The Peace Decision Filter
One gut-check question that replaces every pros-and-cons list: does this invite peace?
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Lemieux's answer to profiting in life is to make peace the priority and, more concretely, the decision-maker. Every decision runs through one question: is this going to invite peace into my life, or is it going to prevent me from feeling peace? She defines peace as the internal feeling of being in alignment with your life and your higher power — something no outside source can supply. Peace, in her framing, feels like freedom, so the practical work is identifying the chains that remove it: job, social media, comparison, toxic relationships, and coping habits that have become identity. The claimed payoff is not only better decisions but faster ones.
Origin
Developed across Lemieux's years of rebuilding after loss, when she noticed that external achievements — awards, financial goals, company growth — never delivered the feeling she expected, and that peace was the only thing that consistently did.
Core principles
- 01Peace cannot be bought, mimicked, or given to you by another person — it is internal alignment.
- 02Peace feels like freedom; anything that chains you costs you peace.
- 03A single filter makes decisions faster and better than multi-criteria deliberation.
- 04Boundaries and letting go are the two main levers that invite peace in.
- 05Coping habits that once served you become chains when they outlive their purpose.
How to run it
- 1
Define your peace
Articulate what peace actually feels like to you — for Lemieux it is alignment with her life and her higher power, and it feels like freedom.
Watch out Peace as a filter fails if 'peace' is really code for avoiding hard things — see the Fear Reframe.
- 2
Inventory your chains
Name what currently prevents peace: the job, social media, comparison, toxic relationships, or habits you can't break because they were once how you coped.
Pro tip Old coping habits are the hardest chains to spot because they feel like who you are.
- 3
Run every decision through the filter
Ask of each decision: is this going to invite peace in my life, or prevent me from feeling peace? Take the answer as the decision.
Pro tip The speed gain is the point — a single gut-check resolves decisions that criteria lists cannot.
- 4
Act with boundaries and release
Implement the answer through boundaries (protecting peace) or by letting go of what chains you.
In the wild
Lemieux replaced her decision process across business, family, and personal life with a single gut check on whether the option invites peace or prevents it.
→ She reports it changed her life, her business, and her family, and that it produces faster decisions that support her better.
Common mistakes
Treating peace as purchasable
Peace can't be bought, mimicked, or handed to you by someone else. Decisions aimed at acquiring peace externally will keep failing the filter.
Keeping coping habits past their usefulness
Habits that helped you survive a hard season become chains once they stop serving you, but they feel like identity, so they go unexamined.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders drowning in optionality who want one durable decision criterion across every domain.
Not ideal for
Decisions requiring rigorous quantitative analysis, or people whose sense of 'peace' currently equals avoidance.
From the transcript
“I base every decision off of is this going to invite peace in my life or is it going to be something that prevents me…”
“Peace to me feels a lot like freedom. And there's a lot of things that can kind of chain us that make us lose it.”
“You can make faster decisions and decisions that support you more based off of that answer of doing the gut check of is this going…”
From the episode
Ashley Lemieux: How Entrepreneurs Can Overcome Loss, Heal, and Build a Thriving Business
Ashley Lemieux