Which one better paints a peaceful picture for you: "she sat peacefully" or "she whistled, lying on the grass in the sun?"
Who is it for?
You don't have to be a novel writer to think about showing and not telling. We all tell/write anecdotes all the time. Instead of using the same emotional cues, you can create a more powerful and complete picture of your characters by using physical signals or internal signs of emotions.
Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman created Emotion Thesaurus and a library of resources to help writers do exactly that:
https://onestopforwriters.com/
How?
By consulting the Thesaurus, you can evoke the sense of a shared experience for the reader. Read the below. Do they take you to a peaceful state or environment you experienced before?
She wanted to spend more time in nature.
He didn't feel he needed to fill the silence when he was with her.
She leaned back with her arm hooked over the back of a chair.
Other resources on the website include:
Character Builder
Scene Maps
Idea Generator
World Building, and more
You can learn more about Puglisi and Ackerman's work in Mark Dawson and James Blatch's Self Publishing Formula podcast episode: