Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
But just like everything else that's put on this earth,
we were planted here to grow. When we're not growing
and exploring, we feel like we are starting to die.
And people talk about languishing as if they feel like
they're dying inside.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I had a
very important chat with Corey Keys. Corey is a well
respected sociologist and psychologist who is a legend in the
field of positive psychology. Corey is especially well known for
his idea called languishing. To languish is to lose or
to never have had a lot of the good things
(00:39):
in life that make our lives matter and make it meaningful.
This is why people who are languishing sometimes describe themselves
as dead or dying inside. Languishing creeps in after a
period of extreme stress, grief, isolation, discrimination, trauma, moral injury,
or demoralization, a sense of low grade mental weariness that
(01:00):
can be easy to dismiss, especially since indifference is one
of its symptoms. If you stay in the state of
languishing too long, it will put you at risk for
a whole host of problems, not the least of which
is depression. Thankfully, Corey offers us some guidance on what
we can do if we're languishing to feel alive again
in a world that wears us down, including the five
psychological vitamins. This is a really important discussion and I
(01:24):
hope it can help you increase your own sense of liveness. So,
without further ado, I bring you Corey Keys, Corey Keys. Wow.
So glad to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Scott.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I'm a long time admirer of your work and I
teach this course the Science of Living Well at Barnard College,
Colmby University, and I start off my introductory lecture with
your mental Health continuum. It's a really good way of
introducing students to positive psychology and kind of a different
way of thinking about mental illness and mental health. So
thank you so much for the amazing work that you
(02:00):
do your for the field. Thank you, yeah, and congratulations
on your new book. I'm glad that you wrote wrote
this book. It's very much needed right now in the world.
I think that a lot of people are feeling that
sense of what you call languishing.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yes, I never imagined it would take a pandemic to
raise the awareness of my work because I'd always thought
maybe I would be approaching this in my book about
it when around flourishing. But it's a good lesson. We
have to meet people where they're at, and my research
(02:44):
has always been about trying to use the positive to
deal with some serious forms of human suffering in the
world that we're not dealing with very well.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
No we're not well. I'm thinking about various inroads into
the languishing construct and I thought we could start off
with discussing idea of the mental health continuum. I think
that's a really good way of framing a lot of this.
You have this very provocative quote in your book. You
say mental illness and mental health are correlated, but only modestly. WHOA,
(03:17):
that's some First of all, that sounds like a lot
of scientific jargon, but also that's for those who know.
They know that's pretty interesting finding.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Well, yes, and it's there. It would be safe to
say there is quite a body of evidence now that
supports what I'm calling the too continuum model. And before me,
people did talk about this to continuum model, but didn't
do any of the empirical science. And strangely enough, as
(03:52):
I read a butt in the book, I'm always I
always do a deep dive into history before I move
forward to know what's where philosophers and thinkers have been
on this topic. And it turns out the ancient Greeks
and the origin story of medicine proposed to continue a
model right as Sclepius, the myth of Asclepius, the father
(04:16):
of medicine, had two daughters, one of which was named Panacea,
and you know Panacea from our current medical healthcare system,
which is about fixing illness. But he also had a
daughter named Hygia, and hygiea was about a healthcare approach
that dealt with maintaining the presence of good health and
(04:38):
dealing with its losses. And so this idea has been
around for a very long time. And I always appreciate
the fact that when I'm working on something that you know,
it's it's it's dealing with something that has been with
humanity for a while. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yeah, well that's the truth. But can you explain a
little bit to people what that means that they're they're
only a miles to cord. You know, you could have
any configuration, right, You can be high mental illness and
high mental health at the same time.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yes, And at first, when I proposed this model. That
was the category the combination that really jarred people. It
was hard for them to hold both of those ideas together.
How could somebody be mentally healthy? Because right I use
the word flourishing as a stand in to indicate the
(05:35):
presence of good mental health and be mentally ill at
the same time. And it's not surprising to me because
I talk about own my own mental disorders and when
I'm in recovery, they and when I'm doing well on
the mental health continuum and flourishing, my mental illness recedes
into the background and it's well managed. So most of
(05:58):
us with mental illness aren't symptomatic twenty four to seven.
That doesn't mean the mental illness has gone away. It's there.
It's affecting us. But as it recedes into the background,
and I think often it does receive in the background
because we're really starting to live a life where we're
getting those ingredients of flourishing. And so I talk about
(06:21):
even a study in Hong Kong of schizophrenic people with schizophrenia,
and twenty eight percent of them at the beginning of
the study were diagnosed as flourishing on my measure, and
yet they were they had schizophrenia, it was being managed.
But they it's everywhere that people can flourish with a
(06:44):
mental illness as long as it's being well managed.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
You know. Yeah, you remind me of a famous study
that I talk a lot about on a study of
creative people that Frank X. Baron initiated in the sixties,
and I believe he did some work in the seventies
as well. They took an old fraternity house renovated frattorney house,
(07:13):
and they brought some of the greatest thinkers and creators
of the day, I think, like Truman, Compodi, they brought
into study and they studied these creative people, and he
has a Frank Burn has this great quote which I'm
trying to remember the exact words, but something like the
creative person is both seen and mad, you know, at
the same time. What he found is that that they
(07:36):
scored these creators scored sky high on almost all the
measures of mental illness they could throw out them. And
they also scored sky high in almost every measure of
mental health in what he called ego strength. Ego strength
which is basically resiliency, resiliency. So that was a major
finding from the Frank Baron studies on creativity, and so
(08:00):
I just wanted to kind of integrate that literature into
what you're talking about.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yes, I think it's a brilliant connection. And what I
like to think about it is that we coexist in
both worlds, all of us, some of us sky high
as you talk about it, but some of us to
lesser degrees, with some symptoms of minimals and some symptoms
of flourishing. And I think that's just human nature. That's
(08:28):
how we are composed. And this two continuum models got
I read you a lot of evidence it's the way
our brain is designed as well, because sadness and happiness
have some things overlapping when it comes to their activation
and deactivation cortically, but they have a lot that's not
in common. Right, So just because you're sad doesn't mean
(08:52):
you can't always can't be happy. And that's what we
call bittersweet moments. You can be both happy and sad
and they can coexist. And Susan Kin just wrote a
book about bittersweet, right, I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
I wrote her a bittersweet scale, actually the scale that
the she esses. I wrote that scientifically with David Aiden.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Oh you did yes, it's amazing. And then and then
to finish up this topic that you raised, it's even
at the genetic level, at the dual continuum exists, and
I've done studies there, and let me step back because
it the first thing we found was that flourishing was
(09:37):
just as haritable as things like depression and anxiety. Literally
sixty to seventy two percent. You know, those numbers kind
of hold them loosely, but it suggests that there's a
high genetic component and that the three kinds of well
being that I used to measure flourishing, the emotional, psychological, social,
(09:58):
all come from a common s source of genetics. They
don't come from a different gene so to speak, which
is validation that they sort of represent an overall construct
called mental health. But here's the kicker. The genetic variance
overlapped less than fifty percent. And what that means is
(10:18):
you can inherit a hygienetic you can inherit a high
genetic risk for depression, but it doesn't mean you didn't
also inherited a high genetic potential to flourish. And by
the same token, you can and you may not have
inherited any genetic risk for depression, but the absence of
(10:39):
genetic risk doesn't mean you inherited high genetic potential to flourish.
So there, it's just remarkable to me that this too
continue model then has huge implications because it suggests even
if we're to cure mental illness tomorrow, it doesn't mean
we have all the problems, because if you just leave
(11:03):
people languishing, you've just pushed them into a different category
of suffering. It's nearly as bad and sometimes just as
bad as things like depression.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, it is profound. I think that it's good to
talk about the different points on the continuum. Languishing is
just one point. It's also possible flourish, right.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yes, yes, And is.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
It possible have you met anyone?
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yes? And it's remarkable that there's the variation in the
Healthy Mind Study, which was a ongoing study, again cross
sectional every year of an array of college campuses. Early
on it used my measure, and it was remarkable. There
was a huge sweet variation from forty up to sixty
(11:55):
percent of students flourishing. But again even in the best
scenario at the highest levels we could find on college
campuses was sixty percent. But it also got quite low,
and we see this also by country. Canada has been
using my measure in the Public Health Assessment or of surveillance,
(12:16):
and over seventy percent of Canadians met the criteria for flourishing,
which is the highest I've seen internationally, because some estimates
suggest other countries have no more than thirty to forty
percent flourishing. So they're out there, Scott, there are mentally
(12:39):
healthy people out there. But what's remarkable to me is
that we've been assuming that if you're free of mental illness,
everyone's mentally healthy, and that's simply not true.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I think it'd be good
to define what these different points than continuum mean though, So, okay,
what is languishing? You know? That could have been my
first question. I asked you, let's just get let's not
bury the lead to into this episode.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Well, everyone's been describing it. They were trying to find
a word that just captures it. And some people want
to use the word blah. And that may be true.
And Adam Grant, I know Adam and Adam used the
word math, and both of those I don't think do
it justice because right because I think some people might
(13:31):
come away from that thinking, well, that's you're languishing because
you're boreder, you're languishing because it's rained three days in
a row and it's been cloudy. No, so let's put
some meat on this. To languish, you have to have
at least seven out of the fourteen signs of flourishing absent. Right,
(13:53):
So there are seven out of the fourteen questions you
have to say that you're not experiencing them. These things
very much, things like purpose, things like belonging. You don't
have a sense that you're contributing anything of worth and
value to the world. You don't like most parts of
your personality, you don't have warm, trusting relationships, you're not
(14:16):
confident to think and express your ideas and opinions, and
on top of that, you might not feel very happy
or satisfied or interested in life. So it's a constellation
of it, at least seven or more things where you're
deficient in what makes life really quite meaningful. So the
(14:37):
languish is not just to be blah. No, you're you
are you do, You're not functioning well and you're not
feeling good at all about your life. You're essentially running
on empty.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Is this kind of like a scale of aliveness, like
feelings of aliveness? I mean will.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yes, Well it's remarkable. Yes. My subtitle is how to
Feel Alive Again? And you know how to feel alive
again in a world that wears us down. I think
it's yes, I think to answer your question, yes, you
(15:27):
could think of it flourishing as coming to life. And
in a draft of the book, and I don't think
this survived, but I was using the analogy the humans
are just like everything else that's put on this earth.
We were planted here to grow, right, to grow and
to explore. And when we're not growing and exploring, we
(15:54):
feel like we are starting to die. And people talk
about languishing as if they feel like they're dying in side.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, that feels that feel that tracks.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, And when you're flourishing, you do feel alive and
you can see it. You can see it because there's
a story of Scott in my book, and he is
a prison guard in Australia and he went from feeling
very dead inside to feeling very alive and it was
(16:25):
very contagious. He became a new form of a positive
virus that infected everyone else around him. It's like, when
you're flourishing, you can't keep it to yourself. You want
to share it, and without even trying, you share this
kind of zest and aliveness with the rest of the
(16:46):
people around you.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
It makes complete sense, And well, I guess what I
really want to do the rest of this episode now
that we've laid that out there, is you know what
the heck to do do about it? I have one criticism.
I'm not one couple criticisms of positive psychology, but but
one criticism I have of it is that a lot
of it's very circular. And what I mean about that
(17:09):
is that you'll see people say things like to flourish,
you need to find perma, you need to these you
need these five things positive emotions, purpose, relationships, and if
you don't have them, you're not flourishing. Now, how does
that help someone who doesn't have them? How does it
help someone to just go to the person and say, well,
(17:29):
the reason why you're not flourishing is because you don't
have these things. Yeah, the person knows they don't have
those things. Okay, they have told you they don't have
those things. So that's what I mean by a lot
of it is very circular. It's saying, well, in order
to do it, you need to have it, but it's
you know, it's so I really love to really discuss practical,
(17:51):
tangible things and go beyond just saying you know, you're
you're you're languishing because you're not flourishing. It's like, okay, yeah,
we just keep it real for a second.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Right, Well, I well, one, I agree with you, and
I have. I have spent a lot of time out
of the limelight, so to speak, because I did not
want to publish anything unless I had a very good
body of scientific evidence. And I came across some research
(18:29):
and it's called the Tuesday in the Life of Flourisher's
study by Lana Cadlino. Yeah, and every Tuesday she called
up these adults and asked them what what activities they
engaged in the prior day, So if this was about
your Monday, and she has asked them also a variety
(18:54):
of adjectives to describe having a good day. Did she
feel proud of, serene, content, joy, grateful, and so forth.
And what she found was there five activities that flourishers
did more of than those who were languishing or depressed
(19:15):
in her study. But hold on, I'm going to get
to the languishing and depressed. So that's what I call
the five vitamins, if right. So, flourishing people engaged in
more helping behaviors. So if they were going to go
do something about helping someone, they did more of it
(19:35):
that day. You don't have to do all five of
these every day, but if you do one of them,
do enough of it, right, It's not like a ten
minute exercise. So they helped others. They learned, and they
learned something new and focused on personal growth. Third, they
(19:57):
engaged in some form of what I'm calling trans some
spiritual or religious activity. Fourth, they played, And fifth they socialized,
but they socialized and prioritized the kind quality relationships where
there's warmth and trust, where there's belonging, and where there
(20:19):
is giving and getting. And so those five activities. Remarkably,
if you were languishing or depressed and did more of
one of those five activities that Monday, you had a
way better day than anybody else who did nothing. That
includes flourishers, because some days people were flourishing did none
(20:42):
of those five things, and they had as bad a
day as those who were depressed. Or languishing who did nothing.
But if you were depressed and languishing and did more
of those activities, you had a better day. And over time,
longitudinally they began to move. Now slowly, they didn't jump
(21:03):
from severe languishing all the way up to flourishing in
a month, but every week she would find them having
better days. And as they had better days, they were
more motivated to do more of those five things. It
was kind of like a virtuous cycle. So those five vitamins.
(21:26):
And then I talk about a few other studies that
show the benefits of moving in the direction of flourishing.
But I'm trying to meet people where they're at. And
I loved that study because it showed that small steps.
(21:48):
And I talk about my own experiences in therapy being
told to start small, Corey. I don't know if you
remember that section, but they told me meditate one minute,
and I laughed. My ego was like, oh my god, no,
and no, I had to start with one minute, small, small, small.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
And so yeah, it is amazing how much big changes
can happen just by like we think we're like depressed,
but maybe some days like we just haven't eaten yet.
And then we eat and and so we feel better
and we're like, oh, that's all I needed to do.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
I know. And so I'm not trying to be Pollyannish
in this book, and I'm not trying to be raw raw,
and I'm not also not recommending that you can sit
on your couch and meditate or practice gratitude and you
will function better in the world, because here's the thing
that people are missing. It's not languishing. Isn't happening because
(22:50):
people aren't feeling good. There are a lot of people
who would meet the criteria for flourishing if it only
was about emotional wellbeing, but they're not functioning well. Their
lives don't have enough purpose, belonging, contribution, autonomy, growth and
acceptance and all those other good things. And you're not
going to get those functioning well qualities without going out
(23:14):
and doing something engaging, because those vitamins about about doing
something good for yourself. But when you're doing those things,
you're also often doing good things for other people and
with people.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Absolutely, how would you describe the relationship between the five
vitamins of flourishing and the six domains of human excellence?
Do you map them onto each other? Like, what's the
relationship between them. Let's talk about what the six domeans
of human excellence are as well.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Well, yeah, I didn't. I was trying to boil down
the qualities of flourishing into six domains of excellence and
to tell you the truth that may not be as
helpful to people as if right, I tried to steer
(24:07):
away from thinking I had the answer to the ultimate
qualities of life. I don't. I humbly submit to you
a concept called flourishing and languishing and the questions that
go into it come from a deeply rooted theoretical notion
(24:30):
in psychology and sociology of what would it look like
if human beings we're doing well in life beyond just
feeling good. So, whether it's the six domains of excellence,
I really really those questions are. There's something about those
(24:52):
questions that get at something that is deeply important, because
I can't tell you a study, Scott word I've found
that flourishers are are aren't doing better than everyone else?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's tough because, as you describe, it's
possible to.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Be flourishing and also to suffer with a mental illness,
you know, and so it's that concept can be hard
for people to to recognize, you know, and to understand.
And I think that's a big theme of today's episode
is kind of the complexity of being human.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
You know.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Yeah, yeah, that's why the book in my work comes
from a deep lived experience with.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
A lot of adversity and suffering.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
You tak me a little bit more about that with.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Me, sure, because yeah, I for the first eleven years
in my childhood and there was just I never felt
safe in my home, and for good reason, and I
never talked when I was in my home, never talked.
(26:15):
I learned to dissociate and disappear. That was all I
had because nobody was there to protect me. But when
they realized, when someone realized that, and that's a historian
to itself, but my grandparents pulled me and my sister
(26:38):
out of there, and at the age of twelve, I
was suddenly in a very different environment with love, warmth, safety, nurturing.
And suddenly I went from being in detention literally every
day and d grades to honor roll every semester, participating
(27:04):
in choir, in sports, the school quarterback. I was doing
just really well, and suddenly all that bad stuff was gone,
so bad stuff was absent. But when I sort of
let my guard down and I was done with the day,
I write about this at the very beginning of the book,
how it started for me, Suddenly this emptiness would creep in.
(27:29):
So I was free of all the negative and I
was experiencing what I would later describe as a flourishing life.
But I was experiencing languishing a lot as well. Right
as a young person. Yeah, I was experiencing it. I
didn't have that word. But when I heard Jackson Brown's
(27:52):
album and song called The Pretender and Running on Empty,
I heard somebody who understood what I was experiencing, that emptiness,
that sense that you were invisible and you were disappearing,
and no matter how things got, how much goodness was
(28:13):
in your life, there was something missing. And so I
tasted flourishing and I tasted languishing. And my grandparents, of course,
when they adopted us, they were in retirement, and they
(28:34):
died shortly after I was married. My grandmother died, My
grandfather died shortly after I was adopted, about a second
year we were there. Then my grandmother died within three
months after I was married in nineteen eighty six and
(28:56):
I was just finishing college. Flourishing came from this notion
of trying to figure out what I had experienced in
that household with my grandparents, which was something very good.
I had tasted something I would later call flourishing, and
(29:18):
it was helping address It was really helping me move
away from that emptiness. But I had a long journey
ahead of me. And suffice it to say to end
this story is it's been a lifelong journey working through
the trauma and the mental illness. But I had to
face those things. I couldn't run from them. I thought
I could create distance, and every time I looked in
(29:40):
my rear view mirror, they were right behind me. And
so flourishing is what I created to feel at home
in this world. When I'm flourishing, I feel at home.
We earlier described it as feeling alive, but I think
also for me, it always reminds me that I belong.
(30:03):
I belong here, and it's I feel at home. And
that's why I also call it my north star. And
I hope other people use that imagery that it's the
it's the image of what's going to guide you to
a place where you two can feel at home.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Absolutely. I really love this notion of just feeling like
you belong to yourself, you know, because there's so much
a discussion about this kind of Oh, I really need
to belong to a group, you know, in order to
have in order to matter. But you know it, I
think that if you matter yourself, it doesn't almost doesn't
(30:45):
matter what other people, what validation you get from others.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
No, and it is Yeah, you're talking what belonging And
to me, the combination of purpose right where there is something.
I just felt alive and at home when I realized
that I had something to give to the world. Yeah,
(31:12):
and I think we all have something to give and
I and I want people to realize when when they're flourishing,
that they regardless of whatever stories that they don't want
to talk about, they don't, right, but if they're able
to work through those stories that they usually want to hide.
(31:36):
I truly believe we're all gifts. I just believe that's
that we have the gift to give of ourselves and
that that is the most precious thing I've experienced in
this life, where others have given me the gift of
themselves because I after my grandparents passed, I had nobody,
(32:02):
and so I had to create and find people who
were like my synthetic family. I call it in the
book the Wall of Love, and that email to my
professor for my undergraduate years. We're still in contact and
those people gave me the gift of themselves and it
(32:23):
made a huge difference.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
It's beautiful, Yeah, it's beautiful. I'm not sure we actually
listed the six do means of human excellence though. We
can't just assume that our audience knows everything. So let
me read the list. Acceptance, autonomy, connection, Let's teach some
things here, professor. The sixth of means of human excellence
(32:49):
are acceptance, autonomy, connection, competence, mastery, and mattering. Now my question,
this is my question. I'm trying to wrap my head around.
Would you say that if you are cooking on all cylinders,
on all these six demeans, that you're flourishing, how does
it map onto the five vitamins of flourishing? Learning, connection, transcendence, help,
(33:14):
helping others in play because play is not in one
of the domeans of human excellence.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
No, but autonomy, the ability to determine your own what
what what you want? To do what brings you joy
right and what you consider useful, and rather than somebody
else telling you from the workaday world telling you how
you're useful. Autonomy is a spark that's represented in almost
(33:45):
every vitamin. The ability to decide to become a better
person for other people. That's to me, that's autonomy is
sort of the foundation. But I mean, I could say
that of every don't because I talk a lot about
how acceptance, especially in the spiritual slash religious vitamin, how
(34:08):
that's one of the many ways that spirituality and religion,
when they're doing the job of helping us become better people.
They don't always do that, but when they're doing their job,
they're helping us to understand that acceptance is at the
(34:29):
heart of dealing with things we want to push away, right,
the pain and the suffering, the loss and death and
all those things, and even our own imperfections and the
others imperfections. And I've found in my own journey, I've
(34:53):
found acceptance to be a hard one because oh boy,
and I'm still working on that. So when I understand
that I'm only in charge of my own thoughts, feelings,
and behavior and not anyone else's The world generally works
(35:17):
far better even when things aren't going well for me,
because then I understand that I have to take responsibility
and change something about me if I want something else
to change in the world. But that's the direction you
have to go, rather than the other way, demanding that
the world change before I start acting. Right. So those
(35:40):
are hard lessons, Scott, Those are really hard things. So
all of them like mattering. Oh boy, is that a
sense that you have something to give to the world. Oh,
I've been on the opposite an end of that, where,
(36:03):
oh where I felt like there was no use for me.
Oh goodness, yes, I write about that and about it.
It's happened when other people started writing books about flourishing.
(36:26):
I was about to sit down and write my own book,
and then when it came out ahead, I thought, well,
I'm not needed here anymore. And I write about the
fact that that sense that I didn't belong and I
had nothing to give anymore. Was I almost let that
(36:48):
convince me that suicide was the answer. Oh my gosh, yes.
If my wife and I write about this in the book,
hadn't come home early I had. I drank myself into
oblivion to hang myself. And she got there and I
(37:08):
was sitting in the dark, and she was like, what's
going on, Corey, and we and to jump to the
bottom line. She said four words that I will never forget,
and these are the most powerful words anyone can hear.
But I need you, But I need you. And I
(37:31):
was like, Okay, well, I'm going to have to work
on some things and I'm going to have to take
a semester off at least, and it's not going to
be once a week for an hour therapy. This is good.
I had to go into intensive impatient and learn about
(37:54):
myself and that's when I experienced cognitive behoral therapy very
intimately and had to deal with all these distortions that
were in my mind for my trauma. And now I
have a user's manual and I'm prepared for when they
come along and I can talk back to them and
(38:16):
not let them trigger me. But that was a moment
where I came very close. That's how powerful that idea
of mattering and belonging is. Because I I write about
this in the section where a purpose. When you have
(38:36):
a purpose, and it can also be lost, right, So
finding your purpose it doesn't mean it's guaranteed it's going
to stay there because I experienced firsthand that I thought
somebody had taken my purpose from me and not what
came from a cognitive distortion. And so those journeys of
(39:01):
dealing with these six domains of excellence are deeply personal,
and I think of them as ways of The first
thing you have to deal with is how those things,
the absence of those domains are really holding you back,
how they're triggering and making you vulnerable first, and then
(39:25):
you can get to the part where you start to
bring them into your life, because doing it the other way,
trying to bring them into your life without dealing with
the triggers and the vulnerability, will continue to derail you.
So I had to stop and deal with the triggers
and the vulnerability where I was missing and where the
(39:50):
absence of those domains of excellence where they came from,
and to understand that.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Thanks for being so vulnerable and sharing your own personal
struggles with us. I'm sure it will inspire a lot
of people listening to this episode. I'd like to really
uh zoom in on the definition of these five vitamins
of flurishing real quick. I wouldn't want to go through
this so we don't get some of the most essential
information lost at all. So the learn one is about
(40:22):
creating stories of self growth following your curiosity to learn
something new. Connection is building warm and trusting relationships. Transcendence
you call transcend which is the title of my book,
Transcend The New Science of Self Actionals well.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Did you know that?
Speaker 1 (40:40):
I do not know that, Scott, thank you.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
But I love I loved I love that. That was
probably my favorite, my favorite part of your book, help
finding your purpose even in the mundane. And I want
to circle back to that in a second. Uh. And
then play, which is the fifth vitamin of forcing, which
is I'm conflicted whether or not my favorite is transcend
or play, but it's probably play. I love playing, stepping
(41:07):
out of a time, stepping out of time, making time
for activities where you enjoy the process, not the outcome.
I want to circle back to the help one. I
think that a lot of times when we talk about purpose,
we can kind of feel like it's this, you know,
like we're a loser if we don't have this big, humongous,
(41:31):
you know, calling in life. And I would like to
you know, a lot of my students right, like they're
like nineteen years old, and they're like, I'm a loser
because I don't have a big calling yet. It's like,
calm down. Isn't it possible to satisfy this need for
help just through small actions? You know, for instance, I
(41:51):
feel better. I'll tell you a little bit of myself. Well,
if I'm feeling down, I'd like to just go to
a coffee shop and I like to just be nice
to people, and I feel better. I just smile. Let's
say I smile. You know it's alle in a warm,
caring way, and they smile back, and you're like, you
know that that was put in a positive vibration in
(42:13):
the universe, that you know that that you know I
matter for even those small vibrations. Do you agree?
Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yes? And I think we overcomplicate purpose and we give
people if they're not solving some world problem, that can't
be a purpose. And I think it stops us before
we've even started. So I've always recommended keep it small,
keep it local, so that can you can keep it focal. Right,
(42:43):
Start small, keep it local so you can stay focused,
because do what's really within your reach literally and figuratively,
And that's right around you, in your small little community
or in your neighborhood or your school. You are doing
something amazing by simply helping people who you may see
(43:07):
quite regularly in town, rather than trying to solve, say,
the crisis in Syria and the people who have been displaced.
I saw that on the news this week, and I'm like,
my heart went out and I was like, God, I
wish I could solve that problem. And then I was like,
I can't. That's not something for me. I know it
(43:31):
requires a big system. So I agree with you wholeheartedly.
But the other thing about purpose is I don't think
we should be pushing people to move in that direction
unless their heart is ready to say yes to that
first question that I ask in that chapter, which is
(43:55):
do you want to help somebody or something else? You
don't always want to. So if that's the case and
you've got other things you need to be doing, well,
don't be sitting there trying to say You're want your purpose,
but you're not going to go find it, because if you,
(44:16):
Michael Steeger and others have shown that the process of
searching can be pretty detrimental to your well being. So
if you're going to keep that open, go do something
about it, rather than right just say I'll get to
it and keep it in my mind, but I'm not
going to do anything about it right away. So I
talk about making a plan. For young people, it's enough
(44:38):
to have a plan for your purpose and that can
come later.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah. Yeah, sometimes, well the play which brings us to play,
the play is planless. Yes, Well that's a prinsically enjoyable yes.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
And the point is we have gotten so immersed in
the world where we think of our time in terms
of an economic commodity. Time is money to most people,
and there's been research on this. When you get people
to think of their time as money, they're less likely
(45:21):
to go help others, and they're less likely to think
play is useful. The worst mindset for play is to
think it's a waste of time, of course, and yet
you know we need studies on that. Of course, it's
a horrible mindset to say I'm wasting my time when
even if you're having fun, What a worst of time?
(45:42):
What a way to dampen the benefits? And yet the
point here is simply do things because they bring you joy.
And more often than not, we play not alone but
we do these things often with others. And so what's
amazing about the VITAMINSCOD is when you start to really
(46:03):
think about practical examples, they start to bleed into each other.
You start playing and engaging and lead. For some forms
of leisure, you're often affirming warm, trusting relationships and building
community and belongingness. Yeah, it's like, it's amazing to me
(46:27):
that happens in spirituality too. My own example is I
practiced yoga for twenty five years in my yoga community.
You don't do yoga alone, or some people might, but
I love the fact that you go to the studio
and you do an hour and a half work with
these people that you talk with before and you talk
(46:48):
with after, and it's often the same people, and you
create this wonderful community and sense of belonging. And yet
you're also practicing, practicing and working on that spiritual muscle.
Because all of these things are skills. All of life
is a skill, and if you don't practice it, you're
(47:10):
you won't be ready. And I talk about how religion
is just a rehearsal. Prayer and spirituality are all rehearsals
to get you ready when when you when the game
is on. When something comes into your life that says
you can be a better angel or you can be
a darker version of yourself.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
You have a choice here right, Wow, Wow, that hit,
that hit, Corey. Wow.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
So I these vitamins are are I mean I balked
using that word, but I know it made sense to us. Yes, well, yes,
And here's the thing. Languishing feels sometimes a lot like anemia. Yeah,
(47:59):
and I that it makes sense after my talking some songs,
some of my my agent and others saying I think
the vitamins is a great way to think about this
because you're nourishing. You're putting into your body something that
nourishes your your mind, and your soul.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
You're You're deep human, Corey, You're You're deep you. I
want to read a quote. I actually want to read
a few quotes, but one quote you said. Good mental
health is not an old category. It is filled with
ingredients of flourishing, purpose in life, belonging, contribution to society,
acceptance of others, acceptance, whatte acceptance of others twice, acceptance
(48:43):
of others, warm and trusting relationships, autonomy, personal growth, and more.
Flourishing is filled with the things that make life worth living,
that bring quality to whatever quantity of life we are granted.
And it's pretty deep, and so the couple. There are
a couple of points there. One is that we're talking
more than just feeling of happiness. Good mental health is
more than just momentary feelings of just feeling happy. And
(49:06):
then another point is not so much a point, but
can you leave our audience with another tangible thing to
improve that? Again, I don't want to. I don't want
people to just be left with like, Okay, I'm lacking it.
So what I need to do is have it, you know, no,
tell people how to have it, tell people how to
(49:27):
have it.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Well it is. It is a journey I and I
write about my mind has been a very long and
difficult one, and that doesn't mean that yours has to be.
But I bet some of my readers will be able
to resonate with that. And I still taste the noonday
(49:48):
demon of languishing some days, in many days, but I know,
I know, I know when it's coming. I can feel it.
I used to not. It's kind of like a fog
you don't know it's coming, engulfing you. But now I'm
aware of it. But it took a long time and
(50:08):
a lot of work to get there. And I hope
I made that clear in the book that this is
not a simple one and done thing. This is a
life long process and commitment. But it is. You're a
north star and if the ingredients of flourishing aren't a
(50:31):
sufficient to motivate you, then there's nothing I can say
or do. Because don't tell me that I should want
it more than you want it, because I can't do
that for you. You're going to have to do it
for you. But trust me, I have to trust in
yourself as well that moving in that direction, doing a
(50:52):
little of each of those five vitamins is about bringing
life back where you fell dead and not alive, and
it's not about taking ten minutes out of a schedule
and a life that you're not willing to change. I
don't even go there. I don't say you can do
(51:12):
this in ten minutes and not change anything about your life.
You're going to probably have to add and subtract a
few things like you can't just help. I mean, your
example is great, it Scott about going to the coffee
shop when you need a jolt, But I mean the
studies showed.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
That a social Yeah, you're going to need to do
a little more on many of those days to help others,
and that requires either engaging in a commitment to be
a volunteer at least once a week or doing right.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
But you will experience better days, and those better days
are what's going to reenforce. Yeah, you won't get to
flourishing overnight. You won't, and I didn't either.
Speaker 2 (52:08):
But I think there's a deeper point. There's even a
deeper point there that you just made. Then fishing is
not a state, a final state. You can't you have
a day where you feel dead inside and then can't
you fourish the next day?
Speaker 1 (52:23):
Oh my god, yes, yes, the.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Next day after that, can you feel dead inside again?
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (52:29):
So that's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm wondering. It's
not like it's not like I don't know these people
who are like I'm flourishing, like as though, I mean,
they're annoying those people because it's not, am I right,
it's not. It's not a final state of destination. It's
a direction out of destination.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
It is I'm constantly going home, I'm coming home, I'm
always coming home, And you do that. Literally, figured you
have to leave home sometimes to do come home. It's
a normal reaction. Languishing is a normal reaction to a
lot of life's adversity. Now, the only problem is if
(53:12):
you stay there too long, Just like if you stay
in sadness or fear too long, they become mental illnesses.
If you languish too long, you get stuck there, it
becomes and I show you there's evidence, it becomes a
let's just say, as an agerious thing. Some people start
thinking about ending their life like I did. Right, But
(53:36):
it's a normal reaction. So don't be overwhelmed or think
that you've lost everything, because the next day you have
an opportunity to say, this is my life, and this
is what I'm going to believe in, this is my purpose,
this is how I belong, This is where how I
accept myself, this is how I accept others, and that's
(53:58):
what I'm going to live for.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
I love it. I yes, this is wonderful. I just
want to give people hope who were the flourishing person
models just feel so out of reach for some of
these for some people, and That's what I'm trying to
do here. Yeah, and I and so thanks to this dialogue.
(54:22):
You know you get it, you get it?
Speaker 1 (54:25):
Yes. And the other thing to remind people because I
think when people hear the word, they think flourishing is
like another form of enticing people into perfection and success.
You do not need to have all fourteen signs. You
only have to have seven out of the fourteen half.
(54:45):
And there's think of all the permutations, because there's eleven
signs of functioning well. You only need six out of
the eleven combined with one of the three feeling good.
It's not superman or superwoman word you need to accomplish.
It's not that at all. It's well within all of
our reach. And you get to choose what are the
(55:07):
domain the dimensions of functioning well that you want a
privilege and work on. Is it a sense of belonging?
Is that absent? Well, go for it. But flourishing isn't perfection.
It's it's not all fourteen signs, it's seven out of
the fourteen.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Lot love it. Let me end here with the notion
of building a community of flourishers. Yeah, how can we
contribute to building such a world.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Well by admitting that very little of anything any of
us have accomplished was done alone. We academics have a
bad habit of portraying to the world that somehow everything
we've done is done with it just came fia out
(56:04):
of me. No. I relied and studied and benefited from
other people in multiple ways, and the spiritual path reminded
me all nobody does it without a community that's invested
in the same things. So as I could imagine a
(56:27):
family saying I want to bring more of those five
vitamins into all of our lives, and we're going to
do this as a family, can you imagine as a
work team. I could imagine people saying I want to
do more of these five vitamins and find ways to
bring them into our daily, our weekly life. In a
(56:49):
religious community, I could see people getting together to practice
these in their spirituality and their religious traditions. But here's
the thing. I know for a fact, I couldn't have
done this alone. I needed a community and people who
gave me the gift of themselves and caring about the things,
(57:12):
not just that I cared about, but caring about me
and my well being. And in turn, my research has
been all about caring about your well being and giving
whatever gift I have to give, and this is it.
This is my life's work. I hate and it's not hyperbole.
I waited twenty five years to do the science to
(57:34):
write this book. I was not going to write it
until I felt like there was something there that was
more than just talk. There was a body of scientific evidence,
and that is the greatest gift any scholar can give.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
You know, this book is very, very important, and I'm
really really glad you wrote it, But I want you
also to know something. You know, you you don't know
the extent to which your work has ripple effects. You're
not aware of it. You think that you need to
write this big book to matter. As I said in
the beginning of this interview, you know, like when I
(58:11):
teach my course, and I've been teaching for years, you know,
I start off my and frame the whole, you know
course through your mental health continuum model. Your work has
profoundly impacted me and the work I do and the
way that I inspire students, and I and you know,
every cohort of students I inspire through your work. So
(58:32):
the book is kind of gravy really when you think
it's the thing you waited twenty five years for. You're
probably not fully aware of how much you've influenced people
in the field.
Speaker 1 (58:43):
So no, I'm not that's I've kept a low profile
because I'm I'm a worker at heart, and I I
love what I get to do, and I think it's
a privilege to be able to teach and be a scholar.
(59:06):
I did retire right, I did retire early because I
think my next step in life is to try to
become a more active advocate for mental illness and languishing
and try to get healthcare systems change in this direction,
because I don't think we're going to deal with the
crisis of mental illness with the way we when trying
to deal with it, which is treatment alone. So I
(59:29):
appreciate that what you just said, Scott, and it does
warm my heart. I haven't paid attention to that stuff
because I've always been said, I've always been looking. There's
more work to.
Speaker 2 (59:42):
Be done, always yeah, and there always will be. But
that also doesn't mean the work that hasn't been done,
you know, like you're allowed to savor it sometimes.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
Yes, something exactly. No, it's it's a good point because
it's something I'm working on. To take it in and
savor sometimes I don't do that, And there you go.
I'm all human. I'm human, hardly, hardly perfect, nowhere close
(01:00:17):
to it. And that's the point. I love the way
Rene Brown talks about that we're all imperfect, but we're
wired to struggle, and because we're imperfect and we struggle,
we're worthy of love and belonging. I will never forget
the first time I heard it because that made me cry.
Absolutely yeah, and that's the point. And I'm still working
(01:00:39):
on those imperfections.
Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Well, thank you Corey so much for bringing your full
humanity to the podcast and for your work and all
the best of the book.
Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Thank you, thank you very much, Scott, and thanks for
having me