I find it so joyously spirit affirming to meet people with a wonderful outlook on life, happy wisdom to share and a humble sense of our shared humanity.

Victoria Moran, the author of Living a Charmed Life: Your guide to finding magic in every moment of every day, is just such a person. And her lovely book with it’s helpful clarity, beautiful writing and bright sense of humor is the perfect antidote to world events that can often result in a fear-based information diet.

Comprised of 50 golden-nugget chapters, she gracefully and with “been-there” compassion offers sage advice such as: “Preventative medicine for charmed-life blackouts is to keep a serendipity log, an ongoing list of wonders, delights, and positive coincidences.” Simple. Uplifting reminders of where the joy can be found in daily life.

Victoria herself has had a remarkable life. When I asked how she started on her inspirational life path, she shared that her parents hired a very metaphysical woman to care for her when she was growing up. So she was exposed early to spiritual concepts about “what’s beyond” this life, “what’s extra” to know.

Childhood Awareness of Spirit

Her first spiritual memory is of being three years old and being strolled outside under a full moon and sky bursting with stars. Her three-year old self looked up and thought: “Well that’s home. I’m here now and that’s good, but it’s not home.” When she was six, she had an angel vision.

As Victoria explains it: “Some people come into this world comfortable with the unseen. Some people are more comfortable with the material stuff.” She is very comfortable with her eclectic spiritual leanings, but can be challenged by material, earthly considerations like money and food. She laughs saying that she has said to her husband on more than one occasion, “As long as I’ve been here, you’d think I’d get it!”

The difference ten years can make

She has gotten earth-life living well enough to have a bestselling book in 1999. That book, Creating a Charmed Life was written at a time when everything was different for people individually and on a world level. “People felt good. There were no Iraq or Afghanistan wars, no 9/11. Times were good,” says Moran.

She herself had found her Mr. Right after nine years as a young widow. They had bought a big house to hold their merged families and were in an exciting building phase of life. So Victoria thought: Life is already good, why not make it magical? Hence, Creating a Charmed Life was born.

Life circumstances and the world were very different for Victoria in 2007 when her publisher suggested that she write another “charmed life” book. Her young stepson had died suddenly. They had moved from the city to the country, which made her feel isolated from her support system.

As she writes in Living a Charmed Life, “Hanging out on earth is messy under any circumstances: you can take all the organizing classes in the adult-ed catalog and there will still be loose ends, the uncontrollable, the inexplicable. And sometimes something really awful happens.”

Finding a charmed life when circumstances aren’t so charming

With refreshing frankness Victoria admits that she had to go to the depths of her soul to write her new book. She had to ask herself: “Do I still have a charmed life?”

“It kept me honest. I thought: Can I do this when I’m looking at my life and it’s bleak? The answer was: Yes, this is life on earth, not the paradisiacal realms — even with the ups and downs you can make it a charmed life. In fact, you owe it to yourself.” Then, each day she was given what she needed to write another chapter.

“Life is like Disneyland…one great ride after another, but you have to stand in long lines in the hot sun between rides,” Moran states.

All this has proven to be serendipitous. When the book came out this year, the public was truly faith challenged by the declining economy, and her book offers small steps that add up to big shifts in daily awareness of what’s good and where anyone can improve their daily experience of living.

Here are some tips from Victoria Moran for enhancing the “lucky charm” quotient in your life:

Accept the positive from others…

and have twice as many positive people in your life to offset the negative. Victoria talks fondly about her accountability partner who’s unfailingly upbeat. When they first started their regular calls, Victoria would ask “How are you?” and her friend would answer with enthusiasm, “Blessed and highly favored!” Victoria thought to herself, “Fine, would do.” But then she came to look forward to this response. “I realized that the divine doesn’t pick favorites so I could be highly favored too,” she states.

Know that you are worthy.

Victoria says that your belief that you deserve good things should be the bedrock of your foundation. Otherwise you will sabotage the good things in your life. In Living a Charmed Life, she recall a watershed moment in her life when she was at a restaurant in California called Cafe Gratitude. Each dish is named as an affirmation, but she wasn’t really paying attention to what she ordered. So when the waitress delivered her entree saying “You are worthy, ” it made a huge impact. “I’ve known many kind and generous people who’ve given me wonderful complements, but no one had said this,” she says. After that she worked on really feeling her worthiness.

Know that your life has purpose.

Victoria believes that our current celebrity-crazy culture has caused a perception problem. “It implies that if you’re really spiritual you will have a mansion on the sea or else something is wrong with you. The truth is that you have a function here, you have a destiny. Of course, you don’t want to want for anything, but this lavishness everyone aspired to is misplaced,” she states.Victoria Moran points out that if it was great beauty that everyone was promised, we’d see what a farce such promises are. “Whenever it’s money, it’s okay to tell everyone that they can have great wealth. It’s more accurate to say that everything is going to be taken care of. When you open up to the good that is yours, you’ll never want.”

For Victoria and like-minded seekers, living a charmed life means noticing the daily gifts in your life, creating the connections that nourish you mind, heart and soul, and putting into play practices that open your personal life to the “upward progression of the universe.”

What you notice matters! Live radiantly in your light.

To get Victoria Moran’s book “Living a Charmed Life” and have access to 100 bonus gifts from a bevy of wise and generous souls go to: www.victoriamoran.com/charmed.