Feel like you’re just going through the motions lately? Wish your days had a little more wonder … a little more magic and meaning in them? Hey, it’s been a CRAZY few years — I think we all feel that way. And, to help, we have a guest post from Minneapolis-based artist Liv Lane to help us all find a little wonder in the every day.
By Liv Lane
The return to work and workout routines still leaves something missing in the equation. Awe is essential to overall wellness, and after a couple years of testing our patience and endurance, it’s a great time to work the muscles responsible for appreciating the magic and meaning in our lives. A recent study by Lifeway Research shows 57 percent of Americans wonder at least once a month how they can find more meaning and purpose in their lives; a full fifth say they grapple with this question every single day.
The good news is there are ways to instantly start experiencing more joy, connection and purpose – and they’re easier than you might expect! Of course, if you’re experiencing frequent anxiety or depression, professional support is critical. The three tactics below can do wonders for one’s outlook, but they can’t replace professional assessments and tools.
Ready to get started?
1. Start choosing beauty.
After a traumatic birth with my firstborn son 19 years ago, I was blindsided by postnatal PTSD and postpartum depression. Instead of being excited about motherhood, I felt joyless, terrified, and alone. It took lots of therapy and medicine, and a daily practice I call “choosing beauty,” to feel like me again.
One of the unsettling things for me during that time was that I could no longer easily access the angels that I’d heard and seen my whole life. Self-doubt and despair blocked my connection to the Other Side. Then, one day after a therapy session, as things were beginning to feel brighter and better for me, I was sitting at a traffic light and a huge rainbow appeared right over the intersection. I adore rainbows, and it felt like such a sweet sign that I was going to be okay.
That evening, I excitedly told my husband about the rainbow and how magical it felt. I’ll never forget what happened next. Standing in our family room, I suddenly heard the angels’ voices again – just long enough to hear them instruct me to start taking a photo of something beautiful every day for a year and write about it. That’s all I got – but I knew I had to follow that guidance!
I started a blog in 2006 to keep me accountable and carried a camera with me everywhere. I began noticing so much beauty that I’d totally missed before – from a ladybug keeping me company at the gas pump to my son’s toy cars lined up neatly to welcome me home from a business trip. Choosing to find and describe the beauty I found in each day – even on days when I didn’t feel like it – opened my eyes and truly healed my heart. And all these years later, I still lean into that practice frequently.
2. Activate your intuition.
We all have intuition that shows up uniquely for each of us – from suddenly getting a strong feeling about a situation to thinking of an old acquaintance who suddenly calls out of the blue. It is an incredibly powerful tool — an inner compass that can help guide our choices and enhance our faith – when we know how to use it and trust it.
In my new collection of WingTips angelic art & guidance, there’s a set devoted to Finding Magic & Meaning. I transcribed the angels’ guidance for each art print, including one on intuition. For that piece, the angels said, “Your intuition is like a flower. It flourishes when you pay attention to it and ensure it gets enough light.”
I love the reminder that our intuition isn’t just an automatic superpower we can take for granted, but something we must lovingly tend to. For instance, if spotting an interesting object or natural wonder immediately feels like a sign from above – like that rainbow I saw after my therapy session – we get to trust that first inkling and not second-guess ourselves. If we feel inexplicably inspired to reach out to someone or take a different route home, we get to follow those nudges and trust there’s a reason for it.
On the back of the intuition art print, the angels further describe how to enhance this inner wisdom, including this: “Your ‘gut’ is the meeting place of grace, guidance and innate knowing. To access its wisdom, you must climb out of the shadows of your fears, opinions and assumptions, and trust the flashes of information that seem to come out of the blue and instantly feel true.”
The more you do this, the easier it becomes to trust this superpower and let it enrich your life.
3. Tell people about it.
That’s right. As you start choosing beauty each day and trusting your intuition more, tell people about it! We need to normalize talking freely about magic and meaning because it’s totally normal!
According to Pew Research, most Americans mix traditional faith with beliefs in things like psychics, reincarnation and a spiritual energy found in nature (from trees to crystals). In fact, 72 percent of Americans believe in angels – and yet I spent years hiding my relationship with them, worried people would think I was nuts.
The braver I got about sharing the magic and meaning in my life, from blogging about choosing beauty to sharing spiritual experiences with colleagues, I was shocked how many people were hungry to talk about it all. So many people are also hiding their own experiences, gifts and practices; they just needed to know they were not alone in order to start opening up.
Your life holds so much magic and meaning, just waiting to be uncovered. I hope you’ll start inviting it in by choosing beauty, honoring your intuition and shouting it from the rooftops. –Liv Lane
Liv Lane has seen and heard angels all her life. But she hid this gift from most as she built a successful communications career, nervous she’d be ostracized for revealing her unique abilities. But by her early 30s, a series of life-changing events convinced her she was meant to share the angels’ light and love to help and inspire others. Today, Liv paints artwork with their guidance and transcribes their wisdom from her studio near Minneapolis. You can find her work at LivLane.com and follow her and the angels on Instagram (@LivLane).
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