Do you feel like you’re going through the motions lately? Do you wish your days had a little more wonder… a little more magic and meaning to 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 a Minneapolis-based artist. Liv Lane to help us all find a little wonder in everyday life.
By Liv Lane
The return to work and exercise routines still leaves something missing from the equation. Wonder is essential to overall well-being, and after a couple of years of testing our patience and endurance, it’s a good time to work the muscles responsible for appreciating the magic and meaning of our lives. A recent study from Lifeway Research shows that 57 percent of Americans ask themselves at least once a month how they can find more meaning and purpose in their lives; One-fifth say they face this issue every day.
The good news is that there are ways to instantly start experiencing more joy, connection, and purpose—and they’re easier than you imagine! Of course, if you frequently experience anxiety or depression, professional support is essential. The following three tactics can do wonders for your outlook, but they can’t replace professional assessments and tools.
Ready to start?
1. Start choosing beauty.
After a traumatic birth with my first-born son 19 years ago, PTSD and postpartum depression blindsided me. Instead of being excited about motherhood, I felt sad, terrified, and alone. It took a lot of therapy and medicine, and a daily practice I call “choosing beauty,” to feel like myself again.
One of the disturbing things for me during that time was that I could no longer easily access the angels I had heard and seen all my life. Doubt and despair blocked my connection to the Other Side. Then one day after a therapy session, when things were starting to feel brighter and better for me, I was sitting at a traffic light and a huge rainbow appeared right over the intersection. I love rainbows and it seemed like such a sweet sign that it was going to be okay.
That night, I excitedly told my husband about the rainbow and how magical it felt. I will never forget what happened next. Standing in our family room, I suddenly heard the angels’ voices again, long enough to hear them tell me to start taking a photo of something beautiful every day for a year and writing about it. That’s all I have – but I knew I had to follow that guide!
I started a blog in 2006 to keep myself accountable and carried a camera everywhere. I began to notice so much beauty that I had completely missed before: from a ladybug keeping me company at the gas pump to my son’s toy cars neatly lined up to welcome me home from a business trip. Choosing to find and describe the beauty I found in each day, even on the days 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 an intuition that manifests itself uniquely in each of us: from suddenly having a strong feeling about a situation to thinking about an old acquaintance who suddenly calls out of the blue. It is an incredibly powerful tool, an inner compass that can help guide our decisions and improve our faith, when we know how to use it and trust it.
In my new WingTips angel art and guide collection, there is a set dedicated to Finding magic and meaning. I transcribed the angels’ guidance for each art print, including one about intuition. For that piece, the angels said, “Your intuition is like a flower. It blooms when you pay attention to it and make sure it gets enough light.”
I love to remember that our intuition is not just an automatic superpower that we can take for granted, but something we must lovingly attend to. For example, 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 can trust that first clue and not doubt ourselves. If we feel inexplicably inspired to reach out to someone or take a different route home, we can follow those nudges and trust that there is a reason for it.
On the back of the intuition art print, the angels describe in more detail how to enhance this inner wisdom, including this: “Your ‘instinct’ is the meeting place of grace, guidance, and innate knowledge. To access its wisdom, you must step out of the shadows of your fears, opinions and assumptions, and trust in the flashes of information that seem to come from nowhere and instantly feel true.”
The more you do this, the easier it will be to trust this superpower and let it enrich your life.
3. Tell people.
That’s how it is. As you start choosing beauty every day and trusting your intuition more, tell people! 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, fearing people would think I was crazy.
The braver I became about sharing the magic and meaning of my life, from blogging about choosing beauty to sharing spiritual experiences with colleagues, I was surprised how many people were hungry to talk about it all. Many people also hide their own experiences, gifts, and practices; They just needed to know they weren’t alone so they could start opening up.
Your life holds so much magic and meaning, waiting to be discovered. I hope you begin to invite it by choosing beauty, honoring your intuition and shouting it from the rooftops. –Liv Lane
Liv Lane has seen and heard angels her entire life. But she hid this gift from most of her as she built a successful career in communications, fearing being ostracized for revealing her unique abilities. But when she was in her early 30s, a series of life-changing events convinced her that she must share the light and love of angels to help and inspire others. Today, Liv paints artwork with her guidance and transcribes her wisdom from her studio near Minneapolis. You can find her work at LivLane.com and follow her and the angels on Instagram. (@LivLane).
