3 Ways to Infuse Your Days With Magic and Meaning
Feeling like you’re going through the motions lately? Do you 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 out, we’ve got a guest post from the 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 general well-being, and after a couple of years of testing our patience and stamina, it’s a good time to work the muscles responsible for appreciating the magic and meaning in our lives. A recent Lifeway Research study shows that 57 percent of Americans ask themselves at least once a month how they can find more meaning and purpose in their lives; a fifth say they deal with this question 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 might expect! Of course, if you frequently experience anxiety or depression, professional support is essential. The three tactics below can do wonders for one’s perspective, but they cannot replace professional assessments and tools.
Ready to start?
1. Start choosing beauty.
After a traumatic birth with my firstborn son 19 years ago, I was struck by postpartum PTSD and postpartum depression. Instead of being excited about motherhood, I felt joyless, 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 unsettling things for me during that time was that I could no longer easily access the angels that 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 felt like a sweet sign that I 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 voices of the angels again, enough to hear them directing me to start taking a picture of something beautiful every day for a year and writing about it. That’s all I got, but I knew I had to follow that guide!
I started a blog in 2006 to keep myself accountable and I carried a camera with me 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 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 an intuition that plays out uniquely to each of us, from suddenly having a strong feeling about a situation to thinking about an old acquaintance suddenly calling out of the blue. It’s an incredibly powerful tool, an internal compass that can help guide our choices and improve our faith, when we know how to use it and trust it.
In my new collection of WingTips angelic art and guidance, there is a set dedicated to Find magic and meaning. I transcribed angel 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 make sure it gets enough light.”
I love the reminder that our intuition is not just an automatic superpower that we can take for granted, but something to which we must lovingly attend. For example, if spotting an interesting object or natural wonder immediately feels like a cue from above, like the rainbow I saw after my therapy session, we can trust that first clue and not question ourselves. If we feel inexplicably inspired to contact someone or take a different route home, we can follow those nudges and trust that there is a reason for it.
On the reverse side of the Intuition artist print, the angels describe in more detail how to enhance this inner wisdom, including this: “Your ‘gut’ is the meeting place of grace, guidance, and innate knowledge. To access your wisdom, you must step out of the shadows of your fears, opinions, and assumptions, and trust the flashes of information that seem to come out of 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 about it.
That’s how it is. As you start choosing beauty every 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 that people would think I was crazy.
The more courageous I became in sharing the magic and meaning of my life, from blogging about choosing beauty to sharing spiritual experiences with colleagues, I was amazed at how many people were hungry to talk about it all. Many people are also hiding their own experiences, gifts, and practices; they just needed to know they weren’t alone to start opening up.
Your life has so much magic and meaning, just waiting to be discovered. I hope you start inviting it 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 of herself as she built a successful career in communications, nervous that she would be ostracized for revealing her unique abilities. But when she was in her early 30s, a series of life-changing events convinced her that she was destined to share the light and love of angels to help and inspire others. Today, Liv paints works of art 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).
