"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 are the words from our Wellness Compass Weekly column. This free column is sent to email subscribers each Friday morning and addresses the same topic as our weekly podcast.
Are We There Yet?
Everyone who has traveled on a long-distance road trip with children will get the same question at some point, as a tired voice from the backseat asks, "Are we there yet?"
We live in Wisconsin and are known to ask similar questions related to the coming of spring. One day the sun is out and gradually melts all the snow left on the ground. A few days later, the temperatures drop twenty-five degrees, and a fresh arrival of new snow comes down, covering the ground again. When it comes to spring, we become impatient and want to know, "Are we there yet?
We just concluded another round of Wellness Circles online. Wellness Circles are our core six-week small group program that we created many years ago to bring people together to identify an area of wellness they want to enhance, and then support one another in making the desired changes that have been identified.
A few of the kinds of things people want to work in a wellness circle include:
I want to reconnect with my child as we haven't been getting along.
I want to find a new job.
I want to be more physically active.
I want to have a difficult conversation that I have been avoiding with someone close to me.
I want to create a better work/life balance.
Inevitably, about halfway through the six-week Wellness Circle, participants commonly become impatient with the progress they are making. Like the children on the road trip, and with the weather here in Wisconsin, we want to know, "Are we there yet?" "Why is it taking soooooo long?!"
Change always takes longer than we wish. We get tired of waiting and quickly become impatient. And change, like the weather, is not a linear process.
No matter what our intentions are, we always learn in a Wellness Circle that it is important to be patient with ourselves and give ourselves grace. If we are not careful, we can turn our impatience in on ourselves or direct it out toward others. Wellness Circle participants often discover how much easier it is to extend compassion and patience to others than to themselves.
We were sharing our idea for this column with a friend, and she told us that whenever she and her brother would ask her parents the road trip question, "Are we there yet?" her parents would offer this response: "No, we are not there yet, but we will surely get there when we get there." She said that as a child, that answer always frustrated her, but now, as an adult, she has come to realize that this is the best answer of all—for children and any of us who are becoming impatient with change.
So, remember when you or someone else asks, "Are we there yet? or, "When will we get there?"--you can simply respond, "No, not yet, but we will surely get there when we get there."