By: Hollie Kowalski
Encompass Outreach Coordinator

We spend 70-80% of our day engaged in some form of communication. 55% of that time is generally devoted to listening. The average person who has not worked to develop good listening skills will only remember about half of any recent conversation. 48 hours after the conversation, they are likely to only remember 25% or less… and then there’s me.  My “working mom brain” has so many “open tabs” at any given time, I consider it a win if I remember my own children’s names on a daily basis.

Because of the “coordinated chaos” in my head sometimes, I tend to “drift” when conversing with my husband-especially in the evening after a long day. We don’t have much time together during the week and I always want him to feel that he is important, that I value his thoughts and emotions. So…

By Kermit Rowe 
Encompass Relationship Facilitator 
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More than half my life was spent as a sports journalist, a life that is now in the rearview mirror. But I continue to see valuable corollaries between the games of the sports world and the game of life. In my last four years as an Encompass Connection Center relationship coach, the similarities are even more glaring – especially in realm of committed couple relationships. ​

The most common answer given to us, to the question "What are you struggling with as a couple?" is COMMUNICATION. This month our posts will feature tips, insights, and research related to improving communication.
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By Lavern Nissley
Encompass Executive Director

The topic of communication is pretty broad, so we'll narrow the scope to the 2 basic elements of interpersonal asserting and listening. BOTH are needed in order for communication to be productive.

ASSERTING is expressing your wishes and interests in a positive way - not being aggressive or demanding. It is the opposite of being silent, of pretending to agree, of passive aggression.

LISTENING is hearing to understand what the other person is saying - not interrupting or planning your own response.

There are six animal types that represent common human responses to stress and that interfere with productive communication. Want to know your type(s)?

By: Joe Kowalski
Owner/CEO Empowered Community Services

Most everyone can remember the panic, sudden jolt, and jarring pain of hitting the ground after their friend jumped off the teeter totter when we were kids.

Or that time when you were in a hurry to get home with the groceries. You’re late, it’s raining, and instead of making three trips into the house with the groceries in the rain, you try to carry all 37 bags at one time, only to slip on the pavement sending a week’s worth of groceries all over the garage floor.

What about this one? You are up against a deadline at work, going on 4 hours of sleep and you get a call at 5:30p from your spouse demanding “where are you?”  With everything going on, you forgot to update your calendar with the kids’ recital that you are now going to miss.  
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These lessons on gravity, imbalance, and regret are hard to forget. Unbalanced objects, whether they be playground equipment, people, or the expectations of others, will always fall.
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My wife and I have four children (3 high schoolers still at home,) a new grandson, 3 dogs, and I run my own small business. The demands on my time are many and balance becomes more and more difficult to maintain. By my own admission, I have a lot of work to do when it comes to balance in my life, but the following are a few pieces of advice I’ve come to cherish on this exceedingly difficult subject.

Our posts during June will feature the themes of Fathers, Father's Day, Leaders/Leadership.

By Lavern Nissley
Encompass Executive Director

My Dad would have turned 90 tomorrow, June 8. Although much of my experience of him as a father included spillovers from his own unhealed and unresolved childhood (anger, anxiety, agitation), I still miss him and acknowledge positive takeaways from his life.

He passed November 12, 2021 and is buried in Arcola, Illinois at the Sunnyside Mennonite Church cemetery. Mom was buried in the same plot earlier this year after her death March 6. Some of the content you'll see in this post is drawn from A Tribute to Our Dad that Ken, Karen, and I shared at his funeral.

But his legacy and impact are anything but buried. In some quirky and interesting ways they live on both in and through me.

By: Abby Glaser
Encompass Community Advocate
 
As part of Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to talk about a key factor in protecting and improving your mental health: Boundaries!  The topic of boundaries has become much more popular in the past decade, but many don’t really know what the term “healthy boundaries” means or how to go about implementing them.  ​

By Kermit Rowe 
Encompass Relationship Facilitator 

If you are looking for objective, empirical evidence that physical fitness leads to marital happiness and endurance, you’ll be looking long and hard. There just isn’t much out there. 

But observation and personal experience offer plenty of evidence that it does. Focus On The Family, one of the preeminent marriage ministries of the 20th and 21st centuries, offers this in a recent article: “Exercise isn’t the answer to every marriage issue, but it will help you to bond on a new level and establish invaluable disciplines, such as perseverance and goal-setting, that can help combat marital fatigue.” ​

By Lavern Nissley
Encompass Executive Director

(Our blog posts in May will feature content surrounding health of various types - with a connection to relationships, of course!)

​Those of you that know Ronda and me well know that we've become quite fond of bicycling. In fact, you may know that for the past thirteen years we've ridden about 13,000 miles on a rather unique looking tandem recumbent bike. It has provided us with hundreds of hours interacting with each other and working together as a team (most of the time😊) to enjoy biking adventures, sometime up to 30 and 40 miles at a time. We've accomplished six or seven "century rides" - that's 100 miles in one day.

What you may not know is the "WHY" of bicycling for us. You'll see three solid reasons that have made this activity our favorite health investment.