Shifting the Balance from Languishing to Flourishing

Languishing has been called the emotion of 2021.?We likely all know that feeling of working harder than ever, doing more than ever, and yet feeling like we have so little to show for our efforts. ?And then there is the eye-burning, hoarse-throat feeling that one more zoom call just might push you over the edge.??And worse, if you look around, you may see that your colleagues, teammates, and mentees are languishing, too.

According to Newton’s third law of thermodynamics, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.?Fortunately for us, the opposite of languishing is what the Greeks called eudaimonia, often translated as “human flourishing,” or simply happiness.?As Adam Grant writes, flourishing is when you “feel a strong sense of meaning, mastery, and mattering to others.”

So, how can we shift the balance from languishing to flourishing?

Flourishing is a deeply personal experience. ??You will know it when you feel it, but as leaders and influencers in organizations, we can take steps to create the conditions necessary for our own and others’ flourishing.??Nearly ten years ago, Maureen Gaffney described in her seminal book, Flourishing, the four essential elements of flourishing necessary for us to be at our best:

1. Challenge —a call or demand to do something, to get over an obstacle, to make something happen.?Flourishing does require that we act.?While we may be relaxed lying face down on the couch, we are not flourishing.?Flourishing implies movement, activity, and forward momentum.
2. Connectivity — being attuned to what is happening inside you and outside you, orienting you to the challenge and preparing you deal with it.?We can feel connected to ourselves, a higher power, a purpose, or other people.
3. Autonomy — feeling free to move and act in pursuit of the challenge. We flourish when we feel we have agency.
4. Using your valued competencies — the experiences of using your talents, especially the strengths you value most in yourself, to the fullest. We flourish when we feel like we get to bring our best selves.

I recognize these elements from my own experience, especially as I settled into the work of writing Elevating the Human Experience and sharing its message:?we pull against the entropy of languishing when we invest in ourselves, in another, and in the communities in which we work.?

Invest in yourself

You, yourself, are a pretty good investment.?Although it isn’t taught in school, often shown in popular culture, or typically modeled in the workplace, you are worthy.?Think about it.?You deserve to experience the happiness of flourishing.?This idea is only radical if you are like me and struggle to feel worthy, particularly when you show up at work.??We invest in our flourishing when we silence our mouthy inner critic, when we set and hold to a boundary that is important to us, when we choose what we give our energy to.?We flourish when we reclaim our agency and take actions that make us feel more connected to what is important to us, bringing the best version of ourselves.?What I have learned as a mother of three who also runs a hundred-million-dollar business is that loving ourselves is like putting on our oxygen mask first.?It is necessary for survival, particularly during times of turbulence.

Invest in another

The only thing that feels more awesome than recognizing your own intrinsic worth is when someone else recognizes it, too.?We can invest in another’s flourishing when we mirror back to them their inherent worth.?We can do this when we offer to connect as a friend, when we offer to listen to a challenge as a mentor, when we use our power to help remove an obstacle to an action, or all of the above.?Have you ever taken thirty minutes out of your day, which meant you might be working later, to listen to a friend describe a challenging day at work??With your gift of time, you contributed to your friend’s flourishing.?Likewise, have you ever missed or simply ignored a bid for connection? All relationships have a mix of positive and negative connections.?According to John Gottman’s research , there is a “magic” ratio of 5 to 1 for positive vs. negative interactions, and relationships are more likely to flourish when they near this ratio.?I think it is fascinating that we can quantify what makes for meaningful connections that help us flourish. It is equally fascinating that flourishing requires more than double the amount of positive interactions than negative ones.??In fact, 3 to 1 seems to be the tipping point between flourishing and languishing.?The good news is that as leaders we know that it is important to make time to listen to our team members and to really “see” them.?When we invest in cultivating more positive than negative interactions, we can tip the balance in favor of flourishing.

Invest in our communities of work

Finally, despite our best efforts to invest in ourselves and in our teammates, many of us may still find ourselves taking part in larger systems in the workplace, which can make us feel unseen and unworthy.?It is hard to find your flourish when your workplace makes you feel unworthy for being a minority, a woman, differently abled, LGBTQ or any of these intersections.?That is why we also need to invest in deconstructing the systems of misogyny, racism, and ignorance that lead to whole groups of people languishing. ?People only have the possibility to flourish when they feel like their authentic selves, regardless of race, sex, or origin, are welcome at work. ?If you are thinking that sounds hard, then I would agree with you.?But I would also affirm that it is the hardest work you could ever love. ?That is, creating an environment where not just one or two people might flourish but where people who might find it hardest to bring their whole selves to work will flourish, too.?We elevate the human experience for our communities at work when, faced with a choice, we choose to make something just a little bit better, shifting the balance from languishing to flourishing.

Please join our community for updates and to learn more about the practice of self-love, believing in your own worth, and extending that love and worth to invest in flourishing.

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