I remember the final day.
The director in our office declared that Sydney was going into lockdown. My colleague and I looked at each other and realised this may be the last in-person contact for a while. But how long? Weeks, maybe? Sadly it has been months now. At the time we shrugged and headed to a coffee shop to have one last decent face to face conversation before the unknown.
We had been in lockdown before and knew what to expect. Still, nothing prepares you for the reality ahead. The first lockdown in Australia hit people pretty hard — like everywhere else in the world 1. Lockdown doesn’t help anyone struggling with any health issues, especially mental problems. Confinement, potential danger from contracting COVID, uncertainty and blurred boundaries around work and play. All irritants sitting under your skin.
You might not feel desperately unhappy. Yet this pandemic purgatory presents its own bland and unsettling challenge. There’s a great saying — name it to tame it- which helps us recognize and manage emotions. One day I came across an apt label for this rather bland and bleak feeling: languishing 2.
So how does this term relate to self-coaching and fostering a sense of resilience? Well, practicing resilience in the face of languishing really didn’t turn out the way I’d expected. It wasn’t that easy to tough it out, think differently or put on a happy face. Depression is the heavier, more well-known cousin of languishing. In the presence of my lighter friend, I couldn’t see the effort I would have to take to get out of the mire of self-pity.
The detached nature of work now means a relatively asynchronous way of working. A colleague pings me — I respond a little later. Synchronous ways of working — like meetings still exist. Yet rather than have the chance to read the room, Zoom fatigue is a more likely end-result 3.
It is easy to appreciate that when you are wallowing in the mire of languishing, anything sounding “positive” and uplifting maybe is not all that welcome. Sometimes it is easier and smarter to let negative emotions greet you like a friend and be on their way in time.
The Power of Negative Emotions
Emotions that feel “negative or difficult” are wonderful teachers. They serve to highlight something missing in our lives. Instead of distracting myself, I chose to tune into these negative emotions. Not only within myself but also my poor family.
By greeting these emotions like I would a good friend, the realization hit me one day. Fleeting happiness and a greater sense of well-being would occasionally visit instead. My feeling of languishing came and went in waves. It still does. No more in-person social activities or outside contact with the world. A daily walk around the block with my mask on. Yet on the day I write this Sydney is in full lockdown — no social strolls.
I chose to channel negative emotions into my writing. Surfing a wave of melancholy doesn’t always lead to a trip to the bottle store, or the bottom of a tub of Connoisseur Cookies ’n’ Cream ice cream. Strong negative emotions are often the genesis of great ideas and a surge of creativity. This surge of emotions helped me to finish my book The Change Manager’s Companion. This latest lockdown helped me start to write this publication. Now that I have taken on the challenge of my ongoing publication, I have regular accountability to put my words down on paper.
Placing my attention on others helps. Not thinking about what I am missing out on, or comparing — these are the thieves of joy. In getting out of my languishing state it dawned on me the quality time that I do have with my family. It’s like putting on a new pair of glasses and in this case, the glasses illustrate what is working well as opposed to what isn’t. It’s just that you can’t rock up to Specsavers and immediately order this pair of glasses — they get handed to you when life says you are ready to receive them.
Negative emotions per se are not necessarily a bad thing. They sharpen your creativity, and like our friend the elephant give you a surge of energy in a particular direction. Your natural resilience and capacity for gratitude can buffer you against awful life circumstances 4.
Maybe lockdown is akin to working in extreme conditions, such as living on an Antarctic station? Workers in these environments can feel lonely despite working in close confines, and can’t “escape” from their daily existence 5. I learned that these Antarctic workers sometimes suffer their own “brand” of depression. It is called winter-over syndrome. This syndrome is a cluster of three symptoms: sleep disturbance, cognitive impairment and low mood. Impairment is often in the form of poor concentration and reasoning, absent-mindedness and irritability 5. Sound familiar?
Elephant and the rider
So how did I go at first? I didn’t fare very well at all. At the time my workload was pretty intense and the days blended into each other. The biggest thing yet was the strength of my emotions at the time. I’ll admit it I felt sorry for myself and I couldn’t find the wherewithal to get out of this funk. It’s not that I enjoyed feeling miserable but I just didn’t seem to have the resource is to sort this out. To me emotions like these are like passing storms- it’s that the storm went for weeks.
One thing I learned was the concept of the elephant and the rider 6. The elephant is likened to our emotions — strong, stubborn yet if spurred to move forward the elephant takes a life of its own. The elephant’s power is formidable. The rider sitting atop the elephant is the rational part out of our brain. Our well-developed prefrontal cortex providing us with excellent attention and executive functioning.
During the lockdown, my rider had gone off for an iced coffee add a nearby café. I don’t think this rider was wearing a mask either and really didn’t return for quite some time. I personally wished I could have joined the rider, but instead felt like I was chained to the elephant instead. So where did this elephant take me? Not far.
I sat in my home office and the days blended into nights and the weekdays blended into the weekends. Having a nightly bath and consuming way too much junk food was a familiar coping mechanism. I ate healthily, exercising and enjoying social contact before the lockdown. My project team had started coming back into the office almost full-time. Life had been returning to normal.
Now a lack of focus and purpose permeated life. The elephant had well and truly won the battle at this stage.
So how can the rider work with the elephant? As I discovered, through the principles of time and tide. Over time, emotions — both positive and negative — dissipate. The tide — in this case, the rider taming the elephant — took time and a little effort on my part.
Martin Seligman, author of the book Flourish created a model for understanding dimensions of well-being 7. The PERMA model breaks down these well-being dimensions:
- Purpose: In lockdown, do you still have a job? For those who don’t, the sole purpose of finding another job may be heartbreaking and lonely at times. For those who do, connecting to your job’s purpose is made harder without the connection to your colleague’s energy. This energy is contagious — it often fosters a sense of collective purpose. In our home office, with the days blurring into each other, digging deep to re-attach to a sense of purpose takes effort.
- Engagement: Flow, or being lost in an engaging activity is possible during lockdown 8. Flow is where challenge and your skill neatly intersect, and you both lose track of time and feel engaged. Yet are you achieving flow in your work, or is this flow now achieved through binge-watching Netflix or Tik Tok? If you enjoy your work, a state of flow still is possible. It’s that the elephant may get in the way. Feeling like you are trapped in your home can tarnish a sense of effortless achievement that comes from being truly engaged in your work.
- Relationships: Zoom or Skype meetings do not cut it. Eye contact isn’t there — and staring into your computer’s camera means your eye contact is there for the other person. Yet doesn’t this feel mechanical? Real-life connection — there is nothing like it. The lucky ones among us have a family to share their lockdown with. As frustrating as this confined living may be, there is still a sense of connection. In a study of Antarctic workers, a feeling of loneliness was linked to greater mental impairment and lower job satisfaction and mood 5.
- Meaning: How much purpose do you feel when employment prospects look shaky, or you are uncertain about the future? Lockdowns are where you might consider better, enduring sources of meaning.
- Achievement: In the confines of your home or suburb you may find new sources of achievement. Yes, it may be a newfound love of Sudoku. Or the achievement of baking sourdough bread. Maybe your achievement needs are satisfied through others — for me, it is seeing my son develop and achieve in his own right. Seeing a soon-to-be thirteen-year-old speak near-fluent Russian is pretty cool (and how would I know if he is fluent or not anyway?)
Languishing to a little better
So how do we move out of the languishing state to something a little better?
I found that after the elephant had done its thing, it got bored with me and moved on. What worked for me?
- Savouring a daily walk. Yes, it wasn’t daily five-kilometre run and intense weights training or mind-blowing yoga sessions to greet the dawn. This is something the achievement-driven part of me wants to have. But my exercise is an even better, life-affirming experience. Walks with my son. We would talk about anything and everything over the course of an hour, and I love every minute of it.
- Maintaining a sense of structure. Waking up at the same time every day and carving my own daily work structure helped me maintain a better sense of equilibrium.
- Enjoying a sense of work community. My team had twice-weekly 15-minute standup sessions. These sessions were very well run even before lockdown. The leader of the standup sessions tried to bring humanity into the standup sessions. This humanity made a significant difference to many people’s emotional states. We had one person with skills in singing and guitar who played both the intro and outro of the stand-up. These small personal touches make a huge difference to people who are struggling or at their limits.
- Setting small achievable challenges. Psychologists working with depressed patients often introduce a technique called behavioural activation 9. Feeling depressed and want to lie on the couch all day? A small achievable challenge might be to go for a walk around the block three times each week. For those of us who aren’t depressed, this might seem easy. Yet for those stuck in a vicious cycle of despair, this might pose a significant challenge. Yet doing things you don’t want to do can help unpick a vicious cycle.
Small behavioural changes and the dopamine rush from a sense of progress are powerful change agents. Greater control over our circumstances opens our minds to new possibilities. The rider begins to tame the elephant. When it does, we can look at other ways to boost our energy and morale.
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.
References
1. Fisher JRW, Tran TD, Hammarberg K, et al. Mental health of people in Australia in the first month of COVID-19 restrictions: a national survey. Med J Aust. 2020;213(10):458–464. doi:10.5694/mja2.50831
2. Living, But Not Flourishing: The Pandemic-Fueled Feeling Known As “Languishing” | Here & Now. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/05/04/languishing-pandemic-mental-health. Accessed August 16, 2021.
3. Lindstrom DL, Schmidt-Crawford D, Thompson AD. Flexible but languishing: What we’ve learned about virtual working and learning. J Digit Learn Teach Educ. 2021;37(3):150–151. doi:10.1080/21532974.2021.1936985
4. Waters L, Algoe SB, Dutton J, et al. Positive psychology in a pandemic: buffering, bolstering, and building mental health. J Posit Psychol. 2021. doi:10.1080/17439760.2021.1871945
5. Jaksic C, Steel GD, Moore K, Stewart E. Person-environment fit: A cross-national and cross-temporal study of human adaptation to isolated and confined environments. Polar Sci. 2020;26(December 2019):100590. doi:10.1016/j.polar.2020.100590
6. Haidt J. The Happiness Hypothesis: Ten Ways to Find Happiness and Meaning in Life. Random House Business; 2021.
7. Seligman M. Flourish (A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being). 1st ed. Atria Books; 2012.
8. Czikszentmihalyi M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row; 1990.
9. Uphoff E, Ekers D, Robertson L, et al. Behavioural activation therapy for depression in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020;(7). doi:10.1002/14651858.CD013305.PUB2