How to Flourish This Year

February 4, 2022
By Carrie Pollard, MSW, RSW

Learn how to flourish this year using your personal strengths.

How have the events of the past year affected your life? Have you noticed any changes in your mood, lifestyle or relationships? The pandemic has had significant effects on mental health, such as higher rates of reported anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and substance use. People have also noticed changes in their mood in less extreme, but still important ways, such as increased stress, burnout, and languishing.

What is Languishing?

Languishing has been described in many different ways:

• The New York Times called it the ‘neglected middle child of mental health;’
• The National Post referred to it as ‘the middle ground between being mentally healthy and mentally ill;’
• The American Psychological Association (APA) defined it as ‘the loss of interest in life.'

If you are languishing, you might notice yourself feeling more apathetic or ‘blah,’ empty, bored, unmotivated, having difficulties concentrating, and experience low energy. Things that once brought you joy, you just don’t ‘feel like’ doing any more. With restrictions being lifted (again), many people expected to feel better, but if you’re still struggling with being motivated to do things, it might be due to languishing.

How to Flourish

The opposite of languishing is a concept coined by Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist and founder of positive psychology, called flourishing. Flourishing is multidimensional and holistic in terms of describing a state of physical, mental, emotional and social wellness. If you’re flourishing you might notice yourself feeling grateful, engaged, hopeful, connected, and having purpose and meaning in your life.

One of the ways to move from languishing to flourishing is to capitalize on your personal strengths. Each person has a set of personal character strengths that are positive parts of who you are as a person. Researchers have found that there are 24 character strengths that people can possess, such as kindness, perseverance, gratitude, and humour. You might identify with some of these strengths right away; you may wish you had others. The great news about strengths is that it is not an either/or situation; rather, it is something that can be nurtured and developed. In others words, strengths can be strengthened!

Practice one of your signature character strengths daily to flourish.

People who use their strengths a lot were eighteen times more likely to be flourishing in their lives. What is‘a lot? Try finding a way to prioritize the use of one or more of your strengths each day. You can use your strengths in simple daily activities, such as washing your hair or walking the dog; however, you can also use your strengths to work towards long-term goals, such as starting a new business, running a 10K race, or joining a dating website.

Listed below are some examples of how you can use a personal strengths to guide your daily life choices and work towards a state of flourishing:

• Use gratitude by writing a thank you letter
  Connect with your spirituality through meditation
• Nourish your appreciation of beauty and excellence and creativity by taking pictures while on a walk or hike
• Connect with your kindness by buying coffee or lunch for the person in-line behind you
• Fuel your leadership and fairness by raising money for an important cause.

Ways to practice your strengths are endless! If you struggle with motivation, remember that motivation follows action and make a list of activities that reflect your strengths and try one a day and see how that feels.

Learn More About Your Character Strengths

Ryan Niemiec, author of The Strengths-based Workbook for Stress Relief states, we need to focus more on what is strong then‘what is wrong in our lives.

If you find yourself struggling, set the mindful intention to learn about your strengths, take the free VIA Institute test, and start using them regularly to find more satisfaction, purpose and meaning. This can be difficult to do alone, so try it with a friend or talk with a professional counsellor at the Student Wellness Centre or peer support through Wellness Education.

The Happiness 101 workshop provides more helpful tips and information on how to flourish using the science of positive psychology.  Chris is running Happiness 101 on March 15, 2022 at 2:30 pm.

*If you notice that that languishing is more intense and/or you’ve been feeling anxious, depressed, or hopeless, please talk with a professional. Here 24/7 and Good2talk provide support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For a printable copy of this article including references, please email us.