This weekend I purchased Gretchen Rubin’s newest book,  Happier at Home, which is a follow up to her fun and insightful book, The Happiness Project.  Whether the book is as enjoyable or not remains to be seen but a couple of timely reminders have already jumped off the page and landed on my face.  Rubin writes about how increasing feelings of happiness in the moment doesn’t always make us happir overall necessarily.  She shared that there are three elements to happiness, feeling good, feeling right and feeling happy.  She states “feeling right equals acceptance of sometimes feeling bad.”  Um, seems Ms. Rubin has been speaking to my acupuncturist lately:)  She goes on to state that we are happiest when we are growing.  This is true.  I haven’t necessarily been feeling great lately but I have been feeling like I am growing and that in and of itself feels great.  Growing pains aside, I can feel that the ground is being cleared for something new and exciting.  I have been receiving messages from the Universe about what excites me and what drags me down.  I am learning what experiences are uplifting and what are not.  These days have been some of the most enlightening.  This is most likely due to the fact that I am not fighting the muck as much.  Personal growth is not always comfortable but even in its moments of being uncomfortable it becomes exciting as well.  As we chat, I am hearing myself talk and I have to say what I am describing is that the muck is beginning to get less uncomfortable over time.  Wow, weird but true.   We evolve over time when we allow ourselves to go on the ride.  In our last chat Who the Heck Am I anyway?? we discussed how to we find out who we are at the core.  I was sharing that we are right here, right now, in our breath and our body. I will add we also sometimes find ourselves through the muck.  When we allow ourselves to just be even in the times that don’t feel so good we eventually come through to the other side.  The lotus begins to grow allowing us to blossom up from the mud.

The next step in playing in the mud is actually playing and not just stomping our feet around in the mud. Today brought warm weather and fresh air to the otherwise cold month of January.  Today was a day to play and that I did.  The moon is building towards full in the sign of Cancer this week.  It is said to be a moon that brings about insight and enlightenment to relationships.  This energy will illuminate the positive aspects in healthy relationships and the negative in not so healthy ones. How have you been feeling during this time?  Are your relationships illuminating, intensifying and becoming more fulfilling?  I have been noticing this since the beginning of the weekend and the carpet ride continues throughout the week.  How can you sit within the muck that is coming up long enough to allow it to transform into beauty?  How might you find playing in the muck playful?

Enjoy this time as the moon builds to get clear about what you want, where you want to head and who you want along for the ride!

Cheers!