Are We There Yet?
The Wellness Compass Initiative is our partner community wellness initative that serves schools, counseling centers, nonprofits, and other community wellness organizations. Each week Holly Hughes Stoner and Scott Stoner, who are both licensed marriage and family therapists, co- write a column for Wellness Compass and we are pleased to share it here on our Living Compass site. There is also a Wellness Compass podcast at www.wellnesscompass.org/podcast.
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 the next time that 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."
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