Welcome back to Connecting With Our Purpose where we will offer tools and tips throughout the term to help you embrace and maximize that which makes your life most worth living. 

Revealing glimmers of your life purpose can be achieved through something as simple as a journaling practice. Let journaling be a powerful tool for helping you better articulate your goals and needs and gain new perspectives along the way. You may also find it to be a relaxing, even meditative activity. Sometimes it helps to write freely, while other times it helps to write under the auspice of a specific prompt. We’ll offer some of our favorite journaling practices and prompts here to help you kick start your journey!

1. Pause and Center Before You Begin
   • Set aside at least 5-10 minutes for your journaling practice.
   • Try this 2.5 minute STOP practice as a way to pause, breathe, notice, and reconnect to your intentions.

2. Our Favorite Prompts to Help you Connect With Your Purpose (write openly or try one of the journaling tools below):
   • When you imagine your future self, what do you hope to see?
   • What does “purpose” mean to you? 
   • Name one way a value of yours connects to your purpose. How did you arrive at this value?
   • Do your decisions reflect your values?
   • What parts of your relationships are most meaningful to you?
   • What does having a sense of purpose provide you?
   • What makes you come alive?
   • When have you felt a sense of meaning?
   • Fill in the blank: I exist to _____ (intended impact) in order to serve _____ (desired audience). What do you notice about your response?

3. Our favorite Journaling Tools:

• Gratitude Journaling: Each day, write down 3 things you are grateful for. When we take the time to remember and list three things we are grateful for, we focus on what’s good in our lives and helps us recognize qhat truly matters to us. Pick up a free gratitude journal from the Student Wellness Center (located in Berry library, right above Novak).

• Swift Ink or Stream of Consciousness Journaling:
  • Want to journal but don’t know where to begin (or worry you’ll get caught in the trap of perfectionism)? Swift Ink can be an effective practice for letting words flow freely onto the page, without judgment.
  • How to start: Set a timer for 2-5 minutes. Choose one of the prompts above and write, without lifting your pen from the page, until the timer rings. If you are stuck, simply write “I have more to say” over and over until an idea or direction emerges.
  • Reflect on what you have written: What themes have materialized? 

• Three Things Journaling: This practice is helpful for helping us prioritize what is important and release that which no longer serves us. Periodically check in and jot down your responses these three questions:
  • What is one thing I want to let go of?
  • What is one thing I want to embrace?
  • What is one thing I want to focus on?

Want more journaling prompts? We’ve developed more prompts here to help you reflect on your past journey, present focus, and future intentions. Happy writing!

P.S. We’d love to hear from you! Schedule a Wellness Check In with one of our skilled wellness coaches to reflect on your journaling practices and debrief what emerges related to finding your sense of purpose here at Dartmouth.

Welcome to Connecting with Our Purpose where we at the Student Wellness Center will be exploring with our community the various pathways for pursuing purpose. A wonderful step to serve you on your journey towards more meaning and fulfillment is by recognizing the character strengths you hold and express, which can help you tap into one of the many entry points for living your strongest life possible.

What are character strengths? Character strengths are, according to the field of positive psychology, a family of constructive traits expressed through a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are universally recognized for the strength that they create in individuals and communities. Understanding your own character strengths can help you realize what you intuitively gravitate towards and contribute. With awareness and intention you can maximize that which makes your life most worth living.

There are more than few tools out there to help you connect to character strengths. But did you know that Dartmouth students have free access to the renowned Gallup CliftonStrengths Assessment, which guides you through your unique talents and how to use those talents to succeed in your role as a student? Understanding your top strengths can help you thrive academically, socially and in your future career. Explore the assessment (available for Dartmouth students) here. Or perhaps you already have a heightened awareness of your unique strengths or understanding of your heart’s compass through a reflective journaling or other wellbeing practice. What next?

Try Gallup’s “Name It, Claim It, and Aim It” framework to make meaning of your strengths and leverage them to fortify your connection to purpose:

1. Name it: Raising self-awareness of your unique talents and intentions helps you gain clarity on what you naturally do well and enjoy. Take the CliftonStrengths survey and/or try these steps for strengthening your self-awareness.

2. Claim it: Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism, posits that “your obligation is to the highest contribution you can make”. So how do you know what unique contributions you have for this world? By not only understanding your strengths but accepting them too. By appreciating what powers and values you are bringing to the table, you are empowered to claim ownership of them and better articulate your needs moving forward.

3. Aim it: When you have identified your talents and claimed them as strengths, you might ask: ‘how can I leverage these strengths to accomplish what is most important to helping me live a purposeful life?’ Intentionally practice using and developing your strengths. Schedule a Wellness Check In with a trained Wellness Coach at the Student Wellness Center or connect with a Career Coach from the Center for Professional Development to strategize how to meaningfully apply your strengths towards personal growth in areas like your career, relationships, and wellbeing.

You can thrive and live more fully into your life’s purpose when you take a strengths-based approach to your life. By doing more of what you do best, and you can feel more engaged, empowered, and energized.

The buzzing sense of anticipation in the air must mean that Fall Term 2024 has officially arrived! Cars full of students, twin XL bedsheets, and mini fridges deluge our dorm parking lots, and our campus transforms into a vibrant and diverse tapestry of people, talents, interests, and experiences. It’s like showing up to a garden at the peak of a harvest (coincidentally, it is peak harvest season!). All around you are opportunities ripe for the picking.

As an integral and deserved member of this community, you are offered an abundance of opportunity. “You can leverage the tremendous resources of this institution to start creating the life you want to be living right now.”  And the abundance of choices and commitments might leave you feeling overwhelmed as you pile on the classes, social commitments, and extracurriculars that sound most exciting. Our Fall theme of Connecting to Our Purpose can help you realize your core values and develop a systematic approach for determining which opportunities at Dartmouth serve you on your path towards meaning and fulfillment.

Before we jump in, we first invite you to consider how you might leverage the tools and resources here to deepen your connection to your life’s purpose:

1. Discover and embrace your core values. Recognizing what your values are early on can provide you with the assurance that the goals and opportunities you pursue in your time as student are anchored in your larger vision. Professional staff and campus resources can help you unearth what matters most, and help you design a criterion that makes a thousand decisions and opportunities dissolve into just a few priorities. Check out this sampling of Dartmouth services that can help you narrow in on your core vision:

1. Student Wellness Center – Set up 1:1 time with a trained, non-judgmental listener to deepen your self-awareness and embrace your path towards flourishing.
2.  Counseling Center – Meet with a licensed mental health provider in a confidential setting to help you understand your emotions as you explore your identity and other challenges.
3. Tucker Center – Seek confidential spiritual guidance through Pastoral Counseling with a College Chaplain.
4. Center for Professional Development – Schedule a coaching appointment to discover self-assessment tools that help you identify your interests and strengths, and which career pathways they most align with.

Reflect: What brings my life a sense of fulfillment and meaning?

2. Maximize opportunities that connect you to a future life vision rooted in your core values. Once you have unearthed what you instinctively most value, your role as a student is to explore and grow the avenues that connect you with your purpose. So many departments and groups are poised to help in this regard. Here are some, just to name a few:

1. Center for Social Impact
2. Dartmouth Sustainability
3. Academic Skills Center
4. Office of Pluralism and Leadership
5. Outdoor Programs
6. Hopkins Center for the Arts
7. Dartmouth Athletics
8. Student Groups

Reflect: Which Dartmouth experiences and opportunities can connect me to what gives my life meaning?

3. Sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop about additional, actionable steps for connecting with your and deepening your connection with your purpose. We will provide tools, resources, student experiences and more to help you recognize your strengths and potential, weed out that which does not serve you, cultivate that which does, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Happy harvesting this fall!

Your friends at the SWC

Dear Dartmouth,

Summer term ’24 is finally here and, in the midst of this dizzying heat wave, it seems Mother Nature is the first to remind us that slowing down and laying back can offer essential benefits! In that spirit, we kick off our term reflecting on “pause” and the many ways we can exercise power and agency from something as simple as slowing down. Within pause lies the freedom to create space, to respond instead of react, and to reflect on the best directions for us going forward.

What we do in pause matters. Pause, or a simple break, can offer such benefits as:

• Noticing thoughts, emotions, and pathways for being present at any given moment.
• Identifying ours and others’ power and making the right choice in a challenging situation.
• Creating space for rest, relaxation, and play, which offers boosts to our cognitive performance.

Pause can look different based on how much time we can dedicate to it. Pause can show up in as little as a few seconds or minutes, or as long a day, a week, or more of intentional recess. Here are some ways to make the most of pause, no matter the length:

• Only have a few minutes? Try this simple STOP practice to focus on activating our body’s ‘relaxation response’ by pausing and breathing. Or meet up with one of our therapy dogs for some puppy-inspired downtime.
• Have 30 minutes to a few hours for dedicated rest? Check out our journaling prompts to guide your reflections on the past or ways to connect with longer-term goals. Or refresh by getting outside—take a walk around Occom Pond or visit nearby Pine Park.
• Do you have an upcoming vacation, sabbatical, volunteer service, or other form of prolonged pause? Use that time to practice engaging in play, restoration, and relaxation. Research shows that taking an extended break (1-5 weeks) in an environment that feels removed from daily activities has restorative benefits, including improving attention and cognitive performance.

However pause looks like for you this summer, know that we regain control of any moment or period when we stop to reflect and move forward in a manner more aligned with our hopes, dreams, and values. Stick with us this summer as we explore the many ways to apply pause and reflection in our daily lives.

Take it easy, Dartmouth 🙂

Your friends at the Student Wellness Center

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.

The end of term can feel like we are juggling so many things: grinding to meet deadlines, catching up on notes and assignments, maintaining the time and energy to study for exams, and finding moments for ourselves to reenergize too. While it might not seem it, this can also be an important time to reconnect to our intentions for ourselves. In the midst of busyness, we may wonder if we are staying true to our guiding principles. As we proceed along the lines of Inspiring Intention this winter term, let’s explore some of the ways we can remain focused on our intentions during busy times and even inspire others to do the same.

Try these ideas to remain focused on your intentions during Finals:

• Pause and empower. How can you feel as though you are in an organized and prepared position going into finals week? You might reflect on ways to ground yourself, which can even be as simple as taking three gentle breaths. Or perhaps checking in with each of your Roots of Wellness. Another intentional approach can be to apply specific labels to our feelings and address those feelings strategically. Maybe you are experiencing a sense of loss of control and consider prioritizing your most critical tasks to help you regain focus again. Set healthy boundaries for yourself like sticking to a reasonable sleep schedule. Ask yourself: what do I need in this moment?

• Acknowledging overwhelm (and asking for help). Consider connecting to campus resources when you need, including wellness check ins (one-on-one sessions with trained listeners) when you feel talking to someone could be a helpful place to begin. The Academic Skills Center offers finals programming to help you keep on track with your studying and assignments. Finally, the Counseling Center can support with crisis counseling and additional mental health resources. Be real with yourself about how you are feeling and consider opening up to friends and family. Help is here, you need only ask.

• Try an accountability buddy. Pair up with a friend or classmate to serve as an accountability partner or partners. Check in regularly with them to discuss progress, offer support and feedback, and encourage each other with affirmations. This can be a powerful way to inspire intention amongst friends and peers too.

• Celebrate the small victories. Take a moment to appreciate how far you have made it in the term already. Acknowledge not only your efforts to maintain your intentions into the finals week, but recognize your friends’ and classmates’ efforts too. Creating a positive and focused atmosphere can be beneficial to all in our immediate circles and beyond.

Living an intentional life means, to the best of our ability, inching closer with purpose each day towards our long-term vision. In moments when we feel direction paralysis (or lost or distracted from our intended destination altogether) we recognize that this is normal and temporary. By pausing to connect with our immediate needs, asking for help, encouraging others to do the same, and celebrating the little achievements, we can be well on our way again. Best of luck during finals, Dartmouth!    

Proceeding with intentionality this winter term, we are doing the inner work of finding space to connect with our core values and identifying intentions for where and how we want to grow. We may have even inspired intentionality in others through this pursuit. But like on any journey, there will be times when we are faced with challenges too. We might follow our path and take a wrong turn. Or lose sight of the trail or of our goal all together. Or be overwhelmed by a series of decisions. It’s important in these moments to not panic, and instead, rely on the simple wisdom of tree hugging to help get us back on track.

Who remembers being told as a child: “if you find yourself lost in a forest, hug a tree”? No worries if you haven’t heard this one before. The basic gist is that advising a small child to stay put when they are lost on a hike (and to take comfort in the company an old tree) helps the chances of them being reunited with loved ones. Importantly, this safety tip helps keep the child in one place, offers the child a reliable, soothing landmark to wait with, and makes it easier for the search party to retrace their steps back to the last known location. The same advice can be applied to moments when we feel lost on our inner journeys.

Hug A Tree to Reunite with Your Intentions:

1. Don’t panic. Staying calm in a moment of difficulty can mark the difference between reacting impulsively or responding with clarity. Hug a metaphorical tree by trying a quick STOP practice, which helps create breathing room between you and a challenging moment. Try getting outside to clear your mind (and perhaps hugging a literal tree). Or reconnecting with an activity you have an uncomplicated relationship with (ie. playing music, hanging out with friends, dancing, yoga, etc.). The goal is to help settle the nervous system. As the great meditation teacher Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: “Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.” 

2. Observe your surroundings. Settling your mind and allowing it to observe a grounded sense of reality for a few moments can help us connect to a range of complicated thoughts and emotions we may be feeling. Perhaps you notice the direction you are heading in is causing you to feel confused or misaligned. Or to feel anxious or fatigued. Label the thoughts and emotions that are arising in you. Try this RAIN meditation to strengthen your self-awareness.

3. Check in with your heart’s compass. Once we have created some breathing room for ourselves and identified the emotions underlying our disorientation, proceeding with clarity and intentionality can be more attainable. This allows us the time and space to connect back to our deeper purpose. Establish a journaling practice to root yourself again in your highest aspirations. Perhaps you realize you are taking a burdensome class that doesn’t support your long-term vision. Or perhaps you notice that you are veering away from a lifestyle more aligned with who you want to be. These observations can be powerful signposts that let us know that we are heading the wrong direction. Allow your intentions to show you the way back to your path.

To live with intentionality and purpose is an inherently profound and trailblazing act. Therefore, it is only normal that we will question our path and direction at times. By creating a moment for pause to connect more accurately with how we are feeling and staying true to our heart’s compass, we can be reunited again with the values that inform our long-term vision.

Welcome back to Inspiring Intention! This week, we hold up a magnifying glass to “screen time” to examine how we can build intentions around our devices. In this digital age, we will undoubtedly encounter screens in our day-to-day routine. Whether it’s checking an email from a professor, completing an assignment online, or connecting with friends from home through social media, it is increasingly necessary to rack up screen time in our culture, especially as a student. However, by being mindful about our intentions with technology, we can maximize the time we have pursuing the things that matter most to us in (non-virtual) reality.

1. See the small picture: Each time you reach for your device, pause, and ask yourself why. Are you reaching for the phone because you’re bored or restless? Are you seeking a distraction from a challenging task or assignment? Are you managing your stress, panic, or worries by scrolling through social media? Or perhaps you are feeling inspired and want to investigate a topic or idea further. We check our phones on average 144 times a day. Before picking up your device, see if you can pause, take and breath, and ask yourself why. Try the ‘Name It to Tame It’ practice if you identify any of these emotions as falling on the low-pleasantness end of the emotions spectrum.

2. See the big picture: Why might you want to be intentional around screen time? Maybe you’re experiencing eye strain or headaches. Perhaps you’re noticing that you default to scrolling in times of boredom or difficulty. Perhaps you’re having trouble falling and staying asleep. Whatever the reason, check in with the habits you’ve developed around device usage and ensure they are still serving your immediate and long-term needs. Be brave, get curious, and check your screen time stats (stored on your phone or device). This data can give you a sense of how much time you may be spending looking at screens each day.

3. Bring an attitude of non-judgment to your screen usage and recognize that you are not alone. Gen Z’ers average 9 hours a day on screens. Much that time consists of classwork, messaging, social media, and internet roaming. Many websites and platforms’ business models thrive on your eyes wandering from flashy content to flashy advertisements. These sites design algorithms that tailor content for us based on our interests. But these systems are designed to capture our attention and to hold it for as long as possible, often at the expense of our own wellbeing. Recognizing that you are not the only one to have “fallen down the rabbit hole” at one time or another can help us understand that our habits around devices might be bigger than us. Awareness and acceptance of this fact empowers us to make healthier choices that benefit us all.  

4. Focus on what matters most to you. Our time and attention may be our most precious resources. Begin by imagining the life you want to be living and create boundaries with your time that keep you focused on the things that matter most to you. Discover your wildest dreams through a journaling practice like this one (bonus: no screens required!). Write out your intentions using positive and specific language to define clearly what it is that you want to attract (rather than want to avoid). For example, instead of writing “I want to reduce screen time,” try saying “I want to create a No-Phone Zone in my bed so that I can benefit from a full night’s rest.” Check out these suggestions from the Jed Foundation for reducing unhelpful scrolling or device usage.

Devices and technology help us connect to new ideas and each other like never before. Increasingly, though, we find ourselves in the territory of excessive use. We can show ourselves grace by realizing we are at an unprecedented stage of interacting with these tools and seeking out ways to spend our time in a way that is more aligned with our hopes and dreams. Recognize the emotions that lead us to excessive online activity and identify the reasons why we might want to consider reducing our time on our devices. By understanding our own present habits, we can set specific, actionable, and positive intentions around our device usage that inspire flourishing on our personal journeys at Dartmouth.

Reflection Question: How can I align my screen time with meaningful purposes, ensuring that my usage is enriching and serves my hopes and dreams?

“Every journey begins with the first step of articulating the intention, and then becoming the intention.” ― Bryant McGill

“Inspiring Intention” is grounded in the idea that when we embody our greatest hopes and dreams, we “plant the seeds for change” in our communities. Showing ourselves self-compassion and acceptance enables us to set clear and positive intentions that lead us closer towards the life we want to be living. Let’s normalize leading purposeful and intentional lives and inspire others to do the same.

Let your heart’s compass guide you through these suggested steps:

1. Carve out time for quiet introspection. Setting aside time for quiet introspection turns our attention away from what’s being asked of us and instead provides us the space to ask what we need for ourselves in the present moment. What is one way that you can find space from the expectations and pressures that we internalize as noisy thoughts and emotions? Is it on a walk? In meditation? Doing art?

2. Have a clear focus on what you want. Once you are in a space where you can focus, tune into yourself, and check in with your core values, examine what matters most to you and what kind of life you want to be living. What direction do you want to be heading from here? 

3. Set specific intentions for where you want to grow. Bring to mind the 7 Roots of Wellness: Intellectual, Financial, Spiritual, Social, Emotional, Environmental, Physical. Identify if there are specific areas you want to grow in or presently address. Which next steps best get you to where you want to go? 

4. Embody intentionality. Carefully examine your identified next steps and notice what external or internal support, if any, is needed. What additional tools, resources, or help do you need to make your journey possible? 

5. Strengthen your self-awareness for times you feel lost. Practices like journaling, meditation, and building self-compassion help us pay close attention to thoughts, feelings, and actions in the present moment. By checking in regularly with our intentions, we are sure to stay the course. What routines and practices support you reaching your long-term goals?

6. Inspire intention: Recognize the stages others are at on their journey, and encourage them to keep moving forward with self-awareness and purpose at the helm. What deliberate action(s) can you take as an individual to help others live more according to their values?

Chart your course with your heart as your compass and your dreams as waypoints. Through deliberate and clear intentions, we not only take care of ourselves and reach our goals, but encourage others in our lives to do the same. Consequently, we can lead a life that is not only intentional, but also inspiring. Together, we can commit to a culture of care that leads to a fuller sense of wellbeing and purpose for all.

“I like you as you are

Exactly and precisely

I think you turned out nicely

And I like you as you are”

– Fred Rogers ’50

In our last week examining Brave Connections, we will explore self-acceptance as an act of courage. Fred Rogers ’50 wrote the song “I Like You As You Are” (1968) and many others to help the child in each of us grasp just how worthy and lovable we are for doing nothing sensational other than being ourselves. But a lesser-known fact is that even the amazing Mister Rogers himself wrestled with self-acceptance, and it is believed that the songs he wrote about self-respect were indeed personal mantras. As we stride bravely into the unfamiliar territory of self-acceptance, know that this undertaking will require us to face and embrace our true selves—all the strengths and vulnerabilities that come with— without judgment or criticism. Herein lies our true challenge.

There are many ways to practice self-acceptance. Here are just a few to get you started:

1. Face vulnerabilities and practice non-judgement. It takes courage to acknowledge our shortfalls. But it takes even more to face them with curiosity and open-mindedness. Practicing non-judgment ultimately means we are refraining from labeling thoughts or experiences as “good” or “bad” and are instead approaching them with an acceptance and a willingness to explore. Try this Headspace suggestion for exploring and overcoming Doubt. Or this one for Manifesting Compassion. Use a SWC guided meditation practice to Label Thoughts as they arise. By using the language of non-judgement, we can silence our inner critics and kickstart the empowering process of loving ourselves unconditionally.

2. Challenge societal expectations. Recognize how societal expectations (i.e. gender roles, educational achievement, career success, physical appearance, etc.) can be imposed on us by our loved ones and the larger spheres of influence around us. These standards can be internalized and pose as damaging to our feelings of self-worth as they are often unrealistic and force upon us unrealistic ideals of perfection. Defying conformity is not only brave but an essential way for us to honor ourselves authentically. Release comparison. Present yourself honestly to others. Cherish your unique journey.

3. Choose love over fear. Ultimately, self-acceptance is a choice we make. And while everyone’s journey to self-acceptance is different, one thing remains true: the decision to love ourselves is a harder one to make than succumbing to fear and self-criticism. Though choosing to embrace self-love and humanity is a difficult endeavor, Fred conveyed its significance in his address to Dartmouth graduates: “I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see, or hear, or touch. That deep part of you, that allows you to stand for those things, without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate. Peace that rises triumphant over war. And justice that proves more powerful than greed.”

Self-acceptance is a transformative journey that empowers you to live fully and authentically. Along the way, you may bolster your emotional wellbeing, resilience, and your ability to connect more genuinely with those around you. As we dive into finals week, you may find yourself under greater pressure than normal. Now is as good a time as any to practice accepting yourself fully, no matter what happens externally. And if it helps, try repeating the wise and centering words of Mister Rogers: “I like you as you are.”