Dear Dartmouth,

At the Student Wellness Center, our strengths-based perspective helps us to frame our work from a positive, inclusive, and empowering stance. Explicitly focusing on strengths themselves as resources for supporting the wellbeing of individuals, organizations, and communities can be an empowering way for us to thrive.

We introduced the concept of strengths and shared ways that you can learn more about your particular strengths constellation in our first Strengths Spotlight post. It’s fun to revisit the strengths-based lens now, as we explore kindness and connection together, as a strengths-based perspective can reinforce your stance of kindness toward yourself and others in and of itself. Believing that you have strengths within you, and using those strengths to resolve different challenges is a fundamentally kind approach to life.

If you’d like to identify your strengths prior to reading on, you can try the free, online VIA Survey of Character Strengths. The 24 strengths that make up this framework are considered universal, positive human capacities (e.g. honesty, bravery, creativity) that are valued in every culture and exist in every person.

The VIA is designed to illustrate only your strengths – NOT your weaknesses, so even though your results are presented as a subjective ranking of your strengths from 1-24 they are all strengths that you possess, and the ranking is more about the intentionality it requires for you to access and make use of them. Typically, the strengths at the top of your list tend to be qualities that you embody without even thinking about it. They frequently feel natural or effortless to engage and require little intention. By contrast, strengths that are lower on the list might feel like they take a bit more effort and willpower to enact, but they are still very much strengths that you possess.

If you’ve taken the VIA, consider the signature themes from your results (i.e. the top 6-8 strengths). If you haven’t taken the VIA, look at the 24 strengths in the image above and see which ones seem like the best fit for you. With those strengths in mind, consider the following:

• Which of these strengths are related to your ability to be kind to yourself or others?
• What does this look like for you? Try to come up with 2-3 examples of a time when a particular strength helped you to be kind.
• Which of these strengths are related to the way that you connect with others?
• What does this look like for you? Try to come up with 2-3 examples of a time when a particular strength helped you to connect authentically.
• Were there any instances where the same strength supported both kindness and connection? If so, how could you leverage those strengths more fully, or in new ways to broaden, deepen, or otherwise enhance the relationships in your life?

Perhaps some of the strengths where there are obvious connections like social intelligence or kindness will stand out, but allowing yourself to be open to any of the strengths could result in some interesting surprises. Maybe a strength like humility could boost your ability to be kind to yourself when you’ve experienced a setback by helping you accept that you’re as human as everyone else, and mistakes happen. There’s an expression that honesty is always ultimately a form of kindness, and perhaps you could find ways that your strength of honesty can help you connect with others by being more authentic too.

Before we wrap up, I want to mention an article that came out today (!) highlighting a new study that helped me understand the relationship between kindness, happiness, and wellbeing more fully. A meta-analysis of 126 research articles on the character strength of kindness, involving almost 200,000 participants from around the world concluded that kindness is positively associated with wellbeing in many ways – boosting happiness, self-esteem, physical health, and self-efficacy while buffering against depression and anxiety. The research suggests that being kind:

“may make us feel better about ourselves as a person or about the meaning of our lives, confirm our self-competence, distract us from our own troubles and stressors, give us a warm-glow feeling, or help us be more socially connected with others. All of these could potentially improve our well-being—reducing our stress, improving our mood, or providing community.”

Of course, every strength has the capacity to support your wellbeing by bringing good things to your life, but studies like this underscore the importance of kindness for connection, health, and happiness. Wishing you all a little more kindness, and a strong sense of connection.

Take care and be well,
Todd