Dear Dartmouth,

Welcome back from a much-deserved break! We hope the receding snow and greening landscape fills you with encouraging energy as we enter the warmer months.

This spring term, we invite our community to explore how we can continue to grow, make a substantial difference, and even change our own culture by recognizing that the small and seemingly unremarkable actions we take matter. ‘Everyday Action’ encourages steady growth and celebrates the tiny steps that lead to forward momentum. Through practice, patience, and persistence, we can look back on our greatest achievements not as a single triumph but as the culmination of everyday actions. 

Actions to try and consider as we embody what it means to take ‘Everyday Action’ this spring:

1. Find inspiration in the changing seasons. Our formerly frozen world is stirring and transforming into bright colors, aromas, and sounds around us. Consider that, like the seasons changing, a transition from barren snowscape to bustling, bursting spring does not happen overnight. Instead, what we notice when strolling across campus are snapshots of the small transformations taking place around us each day—pokes of green grass, buds on branches, tiny ‘cheeps’ from baby birds. These everyday changes eventually usher in a full-blown summer. Try a walk or hike through Pine Park to be inspired by nature’s “everyday action.”

2. Check in with your roots of wellbeing at the start of this term. Use this helpful guide to get an idea of your base wellness coming into Spring Term.

• Reflect: Which areas of your wellness are you feeling nourished in? Which areas of your wellness might be depleted? What are small consistent actions that contribute to your wellbeing?

3. Get in touch with vulnerability. It may feel physically and emotionally unpleasant to open ourselves to the possibilities of discomfort, uncertainty, and failure (trying something outside our comfort zones should be attempted when it is safe for us to do so). But accepting discomfort as a possible outcome of our efforts is one way we develop our ability to bounce back and endure. Noticing when we are judging ourselves, and releasing that judgment, helps us to silence our inner critics and kickstart the empowering process of loving ourselves unconditionally.

4. Practice self-compassion. Deepening our understanding, patience, and kindness for ourselves through this process helps us accept that “missteps” don’t define our self-worth. Try this 6-minute mindful self-compassion break to practice the three elements of self-compassion: mindfulness, common humanity, and gestures of kindness.

5. Recognize the beauty in imperfection. Applying the Japanese philosophy of “Wabi-Sabi” can help us interpret moments of change and transience in our own lives as beautiful. Seeing the beauty in what might be imperfect or incomplete gives us permission to understand that we all, always exist in states of change.

‘Everyday Action’ reminds us that small actions, taken consistently, can lead to powerful and sustainable change. As we kick off a new term, challenge yourself to see the inevitable failures, imperfections, slipups, and slow growth as progress along your unique path. When we frame growth in this manner, we are empowered to recognize that our smallest actions add up and matter. Consequently, each step we take has the potential to make a substantial difference in our own lives and in our community and culture.