Summer Wellbeing Theme: Joy & Playfulness

Dear Dartmouth,

It’s summer in the Upper Valley! The days all stretch a little longer, the hills are verdant and green, the gardens are bringing forth an abundance of fresh produce, and the nights are lit by fireflies and stars. It’s a special time here – one that sends people off to local watering holes or trails into the wilderness to cool and relax during the heat of the day.

Of course, everything I’ve just written feels like it should probably have a giant asterisk after it, connected to a footnote reading “schedules permitting.” It’s Summer Term after all, which means your life is likely full of demands and responsibilities, academic and otherwise. Wherever you are at on the spectrum of busy-ness this summer, our team at the SWC wants to encourage you to take some time for yourself that restores your energy, helps you connect with others, and make the most of this sweet short season that is upon us. With that in mind, we’re excited to share our summer wellbeing theme of Joy and Playfulness.

As a jumping off point, here’s how our Wellbeing & Mindfulness Specialist, LB, the visionary behind our wellbeing themes and all-around great person, describes this focus:

Joy & Playfulness is all about creating space in your life for delight and light-heartedness, even if it’s just for a moment or two. It’s about letting go of the need to constantly practice, perform, or perfect, and instead embracing things that feel replenishing and fulfilling.

Let’s unpack that statement a little bit to see if it can generate some ways that you can start to incorporate these components of wellbeing into your life more consistently.

LB mentions that joy is significant, even if it can feel fleeting at times. In many ways, joy is something we experience in the moment, but cultivate over the long haul. Try thinking of joy as an indicator of thriving. The moments when you are experiencing joy can serve as a cue that things are good, and these moments can impact our wellbeing in positive ways. If we are able to be open to the joy that different experiences present us, then we have opportunities to realize that our lives can be good, which can encourage us to pursue the kinds of relationships and goals that bring this particular type of fulfilling happiness.

After nearly 3 years on staff at Dartmouth, it has become evident to me that many people in our community feel a need to be conduct themselves seriously and stay constantly “switched on.” I’ve heard many students use the phrase “work hard, play hard,” suggesting that this idea of how you should be cuts across all areas of your life. It’s as if there is a sense that you need to go at everything full force –  constantly performing, productive, and at your best in every way.

Focusing on joy can offer an opportunity to step back from striving for that kind of existence and instead think about how you actually want to feel and what kinds of things make that feeling possible. Something as simple as pausing to contemplate this can help you realize that those expectations of performance, productivity, and perfection were pretty unrealistic in the first place. And letting go of those expectations might allow you to embrace other ways of approaching life that are more sustaining and restorative.

This theme, then, is about cultivating the ability to create a diversity of experiences for yourself. There are certainly times when you need to be serious, focused, and on your “A game,” but there are also times when can you can let go, relax, and allow yourself to simply be.

Learning to prioritize joyful and playful moments as being of equal importance with the times we need to be at our best might be transformative. Opportunities for joy – through connection or play, through experiences of wonder or novelty, through reflecting on ways that you have had a positive impact on another person or contributed to your community – can help you become more aware of what, specifically, makes life worth living for you.

Should you decide to prioritize joy this summer, then the last piece to unpack from the statement above is the idea of creating space for these experiences. This is no simple task. Your life is undoubtedly stacked with responsibilities. However, making space for joy, for play, for rest and self-care, is a way of sending a direct message to yourself that you, in fact, matter, and deserve good things in your life. It might also prove restorative, helping you to re-engage with those responsibilities, and show up for others in a more focused and intentional way. So how might you intentionally create more space for joy in your life?

Merriam Webster defines joy as “the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.” In terms of intentionality, there is clearly a spectrum here, so let’s focus quickly on each of the things that might evoke joy.

  • Good fortune is difficult to predict or force. However, you can influence your internal state by cultivating your capacity to appreciate good things. That way, when they occur you can actually experience them in a joyful manner. Practicing gratitude has many well-established links with wellbeing, and can open you up to be more aware of and responsive to the joyful moments that are already part of your life.
  • Wellbeing involves both internal and external factors, making it more self-directed. Prioritizing wellbeing – i.e. making sure you have opportunities in your life on an ongoing basis to both be well AND do well can make all the difference here. This type of “creating space” involves reflecting on what you value, and then taking action to ensure that you have time set apart for these things even in the midst of your other competing demands.
  • Finally, the concepts of success and working toward desired outcomes are things over which you can exert a strong influence. Start by setting an intention. Ask yourself what you most hope to accomplish this summer. What are the goals or outcomes that are most deserving of your energy? Then, focus your efforts on these things that matter to you to create more opportunities to experience joy – both when you accomplish your goals and also during the pursuit of those goals, as this striving is the very thing that can help you grow more fully into the person you want to become.
    [nerd alert: for more on this, look up “self-concordance theory”]

Okay – enough reading about this theme. What could you do right now that would bring a little more joy to your day? Is it time to go play? To connect with someone else? Whatever it might be, here’s hoping you can get away from this screen and go do something that helps you embrace life in a joyful way.

Wherever you are, as you journey through this summer, our SWC team is here to support you. Please explore what we have to offer, and don’t ever hesitate to reach out!

Take care and be well,
Todd