Find Your Heart, Follow Your Heart

You are on an amazing, exciting journey that is uniquely yours. Your journey offers a multitude of interesting paths along the way, each with the potential for its own adventure and reward. The paths you choose can lead you closer to finding and following your heart and discovering the joy and abundance that come from being your authentic self. At times, however, it may feel as if you’re marching in place more than moving forward. The next step is needed, but it’s unclear. What to do? Ask questions. By asking questions, contemplating them, and then thoughtfully and honestly writing down your answers, you can gain clarity to help you find your way. Your answers can illuminate your path and help you develop a successful road map to an abundant, authentic, joyful life. The word “heart” is used frequently in phrases to explain our emotions and to describe those who are special to us, everything from broken heart to grateful heart to dear heart to sweetheart. Find Your Heart, Follow Your Heart is a series of essays and affirmations around heart-inspired themes and phrases, with each essay followed by a set of associated questions. The essays tell of my experiences and my thoughts about each heart-themed topic. My essays are intended to fuel your thinking about how each of the topics might relate to your life. The affirmations are positive declarations to help you articulate what you want. What you think has a profound effect on what physically manifests in your life. Each affirmation is stated in the present tense to help you send a powerful and positive message to the universe. When those affirmations are stated in the present tense with confidence, conviction, and gratitude, it is as if they have already come true. What you affirm you attract. The questions following each essay invite your contemplation and examination in order to better understand your deeper self, hear what’s calling you, help you set priorities, and create the life you want. Your responses to those questions will enhance your understanding of what’s important to you and help propel you forward on your personal journey. I’ve used those same questions for my own life’s examination, and I revisit them periodically to make sure I’m on the right track. I am the survivor of three cancer diagnoses, as well as a benign brain tumor and a benign spinal tumor that caused temporary paralysis. While my experiences with illness haven’t defined me, they have caused me to go deep within my heart. It’s there where I’ve found and continue to find the answers that create and shape my abundant, authentic, joyful life. Throughout this book, you’ll see photographs I’ve taken of hearts, including stones and other heart-shaped items that seem to land in my path on my daily walks, as if they’re waiting to find me. I hope the photographs give you inspiration. What this book intends to offer you is a process, so take your time. Sit in the quiet. Read the affirmations and essays. Consider the questions. Contemplate your responses and then write them down in a journal or notebook. That way, you’ll have the space to continue your writing exploration. (Refer to “Moving Forward with Your Whole Heart” at the end of this book.) The important thing is to give yourself the time you need to consider, write, and study your responses. What do your words tell you? So that’s what this book is all about: a collection of heartfelt essays, affirmations, and photos, along with questions to stimulate your heartfelt responses to probing and pertinent questions. As you turn each page, I hope you gain clarity and get to the heart of what matters to you. Ultimately, I hope you find your heart, follow your heart, and enjoy the journey as you create your very own abundant, authentic, joyful life.