Each year, our birthday’s roll around and it seems as we get older, the less and less we want to celebrate them. I’m not sure if this is a societal or a personal thing but I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t want to celebrate their birthdays. I am very guilty of this too. Since my oldest daughter was born on my 30th birthday, I’ve given up my day so that she would get most of the attention. Birthdays are a marker in our lives and a great time to assess and reevaluate where we are and where we want to be.

But we don’t need to wait for birthdays to celebrate our lives. It seems like we’ve gotten so busy in life, we’ve forgotten to pause and acknowledge our progress and our accomplishments. Why is it so hard to remember to celebrate the little things in life too? I think because we are not conditioned to do this, it simply never becomes a part of our daily lives.

This leads us to think about how we can raise our personal level of awareness of how we are living and how we can make changes. It takes 21 days to form a habit. That’s nothing in the scope of our lifetimes. When we choose to live consciously, we can add celebrations to our life very easily. Celebration and appreciation are closely linked because they both increase our energy levels quickly by making us feel good.

When you condition your mind to look for the things to celebrate in life, guess what happens? MORE great things! I truly admire the company, Mind Valley, because they live each day by searching for what is awesome and they celebrate joy with each other. It’s great to see such a great example of how you can celebrate and find joy in the workplace too. It’s a business model that needs to spread like wildfire.

The world definitely needs more joy and celebration in it…and it’s up to each and every one of us to find it and nurture it in our own lives. Because when we do, we’ll be sharing the joy and awesomeness that is an intrinsic part of who we really are! How can you celebrate your life today?

Have you ever had a time in your life when things just went exactly as you wanted them to? Like nothing could go wrong and everything was happening almost magically? And then who hasn’t had those times when things just didn’t come together and it seemed like there wasn’t anything that you could do right?

I know I’ve experienced both of these different scenarios several times in my life. And it’s only natural to want that first state when things were going your way. We use many expressions to describe that same state of being. For athletes, they call it “being in the zone”—you make that goal, dunk that winning basket, get that hole in one, or break a new world record. For spiritualists, it’s when you experience “being one with all” and is often described as a level of heightened consciousness. And with musicians, they get “into the groove”—they lose themselves in the experience of making their music. These all refer to a state called “in the flow”. Wikipedia defines flow as “the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

Do you remember that movie How Stella Got Her Groove Back with Angela Bassett and Whoopi Goldberg? Stella’s life seemed perfect but inside she had lost herself and wasn’t happy. She goes to Jamaica and falls for a much younger man. The movie was about finding her way back. Now, I’m not suggesting we go out and get ourselves a young hot tottie as a way of finding ourselves—although that might work for some! But often times, we just need some sort of catalyst to get us out of the slump and back into action to moving forward.

We can learn so much from the rhythms of nature. Change is constant and therefore, we must embrace change as a good thing for us. It keeps us alive and ever present. The Asian cultures look at still water as stagnant and dying versus a river that is constantly flowing and moving. Humans as a species are amazing because we are so adaptable. We have the ability to take actions that will propel our lives forward and continually developing.

Our quest is to get our lives into that flow state of being: we need to find our groove and keep it! So how can you find that state of flow and stay there consistently?

There are two things that are important to keep in mind. The first is that you must be happy now. As humans, our natural state is one of joy and if you look at anyone’s life, what is the ultimate goal regardless of their individual paths? Happiness! We ALL want to be happy, whether we seek that through our work, our relationships, our families, our spiritual growth, or our own well being. The truth of the matter is that joy comes from within ourselves and that’s where we need to find it.

The second thing we need to get into the flow is a clear vision. Our dreams give us hope. It’s what will drive us forward and keep us going through whatever obstacles arise. When you know where you want to be, it gives you clarity and the confidence to make the right decisions in your life. Like a compass, your visions or dreams are your true north and will guide you. When you can be happy now and have a visio of where you want to go, you are able to capture that state of flow and then things will begin to magically happen in your life.

What can you do NOW to go out and get your groove back in your life?

Karin Volo is an expert in personal development and is known as a Dream Life Mentor. She is also the transformational author of the Bringing Joy series. Karin’s passion is helping people better their lives by inspiring and teaching others to thrive through tough times and create their dream lives. You can get inspired with Karin’s bi-weekly newsletter, Inspired Lives, by going to www.InspiringYourVeryBest.com. Or meet Joy and get a free e-book at www.BringingJoyToTheWorld.com

Love is the essence of who we all are. It’s the one thing we all have in common that we want and need to have in our lives…and often feel like we are lacking the most. Love to me is an acronym: Living On Vibrant Energy. Because love is vibrant energy flowing through you and into your life.

In the Bringing Joy series of picture books, Joy shows how we can “plug” into Source energy, which is the same as love. When we are feeling like we are lacking in love, it is only because we are “unplugged” in some way from that vibrant energy.

We can’t see electricity but we know it’s there and that it words for us. It’s the same with Source energy or love. We can’t see it but we know when we feel it or have it in our lives.

The Institute of Heartmath has been studying the heart and its mysteries for almost 20 years. Their findings are fascinating. Did you know that:

• The heart emits electromagnetic fields that change according to your emotions
• The human heart’s electromagnetic field can be measured up to several feet away from the body
• Positive emotions create physiological benefits in your body
• You can boost your immune system by conjuring up positive emotions
• Negative emotions can create nervous system chaos but positive emotions do the opposite
• The heart has a system of neurons that have both short and long term memory, and that their signals sent to the brain can affect our emotional experiences
• In fetal development, the heart forms and starts beating before the brain is developed
• The mother’s brainwaves can synchronize with her baby’s heartbeats
• The heart sends more information to the brain than vice versa
• Positive emotions help the brain in creativity and innovative problem solving
• Positive emotions can increase the brain’s ability to make good decisions
• That the heart’s electromagnetic field is approximately 60 times stronger than the brain

The Institute of Heartmath is teaching about coherence and how to reach it. This is essentially when your heart is open and you are experiencing a state of love and gratitude. Love and gratitude are the strongest positive emotions.

Another book I highly recommend is Hidden Message in Water by Emoto Masaru. He looks at the world from the camera lens of capturing crystals as they are forming on freezing water. He has also discovered that love and gratitude create the most beautiful crystals.

It’s very exciting to see so much research happening about love, our hearts, our emotions, and how we can learn to use all this knowledge to better our lives.