The most popular article on the New York Times website in 2021 wasn’t about politics or scandal or even reality TV. Instead, it was a straightforward diagnosis of our less-than-awesome national mood by a mild-mannered business professor.Â
An epidemic of languishing that just went on and on.Â
If you’re one of the few who missed it at the time, Wharton professor and best-selling author Adam Grant kicked off a national conversation by putting a proper name to the “blah” feeling so many of us were experiencing a year into the pandemic.Â
“It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing,” Grant wrote as America collectively nodded its head in recognition. A tsunami of follow-up pieces sharing personal perspectives and offering possible solutions followed. And according to some experts, even as we started to get the pandemic under control, the feeling lingered.Â
Google data on searches for burnout and trends like quiet quitting all suggest that the mental fallout of more than two years of virus disruption are still with us. But are we, on average as a nation, still languishing? Not according to a recent interview with Grant. In it, he hopefully suggested we might be turning a corner into a more positive and energetic mental phase.Â
From languishing to post-traumatic growth
No one could accuse 2022 so far of being excessively cheerful. Between the brutal invasion of Ukraine, grinding inflation, and killer hurricanes there have been plenty of headlines to keep the national mood depressed. But on the other hand, a summer of travel chaos testified people were at least getting back to adventure and forward planning after so much time spent doom scrolling, playing Wordle, and just trying to get through the days.Â
In these first signs of a mental shift, Grant discerns green shoots of a more positive frame of mind. He told PBS’s Firing Line, “I think a lot of people are still languishing… because languishing is part of the human condition.” So far, so gloomy. But Grant goes on to make a more hopeful observation: “I don’t think it’s quite as severe now from the data that I’ve seen. We’re starting to see a little bit of… post-traumatic growth.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the term post-traumatic growth, Grant succinctly describes it as “not just bouncing back but bouncing forward.” Experts argue about the exact prevalence of the phenomenon, but studies generally agree that some significant percentage of people come out the other side of a traumatic experience stronger and with a greater sense of meaning.Â
Psychologists are keen to note this doesn’t happen for everyone, so people should feel under no pressure to fake personal growth if they mostly just feel lousy. Nor does it mean that trauma isn’t terrible and to be avoided if at all possible. No one would opt for post-traumatic growth if given the option of no trauma at all. But it does mean that many people who experience trauma report that it gave them a new and healthier perspective on life.Â
“People say, ‘I wish that hadn’t happened, but because I’m stuck with it, I’m going to walk away stronger. I’m going to be more grateful. I’m going to have deeper relationships with people, and I’m going to have a new sense of possibility and purpose,'” Grant explains.Â
He points to data that we’ve covered here on Inc.com before showing that by the summer of 2020, rates of mental illness had already returned to their pre-pandemic baseline. People are often stronger than both the world and they themselves expected them to be.Â
Which puts all the recent headlines about quiet quitting, labor unrest, and general discontent in a different, more optimistic light. Sure, people are restless at the moment, but Grant suggests that’s not necessarily a sign we’re all still stuck in our collective doldrums. It could very well be a sign that plenty of people are finally brushing them off and starting to build a better post-pandemic mentality.Â