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Peace
begins with me Workshop participants discuss building peace from the individual to the community People tend to think about violence as something that is happening out there to someone else, says Julie Dotsch, diversity consultant. She facilitated a workshop called Peace Begins With Me yesterday, in which she encouraged participants to look at the violence happening right now within themselves and in their own lives, and to think about how to bring peace into those areas first and foremost. "If one person becomes peaceful in their own lives and in their own communities, it's amazing what can happen," says Julie. "The power of one is amazing. You don't know the power you have to create the environment you want." For the workshop, Julie led the group participants in a discussion about what destroys peace within themselves, within their families, and within their communities, and how to go about eliminating these 'peace-destroyers.' The biggest killer of personal peace is low self-esteem, she says. "Self-hatred is a form of violence," she adds. "If you want to work on anything to bring in a more peaceful world, work on loving and forgiving yourself." Participants discussed some of the other personal peace destroyers and how to go about diffusing them. The group then identified a number of factors that can destroy peace within the family, including different value systems, lack of respect, competition and job stress, to name a few. Community peace-destroyers can include isolation, poverty, territorialism, greed, gossiping, closed circles, and refusal to co-operate. "We all have the capacity to build peace in our own lives," Julie concludes, listing some of the practical things that can be done to help achieve that, including finding support, finding the time for quiet reflection, or writing positive notes to oneself. "We can all make a commitment that to do one thing in our personal lives to make our world better." Glennamae Lawton, a workshop participant, says she left the discussion feeling a greater sense of responsibility about her role in addressing the lack of peace in her current family situation. "I also see I need to work on self-love a whole bunch," she says.
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