There are a number of creative activities you can do to get in touch with your heart. The goal here is to open yourself to your heart, or your innermost desire. Styles of self-expression like those used in art therapy can help you become more open to yourself and your heart. Here are a few ideas for things you can do: Music. Try joining a choir or taking guitar lessons. Art. Take a painting class or learn how to sculpt. Dance. Enroll in a salsa class or even exercise-dancing classes at the gym. Drama. See if there's any open theater groups around you that you can join. Acting is a great way to express your creativity. Life can cause your true desires and your daily routines to get crusted over with obligations and expectations. A practice like free-writing can help you access your heart and begin to develop a closer relationship with this essential part of yourself. Choose a topic and write it at the top of a piece of paper. The topic can be one word, like "travel," or it can be a short statement, like "what I think about traveling." Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and try to write about the topic without putting much thought into what you're doing. Don't plan ahead of time. The goal is to let your unconscious mind take over for you rather than letting the control center part of your brain hold the reins. There are two different ways you can live your life: being and doing. The "doing" mode is what many people find themselves stuck in a lot of the time. It's a necessary mode for our fast-paced, high-stress culture, and it's actually very useful for keeping up. However, the "doing" mode can make it hard to listen to your needs and slow down enough to enjoy life. Mindfulness meditation can help you strengthen the "being" mode of your life, which is the mode that will help you begin to follow your heart. Sit in a comfortable, upright position. Get used to this position for a few minutes. Begin to pay attention to what's going on in your experience. You will have a lot of stray thoughts, body sensations, and seemingly random emotional surges. Pay attention to all of these things and anything else that happens, doing your best to take a "curious" stance toward them, where you don't need to react to them. Pretend you're a scientist and you want to observe this experience without intervening. Once you've done this in a safe, quiet, sitting environment, you can try it in your daily life while you're doing other things. Based on your bucket list and overall life goals, decide to make a big move if necessary. This could be going back to school for more education, moving to another city with better opportunities or family close by, or quitting your job to do something that resonates more closely with your heart's desire. It may be a good idea to talk to your friends and family about the move before you start shifting gears, to see what they think and enlist their support. You don't necessarily have to make big changes to change your life and begin to follow your heart. See if there are little things you can do in your daily routine to feel more attuned to yourself and your desire. For instance, you may want to spend more time with your friends, or spend less time in front of the TV. Consult your bucket list to see if there are minor adjustments you can make to your life in order to achieve what you really want out of it.

Summary: Engage in expressive activities. Free-write. Practice mindfulness. Make a big move. Make small changes.

Visit your local fabric store to obtain yellow, gold, and brown colored fleece fabric. Get yard of each color of fleece. Buy a 1-yard piece of 1" elastic. Measure around the person's head from top to bottom. You want to measure under the chin, around the face, and over the crown of the person's head. Make the elastic shorter than the distance around the head so it will fit snugly when stretched around the head. Cut a strip of fabric 2 inches wide. Place the elastic inside the fleece and sew the long edge of the fleece fabric together with the elastic inside. Cut another 2 1/2 inch strip of fleece to use for the lion's tail. Create fringe to make the lion's mane with strips of fabric. Cut the strips to be 3-6 inches long and inch wide. Use fabric glue or a simple hand stitch to attach the fringe strips to the yellow band with the elastic. Alternate colors and stack multiple strips to create a colorful look. Finish the headband by connecting the two ends of the elastic together to form a circle. Make sure to firmly connect the ends of the elastic together so the stretching does not rip the seam. Place the lion's mane around your face by stretching the elastic under your chin and over the top of your head.

Summary: Purchase fabric and elastic to create the mane. Measure the head of the person wearing the lion costume. Cut the elastic 1 inch shorter than the distance around the head. Cover the elastic in yellow fleece. Cut the remaining yellow, gold, and brown fleece into strips. Sew or glue the strips to the elastic covered headband. Sew the ends of the yellow band together. Wrap the headband around the head from the chin to the top of the head.

That person's LinkedIn profile will display onscreen. That person will then be removed permanently from your LinkedIn profile.

Summary: Sign in to your LinkedIn account at https://www.linkedin.com/. Click on the "Connections" tab on your LinkedIn profile. Click on the name of the contact you want deleted from LinkedIn. Click on the arrow next to "Send a message" at the top of the contact's profile. Click on "Remove connection" from the list of options provided. Click on "Remove" to confirm that you want to delete the contact.

Before paying yourself first, you need to figure out how much to pay yourself. Determining this begins with taking a look at your current monthly income. To determine monthly income, simply add together all your income sources for the month. Note that this a net amount or take-home income after deductions from paycheck or applicable taxes. If you have an income that fluctuates from month to month, use your average income over the past six months, or a number slightly below average to represent your monthly income. It is always better to choose a lower number, that way you're more likely to end up with more income then planned, rather than less. The easiest way to determine monthly spending is to simply look at your banking records for the past month. Simply add together any bill payments, cash withdrawals, or money transfers. Be sure to include any cash payments you received that were spent as well. There are two basic types of expenses to be aware of fixed expenses, and variable expenses. Your fixed expenses stay the same month-to-month and typically include things like rent, utilities, phone/internet, debt repayments or insurance. Variable expenses change month-to-month and may include food, entertainment, gasoline, or miscellaneous purchases. If tracking your expenses manually is too challenging, consider using software like Mint (or the many others like it). With Mint, you simply sync your bank accounts with the software, and the software will track your spending for you, by category. This gives you a clear, organized, and up-to-date vision of your spending. Subtracting monthly income from expenses lets you know how much leftover money you have at the end of each month. This is important to know, since it can help you to determine how much to pay yourself first. You would not want to pay yourself first and then discover you are lacking money for important fixed expenses. If your monthly income is $2,000 per month, and your total expenses are $1,600, you technically have $400 to pay yourself first with. This gives you a good baseline idea of how much you may be able to save each month. Note this number can potentially be much higher. Once you know the current amount of leftover money you have, you can take steps to reduce expenses to make this figure even higher. If you are negative at the end of the month, reducing expenses will become even more important.
Summary: Determine your monthly income. Determine your monthly expenses. Subtract your monthly income from your monthly expenses.