Joy
Our focus this week — Aug 20-26: “Colors”
Today’s MotD: Joy. We’re encouraged to allow ourselves to feel all the feels. We don’t have to stay in any of them, just allow them to be there when they show up. From there we can consciously determine what to do about them. For instance, we can also opt to change them.
We’re reminded to take moments throughout our day to ask ourselves: what am I feeling right now ? For me, I’m feeling a little bit of urgency, a hint of despondency, some hope, and some excitement…all of which, for me, depends on what I’m thinking about.
The bit of urgency is tied to the writing of this blog post. With anything I do, my habit (which I would love to break) is to do it with urgency…as if I’m doing something I shouldn’t and “someone” is telling me to “hurry up before mom comes home.” Crazy, right ? Definitely coming from some old, sticky part of my psyche. My remedy, or re-framing for this is to remind myself to be present, just stop and be in the moment…everything is okay. I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m safe.
The despondency, of late—especially within the last 6 months or so, is just a general overall feeling I’m picking up from everywhere, with all the tyranny, pain, and suffering going on throughout the world. My remedy for that is to remind myself to focus on doing what I love to do and help anyone/everyone I can by doing what I love. (Actually, we’re all encouraged to do this).
The hope is because of my appointment with my life coach later this morning. She’s a breath of fresh air for me and helps me process what’s going on in my life right now and keeping me focused on what I’m wanting to create for myself.
The excitement is about a couple of projects I’m working on right now with one big, overall project coming up for 2026. More about that in a future post.
So where does “joy” come in ? Isn’t this post supposed to be about joy ? Yes, it is…I’m just taking the scenic route to get there. We’re being reminded that our thoughts have the ability to affect our emotions (in general, there’s more to it than that but for the purposes of this post, that’s what I’m going with). If we want to feel joy…we can start with changing our thoughts to ones that evoke joy. And of course, we can DO what brings us joy as well.
For instance, just thinking about having a delicious dinner out with dear friends brings me to joy, thinking about hugging my husband or our greyhound Faé brings me to joy, thinking about all the art supplies I have in my studio to play with brings me to joy, thinking about going to coast for the day can bring me to joy. And of course, doing all of those things brings me to even greater amounts of joy.
How about you ? What are you feeling right now ? What are you doing or thinking about right now ? How would you like to feel right now ? What thoughts or actions bring you to joy ?
BTW…Here’s the before…the front and back view of today’s puzzle piece and the pretty ceramic box that holds all my numbers from which I randomly choose each day’s puzzle piece number:
Peace & Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
Creating Mandalas 🔆 Awakening Inner Harmony
ABOUT THE 2025 Mandalas of the Day
Throughout the year, I’ll be building one large (48”x48”) Tibetan-styled Mandala one piece at a time…one puzzle piece at a time, that is. The mandala design and the reversed puzzle side were printed on artist-quality watercolor paper. The forward facing puzzle side was printed on a 48”x48” wood panel.
Each day, at random, I’ll be painting in watercolors one of the 365 watercolor puzzle pieces, that by the end of the year will become Archangel Mandala #4. Read more about the Archangel Series. The word/message for each piece will be inspired by Melody Beattie’s book “52 Weeks of Conscious Contact”.
Ultimately, the message of this mandala is about how we are all uniquely part of the one.
Mandala of the Day 