In the early days of Covid, a lot of us were struggling with fear, grief and isolation. But as the pandemic drags on with no end in sight, our acute anguish has given way to chronic languish....
MENTAL HEALTH
In the early days of Covid, a lot of us were struggling with fear, grief and isolation. But as the pandemic drags on with no end in sight, our acute anguish has given way to chronic languish.
But languishing is not unique to a pandemic. It’s part of the human condition. Two decades of research show that languishing can disrupt your focus and dampen your motivation. It’s also a risk factor for depression because languishing often lurks below the surface. You might not notice when your drive is dwindling or your delight is dulling You’re indifferent to your own indifference, which means you don’t seek help and you might not even do anything to help yourself. Languishing isn’t just hard to spot, though. In many cultures, it’s hard to talk about, too. When people ask, “How are you?,” you’re expected to say, “Great!” or “Living my best life.”
It’s the pressure that we face to be optimistic and upbeat at all times. If you say, “You know, I’m just OK,” then people might encourage you to look on the bright side or count your blessings, which isn’t just annoying. It can actually be bad advice.
In the early days of the pandemic, researchers found that the best predictor of well-being was not optimism. It was flow. Flow is that feeling of being in the zone, that state of total absorption in an activity. It might be cooking or running or gardening where you lose track of time. Flow is the appeal of a Netflix binge because you get transported into a different world and immersed in a story.
The ‘theory of peak flow’ has three conditions: mastery, mindfulness and mattering. Mastery does not have to be a big accomplishment, it can be small wins. Small wins makes sense of why so many people were thrilled to bake their first loaf of sourdough bread. That kind of mastery depends on mindfulness, which is focusing your full attention on a single task, not something a lot of us are doing that much these days. There’s evidence that on average, people are checking emails 74 times a day, switching tasks every 10 minutes, and that creates what’s been called time confetti, where we take what could be meaningful moments of our lives and we shred them into increasingly tiny, useless pieces. Time confetti is an enemy of both energy and of excellence. If we want to find flow, we need better boundaries. We need to treat uninterrupted blocks of time as treasures to guard.
Now, mastery and mindfulness will get you to flow, but there’s a third condition that turns it into a peak experience. Mattering. Knowing that you make a difference to other people. So think about the people who would be worse off if your job didn’t exist. You need to know their names, their faces and their stories, and you can find flow in projects that benefit them.
We need to rethink our understanding of mental health and well-being. When someone says, “How are you?,” it’s OK to say, “Honestly, I’m languishing.” Or if you can only muster one syllable, “Meh.” And when you’re ready, you can start finding the flow that lights a path out of the void.
Compiled by SZ
