The word thriving appears everywhere at the moment. On wellness apps, LinkedIn posts, book covers, podcast titles. It has become shorthand for a particular kind of success: optimised, energised, purposeful. The implication, often, is that thriving is striving done right.
I think this misses something important. And when it does, it can leave people feeling worse about themselves rather than better.
What striving actually does to us
Striving is not inherently a problem. The capacity to work towards something, to persist, to invest effort in what matters to us, is part of a meaningful life. The difficulty arises when striving becomes the primary mode of relating to ourselves.
When we are chronically striving, the message running underneath our activity is a particular one: I am not yet enough. I will be fixed when I have achieved this, become more like that. The present moment is perpetually a problem to be solved on the way to a better future self.
From a nervous system perspective, this kind of orientation keeps us in a state of mild but sustained activation. We are alert, forward-leaning, scanning for the next thing that needs addressing. This is not harmful in short bursts; it becomes costly when it is the only gear we know how to use.
What culture tells us thriving looks like
The cultural version of thriving tends to involve visible markers like productivity, positivity, purpose, physical health, meaningful relationships, and financial security. Ideally, all of these, simultaneously and sustainably.
This is an extraordinarily demanding template. And because it presents itself as aspiration rather than expectation, it is difficult to push back against. Who could object to wanting to live well?
But what the template often leaves out is the texture of an actual human life. The ordinary days that are neither productive nor restorative, the relationships that are complicated rather than nourishing, the periods of low mood that do not resolve quickly, the parts of ourselves we find difficult to like.
When the cultural image of thriving has no room for these, people measure themselves against a standard that was never designed to fit a real person and find themselves wanting.
What thriving actually looks like
In my experience, the people who are genuinely thriving are not those who have optimised away difficulty. They are those who have developed a different relationship with it.
Thriving, in practice, tends to involve:
A capacity to be present in ordinary moments, rather than perpetually oriented towards what comes next.
The ability to feel difficult emotions without being overwhelmed by them or compelled to immediately resolve them.
A sense of self that does not depend entirely on external validation or achievement.
Relationships in which there is room to be imperfect, to repair when things go wrong, and to receive as well as give.
None of these are things that can be downloaded, optimised, or achieved through sufficient effort. They tend to emerge from a process of becoming more honest with oneself, more willing to be seen, more able to tolerate the reality of who one actually is rather than who one is trying to become.
The role of therapy in this
Therapy is not a route to the cultural version of thriving. If someone arrives hoping to become more productive, more confident, more effective, I take that seriously as a starting point. But I am also curious about what sits beneath the wish.
Often, what lies underneath is something different. Maybe a longing to feel at home in oneself. To stop the internal commentary that judges and measures. To be less exhausted by the effort of keeping things together.
That kind of shift does not look like a transformation from the outside. But it changes everything from the inside. It is what I would call thriving, as distinct from its more photogenic imitation.
A question worth asking
If you find yourself wondering whether you are striving or thriving, it might be worth asking not what you have achieved, but what you feel when you are not achieving anything at all.
Not what you do when things are going well, but how you treat yourself when they are not.
Not whether you have the markers of a good life, but whether you feel, on most ordinary days, that you are living one.
Those are harder questions than any wellness checklist offers. But they are, I think, the more honest ones.
John Walter is an integrative counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice in Bude, Cornwall, registered with the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society. If something in this resonates, you are welcome to be in touch.