“Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield” says Adam Grant in an excellent article in a New York Times article
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html?smid=url-share
Grant explains that As COVID19 has dragged on,” the acute state of anguish [from early on in COVID) has given way to a chronic condition of languish”.
I see some of my clients languishing but sometimes it was there before COVID. At some point, the job did not “light the person up” anymore. Perhaps they outgrew the job or the job outgrew them and Covid 19 did not help. Sometimes they are not sure why they feel the way they do and as Grant describes, they are not depressed but they feel the “absence of well-being”.
Grant continues to say that “languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus, and triples the odds that you’ll cut back on work.”
Clients who find themselves suddenly out of work sometime have a hard time knowing in what direction to take their career. I think it’s compounded in those who have been bullied on the job (30%) but they may not be depressed – it’s more like they are languishing.
To successfully advance in one’s career, or get multiple offers from a job requires a flourishing state of mental health or a high sense of well-being.
Grant describes the antidote for languishing as being:
Creating opportunities to experience “flow”. “Flow is that elusive state of absorption in a meaningful challenge or a momentary bond, where your sense of time, place and self melts away.”
Giving yourself periods of uninterrupted time so that you can be in “flow”
Carving out daily time to focus on a challenge that matters to you and that stretches your skills and heightens your resolve” but is still achievable.
In our next Career Resilience Zoom-In, we will come to understand the building blocks of career well-being/happiness. We will explore these and other ways to get out from languishing and talk about ways to increase one’s capacity to set aim for the next steps in their career
For Registration and information: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/472601583057
Career Resilience Zoom-Ins are free weekly workshops to advance your career or successfully manage a job search and career transition.
They are provided by a team of career, human resources, executive coaching and communications professionals, who volunteer their time because of their commitment to building the career resilience of professionals
