KEEP IT SIMPLE

I warn you — if you're looking for complicated, you've come to the wrong place. The Way of the Happy Woman heralds a return to the basics. There's an elegance to simplicity. It brings you to the heart of what really matters. Yet it contains a paradox as well. Being simple can be really difficult — at first. It hurts to change, to let go, and to trade in old, debilitating habits for new, more empowering ones. On the other hand, simplicity can be really easy. It calls you to strip away nonessentials to reveal who you truly are. There's something tremendously light and liberating about living from that place. So while you might feel you need to take many steps to lead the life of your dreams, a core part of you is already there.

You are health. You are happiness. These are your natural states. You already have the answers. You already have inside you everything you've ever wanted or looked for elsewhere. That's why you will find no elaborate rituals or convoluted dogma here. No shoulds or musts. No finish lines or prizes. Your unique process — and what you discover about yourself along the way — is the true reward. This process can get complex, however, since the essence of who you are often gets trampled on and covered over by your doubts, worries, and fears. It also gets denied every time you turn away from your inner wisdom, move too quickly through life, ignore your body, and cut yourself off from nature 's rhythms.

LIVING FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Rushing around, adhering to overflowing schedules, and listening to demands dictated by some outside authority, we ignore our inner wisdom, our innate rhythms, and our intimate connection to nature 's cycles. Instead of being slaves to others' demands, we need to start trusting and living from our own inner impulses. Otherwise, we'll never know how it feels to reside comfortably and confidently in our own skin, sovereign over ourselves.

Envision a woman in your life — past or present — who is at home in herself. How do you feel when she walks into the room? When she sits down next to you? When she speaks to you? Most likely she is not strikingly beautiful in the conventional sense, but her ease of being and the respect that she commands — simply by being authentically herself — make her glow with grace, elegance, and mystery. You too can feel at home. You too can be that woman.

Slowing down, listening, and doing less return us to our basic goodness, and only from there can we emerge stronger, brighter, and, well, happier. To truly survive and flourish as modern women, we need to start living from the inside out. For each time we fail to do so, we lead unfulfilled lives. And our hearts wither. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot.

TRY THIS

Make a list of all the things causing you stress right now. Include everything you can think of, big and small. Then, next to each item, write down how that particular stressful situation affects you. For example, if the stressor is "too many emails to answer," then next to it write, "anxiety, shortness of breath, pressure to respond." That's all you need to do — there's no need to find solutions right now. You'll discover plenty of those in the days to come. Simply by naming your sources of stress and how they affect you, you will find more relief and inner spaciousness.

Take Claire, for example. She's married, raising a three-year-old, building a business, seeing clients, and running her family's household. She often stays up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning to get her work done after her family has gone to sleep, only to wake up a few hours later to the cries of her little girl. Mentally foggy and physically exhausted, she 's too tired to exercise and instead turns to coffee and sugar to keep her going. Her hormones get out of whack, she gains weight, she feels ashamed of and disconnected from her body, and her mood swings intensify. All these things cause a riff in her marriage. She's stuck in an endless cycle of trying to do so much for others that she has no energy to take care of herself and each day grows more angry, depressed, depleted, and resentful. Sound familiar?

Like Claire, we can feel controlled by our minds and are often afraid of our feelings. We manipulate, coerce, and curse our bodies until we break down. For some women, this struggle looks extreme; for others it's a subtle inner battle of vague discontent. But it doesn't have to be this way. We can take our health and happiness into our own hands simply by remembering who we truly are — deeply intuitive, spiritual beings intimately connected to the rhythms and cycles of nature. And the first step is simply to look inside and welcome what you find there.

THE POWER OF JOURNALING

My journals have been some of my best friends during the past two decades. Stacks of them reside in my home, and each one chronicles major milestones in my life: my first love, my first heartbreak, my first year in college, dips into depressions, euphoric expansions, new homes, world travel, and so much more. Writing in my journal has been a crucial means of developing an intimate trust in my inner wisdom and an outlet to freely process uncensored emotional distress that otherwise I would have held captive in my body.

Even when you're not going through extreme life changes, journaling offers a useful way to examine the intersection between your inner and outer worlds daily. This process can't just happen mentally. A transformation occurs when you meet the page with your pen and your words flow. A wise witness emerges from within you — the one who can extract the insights and magic from whatever you're presently living through and help you to see how to apply them. Here resides an important ingredient in reclaiming your creativity. I found the courage to write this book only after doing Julia Cameron's twelve-week creativity recovery plan, as described in The Artist's Way, and committed to write at least three handwritten pages in my journal each day. When you journal, even if...