Start THRIVING, not just SURVIVING

Feel like you're just muddling through life? It's time to find your spark again 

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Did you welcome the new year with a sense of 'meh'? Or maybe for months you've been thinking, 'Is this it?' and 'What's next for me?' The trouble with reaching middle age is that there's often a natural pause. Life's pace has likely slowed since those whirlwind decades when big experiences, such as buying a house, getting married, climbing the career ladder and having children - to name a few - consumed all of your focus and energy. And while you may now have much more freedom with your time, a feeling of being directionless can easily creep in. In fact, this inertia is so common it has a name - languishing. Simply put, it means you're trudging through days that are lacking real joy or purpose.

Sound familiar? You may already recognise this feeling of aimlessness, as it closely mirrors the mental state many of us experienced during the pandemic - that tricky time when Groundhog Day took a toll on our well-being, and there was a sense of limbo and emptiness in the day-to-day.

If you're languishing, it can best be described as not firing on all cylinders, and your drive and desire for life will be noticeably dulled. It might be that your feel-good morning routine has gone kaput or you're cooking the same humdrum dinners because you can't be bothered to open a recipe book. Spending every evening channelhopping or snoozing on the sofa, instead of enjoying hobbies and social activities, can also highlight a life that has slid into the languishing zone.

Unfortunately, unhelpful patterns soon turn into unhealthy habits and, because our physical and mental health are so interlinked, it's all too easy to get locked into these 'stuck cycles', says Gosia Bowling, national lead for mental health at Nuffield Health. More than a quarter of adults say they experienced languishing last year, while 35% felt that they were just 'getting by' in life*.