Hope you all had a wonderful long weekend with your family and friends.What made your time enjoyable?

Perhaps you were like me - my favourite parts were in the preparation and eating of dinners where friends & family gathered for food and, most importantly, amazingly heartfelt conversations. Quality time with those you care about is an important love language. Taking the time to put away the distractions and really be present with others is really nourishing for our minds, bodies, and souls.  Here is some food for thought to pass along to all of you: how do we incorporate this precious time into our daily routines?!

As you may know, I have been reaching out and asking people I admire what daily practices (i.e., record worthy practices) they perform in their lives to feel better about themselves. I encourage you to sit back, put away your distractions for a few minutes, and reflect. Think about how you can apply the record worthy practice, which is shared below, in your life.

Today. Anne-Sophie Reinhardt shares her record worthy practice with all of us.

December is always a time of reflection for me. Therefore, to gather my thoughts and reflect on what I learned over the past year, I decided to go for a walk in the forest. On my walk, I found a very tall tree and decided to stop and think. As a nature lover, whenever I see a tall tree, the term “growth” comes to mind. Growth of any kind is a process, whether it be individually or collectively.

When talking to people over the past few months, many have independently mentioned how years ago I was “floundering” in terms of transitioning from recent graduate to established professional; now, they love how I have found my balance.  Each has used that exact word, floundering, which means: “to make clumsy attempts to move or regain one's balance” (thefreedictionary.com). The reason the word was used was because I took a different route than what they were used to so they thought I was off course. However, I never thought I was "floundering," I used the term exploring instead. I knew exactly where I was going and working hard to get there.

This quote in my last post  gathered quite a few responses, “Passion is positive anger; it is anger harnessed into constructive action. For example, you feel angry that someone or something you care about has been harmed in some way; therefore, you resolve to do everything in your power to prevent such injustice from happening again. This is an example of anger harnessed to bring about positive change.” Readers and job seekers wanted advice to harness their energy into turning their dreams into reality, valuing themselves, and not losing hope.

Ever wondered where a professional poet finds inspiration to write? I'm excited that today, Heather Grace Stewart, is “Speaking From the Heart” and sharing her experiences with all of us.

Heather Grace Stewart is a Canadian Poet and the Author of /Three Spaces, Carry On Dancing, Leap, Where the Butterflies Go, The Groovy Granny, & The Friends I've Never Met. Visit her website heathergracestewart.me and her blog heathergracestewart.com. I had to ask Heather to be involved as she continually inspires and encourages me on my writing journey.  Heather and I both grew up in the same city, and connected through blogging.  I consider her a "Friend I've Never Met" as we both live on opposing sides of Canada.  I can't wait to meet Heather in person!  

When you think you don’t have anything super exciting to announce or to say, do you stop talking or hide your thoughts?

A friend asked me recently why I wasn’t posting more regularly.  While I had been posting, I think what she really meant to ask was: why wasn’t I sharing more of my journey on the blog?

After she brought this up, I found a chance to head to the water and reflect. As you may know, water is my source of inspiration. When I’m looking for guidance, I seek it out.

I have had this happen to me a couple times before, when I was starting to write large papers for some courses I took. However, I have never experienced such a large mental roadblock until recently. When I went to start writing my book, I had all these ideas running through my head; but when I went to type them out recently, I couldn’t.

I know from past experience that you don’t make any progress by doing nothing.  So I decided to try to overcome my writer’s block and found some successful ways to do that. The small changes I made and the strategies I learned (which I have shared below) made a world of difference!

I love to write, and thought I would share what has been going on in my heart over the past week.  I went to visit my grandparents, and my grandpa told me how my grandma had been leaving pots on the stove and forgetting they were on.  The fire department recently came to their house, as one of the pots set off the fire alarm.  She has been diagnosed with Alzheimers, and the family is debating whether she should go into long-term care. It is such a hard decision to make.  Putting her in long-term care means that she would have to leave her home of almost sixty years.