The Wellness Compass Podcast

In this episode, Holly and Scott share their thoughts in reaction to this beautiful poem called "On the Necessity of Snow Angels for the Well-Being of the World" by Grace Butcher.  Here is the full text of the poem:   Wherever there is snow, I go, making angels along the way Luckily angels have no gender  and are easier to make than you might think.   All you have to do is let go,  fall on your ba...

Continuing their series on proactively caring for our wellbeing during the holidays, Holly and Scott talk about how we can take the opportunity this time of year to strenghten our relationships.  Few things affect our wellbeing more than the state of our relationships.

The pressure around the holiday season to have the "best holiday ever" can cause us to ignore the full range of complicated emotions we often feel this time of year.  In this episode, Holly and Scott discuss the importance of caring for our emotional wellbeing this time of year.   They also reflect on a poignant commercial they saw recently that helps bring to life what they are talking about.  Yo...

Small daily habits make a difference. For example, every morning, we both clean our glasses. It's just something we do as part of our morning routine. Doing so allows us to see the world a little more clearly. If we miss a day, we probably won't notice it that much, but if missing a day turned into missing a week, our view of things would undoubtedly become a bit clouded. Practicing gratitude is l...

In this episode Holly and Scott talk about the power of being kind. If you ever doubt the power of kindness, you can quickly become reassured of the difference it makes by trying it. Make an effort to say a kind word to someone today. You might call someone who could use a kind word, send an email, or text to someone who could use some encouragement. Or you could make a meal for a friend, help a n...

Most likely, we have all had the experience of negatively judging someone else's behavior and then wholly changing our opinion after we later learned more about the context or background of the person and the behavior we had judged. Maybe we regarded someone as being rude for coming late or unprepared to a meeting, only to find out later that they are a caregiver for a loved one and are overwhelme...

Practice the Pause Have you ever sent a text message or email when you were upset, only to regret doing so? If so, you know firsthand how important it can be to remember to "practice the pause."  The word we are focusing on in this week's column and podcast is "pause." We like concentrating on a single word because that makes it easy for us to carry it with us throughout our week, reminding us to...

What follows is a transcription of this week's Wellness Compass podcast episode.  Listening gives the full experience of the emotions and tone of what is being said, which is difficult to capture in a transcription. The spoken word is different than the written word. We are happy to provide this transcript for those who prefer to read rather than listen.   Holly:   Welcome to the Wellness Compass...

What follows is a transcription of this week's 10-minute Wellness Compass podcast episode. Listening gives the full experience of the emotions and tone of what is being said, which is difficult to capture in a transcription. The spoken word is different than the written word. We are happy to provide this transcript for those who prefer to read rather than listen. Holly:   Welcome back to the Welln...

What follows is a transcription of this week's 10-minute Wellness Compass podcast episode. We invite you to listen to this ten-minute episode by clicking the player graphic above or by clicking  HERE to listen to it on our website. (You can also listen in any podcast app, Apple, Google, Spotify, by searing for Wellness Compass--and be sure to subscribe.) Holly: Welcome back to the The Wellness Com...

What follows is a transcription of this week's 10-minute Wellness Compass podcast episode. We invite you to listen to this ten-minute episode by clicking the player graphic above or by clicking  HERE to listen to it on our website. (You can also listen in any podcast app, Apple, Google, Spotify, by searing for Wellness Compass--and be sure to subscribe.) Scott:   Welcome back to the Wellness Compa...

Please note : What follows is a transcription of this week's Wellness Compass podcast episode entitled "Learn." We invite you to listen to this ten-minute episode by clicking the player graphic above or by clicking  HERE . Listening gives the full experience of the emotions and tone of what is being said, which is difficult to capture in a transcription. The spoken word is different than the writt...

  Please note : What follows is a transcription of this week's Wellness Compass podcast episode entitled "Learn." We invite you to listen to this ten-minute episode by clicking the player graphic above or by clicking  HERE . Listening gives the full experience of the emotions and tone of what is being said, which is difficult to capture in a transcription. The spoken word is different than the wri...

When it comes to achieving an important goal, what do you think matters most—individual effort or the support of others? Of course, this is somewhat of a trick question as the answer is not an "either-or" but rather a "both-and." Evidence of this "both-and" is all around us in this season of graduations, where we honor the accomplishments of both individuals and the villages of support that have m...

As a nonprofit wellness initiative, we are honored to work with organizations worldwide. One of our favorites, though, is right in our hometown—the University of Wisconsin, a school we both happen to have graduated from. We were on the university campus this week for several meetings. We had the good fortune to interact with many recent graduates, as this past week was the university's commencemen...

A few months ago, while standing in line at a coffee shop, I noticed a beautiful tattoo on a man's arm right in front of me. It was a heart with the word "Mom" in it. I commented on the tattoo and said, "Your Mom must be very special to you." My comment evoked some beautiful stories from the man I had just met. Here's my recollection of some of what he told me. "It's complicated. My mom was very s...

Most nonprofit organizations have mission statements. These statements succinctly state the purpose of the organization in order to inform and guide those who work for or support the organization.  Here are a few such statements from some organizations you might know: "The American Red Cross prevents and alleviates human suffering in the face of emergencies by mobilizing the power of volunteers an...

Let Your Life Speak: Nurturing Our Relationships As marriage and family therapists, people often reach out to us because there is a relationship in their life that they want to improve. It might be a relationship with a friend, neighbor, colleague, partner, spouse, sibling, or another family member.  These requests remind us of two things. First, relationships are critical to our well-being, as fe...

Let Your Life Speak: Listening to Your Emotions This is the second in our series entitled "Let Your Life Speak." Our first column focused on listening to our bodies, and this week we are focusing on listening to our emotions.   The quote we share above succinctly captures what we want to say about this topic. The first part of the quote is, "The more you hide your feelings, the more they show." Wh...

Let Your Life Speak: Listen, with Love, to What Your Body is Telling You We all know how good it feels to connect with an old friend, someone we haven't been in touch with for a while. It feels good to listen to what they have to say and catch up on how they are doing. The experience of reconnecting can remind us of how very important they have been to us. Now imagine that the old friend we connec...

We live in Wisconsin, and like other places with northern climates, we actually have five seasons each year. Our fifth occurs between winter and spring and is known as the "mud season." If we need an image of the name for this extra season, we need only look at our mud-caked hiking shoes inside our back door, removed and left there to dry after a walk in the woods this past weekend. Or we can look...

Celebrating Assist Leaders "We rise by lifting others." Robert Ingersoll Caitlin Clark is one of the reasons the University of Iowa women's basketball team will be in the NCAA Final Four this weekend. What we admire most about her is not that she is a prolific scorer, although she is number three in the nation in that category, but instead that she is the assist leader for all collegiate women pla...

Detaching From the Outcome We carefully filled out the NCAA Men's and Women's basketball tournament brackets last week, both hoping for the best. We just checked our brackets, and out of the 20,056,273 entries submitted to ESPN, Scott is currently in 18,984,367th place. Holly's situation is only slightly better. While our ability to predict the future is clearly lacking, here's one prediction we a...

A Wee Bit of Irish Wit and Wisdom In honor of this week's column being sent on St. Patrick's Day, we are celebrating the wisdom of Ireland. The Irish are known for their pithy words of wisdom, which we believe are relevant to this column's wellness focus. In no particular order, here are several of our favorite Irish sayings. Read them carefully and see which ones resonate with you.  May you have...

Changing Your Perspective, Changes Your Experience by D. Scott and Holly Hughes Stoner Years ago, when I (Holly) was in high school and college, I was lucky enough to take several drawing classes, some with still lifes or inanimate objects and others with live models. I learned a lot in those classes and only some of what I learned had to do with actually capturing what I saw on paper. I learned o...