On February 11, 2026, I started the daily morning practice of writing this phrase: ‘Today will be my peaceful day.’
I was inspired to do so after hearing the advice shared by the ‘2025-2026 Walk for Peace’ lead monk.
During the 2,500-mile silent walk from Texas to Washington, D.C., Venerable Bhikkhu Paññākāra encouraged people to start each morning by writing down, reading, and saying the phrase out loud as a conscious daily intention rather than a passive wish.
I figured there was no harm in doing so, and I was curious of what would come from it.
As I entered the kitchen and before my first sip of coffee, I would pull open the counter draw and pull out the same piece of scrap paper and write, “Today will be my peaceful day.” It wasn’t that my days were ‘not peaceful’. For the most part, I would have said that my days were generally peaceful.
However, the practice of doing this every morning did something to me. I did not notice it right away. There wasn’t one big ah-ha moment where I was finally said, “Yeah, I’m at peace, now.”
I just started to notice that throughout the day when tensions or aggravating thoughts popped into my head, the phrase would enter my mind without even giving it permission to do.
This one small daily practice started adding a blanket of comfort over thoughts or conversations that stirred up negative energies. Negative energies that were hanging around, unnoticed at the bottom of my mind.
The act of thinking the phrase, writing the phrase, seeing the phrase, and reading the phrase out loud was a simple short mindful meditation that started to resonate with me and is still developing.
When we take our thoughts and handwrite them, we light up internal and external senses.
When we think of a phrase, we create mental imagery. This is our internal representation of the auditory and visual sense. Your inner senses can hear and see the words before you write them.
When we write a phrase, we create physical movement and a visible record of our thoughts. Proprioception (physical position), kinesthetic (movement) sense, touch (tactile sense), and visual sense, when combined, creates the self-driven action.
When we read a phrase, we decode visual symbols into meaningful language. Your eyes track the text, spacing, shapes, letters, and punctuation while your internal auditory sense hears the words inside your head.
When we vocalize a phrase, we create a highly coordinated motor and sensory feedback loop. Proprioception (physical position) and kinesthetic (movement) sense feel the movement and placement of your vocal cords, tongue, lips, and jaw to shape the correct sounds. Hearing (auditory sense) and/or listening to your own voice creates an immediate feedback loop so your brain can adjust your volume, pitch, and pronunciation in real time. Touch (tactile sense) allows us to feel the air pressure changes and the physical contact between your lips, teeth, and tongue as you articulate consonants of each word.
I still practice this simple mindful meditation and although I don’t write it on that scrap paper that was kept in my kitchen counter, I have added it to my morning prayers and to the first line of my daily journal entry.
So many times, we allow our mind to process thoughts on its own without making a conscious decision to see if these thoughts align to our Purpose, our Values, our Principles, our Mission, or our Vision.
We may be too busy to consider that such a small act can make a difference,
but it can. I tried it and it works.
Maybe you like this phrase and want to try it. Maybe you don’t like this phrase and think this is a waste of a few precious seconds of your day. And that’s okay.
But, are there any traits or characteristics that you admire in others that you wished that you had or wished that you were better portraying. If there are any, then you might benefit in using this practice over the next few months to see if your thoughts and responses to yourself and others start to move in a direction that supports your mental peace.