“When you’re in a groove, you’re not spinning your wheels; you’re moving forward in a straight and narrow path without pauses or hitches. You’re unwavering, undeviating, and unparalleled in your purpose. A groove is the best place in the world. Because when you are in it, you have the freedom to explore, where everything you question leads you to new avenues and new routes.” —Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life

And all of a sudden, you discover that you have found the groove of living and savoring the life that for some time you weren’t sure would ever be possible, but you kept trusting and choosing and tailoring and showing up, and eventually you found your groove.

It happens in the most ordinary of moments, and it isn’t until you reflect upon such moments when you were wholly present, entirely engaged and flowing in a life moment made possible part by your design and part by serendipity, elements you have absolutely no control over, that you discover you’ve found your groove.

The time to reflect often occurs when I am simply being. Perhaps Nelle is on my lap chewing on her latest ‘favorite’ toy and Norman is napping peaceful nearby or when I have sat down and am gazing at the evening sunset while sipping a cup of tea. During these moments of reflection that reveal the groove has been found, I gain of clarity as to where I find myself, how I arrived and the intention which set it into motion, often an intention set years, sometimes a decade or more before, and I acknowledge a truth that enabled the moment and life I now savor to be my reality: Discontent had been present.

Back in late 2020, I shared an episode (linked above) detailing how discontent is a helpful guide and motivator to nudging (sometimes pushing) us to venture outside of our current circumstances into a life that brings us to life, and the truth of this cannot be underscored enough, but it also requires that we pack and utilize our patience, trust in our selves and the journey we are on, so that we don’t remain in the way of life that fosters the discontent.

Gradually, with the knowledge of ourselves and other vital life skills (all detailed and taught in TSLL’s 2nd book) as our constant companions, we make decisions that navigate us ever so eventually to the life that harmonizes with what we can give to the world (and so that we can give it with joy and be energized in doing so).

Often what we ‘desire’ isn’t even known or brought into focus in the moments we feel discontent. Rather, all that we know is that something feels ‘off’ and consistently in a state of cacophony, but during this discord, there are moments that delight us, move us to euphoria and to feel absolute bliss, so we intuitively are drawn to understanding why, and this is our internal compass, our true self that lies with in each of us, nudging us to explore where our curiosity wishes us to go, look and better understand.

What does it feel like to find our groove?

Choreographer and dancer Twyla Tharp shares in the quote above much of the clarity that arrives when we step into and then travel in our state of discovered groove. Below are more concrete ways in which you will know you have found your own groove.

1. You are energized and internally motivated by what you are doing and how you are living. Even if you are physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the ‘work’ you have done, there is a feeling of being elevated, and so all you need to do is get some sound sleep as you cannot wait to live and do it all again tomorrow.
   • A balance, while dynamic which requires of us each to be conscious and self-aware, is part of our approach to daily life. We have made choices honoring what we need, but also welcoming enough challenge and novelty to contribute as well as thrive.
     
2. Harmony results – with others you work with, friends and family, the world around you, as you give without expectation, contributing as you uniquely can and celebrating what others contribute in their own unique way.
   
3. Martin Seligman founder of the positive psychology movement defines ‘grooving’ as engaging and expanding our strengths in activities that bring higher meaning and enable achievement, thereby generating the positive emotions.
   
4. A cultivation of an intentionally enriched environment that provides energy and piques our curiosity to try and do what we may have never done or seen attempted first-hand.
   
5. What you do through work or how you live your life (1) uses your strengths, (2) grows your competence, (3) generates healthy relationships, (4) provides the opportunity for new and interesting areas of interest and exploration and (5) supports your overall well-being as discovered in multiple studies centered around ‘job crafting’ (learn more here on Harvard Business Review‘s blog)
   
6. You engage with the choices you have made not to simply complete them, but because you enjoy doing them, even if sometimes challenging.
   
7. You no longer ‘defend’ your life choices, but celebrate them, not looking for applause, but savoring the lightness of just being yourself.
   
8. Being internally motivated to deepen your awareness as to why or how to continue to in a state of true contentment in order to maintain it no matter how the future unfolds. Why? Because you like how you feel in this moment and are deeply grateful to be experiencing your groove – you are energized, clear-eyed, non-reactive, loving, kind and free from anger, even during moments of stress and confusion prompted by events or people beyond your control. Knowing is comfort, so you invest in strengthening the skills and way of life that give you a full and enriched way of living and being.
   
9. You don’t want to rush, but you do not cling.
   
10. You savor each step without expecting or wanting more. Trusting and curious from a place of excitement about what tomorrow will bring, but holding firm in the present moment.
    
11. Things are not ‘perfect’, but you are moving/traveling through your days along your journey at a pace and in a way that puts you at ease; you have an inner ‘knowing’ that you have set into place the boundaries, the discipline and the ‘aids’ paired with going in the right direction for your life alignment that energizes and comforts you.
    
12. You feel the warm embrace of being ‘home’, welcomed, at ease and deeply happy.

When we find our groove, we understand why the difficult choices had to be made, why the discontent presented itself and wouldn’t relent until we paid attention. We understand that in order for our life circumstances to change, we had to change how we engaged with life, how we understood life and thus how we lived life.

And while our groove is dynamic as well, once we have found and know what it feels like to find it, we become better students of ourselves and no longer linger in discontent when it returns momentarily to give us a heads up that we need to tend to something. We respond, and move forward, grateful for the warning and then find our groove again, slightly altered and improved, further deepening our gratitude for being able to live the life that we have consciously chosen and feels as though life has gifted us with the most priceless of gifts: the gift of finding and experiencing our happy groove.

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