Hallelujah. [Music] Wonderful. [Music] Good morning. Thank you, Ron. Congratulations to all of you for making it to week four of your first semester of college. And welcome back to Doll Chapel for our second convocation of the semester. It is my sincere pleasure today to introduce today's speaker, Dr. Sydney Greenwall. Dr. is a licensed clinical psychologist and serves as the director of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville's counseling services, an office on the SIO campus that plays an essential role in efforts to help students cultivate the skills necessary for success both inside and outside the classroom. She's also the proud partner to a Monmouth College alum. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Greenwald to the stage. [Applause] Hey y'all. It is so nice to be here. Um like Professor Quick just said, my partner is a Monath College alum and so I'm just so happy to be back on this campus and to be in D Chapel and to see um so many new faces and to see the faces of your faculty too who I have um uh deeply missed. I am going to talk to you a little bit about psychological flexibility and what that means for mental health. Um, we're going to go over some data points and then we're going to practice psychological flexibility together. I thought I could work it. Thank you. Okay. So, here here's the plan. We've got data to start with. I actually have some data from Monmouth College students about how their overall mental health is. We're going to talk about that in comparison to some national trends for college students data uh or college students mental health. Then we're going to talk about what it means to flourish to be psychologically flexible. Then I'm going to talk a little bit about the resources that exist for you here at Monmouth College. Oh, now it's working. Okay. So, a couple years ago, we surveyed Monmouth College students. And we asked them how are you doing and we asked them lots of questions about uh the presence of psychological disorders or symptoms related to psychological disorders. I used to include that here, but I've taken it out because I think this is a um a much more impactful statistic because here we're talking about how many students at Monmouth College a couple years ago said that their mental health was rocking and rolling and about 36% of the respondents were like, "Yeah, that's good." Okay, so roughly a third of Monmouth College students are doing fantastic. But what does that mean? Do we remember our fractions? This is call in response. So, thank you. 2/3 are what? They are not rocking. They are not rolling. Twothirds are like, "Hey, this is hard. I'm going through a difficult moment right now." Okay. So, if we if we look around the room, twothirds, that's a lot of us, right? Most of us. um are struggling or suffering in some capacity. And when we look again this is non these are nonclinical terms and we ask students how lonely do you feel? How lonely do you feel? Monmouth college students about 34% said I feel very lonely. Okay. 37 said, "I'm somewhat lonely." And 19% said, "I'm good. I'm connected." Okay, so about 20% of people felt really connected on campus. Same thing when we ask, "Do you feel left out?" And 22% said, "No, I don't feel left out." But again, that leaves four-fifths of our students who are feeling left out and isolated from others. So, this is actually pretty consistent with some of the data that we have on SIU's campus. We ask students um about their experiences with loneliness. We ask students about their experiences with belonging. And you might imagine that those two things are related. But what we found is that even when students feel like they belong, they are also still feeling lonely. So it's not enough to just feel like you belong to campus. We also want to build the connections with other people. Okay? And one of the reasons that we want to do this is because our mental health impacts our academic performance. And so we asked students at Monmouth College, in the last four weeks, how many days did you have emotional or mental difficulties that made it difficult or hurt your academic performance? 20% of the students said, "Nope, not at all." But again, what does that leave us? four-fifths of our students are saying at least one or more days in the last four weeks did my mental health or my emotional distress impact my academic performance. Okay, so this is me telling you here's why we care. Here's why your faculty care. Here's why uh Professor Quick asked me to come in and talk about psychological flexibility and mental health with you. Because we want you to feel like you are flourishing here. We want you to feel like you belong. We want you to feel connected and we want you to feel like you can show up and be present in your classes, right? And you can show up and be present in your classes if we can prioritize some psychological flexibility and be managing some of our mental and emotional distress. This is not to say that you should experience no mental and emotional distress, okay? That is actually part of life. That's one of the really beautiful things about life is that we will experience that. It also means we experience joy. So, we're going to hold on to those pieces and I'm going to come back to that in just a moment. Okay. So, we've got academic impairment. How many of you have heard this? The mental health of college students is getting worse. Yes. I I have some good issues for this. This article is a couple of years old now. The most recent trends in the data suggests that college students are doing slightly better than they were a few years ago. So it's good news for us is that the mental health of college students had been getting worse progressively rapidly year after year and within the last year we saw a change. It wasn't quite as bad. We're also seeing amongst folks who are traditional age college students and high school students that you're drinking a lot less. you're consuming substances a lot less than the folks who came before you. So, we've got some good positive health indicators here. Now, that being said, we still have twothirds of Mon College students who are going to struggle at some point. Really, I'm going to say 100%, but 2/3 um is what popped out at the data. And so, what is it that college students typically struggle with? A big one is anxiety. How many of you have said before like, "I'm feeling anxious, right? Not I have an anxiety disorder, but I'm having anxiety right here, right now." Okay. What if I told you I'm having anxiety right here, right now? Would you be like, "That makes sense, Dr. G. You're talking in front of over 100 students on a stage that you don't know, right?" Be like, "Oh, that that anxiety makes sense." So, so we see college students who are struggling with anxiety. Why might college students struggle with anxiety? You're in a new place, right? We are overwhelmed with homework. We're in week four, right, Professor Quick, congrats on making it to week four. My guess is you've got some exams coming up soon. You've definitely had some homework assignments come in. The workload is heavier than it was in high school, I might imagine, too. What else? Why else might college students experience anxiety? You're trying to connect with other people that you don't know. Yeah. Many college students make the journey to college. And whether you came from Monmouth Roseville High School or you came from Washington State, there are lots of people here that you do not know and you're trying to figure out who can I be friends with? Who am I now? Like if I have the opportunity to introduce myself as someone new, who is that someone new? We also see college students who either have had neurodedevelopmental disorders like ADHD, autism, learning disorders prior to college and we see students get to college and say, "Hey, I think something's up. This is harder than I would have expected it to be or the strategies that I've been using haven't been working." So, we see the presence of some of those. We see changes in eating in college students and most psychological disorders will come with uh changes in appetite. So folks will say, "Oh, like I'm hungry all the time or I just I just can't eat. Nothing tastes good." So we see our appetite shift and that's across many different psychological disorders. We also see similar changes happen with sleep. I just can't rest enough or I can't sleep. I'm tossing and turning at night. We see low mood. Um college given the the age that most folks are when they enter college, um we're sort of at this prime spot for mood disorders. So you might have your first depressive episode or you may be going back and forth in um your experience with depressive and manic episodes. We also come to college with lots of previous experiences. So the data suggests that roughly 30% of students now are seeking out mental health resources before they even get to college. So that tells me, right, these concerns are not college specific, right? They're human specific. And these humans just happen to be in college. Does that make sense? Okay. And because these are human specific and because we're talking about being connected to others, we're talking about um having really low mood, difficulty sleeping, changes with appetite. Um, we also have in college lots of students start to think about or maybe have already thought about ending their own life. Okay. One of the things that happens is that lots of folks are afraid to talk about this. They're afraid to mention this. And that's a little bit risky because if we don't ask the question, we don't know. Okay? So, here's what I want you to do. We're going to practice asking this question. Okay? Before I get there, I want to say a couple of things. Data shows that asking somebody if they're thinking about suicide does not actually implant any ideas about suicide. Okay? You're not going to make somebody start thinking about something they weren't considering before. Instead, asking about suicide actually helps people be honest in response. It's going to help people be honest in response. And if they're honest in response, we can give access to the resources that we need. And so I want I want you to practice right now with a peer. I want you to practice asking the question, not answering the question. Okay? We're going to practice asking, not answering. So there's a couple ways you could ask this question. You could say, "Are you thinking about killing yourself?" Right? Are you thinking about suicide? We're going to be really explicit because if you say, "I'm thinking about harming yourself." And somebody's thinking about killing themselves, they're like, "That won't be harmful. That won't be helpful for me." So, we're going to ask it directly. Okay? So, I want you to turn and practice asking this question. Heat. Heat. Did we do it? Did we do it? How was that? I saw lots of people laughing, right? It's a little bit uncomfortable. It's also uncomfortable you're asking a question and you're really not expecting an answer. My recommendation to you is to practice asking that question because if we can ask that question, we can save a life. If we can ask that question, we can save a life. The next the next thing that I think is really amazing about the data because um data on uh suicidality is sort of variable but the one thing that is fairly consistent is that if we can help folks or for ourselves identify reasons for living we could also save a life. Okay, so I have this long list up here and I want you to read through it and I want you to pick out your reasons for living. I want you to try to find at least five. They could be from this list or they could be something else that you live for that's not up here. So go ahead, take your time. I want you to find five reasons for living. Do we have our reasons for living? More time. I have mine. I just mine are highlighted. Yours could be any of these, but I just highlighted mine. What are some of our reasons for living? Reaching my full potential. That's beautiful. Is Mammoth College part of that journey for you? Yeah. This is like the step towards the reason for living, right? So, every day I wake up, I go to class because going to class helps me reach my full potential and I know I've got a good potential ahead of me. What else? Brownies and chocolate milk. You're talking to a pregnant lady now. That sounds delicious. Yeah. Like fresh out the oven brownies. You'll let them cool down. Okay. Um, do you like them like crispy on top or you like them soft? Crispy on top, right? Maybe some pretzels in it. Okay. Okay. So, the brownies and chocolate milk. That's beautiful. You know what's beautiful about that is like county market is not that far away. We can get chocolate milk, right? Okay. What else? Other reasons for living. Uh-huh. Family. Your How many folks put their family down as a reason for living? Yeah. That's so beautiful. I imagine if you told your family today, "Hey, by the way, you're one of the reasons I'm so thankful to be alive." They would feel like all warm and fuzzy inside, right? And so our family, that's so beautiful. What else? Hearing a good song for the first time. Hearing a good song for the first time. Yes. Music. Music. I imagine lots of people would do that. What's the last good song we heard? I as I was driving up here, I put on like the top hits and I thought, "Oh, wow. There's so much new music that I miss out on when I just listen to my '9s country." So, I feel like I got lots of new music today. Okay. What else? Another reason for living? Laughing. Laughing. Like telling jokes and just like cackling till your cheeks hurt. Yeah. Yeah. Those are great moments. The other thing is that most of the time when we're laughing, we're with other people, right? Most of the time if we're cackling, we're like with a group of people just having a really good time or we're maybe watching a really funny show. Okay. Any other reasons for living? What was that? Fall. like the season. What about fall? Agree. Yeah. So, fall this season I think I have on here. Do I have it? Stepping on crunchy leaves, which you can really only do in the fall. And let me tell you cuz like lots of you are coming up on your first fall in Mon this campus. So many crunchy leaves. So many crunches. Just to go for a walk. I parked a little bit farther away today so I can walk back and get some good crunches. My favorite tree on campus is just out front and I know it's dropping leaves right now. That's just going to give me that little bit of joy and it's so pretty and the colors are changing. Okay, excellent. So, we can see there's lots of reasons for living. And I have some really other good news about this data, which is that it's not just if you can find a reason for living, but if you heard somebody else today come up with a reason for living that you didn't have before that you were like, I really like that, use it. Data suggests that um data suggests that even if you can't come up with your own reason for living, if you can buy into someone else's reason, that will also save a life. So we don't even need to when we're feeling really down, really low, our creativity also tends to sink. So we could just say, "What's your reason for living? What is it that helps you show up in the day?" Okay. Oh, also clean laundry. Highly recommend on weekends just walking by all of the residence halls cuz y'all are doing laundry. They smell so good and you get some crunchy leaves. Okay, doubling up. All right, so now we're going to talk about floundering versus flourishing. And when we talk about mental health, often times people are talking about the floundering in mental health. So where we're seeing things like increased risk behaviors, um we're seeing uh more problems both externally and internally, but often times um what we're what we want to get towards is flourishing, right? So, where we're feeling really good, we're being able to be adaptive. Uh, and most people when they're flourishing are internalizing their own beliefs and values. And so, we're going to see now, is this floundering or is this flourishing? Okay. So, I've got some examples that we're going to go through. avoiding communication or difficult conversations, floundering, right? If we were flourishing, what would we be doing? We'd be communicating. We'd be showing up. Anytime avoidance is there, that's an indicator that we're trying to disconnect from whatever our reality is. Right? So, that's a flounder. We're here to flourish. engaging in hobbies and creative interests. Is that a flounder or a flourish? It's a flourish, right? Our hobbies, our creative interests, leaning into those things, that is a flourish. Okay? If we're helping others, are we floundering or flourishing? We're flourishing, right? talking about connection. We're talking about valuesdriven behavior. Chronic disorganization and clutter. Is that a flounder or flourish? This is a tough one. It feels like a flounder, right? And my guess is for those of you who live on campus, you are learning what your organization strategies look like, right? And so we're probably oscillating between these two right now. Okay. Some folks might be like, "But Dr. G, like I'm just disorganized. Like that's just how I am and that's how I live my life. Um, I just keep piles of things." Fantastic. Keep your piles. I'm totally cool with piles. When this gets to the point where you feel like you need to avoid things or you can't do stuff or you don't want people to come over, that's the flounder, right? The piles themselves are not the flounder. It's the um perception about them. Okay. What about pursuing learning and professional development? Flounder and flourish. Flourish. Y'all look around. Look at you flourishing. Do you see this right now? You're all here pursuing learning. Okay. I feel like you're not as excited as I would like you to be. Okay, look around. Be in awe of each other as you flourish together in this moment. I want to hear like audible. Wow, that's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Um All right. So floundering, flourishing. I feel like we've got a good grip on it. We're all flourishing a little bit. We've all got moments where we flounder. Here's the other thing that's beautiful about floundering and flourishing. Is they're not forever. They're like right now. Like right now in this moment, I'm having a floundering moment or right now in this moment, I feel like I'm flourishing. It's not static. We're humans. We're going to fluctuate. Um given that I want to talk a little bit about some of the research on anxiety. So this is the York Statson curve that talks about anxiety may be good for us. Have we heard that before? Cuz most students that I meet with, they're like, "My goal is to just get rid of my anxiety." And I'm thinking, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We need anxiety. Anxiety is helpful for us because anxiety is the thing that got you to brush your teeth this morning cuz you knew you were going to sit next to somebody. You were like, "Hey, I want that person to like me and I don't think they're going to like me if I've got some heltosis." Right? So, got you to brush your teeth. It got you to put your clothes on this morning. It gets you to do your homework because you're like, "Hey, I need to do this. I want this person to think highly of me." Right? So what we want is this optimal level of anxiety. Uh anxiety, we call this physiological arousal. Also just some some uh actually I'm going to pause on that. So we want a moderate level of anxiety. Anything above a moderate level of anxiety is when we start to shut down, right? That's where we go into panic. Anything really low, we are missing out on the motivation to do the task. Now anxiety physiologically speaking is excitement. There's just bodily excitement. Physiological excitement, physiological arousal, which also means that the way we think about our anxiety, the way we think about that physiological arousal matters, right? Right? So if I think, oh, I'm anxious right now because I have to give a presentation to Mammoth College's INI class and me being anxious means I'm going to do a really bad job. What's going to happen? Probably going to do a bad job, right? But if I'm thinking, wow, my body is getting me ready, getting me pumped to be up here. That's what these physiological symptoms are. I'm in a much better position to perform in the a manner more aligned with my capabilities. Okay. And so how do we do that? We do that through this concept called psychological flexibility. So here are the big three takeaways. All right. I think lot you write um reflection papers for your INI professors. So here's your big three takeaways and not just for the reflection paper but like forever ideally. Psychological flexibility is our ability to be present to open up be open to the experience and to do what matters. So if we can be present, open up, do what matters, we are in a position to rock and roll. So, let's give let's talk a little bit about this. Let's be present with each other. Okay, before I get to this image, I'd like for everybody to like plant both feet on the on the floor if you can. Sit in your chair if possible. All right. I want you to put one hand on your chest, the other hand on your belly. And I want you to take two deep breaths. So, we're going to breathe in. And I just want you to pay attention to which hand is rising and falling. Breathe out. I want you to breathe in and breathe out. Okay. What's beautiful is you're all present with me right now. Um, which hand was rising and falling? The one on your chest or the one on your belly? Someone not in band or chorus or theater? Was it the hand on her chest rises and falls? this up. When you were little babies and your caregivers wanted to check to see if you were still breathing, what did they look at? Your chest or your belly? They look at your belly. If you were to like walk in and see somebody like laying here, you want to check to see if they're breathing, they're your age. Do you check their chest or their belly? You check their chest, right? So, at some point between infancy and now, we've stopped engaging in those deep belly breaths. Babies are so good at being present. Okay? So, we want to be like baby, right? We're going to try to breathe from our belly. We want that diaphragmatic breathing. And the reason I said if you were in band or chorus or theater not to do that, it's because those students are trained in deep belly breathing. And the rest of us are like breathing is just a thing I do. I don't think about it, right? It's just happening. So, I want you to pause and think about it. That's one way for us to be present. Okay? So, we're going to do it again. We're going to do two two breaths. I want you to try to make your belly hand rise and fall to breathe from your diaphragm. Okay? All right. So, we're going to breathe in and out. Breathe in and out. More belly breaths. It's a little bit harder, right? I have a alien that's pushing up on my diaphragm, which makes it a little bit harder for me to get there for a skill that I did not naturally have before either. The next thing we can do for for being present this is a grounding exercise. So when we're feeling distressed, when we're feeling anxious, anxiety is there, it's then. It's not right here. It's not right now. So what I what we're going to do with this grounding exercise is bring us back from there. Bring us back from then. Bring us to right now. Okay. So I want you to look around Doll Chapel and see and name five things that you can see. Five things that you can see. Once you've named your five things, I want you to name four things that you can touch that you can feel. Maybe don't touch each other. Okay? Maybe you feel the seat pushing back up on you. Can you feel the way that your shirt is on your skin? I can feel like little hairs on the back of my neck. So, what are four things that you can feel? What are three things that you can hear right now? two things you can smell and one thing you can taste. So, we're just going through our senses. 5 4 3 2 1. Five things we can see, four things we can hear, or four things we can touch, three things we can hear, two things we can smell, one thing we can taste. If we can go through that list, what that's requiring us to do is engage in our surroundings right here, right now. So, we're being present. Does that make sense? So, we're going to be present. We're going to open up. What was the last one? Do what matters. Fantastic. Okay. So, if we're going to open up, we need to have a better understanding of what our thinking is. Okay? So, um some psychologists would say you are what you think, right? Your thinking is going to determine where you're going. And I'm here to say we're not what we think. We're not what we think. It does tend to be the case that human beings tend to engage in irrational thinking. Like, that is our go-to, right? We we praise being rational. Um but actually our minds are looking for they want to move fast. So we're going to make really quick connections. We're going to tend to overgeneralize about things. And so here are some really common um what we would call cognitive distortions or irrational thinking. Um one of my favorites is shing on ourselves. I hear students on themselves all the time. I should get an A in this class. I should be friends with this person. I should be starting in this sport. I should be doing this. I should be doing that. That is on ourselves. That is creating this requirement for acceptability. Right? So we could challenge that. You could say, "I want to get an A in this class. I want to get an A in this class. I It's not that I should get an A. An A is what I desire. It would be really nice. If it doesn't happen, my hope is that I leave with knowledge about the class, with knowledge about the content, the grade itself. I I remember very few grades that I got and I was in college for 13 years. So in that time frame, I don't know what my grades were. And when I talk with people about education and learning, we're not like, oh well, here was our GPA. We say, I really liked this concept that Professor Wright taught us. I really liked learning that piece of creative writing. I don't remember what he scored me, but I remember that class was really meaningful, really moving. So, I want to do this, not that I should. Okay. Um, the other thing is that we believe that the world owes us fairness, right? And so, we want things to be fair. We want I want it to be fair. But actually, the world doesn't owe me fairness. It doesn't owe me anything. It doesn't owe you anything. The world is the world. you are you. And when we believe that we are owed fairness, we find ourselves falling into these traps of irrational thinking. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about some of your irrational thoughts, some of your cognitive distortions, and I want you to practice changing them. So, this is a strategy we would use in therapy uh to determine whether or not this thought is rational and we keep it or if it's irrational and we put it to the side. So, I want you to think about a thought that you've been having. Okay? I want you to think, is this thought realistic? If the thought is realistic, I want you to try to find the evidence. What's the evidence that the thought is true? How would somebody else interpret this? How might, if I ask somebody else to think about this, what might they say or think that would be different from how I say or think? And then is it possible to view this another way? Right? So if we go back to I should get an A. I should get an A in this class. Is that a realistic thought? Well, what would make that realistic? What is my overall academic performance? Do I typically get A's or am I typically getting average grades? So, if I'm typically getting an average grade, this belief that I should get an A doesn't feel like it's realistic given my history of academic performance. Now, if I have a history of getting lots of A's, I think it's realistic that you could get an A. What's the evidence that it's true that you should get an A in this class? Is there any? No. Right. Ideally, you pass the class. Even if you don't pass the class, you can take it again. Right. Okay. How might someone else interpret the situation differently? What do we think? I should get an A. If you were to ask somebody else that, what might they say? I'm waiting. I should get an A in this class. You would say to me what? If you want to get an A, it's probably important that you study. Um, okay. So the A actually is just potentially an indicator of the effort I put in over time. Okay. Is it possible to view it another way? I should get an A. Right? I want to get an A is another way to view it. Right? I want to get an A. Uh and so we have this capacity to change our thoughts. But um I don't know about y'all, but sometimes even if I challenge them like this and I have a thought that's not realistic, there's no evidence that it's true, my brain is like, "No, but it is. It's this is the thing and it's going to stay this way." And so what can we do when the thoughts just stick around and don't leave? We can open up to the thoughts and we can observe them. So, I like this little graphic because it talks about our thoughts being like fireworks. Best to be observed, not to be struggled with, right? So, we can only appreciate fireworks ideally from a distance, right? And so, if we have this thought that's coming in like nobody likes me, I'm not friends with anybody, I'm the worst, we don't have to believe those thoughts. Just because we have the thoughts doesn't make them true. We can just take one step back, say, I'm having the thought that nobody likes me. I'm having the thought that I'm the worst. I can view that thought without becoming fused to it. Like it's like the thing that is most connected to me. So we want to observe our thoughts without being ruled by them. And one of the ways we can do this is with guiding meditation. We're not going to do this today, but there are a couple that I really like. One is called leaves on a stream. The other is clouds in the sky. And the idea is that you have your thought, you take that thought and you place it on a leaf and you watch it float down the stream. We don't force a stream, right? When we see leaves floating down the stream, we're not like, "Come on, leaf. Get gone. You got to go away." Like, let that leaf hang out for a while. Let it be there. You could do that with clouds in the sky, right? We're just observing the clouds in the sky. We're going to put our thoughts on them and we're opening up to that experience in this way. There's no such thing as a good thought or a bad thought. There's just thoughts and our willingness to hold on to them or not. So our thinking is just our thing. Uh and one of the reasons our thinking gets so muddied is because we have come up with this really um fantastic thing called language that allows us right to like put our feelings to words and then we've decided that those words are like the most important thing right now. So here's what I want us to do because I'm going to show you how silly words are for the next 30 seconds. We're going to say the same word over and over and over again. All right, that word is milk. Okay, but I just want you I said the word milk right now and I want you to think like when I say that word, can you see like a glass of milk? Can you like almost feel it? It's cold. Can you almost taste it? Just like the word itself has brought milk into the room. Okay, so Milk is sitting here with us and for the next 30 seconds together, we're going to say this word over and over and over and over and over again. Then at the end, I'm going to ask you how it felt. All right, are we ready? Milk. Milk. Milk. Milk. Milk. Faster. Faster. Faster. [Applause] Okay. Excellent. Excellent. How many of you are still saying the word correctly? Do you think it doesn't feel right? You're It's like all of a sudden this thing that was this nice cold cold glass of milk that you could drink while you ate your brownie was like a weird movement that your mouth made and it loses all of its attachment. Right? This is a strategy that we can use to take these words that that weigh us down and um take their power back. We're just observers of this. Okay. Now, I want you to think about, so we have been present. We've opened up to our experience. Now, I want you to to think about what matters to you. These are kind of hard to see. Essentially, what I'm asking you are, what are your values? What are your values? And try to come up with a couple. They might even overlap with some of your reasons for living. Do we have some values? Once we know what matters to us, we're in a better position to do what matters. That makes sense, right? Go ahead. What was that? Money. Money. Yeah. Okay. Money matters and college tends to be a great place to enhance our social mobility, right? So, lots of us are thinking about what does this look like? What else matters to us? A good state of mind. Yeah. Anybody else? Mine tends to be family. like family to me is priority. Like if you ask me who I am or what's most important to me, I would say like I'm a partner, I'm a daughter, right? That connection. And so now when we're doing what matters essentially is we're going to take that action to pursue it. And I've got this um target up here and I want you to go ahead and write down the target. I want you to try to figure out where do you fall in this. The closer you are to the target, the more closely you're living in alignment with your values. And the further you are from the target indicates that our behaviors aren't really value aligned right now. And again, this isn't good or bad where you fall on here. It just is. I tend to fall the closest to my values as it comes to work and as it comes to relationships and the farthest away when it comes to leisure. Okay. So then the question I ask myself is how important is leisure to me in doing what matters right? Do I want to incorporate that more? So, can I do what matters? And so, I want you to be thinking about this as you're making decisions. How does this decision matter to me? My partner's grandpa has this saying called ain't no, he says, ain't no hill for a stepper. That ain't no hill for a stepper. And I was like, papa, what? He says, one step at a time, one direction. Our values are not static places. they're directions that we're headed in. So, we're just heading in the direction of that value. Okay. Uh we've got some good news again from the research is that when college students do what matters, they tend to also report um better mental health outcomes, better levels of engagement, and you're an INI right now. You will have the opportunity to take community engagement courses. That's an opportunity for you to do what matters built into your curriculum here at Bonman College. Okay. So now again, we're going to do call and response because I've got one sentence that is going to wrap up psychological flexibility. And if we can do this, we're in a pretty good spot. Okay. I am I am here now. Here. Accepting the way I feel. Accepting the way I feel and noticing my thoughts. while doing what I care about. while doing what I care about. Said another way, this is um from one of my favorite authors. They wrote in their memoir, "I am so glad that I lived long enough to feel the world that I built for myself. I'm grateful for the work I did when I didn't feel like living because it has wrapped me in this life." Now, right, this sentence, this sentence, very, very similar. Okay, last couple of things. You have counseling services here on campus. I highly encourage you to utilize them. And if you haven't done so already, I recommend that you download Timely Care, which is a 247 virtual platform. With their talk now services, you can have access to a licensed provider within five minutes, regardless of the state or country you're in at the time. Monmouth College has mental health resources for you. Thank you so much for giving me your time today. [Applause]