I can’t tell you how many times recently I’ve had conversations that have started like this:
Because, for many of us right now, the answer to “How are you?” is so deeply complex, so layered, so hard to sum up, that honestly the best we can do is toss up our hands and say with a shrug, “I’m fine.” Even I’m answering “fine” all the time these days, and if you know me you know that “fine” is my least favorite f-word. Honestly, it’s a useless answer that doesn’t come close to approaching the truth of how we feel (most of the time).
Organizational Psychologist and author Adam Grant reminds us that there is language for what we’re feeling: languishing - the reigning heavyweight champion and dominant emotion of 2021.
Grant first wrote about languishing in the NY Times in April 2021, “There’s A Name For The Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing,” and then spoke further about it in a TED talk called “How To Stop Languishing and Start Finding Flow” in August 2021.
What does languishing mean? It’s defined as “a sense of stagnation or emptiness,” or “the absence of well-being,” or, as Grant likes to say, simply feeling “meh”—languishing is that hard-to-define feeling that most of us mean these days when we answer “I’m fine.”
Corey Keyes defined this for us back in 2002 in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior when discussing “The Mental Health Continuum: From Languishing To Flourishing in Life.”
Languishing is not anguish. Acute anguish is at the far end of the spectrum—what people are experiencing right now who have lost loved ones, lost jobs, lost homes. Anguish is deep pain from a specific source. And many people across the globe are indeed in deep, deep anguish right now.
Languishing is certainly not flourishing, either. We flourish when our life feels in flow, and when we are thriving. We are flourishing when we have positive emotions, relationships, purpose, and direction.
Languishing lingers in the middle, and that murky, messy, muddled middle is where many of us are feeling stuck at the moment.
I’ve heard that one of the worst things we can do to a languishing person is giving them a bumper sticker dose of positivity…
“Oh, just look on the bright side!”
“Hey, life is what you make it!”
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!”
“We all have 24 hours in a day—how will you spend yours today?!”
… and hope they will somehow snap out of it. It’s why if you yourself have recently tried to give yourself a pep talk of positivity, you may have found yourself responding to yourself with complete indifference. Possibly even an eye roll.
What Keyes, Grant, and others tell us, though, is that there are ways to move through our languish in order to get closer to flourish, and key among those things are: mindfulness, connection, and action.
So, to assure yourself that you are moving through languishing, and not just sitting stuck in it, the three best things you can do are to:
In the meantime, the next time you are tempted to ask “How are you?” when you see someone, pause and think of a different question to ask. Here are some ideas to get you started:
And, in the end, just know that if what you are feeling right now leaves you only able to muster up an “I’m fine”… well, that’s just fine. You are most assuredly not alone.
September is Suicide Prevention Month. The Suicide Prevention Lifeline is always available. Call 1-800-273-8255. Someone is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to offer free and confidential support.
September is also National Recovery Month, in recognition of mental and substance use disorders and in support and celebration of those on the path of recovery. For more information, visit https://rm.facesandvoicesofrecovery.org/