Let Your Life Speak: Listening to Our Souls

Let Your Life Speak: Listening to Our Souls

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 and the generosity of donors."

"The mission of the American Cancer Society is to improve the lives of people with cancer and their families through advocacy, research, and patient support, to ensure everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer."

"Feeding America's mission is to advance change in America by ensuring equitable access to nutritious food for all in partnership with food banks, policymakers, supporters, and the communities we serve."

Our Wellness Compass Initiative is a nonprofit program, so we also have a mission statement. "The Wellness Compass Initiative is a nonprofit with a mission to enhance mental health and resilience in individuals, families, schools, organizations, and communities."

Today's column is our fourth in a series on "Let Your Life Speak." This week we focus on spirituality and listening to our souls as they relate to our core beliefs and values. It is our response to the question, "What's your why?" A person’s why may be expressed through our spirituality in religious beliefs or practices, or it may be expressed in a manner that is separate from a formal religious tradition.  

An individual's spirituality is like a nonprofit organization's mission statement. If you were to write a mission statement for your life, it would be an expression of your spiritual beliefs. To use the metaphor of a compass, spirituality is our true north.  

Just as mission statements help organizations know what to say yes to and what to say no to, our core values and beliefs do the same for us as individuals. When we say yes to things that do not align with our spirituality, we will eventually find a sense of unease as our souls speak to us, letting us know we are getting off course.

Our souls contain deep wisdom. We are wise to listen to them, especially when they let us know that we are veering away from our sense of true north.  

Making It Personal: 

If you were to write a personal mission statement, what would it be?

Might you be willing to try doing so?

How do you recognize when you are getting out of alignment with your spiritual values and beliefs, and what helps you to get back on course?****************************************************************************************************************

To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Let Your Life Speak: Nurturing Our Relationships

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 few things affect the quality of our lives more than the quality of our relationships. The second thing these requests remind us of is that relationships are complicated, requiring an ongoing commitment to maintain and strengthen them. As the quote above says, “Human relationships are not rocket science--they are far, far more complicated.”

So while relationships are complicated, here are several principles that we find to help keep them on track. 

*Whatever we pay attention to is what will grow. If we pay attention to our relationships and water them regularly with positive attention and kindness, they will grow. As we like to say, “The grass is greener where you water it.”

*We often have more agency to change and improve a relationship than we realize. While this is not always the case, we often can do things, including having difficult conversations, rather than avoiding them, to help shift a relationship stuck in a painful or unhealthy pattern. We may need to ask for professional help to do this, but change can happen with commitment and intention.

*Old patterns take time to change. Each of us has internalized relationship patterns from our childhood. Some of those patterns serve us well, and others may not. While changing these patterns is not easy, it is possible. We need to be patient and loving with ourselves (and others) as we, with time and effort, try to make these changes.  

*Love is a decision. While love is undoubtedly a feeling, too, feelings ebb and flow. Long-term relationships of every kind (between partners, friends, siblings, colleagues, etc.) require a commitment of the will. Deciding to continue to invest in the relationship even when the feelings are uncomfortable is an essential aspect of nurturing our relationships.

*The best time to have a difficult conversation about a difficulty in a relationship is when that difficulty arises. The second best time is today. Avoiding hard conversations almost always makes them more challenging to have later on. As we wrote last week, “The more you hide your feelings, the more they grow.”

Relationships are complicated. Some say they are more complex than rocket science. They are also essential to our well-being. Hopefully, the principles we have shared will make nurturing your relationships a little less complicated. 

Making It Personal:

1. Did one of the principles we shared speak especially to you? 

2. If so, is there a specific relationship you might apply it to right now? ****************************************************************************************************************

To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.

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Let Your Life Speak: Listening to Our Emotions

Let Your Life Speak: Listening to Our Emotions

This is the second column 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." When I (Scott) was younger and not as comfortable expressing my emotions, I can remember saying, "I am NOT MAD," or "I am NOT SAD," with such force that it was pretty evident to anyone listening that I was, of course, completely feeling those exact emotions. I was not yet, however, capable or comfortable in expressing them in a helpful way. The more I tried to hide or deny those feelings, the more they showed, but not in healthy or beneficial ways.

The second part of the saying is, "The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow."

Imagine standing in a swimming pool, and someone hands you a beach ball. Now imagine you try to submerge the ball and try to sit on it while it is entirely underwater. You might be able to do it for a moment, but surely it will be evident to anyone looking that you are trying to hold something down that naturally wants to come to the surface. That's what trying to repress our emotions looks and feels like. We might be able to do it in the short run, but it will be exhausting, and the pressure to let the feelings come to the surface will only grow. Eventually, everyone around you will soon recognize that you are hiding something, but will be unable to help as they won't know quite what is going on "under the surface."  

The expression, "I had a good cry," speaks to the wisdom of being able to feel and express the full range of emotions. A good cry releases the pressure of our feelings, which is why we feel relief. If you think of the "motions" part of the word "emotions," it is a helpful reminder that our emotions want and need to be in motion. They need to be expressed and not bottled up. 

Of course, not all expressions of emotions are healthy, and so learning to do so is a skill that takes practice, as any parent knows who is teaching their children the difference between healthy and unhealthy expressions of feelings. The key here is that emotions are not healthy or unhealthy—they simply are a natural part of who we all are. How we express our feelings is what can be healthy or not. 

We have more to say on this topic in the podcast accompanying this week's column, so if you have fifteen minutes, we hope you will listen.  Click here to listen.

As we say at the end of every podcast episode, we are so grateful to be walking this journey toward wellness and wholeness with you. Our feelings of gratitude are definitely feelings we want to share with others!

Making It Personal: 

1. How comfortable are you with experiencing and expressing the full range of your emotions? 

2. Can you think of ways in which the words of the quote we share above have been or are currently true for you? 

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Subscribe Now to Weekly Words of Wellness:

Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.

You can unsubscribe at any time.

Let Your Life Speak: Listen with Love, to What Your Body is Telling You

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 connect with is not another person, but our bodies. That's right, what if it has been a long time since we have really touched base with our physical well-being and listened closely to what our bodies are telling us?  

With today's column, we have started a series entitled "Let Your Life Speak." A theme that will run through each of the columns in this series, and the Wellness Compass podcast episodes that accompany this column, is that our lives are always speaking to us in one way to another. The question is, “Are we curious enough to listen?”

People sometimes ask what we mean when we say that we focus on "whole-person" wellness. Our short answer is that all areas of our well-being are interconnected, like objects hanging from a mobile attached to the ceiling. Move one dangling part, and you will create movement in the other objects as well. All parts of the mobile, like all parts of our well-being, are interconnected.  

This is why experts report that two-thirds of visits to a medical professional are stress related. In other words, while these visits are intended to address a physical health concern, the origin of the symptoms is often stress or being out of balance in a dimension other than the physical area of our well-being.

Knowing that stress, anxiety, and grief may first express themselves as physical symptoms is helpful in understanding and helping ourselves heal. For example, if a person is having difficulty sleeping because of something stressful they are experiencing, simply treating the sleep symptom would miss the opportunity to address the underlying issue causing the distress.

It is also true that being proactive about caring for our physical wellness can have a positive preventative impact on our emotional, relational, and spiritual well-being as well. This is the premise of a recent New York Times guest article, "Whatever the Problem, It's Probably Solved by Walking." 

The article begins:

"Walking is the worst-kept secret I know. Its rewards hide under every step. Perhaps because we take walking so much for granted, many of us often ignore its ample gifts. In truth, I doubt I would walk often or very far if its sole benefit was physical, despite the abundant proof of its value in that regard. 

There's something else at play in walking that interests me more. And with the arrival of spring, attention must be paid." 

You can find the whole article HERE.

If we are fortunate, we can say we have more than one friend, yet we each only have one body. Perhaps it's time to reconnect with your "old friend,” go for a walk, and listen closely to what it is saying to you now. 

Making It Personal:

1. What are a few things your “old friend,” your body, is telling you now?

2. Have you thought about looking at your health from a holistic vantage point before now? What could it mean to you and your life?

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Subscribe Now to Weekly Words of Wellness:

Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.

You can unsubscribe at any time.

Hope and the Mud Season

Hope and the Mud Season

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 out the window and observe the thirty-degree temperature swings that often occur daily, never knowing if we will see rain, snow, or sunshine. 

There is a muddiness in the broader world right now that is so much more profound than anything related to the weather. The unspeakable violence and suffering we are witnessing in Ukraine, and closer to home the continued school shootings and the political uncertainty in our own country can create enormous swings of emotions within us day to day, or even hour to hour.  

As mental health professionals, we know from our experience and research that the presence of hope within a person profoundly affects their resilience in the midst of such challenging times and their overall well-being. And so, right now, the question, really the challenge we hear from many people we talk with, is about how a person goes about nurturing and sustaining hope amidst so much suffering. 

We believe that hope is like a muscle; it is not something we either have or don't have, but it can be exercised and strengthened. In our Wellness Compass Model for Well-being, we address eight areas of wellness, and one of those areas is spirituality. 

Hope is often grounded and nurtured in our spirituality. Many people, but certainly not all, express their spirituality through a particular religious faith. In that light, it is worth noting that three of the world's great religions are celebrating holy days amidst the suffering and challenges facing our world right now. Ramadan, Passover, and Easter are all being observed across the globe. 

None of these religions minimize the reality of suffering. Each of these faiths acknowledges the presence of profound suffering, and yet it is in the midst of it that they each proclaim hope. So, for example, we read the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."

Mud season is real. Suffering happens in the world and our lives, as we are reminded all too often. Hope, though, doesn't just happen; it needs to be developed, practiced, and sustained, even when it is hard. In our fifteen-minute podcast, which is a companion to this column, we discuss some practices that nurture hope. You can listen to the podcast by clicking HERE or down below.

Sometimes hope springs forth all at once, symbolized by an unexpected sunny seventy-five-degree day in Wisconsin in April. More often than not, it appears as a small glimpse of a new crocus or daffodil just beginning to peek its head up through the soil on a cold and rainy day. In both cases, the hope is there, yet sometimes, we have to look closely to see it, given all the mud surrounding it. 

Making It Personal: What helps you sustain hope in the midst of challenging and uncertain times? What role does your spirituality play in grounding hope for you? Is there anything specific you want to do to nourish your spirit and sense of hope right now? 

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To explore your own well-being in the eight areas of wellness, you may be interested in downloading our newest FREE resource, The Adult Wellness Compass Notebook. This workbook is perfect for either individual or group use, and is a tool for self-reflection, learning, and goal setting. Click HERE to download and enjoy.

Each week Holly and Scott Stoner record the Wellness Compass Podcast. Each episode is about 15 minutes and offers a deeper dive into what appears here in the written column. You can listen to the Wellness Compass podcast in your favorite podcast app—just search for “The Wellness Compass,” and you can listen by clicking HERE and scrolling down to this week’s episode.

And speaking of podcasts, Scott has launched a new podcast this week that is just him speaking about a topic that he is passionate about—the integration of spirituality and wellness. You can listen to the newly launched Living Compass podcast by clicking on the word “Podcast” in the bar at the top of this Living Compass webpage or find it in your favorite podcast app (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.)

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Subscribe Now to Weekly Words of Wellness:

Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.

You can unsubscribe at any time.