From languishing to flourishing.

If you’ve been in my world for a while, you might have noticed I talk about languishing & flourishing, but it occurred to me I might not have really explained what I mean by these terms, so I thought it might be worth digging deep in a blog post. 

For a long time, (post World War 1) the psychology of mental health moved away from thinking about what makes people happy and focussed solely on mental ‘disorders’ and how to ‘cure’ them; it lost its focus on the science and practice of wellbeing. 

In the late 1990s the focus started to shift towards Positive Psychology, the concepts of languishing and flourishing emerged to understand wellbeing beyond disorder or illness, resulting in numerous models and positive psychology interventions we can use. 

So, What’s Languishing 

Languishing has been defined as the absence of mental health (American Psychological Association); it's characterised by a sense of dissatisfaction, you’re not really participating in life, and a sense of feeling stuck (you’re not taking action or setting goals). And whilst it isn’t considered a mental health problem, it is associated with a 6 x greater risk of depression than those who are flourishing. So, if we find ourselves languishing, we don’t want to stay there long. 

This is the place many of my clients find themselves when they come to coaching; and positive psychology and coaching psychology are the perfect tools to empower people to move to a position of flourishing. 

So, What’s Flourishing 

Flourishing is more than just happiness, or a positive attitude to life. It constitutes our emotional wellbeing, our psychological wellbeing and has been defined as  

“the combination of feeling good and functioning effectively” (Huppert & So, 2013) 

The research shows us there are some key factors to flourishing 

• A sense of connection 

• Experiencing positive emotions, and so make us feel good 

• Doing things which keep our attention and give us a sense of achievement 

• Having a sense of meaning and knowing that we matter  

• A sense of autonomy, the idea that we have control over our choices and life 

Being about to create space for and prioritise these areas consistently will help us build and sustain our wellbeing, enabling us to flourish. The good news is that there are lots of things we can do to nurture all of these areas. 

Over the coming weeks I’ll be exploring each of these aspects and sharing tips in the Newsletter, the Collective, you can sign up here to get these straight to your inbox.