"Meeting Someone We Already Know for the First Time This Holiday Season," Dec. 13, 2024
Release Date: 12/13/2024
"ASAP: As Slow As Possible"
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is the Weekly Wellness Column which we send out by email each Friday on the same topic as our weekly podcast. ASAP: As Slow As Possible As we prepare to transition to summer, many people look forward to two things: more time outdoors and a slower rhythm of life. If you are a regular reader/listener of our weekly column and podcast, you know we take a break from producing this content between Memorial Day and Labor Day. We do this so that we, too, can spend more time outdoors and live our lives at a slower pace. When we recently came across several creative versions of the...
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"Let’s Normalize Conversations with One Another about Our Mental Health"
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is the Weekly Wellness Column which we send out by email each Friday on the same topic as our weekly podcast. Let’s Normalize Conversations with One Another about Our Mental Health You may have heard that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. In honor of that, we thought it would be helpful to offer two simple yet powerful ways we can all help reduce the stigma of talking about mental health. Suggestion One: Let’s normalize talking about our emotional pain, just like we do with physical pain. Feeling sad or anxious during a difficult time in life is as...
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"The Wisdom of Momisms," May 9, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is the Weekly Wellness Column which we send out by email each Friday on the same topic as our weekly podcast. THE WISDOM OF MOMISMS It's been a few years since we shared some of the wise advice that mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and other women we have all been blessed to know have shared with us throughout our lives. We call these wise, pithy sayings Momisms. Here are a few of our favorites, and because this is a wellness column, we also share ways these words of advice apply to various aspects of well-being. "I'm not interested in who started it!" The...
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"Lessons Learned From a Mindfulness Jar," May 2, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is the Weekly Wellness Column which we send out by email each Friday on the same topic as our weekly podcast. Lessons Learned From a Mindfulness Jar We both have mindfulness jars on our desks and use them regularly in our coaching practices. And Holly used to use hers in her previous career as a grade school teacher. They are helpful in so many situations. And you can easily make one for yourself—do a quick online search, and you will find many suggestions. If the concept of a mindfulness jar is new to you, here's a short description. A...
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"Wellness Begins with We," April 18, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is the Weekly Wellness Compass Column for this week. Each podcast episode addresses the same theme as the column. Wellness Begins with We Passover and Easter overlap again this year, allowing us to reflect on the power of these celebrations for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The celebrations connected to these holy days, as with the celebrations of all religious holy days, are grounded in bringing people together. While individual beliefs and practices are important, the gathering of community is primary, a practice as old as human civilization. And...
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"In-Between Times," April 11, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is our Weekly Wellness Column, which is emailed every Friday morning and addresses the same topic as each week's podcast episode. In-Between Times Life is filled with clear beginnings and endings. As wonderful and/or sad as these times may be, the majority of life is filled with in-between times. These are the spaces where we are neither where we were, nor where we are going—just like spring here in Wisconsin, still cold and windy, yet sunny and the snow is gone, so it's neither fully winter nor spring. It's more of an in-between time. These in-between times can be...
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"Well Connected," April 4, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is our Weekly Wellness Column which is emailed every Friday morning and addresses the same topic as each week's podcast episode. Well Connected We recently came across an extended quote from Albert Einstein that we would like to share with you today. “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to...
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"The Benefits of Turning Over the Soil," March 28, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
Turning Over the Soil Wisconsin is known for it many Rails to Trails bike paths. Converting former rail lines to bike trails gives a safe (and flat) way to explore the countryside on two wheels. We ride these trails regularly and were delighted to get out for our first ride of the year this week. Wisconsin is also known for its abundant and fertile farmland. On our ride, we saw many farmers on their tractors plowing and turning over their soil as they prepared for planting season. And because we love to think in metaphors, we both agreed that turning over the soil from time to...
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"Hope Springs Eternal," March 21, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is our Weekly Wellness Column which is emailed every Friday morning and addresses the same topic as each week's podcast episode. Hope Springs Eternal Yesterday marked the first day of spring. In Wisconsin, where we live, it was more a day of hope than one of actual warmth. As we watched two determined golfers tee off on a course still dusted with snow, we couldn’t help but think of the timeless words of English poet Alexander Pope, written in 1733: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” His words capture the enduring optimism that keeps us looking ahead,...
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Making Time for Joy, March 14, 2025
The Wellness Compass Podcast
What follows is our weekly Wellness Compass column. This column is sent out by email each Friday, and our podcast each week addresses the same topic as the column. Making Time for Joy We both started music lessons a few weeks ago for instruments that are new for each of us. Holly is taking ukulesle lessons, and Scott is taking bluegrass fiddle lessons. We had been saying we were going to do this for a long time, and now that we are enjoying it so much, we wonder why we waited so long. Making time for the lessons and practicing has reminded us how much fun making music is and how...
info_outlineWhat follows is the week Wellness Compass column we send out each Friday morning. This podcast episode expands on this same topic.
Meeting Someone We Already Know for the First Time This Holiday Season
Thank you to the reader that wrote us in response to last week’s column: “I like the idea of focusing on presence over presents this time of year. Can you give me a suggestion on how to do that?”
We would be happy to! And so here’s one idea.
Our families can be both our greatest source of love and joy and yet, sometimes, our greatest source of frustration and worry. It seems that there is no time when this is more apparent than during the holiday season. Both our joys and our concerns where family members is concerned may be magnified as we find ourselves interacting with people we seldom see.
There is a principle that speaks of developing a 'beginner's mind' when approaching one's everyday life, including our relationships. A beginner's mind is characterized by openness, being free from preconceived ideas, and being eager to learn something new from whatever and whomever one encounters. It is said that with a beginner's mind there are endless possibilities and that by contrast, with an expert's mind there are very few. A beginner’s mind is humble, curious, and open to whatever is to be.
What would it mean to move through the rest of this holiday season with a beginner's mind? One possible way to think about this is to realize that while we have experienced many previous holiday seasons with our families, we have never experienced this holiday season. As much as we may have traditions that we honor, each year is, by definition, unique. A beginner's mind remains open to experiencing the particularity of this holiday season in order to discover the unique joys that it might hold.
Cultivating a beginner's mind is perhaps more difficult when it comes to the relationships we have with people we know well. It is easy to get stuck in thinking that we already know, for example, exactly Uncle Bob or Cousin Latoya is going to talk about again this year at the holiday gathering. Approaching people we know well with a beginner's mind means that we commit to practicing wonder and openness and learning more about who they are, and come up to each person as if we are meeting them for the first time.
When we meet someone for the first time we have no choice but to practice a beginner's mind. It is easy and natural to practice wonder and curiosity as we get to know someone new. What if we used this same mindset into our interactions with everyone we spend time with over the next few weeks?
The saying “you can’t step in the same river twice” could be adapted to remind us that “you can’t talk to the same person twice.” Just like the river, the person you are talking to in the present moment is not the same person they were a year ago, or even a month ago—and for that matter, neither are you.
There are many ways we can focus on presence, and not just presents, this holiday season. How we do so is not important, but that we do so, is one way to find more meaning in the holidays this year.