The Optimist Daily guide to “Un-LANGUISHING”: Ideas on how to reconnect to thriving

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“By acknowledging that so many of us are languishing, we can start giving voice to quiet despair and lighting a path out of the void.” – Adam Grant
BY Kristy Jansen and Summers McKay

This year, big, audacious, expansive resolutions seem a bit on the absurd side. Nearly the entire first week of this year’s podcast, The Optimist Daily Update was spent with our hosts and producers meekly committing to some form of self-improvement or another. As the first week of the New Year comes to an end and we find ourselves mid (northern hemisphere) winter, it seems like we all already needed another foggy-brained, deep breath required – break.

It’s not that we don’t love our work at The Optimist Daily. It’s not that people don’t love what we do. In fact, we’ve had literally our most successful week ever, reaching almost a million people through our website alone. It’s that as much as there seems to be outside momentum, internally we are all kind of meh.

Chief Content Officer, Kristy Jansen reminded us that the most successful article from the New York Times in 2021 was actually about this very state of meh. In an article titled There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing, writer Adam Grant captures the uncertainty, indifference, and general not knowing what will make a difference’ness of the seemingly endless pandemic.

In his powerful article about the psychological impacts of uncertainty and the post dread, pre resolution days, he shares the general experience of languishing.

“In psychology, we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing. Flourishing is the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others. Depression is the valley of ill-being: You feel despondent, drained and worthless.

Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health. It’s the void between depression and flourishing — the absence of well-being. You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work. It appears to be more common than major depression — and in some ways it may be a bigger risk factor for mental illness.” source: New York Times

Now, you know us at The Optimist Daily. We are all about the solutions opportunity for this ennui. We decided to dig back into our archives to find stories that can help us and maybe you move forward into the year ahead.

“Ennui” – a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.

Here’s a solid round-up of our top 21 stories to read, share, and digest in order to go from languishing to thriving, and to not beat yourself up too much on the journey.

The best advice we can give you is to start with something small, read two or three of them, share a story with someone who might need it. Begin a conversation on what’s going right in your own world and what we have to look forward to ahead. Resolve only to take the next small step and then the next one when you are ready.

Reconnecting to your inner motivation:
Getting in touch with your creative flow:
Reprioritizing your thriving self:
Cultivating connection and joy:

The post The Optimist Daily guide to “Un-LANGUISHING”: Ideas on how to reconnect to thriving first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.“By acknowledging that so many of us are languishing, we can start giving voice to quiet despair and lighting a path out of the void.” – Adam Grant BY Kristy Jansen and Summers McKay This year, big, audacious, expansive resolutions seem a bit on the absurd side. Nearly the entire first week of this year’s
The post The Optimist Daily guide to “Un-LANGUISHING”: Ideas on how to reconnect to thriving first appeared on The Optimist Daily: Making Solutions the News.