This past week has been a blur. Last Wednesday, I received some wonderful, life-changing news that I promise to share just as soon as I am able to. And I spent several days floating around in a happiness balloon.

At first, I was filled with complete gratitude and found myself feeling a lightness that I hadn’t felt in a very long time. My insides were smiling and doing cartwheels and were absolutely elated. It took me a few days for the bigness of it to sink in – to not feel like I was living a dream but to remind myself that this was real.

Feeling this increased joy was wonderful. I felt free and validated and at peace. I felt happy. I couldn’t get myself to do anything other than bask in this moment – this place where everything seemed to align and come together for my highest good. And so I gave myself permission for several days to step away from the daily routine and just be in this new space.

What I found, though, was that a part of me kept trying to bring me back down to “reality.” A part of me wasn’t comfortable in this happy space and was doing its best to ground me in what I knew – what I was used to. So I heard all sorts of voices in my head worrying that maybe it wasn’t all going to work out the way I hoped it would. Or maybe something would happen and it would all be taken away. I squashed these naysaying thoughts as quickly as I could and continued redirecting myself back to the celebration.

Then they started appearing in my dreams:

In the first dream, Dan and I had gone on a wonderful road trip and stopped at a friend’s house on the way home. We had just seen some amazing sites and experienced such joy together. But from the moment we walked in, it was clear that our friend didn’t want us there. We were packing up the car and getting to ready to go home when I heard him talking on the phone with his friend – not knowing that I was listening. He said, “They just think that everything will come easy to them – that it will just flow. They’re just weird.”

In the second dream, I was taking a class with Bob Proctor, and he went through my notes to find what underlying belief may be holding me back in any way. I had written “Sounds suspicious,” which he circled in red and said that this was the one. Not fully trusting and thinking that if things seemed too good to be true, they probably were.

Clearly, I have some deep-seated beliefs that want to protect me from getting hurt – feeling that if things just flow easily and lovingly that there must somehow be a catch. And thinking that if I am no longer struggling in some way, that there must be something wrong – that it can’t be real.

Yesterday, I woke up with a sore throat and felt like I was coming down with something. So it seemed that my body was also getting on board the “let’s bring her back to reality” train – wanting me to go back to the known.

But here’s the thing: I so appreciate each part of my psyche and mind and body and heart wanting to keep me safe. I know that they are all coming from such a good place and just want to keep me from getting hurt. I know that none of these pieces of me are doing this maliciously, but they certainly aren’t helping.

Yes, it’s true that this place of struggle and uncertainty and mistrust are comfortable for me. They are normal for me. But I want to create a new normal. I want to raise the bar on my day-to-day existence. I want to embrace happiness and ease and flow and possibility. I want the joy that I felt over the past few days to be the norm. I want the freedom and lightness to be the routine.

And so I’m going to stay conscious of these negative thoughts and do my best to lovingly redirect them just as soon as they come up. I keep hearing from the universe and my soul that it’s time to soar – that it’s time for a new normal, a new reality. And I’m certainly not going to get in my own way of fully experiencing that. Not after I’ve seen the light and lived in the light – it’s just too wonderful of a space to exist in to not want to be there as much as possible.

If you’re also feeling your way around this new normal, I hope that you’ll choose to stay here, too. That way we can be here together.

Hugs,