Life is messy.

Last night my 16-year old twin boys had been arguing for a solid 20 minutes. They were in what Jill calls 'flipped lid'. The prefrontal cortex is shut down Their emotional brains were in charge and there was no reasoning with them.

The best I could do was to eventually get one of them to go out in the garage where my husband was working on something while the other one stayed inside.

I remember the days where I could pick one of them up and give them some space from each other but it’s pretty hard to physically separate them when they are 6'2" tall.

It was feeling pretty messy here last night; not a calm slow evening that was enjoyable and definitely not conducive to winding down from a full day.

Which brings me to an invitation for you to check in with yourself to see how comfortable you are with the messiness in your life.

I've become more comfortable over the years with the mess, in part because I've realized, often there isn't an alternative. No matter how hard I may try to change it or create something different, the situation stays messy. Messy in my parenting, messy in my marriage, messy in my friendships…in my work, in my spiritual life, in my financial life, in my relationship to food, body and health…

While I do believe in setting goals and working towards them, I've learned to let go of my attachment to a specific result or outcome; to my attachment that the result or outcome has to be exactly what I want it to be or that the process will unfold smoothly.

I've learned that when I open up to being more comfortable with the messiness in my life, often the results can be even better than I had been wanting. Not always, but often.

Part of my practice though has been and continues to be to learn how to be IN the mess AND be intentional about how to respond to it. And, to also open my eyes, mind and heart so that I actually can see the other gifts for me to receive in the midst of it all.

We often don't feel comfortable being in the mess, or being 'in the process of'. We want the end result and we want it the way we want it, when we want it. And, that is often what gets in our way of learning more about what we truly need.

Giving yourself the space to experience and explore the messiness in your life - to be okay with being 'in the process of' - is exactly what allows you to better know what you truly need and want in your life.

As I was finishing the post last night, my guy who had gone out in the garage and spent a few minutes yelling - which I heard through the closed door - ended up coming in and sitting across from me smiling while working with his dad to set-up a spreadsheet of college he's interested in. AND, was talking about making sure they included his brother's top choices in there too.

Meanwhile, my other guy came downstairs, went outside in the dark and was swinging a plastic bat against the play structure they used to climb on together for hours.

They were moving through their own intense messiness and are on the other side of it.

And, I seriously wanted to go eat chocolate while they were yelling at each other. Chose not to. This time. xo Angelle

P.S. I had my guys read this before sending it because I wanted to respect that this was part of their story. Jacob told me it was “a very good post” and Lucas said it was a “powerful post - send it.” Another gift I hadn’t expected.