How healthy is your heart? This question has been in the news a lot this month because February is National Heart Health month and heart disease is the leading cause of death in the America. When talking about heart health, there’s a lot said about exercise and diet. We agree that these are definitely important factors but what’s not talked about is how much relationships affect heart health.

What are your thoughts about appreciation? What got us thinking about appreciation is that recently we went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum for their Appreciation Day. There we got the feeling of spring through the scent of the many beautiful spring flowers. They also had several activities including music venues, massages,

Are you spending some time playing? There are many benefits for children when they play and research shows that there are also many health benefits for adults. We got to thinking about this subject recently when there were some snow storms. We decided it would be fun to play on a snowy day by taking a walk to enjoy the big flakes coming down. Then we even got down in the snow and made snow angels.

What are you tolerating in your life that you want to change? What got us thinking about this subject is that some hinges on our kitchen cupboards were old and doors would no longer close tightly. We also noticed a kitchen chair was coming apart at the joints and every day we would just give it a whack to get it back in shape before sitting on it.

What decisions have you been making lately? We read an article recently that said we make about 70 decisions per day. Whew! That sounds exhausting but some of these choices are simpler decisions, such as what to have for dinner, or what clothes to wear to work.

In our last few columns we’ve covered reflecting on the past and making goals for the future. Are you wondering what happened to the present moment, the “now”, which is also called living in the moment or mindfulness? What brought this subject up for us is that I (Lynn) was heating soup in the microwave and I saw I had two minutes until it would be ready.

Do you have any “leftover goals” from last year? Maybe those goals are somewhat like leftover food that gets old and tossed out. Have you identified new goals you want to achieve? If you are having trouble moving toward those goals, are you stuck, taking no action, taking actions that are ineffective or, worse yet, taking some actions that are even destructive?