St Thomas

I have spent more time jumping on a trampoline in the last three months than I have in the previous sixty-four years of my life. The gift of all these visits to an indoor trampoline park has come via my grandchildren. I cannot thank them enough for both the uncontrollable laughter we have experienced, as well as introducing me to such a wild place where I have relearned an essential lesson during all the hours we have spent bouncing together. In the midst of our fun, I have discovered that when you are bouncing on a trampoline, you cannot possibly think about anything else other than, well, bouncing on a trampoline. It takes every ounce of my concentration to be sure that I do not lose my balance, drift too close to the edge, or stumble over my grandchildren. There is not a care or worry I could possibly think…

Regular readers of this column know that I am an avid baseball fan, and so it broke my heart to learn of the cheating scandal that has come to light this past week. What some players and managers connected to the Houston Astros 2017 team hoped would remain a secret came out in full detail this week, and the news has cost three team managers and one general manager their jobs. Rather than debating the particular details of how this all came to be, I am more interested here in the universal wellness lesson that we can learn from this unfortunate example of secrets and dishonesty. Being dishonest and keeping that secret can actually make a person sick. As two related quotes from Twelve-Step programs remind us: “Your secrets keep you sick,” and “We are only as sick as our secrets.” I heard another saying this week (thanks to my…

I love shoveling the sidewalk in front of our house after a fresh snowfall. I don’t always get to see immediate, tangible benefits in the kind of work I do for a living. So I take particular pleasure in doing things, like shoveling a sidewalk, that show clear and obvious benefits. And because we live in a walking community, I value being able to make a clear and safe path for the many people who walk by our house every day. It snowed an inch or two overnight last week, which given our lack of snow this year in Wisconsin, was a welcome morning sight. I was home on vacation, feeling lazy, and for once was in no hurry to clear the new snow off the sidewalk. I could see that there was no ice and that people had no trouble using the sidewalk and so I didn’t get out…

Yesterday I took our now dried and brittle Christmas tree and placed it on the curb in front of our home. It wasn’t alone out there as many of our neighbors had recently done the same. Even though Christmas is over, it’s still a sad sight to see all the once beautiful Christmas trees waiting now out in the cold to be picked up and taken away. There is a lesson I find in these discarded trees that applies to a favorite activity this time of year, the making of New Year’s resolutions. Trees die quickly once they are cut off from their roots, and the same is true of resolutions. If we only focus on the what we want to change rather than the underlying why, there is a good chance our resolve to change will not last. Connecting with the why we want to change something helps us…