t be repaired by you alone? And where do you perhaps need help? We’re very good at carrying a lot of this by ourselves without telling anybody.
And it could be something small, it could be a clearer boundary. If you ever really define the boundaries for yourself, do you know what I mean by that? Like your kind of rules around rest and who you want around you and how you want to live your life. It’s really hard because it seems really selfish, especially when it’s like family relationships. our work relationships, but actually it makes you a better person, I think.
More rested, more capable, more productive, more powerful, more potential. It might mean accepting that somebody’s just not going to change. It might mean grieving the relationship that you hope for. And where there is any danger or abuse, it might mean seeking some, some help, you know, some specialist.

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Support. So many women I know say to me, I don’t like conflict. I don’t like conflict. Well, I’m not sure anyone really likes conflict, do they? I don’t know. Conflict asks you to be vulnerable. It can be scary. It asks you to speak your truth, to risk disapproval, accept that you might be misunderstood and keeping quiet. Not saying anything can be actually safer in the moment, psychologically and physically sometimes. But over time, my love, keeping quiet can be far more exhausting.
You swallow the sentence, you smooth things over, you walk on eggshells. You accommodate, apologise, make yourself smaller. Yes, the immediate disagreement is avoided. But the conflict hasn’t disappeared, has it? It’s gone underground. And underground is where resentment, distance and fear grows very, very well. Did you know that the World Health Organisation reports that nearly one in three women worldwide, about 840 million women and girls, have experienced physical and or sexual intimate partner violence? or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.
One in three. One in three. I mean that just phenomenal to me. World Health Organisation also reports that about one quarter of women aged 15 and over who have been in a relationship have experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former male intimate partner. Now these kind of facts if they affect you directly you’re very conscious of them. But if they don’t, does it mean that it’s someone else’s problem?
Does it mean that it’s something that isn’t a war that you need to carry now? Is it something where you say, I’m just trying to keep the peace? And which are, by the way, silence and accommodation survival strategies that should never be judged. But they don’t mean peace exists. Keeping someone calm is not the same as being safe. Silence is not consent and fear is certainly not peace. Look, if this is your reality, I’m not asking you to confront an abusive person or negotiate harder or stay in a relationship.
No. This is not an ordinary communication problem. Sometimes we do have to find the courage or find whatever it is inside ourselves to talk to someone we trust. and use a safe device if you believe your communications might be being looked at, alright? I also want to be careful about the language of abusive in terms of work and workplaces. Yes, a workplace can be bullying and psychologically unsafe and these experiences can be really harmful but not every disagreement, poor manager or political environment is abuse.
And it would be wrong to equate ordinary workplace conflict with physical or sexual violence at home. Precision helps you choose the right response and seek the right support. But you know, many women will tell me that entering a board meeting, a leadership meeting, or an everyday team meeting can sometimes feel like entering a war zone. Not because there’s armed conflict.

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and not because armed conflict and meetings are equivalent, of course they’re not, but because the body can prepare for battle when you expect interruption, dismissal, hostility, or political manoeuvring, and that can be exhausting. You might feel you have to become someone else, someone harder, more certain, less human, more professional. You calculate the alliances, wonder why your point was ignored, and then hear it praised when someone else repeats it. You try to understand the intricacies of the politics while doing the actual work, and you decide whether speaking again is really worth the risk.
God, isn’t there so much work for us to do? But the solution cannot be endless silence. Silence may protect you in one moment, and sometimes is the wisest choice, yet a lifetime of silence asks you to disappear. The goal is not to force yourself to speak up in every room. The goal is to build the judgement, support, freedom and allies to choose when, how and with whom to speak. Peace isn’t about keeping everybody happy, alright.
It’s not about avoiding every difficult situation. It’s not weakness and it’s not softness and it’s not surrender. This is important. I’m talking about cool, calm, quiet, fierceness. communication that is grounded in logic, data, understanding and compassion, all at the same time. A voice that does not need to shout to be strong. A woman who will list deeply, but will not bend simply because another person is louder or more powerful. When she hears no, she will not automatically vanish.
She asks another question. She presents the evidence differently. She finds another road, another ally or another moment. She changes the message and the method without necessarily abandoning the purpose. This is persistence. This is the kind of resilience that we need. There are moments when leaving the room, documenting what happened, seeking support or walking away is the wiser and more peaceful act.

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Look, there’s a lot that global peacekeeping can teach us. The need for peace in the world is, well, you don’t need me to tell you that. But did you know that in 2024, recently, 61 active state-based conflicts involving at least one state were recorded? That’s the highest number of conflicts since 1946. And approximately 676 million women and girls. live within 50 kilometres of armed conflict and 123.2 million people were forcibly displaced because of war.
I mean, just think about that. Yeah, there is also another story. Evidence reported by UN Women and the Council on Foreign Relations shows this. This is really interesting, that when women participate in peace processes, it increases the probability of an agreement lasting at least two years by 20% and at least 15 years by 35%. What about that? When women participate in peace processes, peace lasts much longer. Okay. Not all women are naturally peaceful or morally superior.
Women can create conflict too, I hear you. But it does mean that women’s meaningful participation changes the quality legitimacy and durability of the process. Women are not only affected by the future, women can help shape it. Yet women still make up only around 10% of peace negotiators and about 14% of mediators. It’s a job if you wanted to move roles, isn’t it? Because the people whose participation is associated with more sustainable peace

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are too often missing from the table. I don’t think you have to be a diplomat to become a peacemaker. Peace is also created in a workplace, a school, a clinic, a charity, a small business, a community, a friendship and a family. It is created in the conversation you have been avoiding and in the way you use whatever influence you already possess. So, I’ve got seven practices of a fierce, fierce, peacemaker here, and I’d love for you to listen to them and see whether there’s maybe one that you would like to take away today.
Are you ready? Number one, create enough peace inside yourself. Let’s stop. Slow down. Name what you feel and what you fear and what you need. This doesn’t mean you’re calm all the time, but it means creating enough space between a trigger and your response to make a peaceful choice. Number two. Tell the truth earlier. Don’t wait until resentment becomes anger and rage. Say the smaller, truer thing while the relationship may still hold it.
Try, something is not working for me and I would like us to look at it together. Early truth is often kinder than delayed explosion. Number three. Become curious before becoming certain. You might think you know, but, you know, you might have a fixed story in your mind, but ask yourself, what am I missing? What do I need to find out more about? What’s really going on with this person? What matters most to them?
Curiosity is not agreement, but it’s a great way of gathering better information before you choose your next move. Number four. separate the person from the behaviour and the problem. Yeah, again, another one that’s not easy, but be precise. And rather than saying, you never respect me, you could say, well, when I was interrupted, I couldn’t complete what I was saying. Something like that. So you’re not making it directly about the person, which always makes it a bit more confrontational and leads people into defensiveness.
Use this precision to document and seek support and to really understand what is happening. Number five. Okay. Here we go. Bring logic, data, humanity, and passion all together. Please don’t allow anyone to tell you that you’ve got to choose between evidence and emotion. Data can show you the pattern, but it is the lived experience can show you the cost. Logic can clarify the choices, but passion explains why it all matters, all right?
So use all four and then make a clear request. For example, what decision, commitment or next step are you asking for? Number six, build a circle before you need it, before. Peacemaking is rarely so low. Find the people who see what you see, the person who sees what you’ve missed or the person that understands the system. Seek your like-minded people and any specialist expertise that you don’t have. But be proactive, be doing this now, not when you need it.
Big mistake I see all the time. All right. So you want to be having that network of people you can call out to when you need to. Number seven, final one. All right. Know when to stay. when to pause and when to leave. Staying at the table can be very courageous when there’s good faith and enough safety for dialogue. Pausing can be wise when emotions are flooding the room. Leaving can be the strongest and the most difficult act when the pattern is dangerous or abusive.
Peace does not require access to you at any cost. So that’s the seven. Let me say them back. Number one, create enough peace inside yourself. Number two, tell the truth earlier. Number three, become curious before becoming certain. Number four, separate the person from the behaviour. Number five, bring logic, data, humanity and passion all together. Number six, build your circle before you need it. And number seven, know when to stay, when to pause and when to leave.

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Which one of those jumped out at you as something that you want to do or you need to do? So you know what? Oh, my dear one, all right? Don’t be scared. Try and tap into your inner courage here and your need for peace and freedom and liberation. I think you might be underestimating yourself sometimes, all right? I know that you’ve rebuilt before. You cared for others, survived disappointment, started again. And I know you found money when things looked impossible.
You know more about survival, adaptation and beginning again than perhaps you give yourself credit for, all right? I’m not romanticising financials or asking you to take any risks, but plan, gather, support, understand your rights and your options. Protect what needs to be protecting. You will find a way because you have found a way before. Peace is truth and justice and reconciliation and creating conditions in which you and others can really flourish.
My vision is unapologetically large. I want you and me and others like us to shape a world that’s more peaceful, more compassionate. and a just future. And if that’s idealistic and utopian, so be it. Please recognise that your everyday choices are connected to that future. You don’t need to solve all the world’s conflicts, but you do need to decide what your contribution will be. We are all inhabitants of this planet. Perhaps your contribution is starting small and it helps you build bridges to something

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even bigger than you. Make one move towards your fierce peace. Thank you. War and peace. What would real peace require, I wonder? It needs you. Your cool, calm, quiet, fierceness. And it begins closer than you think. Inside you. Inside your mind. Inside that big brain of yours. which is impacting all the things that you do. So stop editing yourself, alright? Ask yourself better questions, soothe yourself, start to have those boundaries, invite others to the table with you and thank you for listening.
Until next time, see you soon.

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