The Peace Building Process™

Clear the space for peace — and let love, joy, and play move in.

Awareness · Begin

A fresh start, free of the clutter

Peace is rarely something we add. It is what remains when the things quietly stealing it are named and cleared. In this process you will list your Peace Stealers, sort them, and weigh what each one costs you. Then you choose the order to clear them in. For each one, you decide whether to resolve it, eliminate it, or, when it isn’t fully in your control, minimize its effect on you and release the rest.

You finish with a Peace Plan in three parts:

Power Quarter — Valued Actions and activities to schedule across the next three months.
MindScaping — simple daily practices that keep the space clear.
Therapy — the deeper items to work through with your therapist.

Anything urgent comes first, in a Stop & Stabilize step at the top of the plan.

Your name — optional

Before you begin. You do not need to write details of anything private or with legal exposure — a few words (“the situation at work”) is enough. The specifics can wait for session.

If anything here involves a risk of harm to yourself or someone else, please pause and contact your therapist now, or call or text 988 (U.S.) — or 911 in an emergency.

Why it works — the research behind the process

Open loops drain attention. Unfinished goals keep intruding on the mind — and making a specific plan quiets them, even before the task is done (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2011). If-then plans show a medium-to-large effect on follow-through across 94 studies (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006).

Stress adds up. Many small unresolved demands accumulate into allostatic load (McEwen, 1998). Clearing them lowers the load; positive emotions then widen thinking and build lasting resources (Fredrickson, 2001).

Small wins build momentum. People who closed small debts first were more likely to clear all of them (Gal & McShane, 2012); visible progress sustains motivation (Amabile & Kramer, 2011).

Match the response to control. Solving what you can change and accepting what you can’t — coping flexibility — predicts better adjustment (Cheng, Lau & Chan, 2014).

Surroundings matter. People who described their homes as cluttered showed flatter daily cortisol patterns and more depressed mood (Saxbe & Repetti, 2010).

Secrets weigh on the mind. How often the mind returns to a secret predicts lower well-being (Slepian, Chun & Mason, 2017).

Guilt can guide; shame hides. Guilt tends to motivate repair, while shame drives hiding and defensiveness (Tangney, Stuewig & Mashek, 2007). Forgiveness work reliably reduces resentment (Wade et al., 2014).

Safety comes first. Like DBT’s target hierarchy (Linehan, 2015), anything harmful and escalating is addressed before quality-of-life work.

An organizing map. The nine Clearing Types follow Robert Dilts’ logical levels, from environment up to identity — a practical NLP map rather than a tested model.

Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The progress principle. Harvard Business Review Press.

Cheng, C., Lau, H. B., & Chan, M. S. (2014). Coping flexibility and psychological adjustment to stressful life changes: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1582–1607.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218–226.

Gal, D., & McShane, B. B. (2012). Can small victories help win the war? Evidence from consumer debt management. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(4), 487–501.

Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.

Jampolsky, G. G. (1979). Love is letting go of fear. Celestial Arts.

Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(4), 667–683.

McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179.

Saxbe, D. E., & Repetti, R. (2010). No place like home: Home tours correlate with daily patterns of mood and cortisol. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(1), 71–81.

Slepian, M. L., Chun, J. S., & Mason, M. F. (2017). The experience of secrecy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(1), 1–33.

Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345–372.

Wade, N. G., Hoyt, W. T., Kidwell, J. E. M., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2014). Efficacy of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 82(1), 154–170.

Private by design — your entries stay on this device and are never sent anywhere. On a shared device, use “Clear everything” on your Peace Plan when you finish.