Episode 12: Let There Be Peace on Earth, and Let It Begin with Me.

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Let There Be Peace on Earth, and Let It Begin with Me.

Do you ever find yourself discouraged by the amount of conflict and hostility in the world, wishing there was more peace on earth? Or perhaps you wish for more peace in your community. And as families connect around the holidays, maybe you wish for more peace in your own family.

When we find ourselves longing for more peace, the words of a song written shortly after World War II can be helpful. The song's first line offers this insightful wisdom, "Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me."

Many things in the world are beyond our control - a lesson we have all learned repeatedly during the pandemic. One thing we do have control over, though, is how we choose to show up in the world, in our relationships, and at any holiday gatherings we may be attending. Rather than waiting for others to change, we can focus on our ability to be an instrument of peace in our circles of influence.  

All of us from the Wellness Compass Initiative wish each of you the happiest of holidays, filled with peace and love.  

Episode 11: The Gift of Presence

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The Gift of Presence

One of the highlights of Christmas for me as a child was my grandmother coming to visit and staying with us for a week. She lived far away, so a visit from her was always a special occasion. All this was magnified when she visited over the holidays. My sister and I would gather on the couch with her for hours, watching all the classic holiday movies. As I write this now, I vividly remember the magic of watching Miracle on 34th Street with her every year. And we when were done watching movies, it was off to the kitchen to make cookies together.

It’s enlightening that I have so many powerful memories of her visits, yet I cannot remember one Christmas present that she ever gave to me. I do not doubt that she gave us all presents, it’s just that I have no recollection of them. What I remember instead is her presence. That was indeed the greatest gift she could have given us, and she shared that gift abundantly.

If you celebrate the holidays by exchanging gifts and find yourself stressing out about finding just the right present, perhaps my story will be enlightening for you, too. I’m no Scrooge when it comes to presents; I just know that one of the best gifts we can give to family and friends is, to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, “a portion of ourselves.”

The gift of our presence does not require any money, but it may require some internal work on our part. I know I cannot be truly present to someone if internally I am distracted. I also cannot be present if I am holding on to some kind of judgment, anger, or regret.

Many things can block our ability to show up fully in the important relationships in our lives. The holidays seem like a perfect time of year to let go of those barriers. It could turn out to be the best present we give to both ourselves and the people we love.

Making It Personal

1.  Can you think of someone who has given you the gift of presence, either when you were a child or in your adult life? How did/does that person make you feel? 

2.  To whom do you want to be sure you give the gift of presence this holiday season?

3.  Are you aware of any internal barriers that might make it difficult for you to show up fully for those you love? If so, are you ready to let them go? 

Episode 10: To Acknowledge Our Grief is to Acknowledge Our Love

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“To acknowledge our grief is to acknowledge that we have loved and that we have been loved.” 

To Acknowledge Our Grief is To Acknowledge Our Love

  Grief has many faces and presents itself in a myriad of ways. We are familiar with grief when it shows up as sadness, loneliness, or feelings of emptiness. It may be less evident that grief is commonly the feeling underlying irritability, anger, conflict, excessive drinking, feeling numb, wanting to isolate, and busyness.

  I believe we all grieve during the holidays, one way or another. Maybe this is the first year we are celebrating the holidays since someone we love has died. Maybe there has been a painful break in the family. Or perhaps this is the first holiday since someone has moved away or because of other circumstances, we cannot be with someone we love. And then there are always the poignant feelings of remembering parents, grandparents, and other friends and relatives who have been missing from our holiday gatherings for many years.  

  I am pointing out all the ways that grief can show up this time of year not to make us all sad, but to remind us that whenever we acknowledge our grief, we also acknowledge that we have loved and been loved. It is well-known that repressing or hiding our grief is detrimental to our mental health. Avoiding our grief also prevents us from fully celebrating the love we have shared with those who are no longer part of our day-to-day lives. 

  Many people have been raised with a mindset that it is best not to think about grief, let alone express it. If that is true for you, you may want to consider adopting a new mindset about the importance, and I might even say, the sacredness of grief.  

  So if you find yourself listening to a particular song or hanging a sentimental ornament and suddenly are overcome with grief or sadness, by all means, embrace it. In doing so, you are in that moment, embracing the love that you have shared with the person you are remembering. Take whatever time you need for yourself to acknowledge, feel, and express both your grief and your love.  

Making It Personal--prompts to help you apply to your own life what you read and hear in this episode. .

1.  What do you think of the idea that when we acknowledge our grief, we acknowledge our love?

2.  Who are you missing—what specific grief are you feeling this holiday season?

3.  Are you comfortable honoring your grief and maybe even sharing it with others?

Episode 9: Sharpening Our Saws

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Sharpening Our Saws

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you." Anne Lamott

A story is told about two loggers who have been working all day cutting down large trees using an old-fashioned two-person hand saw, one of them on each end pulling back and forth. In the morning, they made significant progress in cutting down many trees. As the day went on, they became increasingly frustrated with how much their progress slowed down, finally quitting when they could not make it through their last tree. Once they stopped for the day, they suddenly realized why they had been so inefficient in the second half of the day. In their busyness and rush to cut down so many trees, they forgot to take their usual midday break to sharpen their saw. They learned from their oversight that it's nearly impossible to cut down a tree with a dull blade.

For many, this can be a hectic time of year. There are many things to do, many trees to cut down. If we are not careful, we can forget the importance of sharpening our saws. This is all the more critical this year because the ongoing grind of the pandemic means that we are likely to be already feeling a bit dulled by all that we have experienced.

As part of our Wellness Compass Initiative, we lead and train others to conduct our Wellness Circle program. Based on our holistic Wellness Compass Model for Well-Being, a Wellness Circle is a six-week small group coaching program where each participant chooses an area of wellness that they want to strengthen. One of the most commonly chosen areas of wellness is "Rest and Play" because it seems that many people are aware of the need for them to take more time to consciously re-create and re-energize both their mental health and physical well-being.

As we navigate the holiday season, we are wise to reflect on the activities that are truly re-creative, and those which are not. Over-eating, over-spending, and over-drinking are not going to sharpen our saws, but in fact, they will probably do the opposite. Focusing on simplicity, time with friends and family, and the spiritual meaning of the season are all things that will likely be more re-creative for our overall well-being.

I'll close with something I read this week that made me cringe. "I think I"m winning Christmas this year" was a comment I read on social media. Accompanying this statement was a list of all the person's accomplishments as proof of their "winning." I cringed because I can remember times when I was younger, and I overdid things this time of year and somehow thought that was a good thing. I remember how exhausted I used to get and how I figured that was the way the holidays were supposed to be. Now I am taking more time to unplug from some of the things that previously wore me out around the holidays and am instead focusing on what renews and feeds me.

I invite you to reflect on what sharpens your saw and helps you rest, play, and re-create with these three "Making It Personal" questions. We provide these each week to help you put into action anything that speaks to you in these columns. 

Making It Personal:

What signs do you see in yourself that indicate that you need to unplug or sharpen your saw?

Make a list of three to five things that help you sharpen your saw and re-energize you.

Are you satisfied with the quality and quantity of time you take for rest and play? If not, what is one thing you could do differently this week?

Episode 8: The Key to Happiness is Finding Your Balance, Again & Again

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I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It has always been my favorite holiday because of both its simplicity and its focus on gratitude. As I get older, I find that gratitude is foundational to my emotional and spiritual well-being, as I continue to discover the truth of this quote from David Steindl-Rast, “The root of joy is gratefulness. It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”

As the intensity of the holiday season ramps up, I am realizing that I will need to be more intentional about focusing on gratitude as the foundation for joy and happiness. Another quote, this one from Thomas Merton, will also help guide my choices over the next month: “Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.”

I invite you too to be intentional about how you navigate the holiday season. How will you practice gratitude and create a rhythm that enhances balance and well-being? Part of the intensity of the holiday season comes from the cultural message to buy and do more, which, if we are not mindful, can create feelings that our lives are lacking in some way. A focus on gratitude for what we already have is perhaps the best way to maintain our emotional, relational, and spiritual balance this time of year.yer above to listen to this episode)

Episode 7: Prioritizing Our Mental Health Throughout the Holiday Season

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Prioritizing Our Mental Health Through the Holiday Season

"Mental health is not a destination, but a process. It's about how you drive, not just where you're going."  Noam Shpancer, psychologist

A few weeks ago, I wrote about recalculating our routes in a column that focused on giving ourselves permission to make changes in direction when needed. Today I am writing about something a bit different yet similar, calculating our routes. Specifically, I'm going to focus on inviting us to plan the way we intend to navigate this upcoming holiday season, in a way that prioritizes our mental health and overall well-being.  

The holiday season can be stressful for our mental health in a typical year. It can bring a roller coaster of emotions of both sadness and joy, and sometimes pressures to be or act a certain way that is not in alignment with what we are feeling or wanting. When you add the additional stress of an ongoing and changing pandemic, it becomes even more important to be proactive about prioritizing our mental health so as to level out the potential highs and lows of the season.

Through my four decades as a psychotherapist, I often have had conversations with clients in January where they talk about how exhausted they are because of not making good choices through the holidays. "It's like I was on auto-pilot, trying to meet the expectations of family and friends, and not even realizing the cumulative effect of the choices I was making," is something I hear often.

To help you avoid this kind of exhaustion, here are three things to focus on to help you calculate your plans for the next six weeks. They are offered with the hope that with some planning and focus on some self-care, the holidays can be a time of authentic joy and peace.  

First, if there is a potentially uncomfortable conversation you need to have with friends or family, don't make the mistake of putting it off or avoiding that conversation. Holidays bring both the gift and sometimes the pressure of traditions. "But we've always done it this way" thinking can create undue pressure to continue traditions that don't serve us well anymore. Instead, have honest conversations now about what will work best for everyone this holiday season.

Even though these conversations may be challenging initially, they usually help families and friends find new ways of doing things that all can enjoy. As I wrote a few weeks ago, the pandemic gives us a new freedom to recalculate our routes, and that includes how we will celebrate the holidays.  

Second, set a budget not just for your finances, but also for how you want to budget your time and energy. The holidays sometimes trigger feelings of sadness, obligation, and/or loss, which in turn might prompt us to over-spend, over-drink, over-eat, or over-do. Prioritizing our mental health through the holidays means being proactive about setting limits, and also at the same time, not avoiding the challenging emotions such as regret, sadness, and grief that may occur this time of year.

A third way to practice self-care this holiday season is to intentionally choose to focus on the spiritual meaning of the season. The word "holiday" is a contraction of the two words "holy" and "day." How will you honor what is holy and sacred for you this year? How will you budget time and energy to practice and nurture your spirituality? Strengthening our spirituality is always good for our mental health, and particularly so this time of year.  

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and best wishes for navigating this holiday season in a way that is mindful and good for your well-being and for those with whom you will connect.  

Making it Personal (These prompts are offered to evoke your ideas for how you might want to prioritize your mental health during the holidays.)

1.  Is there a conversation regarding holiday plans, that while perhaps challenging to have, would be beneficial to have now rather than later?

2.  What's one thing you might want to do new or different this year regarding how you celebrate the holidays?

3.  What is one thing you could do to practice and nurture your spirituality throughout the holidays this year? 

Episode 6: Are You Handling Your Emotions or Are Your Emotions Handling You?

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Are You Handling Your Emotions, or Are They Handling You?

The title question for this column, “Are you handling your emotions, or are they handling you?” is timely given the chronic stress that we have all been facing the last year and a half. My answer to this question is, “Yes!” Yes, there are times when I am handling my emotions, and yes, there are times when my feelings are handling me. One of the warning signs I recognize in myself when I am not managing my emotions well is that I am irritable and impatient in my communication with others. Perhaps this is why I resonate with the advice that when it comes to good communication, it is wise to strive to, “Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Don’t say it mean.”

  There is much wisdom in these three short sentences. Like many wise sayings, it takes a moment to memorize, but a lifetime to master. Let’s reflect briefly on each of these three sentences. 

“Say what you mean” describes the importance of having the emotional intelligence to recognize and express the full range of our emotions. For example, if I am sad or scared, and if I am not mindful, I might express those feelings as anger or criticism, when it would be far healthier to be vulnerable enough to share what I am really feeling. Being thoughtful and honest about what we really mean is good for ourselves and those with whom we are in relationship. 

“Mean what you say” invites us to reflect on what we are communicating so that it is an accurate expression of what we are feeling. For example, “You never help me clean up around here” is probably not accurate and indeed not helpful. Much better is, “The last week or so, I have felt like I have been doing most of the household chores. You may have a different perspective, but in any case, I want to talk about how to rebalance all this better going forward.” The person who is frustrated in this example probably doesn’t really mean that the other person never helps out, and escalating their words to that level greatly reduces their chance of being heard.

“Don’t say it mean” is often the most challenging advice for many of us to follow. Somewhere along the line, it seems we got the idea that we can increase our chances of being heard by raising our voices in anger. Yet, we know that attempting to increase our persuasive power by raising our voices actually has the opposite effect. People instead shut down and stop listening when we are mean. 

On the podcast that corresponds with this column each week, I shared the story of a youth soccer coach who screamed at his players regularly. When I reflected this back to him and asked him why he did this, he replied it was because his players never listened to him. The coach and I talked some more, and he had a minor breakthrough as he began to see a possible connection between his “saying it mean” and their not listening. His frustration was clearly handling him, and I was trying to give him some insight into how perhaps he could begin to manage his feelings more productively and in turn, get his players to pay more attention to his words.  

It is natural at times to be overwhelmed by our emotions and to feel like they are handling us rather than that we are handling them. Whenever we find ourselves overwhelmed, it is wise to call a timeout and wait until we are sure we won’t say or do something we’ll later regret. When we have calmed down, we will be more able to “say what we mean, mean what we say, and not say it mean.”

It takes a lifetime to master this wisdom. Any of us, at times, can and will “say it mean.” It happens to all of us, and when it does, we need to be careful not to be too hard on ourselves. We simply and humbly need to apologize, learn from what happened, and grow a little wiser when it comes to handling our emotions.  

Making It Personal:

1.  Which of the three parts of this saying is most challenging for you, “Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Don’t say it mean?”

2.  ‘Saying it mean” is one manifestation of not handling or expressing our emotions well. Can you think of others?

3.  Is there a particular person or relationship in your life with whom you would like to practice the advice of “Say what you mean. Mean what you say. Don’t say it mean” this week?

Episode 5: Recalculating Our Routes

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"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." Lao Tzu

This episode will expand your understanding of vocation and how vocation is an essential comment of mental health and wellness.

We took a road trip and because we had some extra time and were in no hurry to get to our destination, we turned to Google maps to help us chart some less traveled and more scenic routes. Several times we made changes to our route on the fly, or we missed a turn we were supposed to make, and each of these times we received a friendly message that the app was “recalculating our route.”

We have come across several stories recently that talk about “the great resignation” in America’s workforce. The articles describe how many people have resigned their jobs during the pandemic. While there are a variety of reasons that people are leaving their jobs, one clear theme is that people are choosing not to return to the kind of pace or balance or unsatisfactory working conditions that they had before the pandemic. One subgroup with the larger population that is not going back to their jobs is older workers who have chose to retire rather than return to their previous employment. And of course, many have lost their jobs and have no choice but to find a new direction for their work.

All of this has me thinking that this time of “the great resignation” is really a time of “the great recalculation.” Many of us are recalculation our routes, some by choice, some by necessity. As awful as the pandemic has been, perhaps one benefit that has come from it is that it has given many people the opportunity to rethink what parts of their lives they wish to return to and which parts they do not want to go back to again.

I love that the Google voice is always so calm and patient when I miss a turn. There is never a hint of judgment or criticism. Perhaps we can all keep that in mind as a model for our own inner voice as we find ourselves making changes in our lives. May we be as calm and patient with ourselves when it comes to recalculating the routes, routines, and relationships in our lives that have been dramatically changed the last year and a half.

Episode 4: Watering our Spirituality's Root Systems

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Spirituality is like the roots of a tree; the deeper the roots, the stronger the tree. 
 Spirituality is a part of all of our lives, whether we consciously are aware of it and nurture it within ourselves, or not. We are spiritual beings. As the author and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "We are not human beings having spiritual experiences; we are spiritual beings having human experiences."   


Practicing a religious faith is one way to express and ground one's spirituality, but spirituality transcends any one religion. Some have referred to spirituality as a deep underground river that gives us strength and sustenance, and acknowledge that there are many ways, many wells, to tap into that river. 


Staying with the idea of spirituality being underground and often out of view, I have always liked the image that our spirituality is like the root system of a tree. The roots of a tree are what ground a tree, what helps the tree to stand upright. The roots are also what bring nourishment to the tree. In order for a tree to grow taller or broader, it must simultaneously grow deeper and broader roots. And we are also learning that the roots of a tree spread out and interact with the roots of other trees, even drawing strength from nearby trees in times of distress.  


Just as with the roots of a tree, our spirituality needs to be watered and deepened regularly over our whole life. Spirituality helps us define our core values and purpose, and begin to be developed in childhood. These values are especially important in the first half of life as we are then in the midst of making important decisions that build the foundation for our life. In the second half of life, our spirituality additionally helps us deal with aging, loss, and letting go. It helps us to make peace with what has been, what is, and what will be. Just as with trees deep roots can help sustain us through rainy and stormy days. 


In this week's Wellness Compass podcast, Holly and Scott talk about two traditional practices for deepening one's spirituality. The first is meditation or prayer. Every religious tradition has both corporate and individual practices of prayer. Meditation and mindfulness practices are also important to millions of people who don't necessarily define themselves as being part of a religious faith yet very much benefit from this soulful practice.   


The other practice we talk about in this episode is gratitude. A regular gratitude practice, of taking time each morning or evening to note what you are grateful for that day, can help deepen one’s sense of the spiritual aspect of life. Research has shown that a regular gratitude practice has positive benefits for one's mental health, with some studies even suggesting that it has a positive effect on one's brain. 
 In whatever ways you express and tend to your spiritual root system, the benefits of doing so are immense. This is why we include spirituality as one of the eight dimensions of wellness in our Wellness Compass of Well-Being. And while all eight dimensions are essential, spirituality is perhaps, for many, the one that grounds and guides all the others. 

  
 Making It Personal: The questions below are offered to help you reflect on how you might apply the content of this week's column to your own life. You might write your responses to them in a journal, discuss them with someone else or in a group, or simply take a few moments to reflect on your responses. 


What comes to mind when you think of spirituality as being like the root system of a tree?

Are you satisfied with how aligned your current life choices are with your core values and spirituality?

How do you water your spiritual life now?

Might you want to try a regular gratitude or meditation/prayer practice (if you are not already doing so)?

Episode 3: Enhancing The Quality of Our Relationships

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Few things affect the quality of our lives than the quality of our relationships. All of us attended a "school of relationships" where we learned certain relationships skills and patterns. If those serve us well, our relationships will benefit. If they don't, the good news is we can always learn new relationships skills if we are humble and open to learning and willing to put the work in to create new patterns.

In this episode, Scott and Holly teach one specific relationship skill known as "the soft start-up." This is in contrast to "the harsh start-up" and the kind of start-up we use to start a conversation will highly affect how that conversation unfolds. Once again, they offer three "Making It Personal" questions/prompts to help you put into practice what you have learned from this episode.

Episode 2: Increasing Resilience Through Compassion

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“Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.”― Sharon Salzberg. This quote introduces the topic of this show which is about how "the seeds of resilience can only take root in the soil of compassion."

Resilience is defined here not so much as "bouncing back," but as "bouncing forward" because sometimes there is no going back, no bouncing back. When loss happens, when our "normal" is disrupted in profound ways, there is no going back to "normal." There is only going forward as we slowly create a new normal.

Holly Hughes Stoner joins Scott on this episode and talks about how the Wellness Compass Model for Well-Being can help us think about and respond to stress in a holistic way. Stress Resilience is one of the 8 areas of wellness in the Compass and this show talks about how all eight areas are interconnected, each affecting the other.  

The show concludes with three "Making It Personal" questions that invite the listener to apply what they have heard to their own life.  

Episode 1: What if the Hokey Pokey is What it's All About?

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This is the premiere episode of the Wellness Compass Podcast.  Scott introduces the podcast and the larger Wellness Compass Initiative. He also introduces the concept of whole-person wellness and what it means to put "your whole self in."

Scott also plays his guitar and then used it as a metaphor to learn about whole-person wellness.  He intentionally makes one string on the guitar out of tune, and then lets the listener hear how cringe-worthy that sounds. The metaphor is that our lives are always going in and out of tune. That's not a problem. The problem is when we don't or when we refuse to hear that our lives are out of tune and thus are unwilling or unable to make the changes necessary to get them back in tune.

This podcast, along with the overall Wellness Compass Initiative is all about providing the resources and support to both hear when our lives are out of tune and then figure out the steps necessary to get our lives back on key. Together, let's support one another as we dance and sing on this lifelong journey of wellness.