by Aren Henry | March, 2022 | Clarity is . . ., Grit/Grace/Gratitude, Karen Henry, Light Life, Noetic Nomad
The light life leans on languishing. The NYTimes recently published an Adam Grant article about how so many of us are languishing as a result of the relentless pandemic. Of course, once one major news source picks up a key concept, a flood of others follow suit. So? Are we all languishing these days, or is it that we were inundated with this idea that we are? Languishing? This feeling of emptiness, or apathy as we see wave after wave of bad to horrible news is a very real concern today. In 2002, a scholar at Emory University published an article about languishing compared to flourishing. It was in the early days of positive psychology, when we were all so excited to finally speak out loud about the good things in the world. Keyes work has followed us into the other side of despair. We want to flourish, of course, but today, twenty years later and two years into living in a global pandemic, I have to ask, is languishing really such a bad thing? Flourishing Flourishing means that we are productive, joyful, engaged, and love all the parts of our lives. For the most part, if we are flourishing, we are also emotionally strengthened by our own sense of purpose. However, what happens to those who only focus on being productive, flourishing and engaging? Will they have the strength to bounce back from a longer period of languishing? Will they know how? For those of us who experienced terrible life events prior to the pandemic, there seems to have been a push for outward joy. We encourage productivity,...
by Dan Collinson | August, 2015 | Nature
Nature is important I was thinking about what I could write as a blog that was different, for me the idea of nature is important. If I want to de-clutter my head, I just need to drive to the seaside and watch the waves go in and out, the sounds invoke good memories for me and I am reminded of how life is full of good and bad things. The bad things get swept away with the tide and what remains tends to be clean. There are of course exceptions when pollution comes in, but the good news is that when this happens you have eco-warriors who come and heal the environment, just the same way as a human being has friends and family who can help them to heal. How trees demonstrate languishing and flourishing I, like many before me, am fascinated by trees, how they can grow for so long and develop so well. Trees for me demonstrate flourishing, languishing and pre-contemplation, especially in the different domains of life. Flourishing can be seen in the growth and germinated seeds. Pre-contemplation can be seen in the autumn, where the trees go into hibernation, which consolidates their growth for later life. There are times parts of the tree may begin to languish and be seen to die, for me this can be seen in a tree in Windsor Great Park, which half of the tree is flourishing and alive, and half the tree is dead or languishing after it was hit by lightening when it was younger. Sadly this part will never become alive again. I am reminded of how...
by Lesley Lyle | June, 2015 | Health
World Mental Health Day – 10th October A challenge for all those interested in flourishing us to get involved with at least one event on World Mental Health Day. Let’s recognise the work of Corey Keyes who states that “flourishing is complete mental health“. The precise theme for World Mental Health Day in 2015 is Mental Health Education – for me this is about how we can make sure those around us understand what makes them mentally healthy. What could we focus on to help people understand that they can flourish? For me there are a number of challenges, getting people to understand that flourishing like happiness is a choice. We can chose to live in one of three states, that of flourishing, pre-contemplation or languishing. So flourishing is complete mental health, whilst languishing can be perceived almost as depression and despair. There are times in life whereby we pre-contemplate – in this time we work through our emotional and logical thinking about a situation, whilst deciding on creative solutions to life’s issues. It is further a reality that we may flourish in one area of life, whilst not in others. So we might flourish in the work situation, be in pre-contemplation during relationships and languish in spiritual domains of life. If we adopt strengths theory to this, then the temptation would be to focus on one domain of life, however, people operate in different domains for a reason, so we would be wiser to take the lessons from the area of flourishing and see how they can be adapted to broaden and build flourishing in the different domains of...
