from languishing to flourishing
Stuck in the middle
At some point in your work life, you might have had a strange feeling.
Even when things were going well and you had every reason to be happy, you felt empty and adrift.
You might have asked yourself:
Do I need a new job? Is this all there is?
Or you may have gotten stuck in between two situations without being able to reconcile them: do I want this OR that? Am I a creative or a business person? Can’t I be both?
Sometimes we find the answer by making radical changes.
Often, we don’t.
circling
Imagine yourself on a flight.
You are going somewhere, you are almost there, but you cannot land.
You spend months circling. You cannot get where you want to be and cannot go back to where you started. You don’t feel anything negative but for sure you don’t feel anything good..
It’s not like the plane is crashing either but you are left with no control on when and where it lands.
You seat and wait. Instead of feeling belonging, you are forced in the condition of feeling still just “longing to be”.
This experience is what social psychologists call languishing.
languishing
Languishing is the experience of feeling empty and disconnected, even when everything seems to be in place.
It is marked by a profound sense of loss as one transitions from a life of purpose, belonging, and growth to a disconnected state where nothing feels quite right.
In this gap, there is a struggle to reconcile living with meaning while feeling adrift.
Despite outward appearances of being “fine,” there’s an invisible pain—an existence in a “neverworld,” where one feels unseen and struggles to guide others when they themselves feel lost.
It makes it difficult to relate to others and we feel a judgement lingering. “How dare you feel unhappy? You have everything.”
So what do we need to navigate languishing?
mattering
When languishing lingers for too long, we feel exhausted by having to prove our worth and belonging over and over again and we lose of our sense of feeling needed by others in society.
The external feature of lives is not enough to navigate this state. “Success” is no defense against languishing, because when we languish, we feel we are not necessary for society.
These times are scary, but also ripe with creative possibilities to design a space where you can take away the person you never imagined you could become and replace it with the person you want to be.
Mattering is about moving from being the person society want to the person society need, reconnecting with the impact you can have on others and how you serve yourself and your community.
flourishing
We need to feel alive.
Languishing is not just about a lack of personal fulfillment; it’s deeply tied to our disconnection from others. It’s not the absence of stress that keeps us from languishing, but the presence of meaningful connections.
While humans uniquely have the choice to live for themselves, growth and flourishing happen when we choose to belong and connect with others.
Research shows that strong social connections can even protect us biologically, activating protective enzymes that shield us from the harmful effects of chronic stress.
At a deeper level, to feel good again means re-engaging with life, accepting ourselves, and feeling that our actions matter—not just for us but for others.
This is where belonging in between comes in as a design practice.
It’s a process that can help you move from languishing to flourishing helping you rediscover your creative courage spark and rebuild bridges and connection sparks with your community, helping you:
– Uncover your impact on the world by discovering your purpose
– Engage in dynamic feedback loops with your community to nurture mutual growth
– Design new, transformative questions instead of dwelling on outdated answers
– Take your next better step forward that create ripples of positive impact
If you are struggling with languishing, by choosing to belong and reconnect with yourself and others, you can reawaken your sense of aliveness.
“Nothing in nature lives for themselves. Only humans have the choice to live for themselves but when we are growing, we give to others. Flourishing is a pinnacle of life. When people are flourishing, they can’t keep it for themselves”