Protecting Your Inner Peace is a step-by-step guide on how to maintain peace within yourself during challenging times. Author J. Michael Goulding blends his twenty-five years of experience in mental health crisis intervention with his martial arts background. Goulding incorporates the Aikido concepts (The Japanese Art of Peace) into practical steps for maintaining peaceful verbal interactions with people while also meeting your needs. Like Aikido, you do not have to harm your opponent in order to protect yourself. There are verbal ways to maintain your position without having to hurt the feelings of others. Goulding outlines these steps in an easy to use technique that everyone can quickly apply to their lives. In today's stressful times, many people are finding a greater need to protect the inner peace they are given at birth. Many of us often find ourselves disconnected from our highest sense of self, however we perceive it to be, by allowing draining forces into our lives. It is easy to protect ourselves from the pushy person we may never see again, but how do we protect ourselves from family, clients and people in the workplace? Protecting Your Inner Peace offers easy solutions to real life problems and teaches us to make peace with the most powerful opponent of all, ourselves. This book offers solutions by employing the principles from the martial arts form of Aikido (Japanese art of peace) and research-based psychological techniques. Regardless of your goals or relationship aspirations Protecting Your Inner Peace conveys the message that peace is what you ultimately seek and gives you the tools to help you make your life a more peaceful one. Protecting Your Inner Peace is a fusion of stress management, anger management, assertiveness training, and time management. This book helps you to: *Sort out your distractions and focus on the life that is relevant to reaching your goals. Much of our culture is focused on adding as much as you can to your life. You will learn to prioritize, and learn the techniques to drop the extra baggage that is weighing you down. *Protect yourself from others who are trying to take away your time and resources. Learn to honestly protect your boundaries with the people that you see every day while still maintaining positive relationships with them. *Get your message past another person's defenses so you are actually heard. Many times we know what to say, and we mean the best for everyone involved. However, often times our message may not be heard. You will learn the approach to prepare your listener to be open to your message as you deliver your message. *Form alliances with others so you can strengthen your social network. By applying a simple test to your relationships, you will learn how to screen out the people who will be helpful and supportive to your cause from the people who will work against you. *See things as they are so you do not have to waste any energy on misperceptions. Many times we add meaning to neutral messages we receive from others. If we add too positive a meaning, then we may end up in dangerous situations. If we add too negative a meaning to our situations, then we push positive people away from us. Protecting Your Inner Peace promotes the idea that peace is what you ultimately seek and gives you the tools to help you make your life a more peaceful one.