April 25, 2024 • 60 mins
This week Scott is joined by sociologist and psychologist, Corey Keyes. Scott and Corey discuss the pervasiveness of languishing in our society today and how to feel alive again. Dr. Keyes explains the 5 psychological vitamins we should all be taking to live life to avoid depression and live life to the fullest.
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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.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
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,
Colombe 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 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 it around flourishing. But it's a good lesson.
We have to meet people where they're at, and my
(02:43):
research 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. There is quite a body of evidence now
that supports what I'm calling the to 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,
(03:52):
as I read a button 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 rowing
a miles to court. You know, you can 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 receide 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 frattornity 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 seene 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 that they could throw out them.
And they also scored sky high on almost every measure
of mental health and 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
(08:00):
so 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 we are,
(08:28):
That's how we are composed. And this too, 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
(08:52):
mean 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 and right, I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
It's I wrote her a bittersweet scale, actually the scale
that the 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
the first thing we found was that flourishing was just
(09:37):
as heritable 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 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 you
(10:18):
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 genetic
(10:39):
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 lead
(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. 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 percent
(11:56):
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 at 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 your 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're 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
(13:27):
because right because I think some people might 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 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
(14:16):
not 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
(14:37):
the languish is not just to be blah, No, 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?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I mean will 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,
(15:27):
you 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 that
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 sight.
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 in 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,
can 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 this was about your
Monday and she has asked them also a variety of
(18:55):
adjectives that 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. In
(19:15):
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 that day.
(19:37):
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 engaged in some form of what
(19:59):
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 is giving and getting. And so those
(20:22):
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 of those five things, and they had
(20:44):
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 from severe languishing all the
(21:05):
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. And then I talk
(21:27):
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. And I talk about
(21:49):
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 we 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 equipped qualities without going
(23:14):
out 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 aren't doing better than everyone else.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's tough because, as you describe, it's
possible to be flourishing and also to suffer with the
mental illness, you know, and so it's that concept can
be hard for people to to recognize, you know, and
(25:27):
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):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why in the book, in my
work comes from a deep lived experience with a lot
of adversity and suffering.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Can you talk me a little bit more about that
with me?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
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. I
(26:16):
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 out of there,
(26:39):
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 in choir,
(27:05):
in sports, the school quarterback. I was doing just really well,
and suddenly all that bad stuff was gone. 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 that 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 ourselfs 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 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.
(32:47):
The sixth to means of human excellence 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 domeans, that you're flourishing, how does it map on
(33:08):
to the five vitamins of flourishing? Learning, connection, transcendence, help,
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 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 every vitamin.
(33:46):
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 that's one
(34:11):
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
heart of dealing with things we want to push away, right,
(34:38):
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
found acceptance to be a hard one because, oh boy,
(35:00):
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 far
better even when things aren't going well for me, because
(35:21):
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 are
hard lessons, Scott, Those are really hard things. So all
(35:44):
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,
oh where I felt like there was no use for me.
(36:14):
Oh goodness, yes, I write about that and about it.
It's happened when other people started writing books about flourishing.
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
(36:38):
fact that that sense that I didn't belong and I
had nothing to give anymore. Was I almost let that
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
(37:04):
oblivion to hang myself and she got there and I
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 behavioral 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 first hand that I
thought somebody had taken my purpose from me and not
what came from a cognitive distortion. And so those journeys
(39:01):
of 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 forishing 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 creating
(40:22):
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 Actualcation. I did 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 probably it's probably play. I love playing,
(41:07):
stepping 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 myself. Well,
if I'm feeling down, I'd like to just go to
a coffee shop and I'd like to just be nice
to people, and I feel better. I just smile. Let's
say I smile. You know it's someone in a warm,
caring way, and they smile back, and you're like, you
know that was put in a positive vibration in the universe,
(42:14):
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
(42:41):
focal right, 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
(43:01):
are doing something amazing by simply helping people who you
may see 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
(43:22):
wish I could solve that problem. And then I was like,
I can't. That's not something for me. I know it
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
(43:44):
unless their heart is ready to say yes to that
first question that I ask in that chapter, which is
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,
(44:06):
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,
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
(44:29):
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
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
a 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 vitamins God is when you start to
(46:03):
really 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
(46:25):
to me that happens in spirituality too. My own example
is I've 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
(46:45):
with these people that you talk with before and you
talk 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
(47:07):
is a skill, and if you don't practice it, you're
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
(47:28):
a darker version of yourself. You have a choice.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Here, right, Wow, Wow, that hit, that hit, Corey.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Wow. So I these vitamins are are I mean I
balked using that word, but I know it made sense
to eat. Yes, well, yes, And here's the thing. Languishing
feels sometimes a lot like anemia.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
It makes sense after my talking some song, 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 what 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
(49:27):
to 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 little of
(50:52):
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 this in
(51:12):
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, Scott about going to the coffee shop when
you need a jolt, But I mean the studies showed
that a social yeah, you're going to need to do
(51:36):
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.
But you will experience better days, and those better days
(51:57):
are what's going to reenforce. Yeah, you won't get to
flourishing overnight. You won't, and I didn't.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Either, But I think there's a deeper point. There's even
a deeper point there that you just made. Then forshing
is not a state, a final state. You can't you
have a day where you feel dead inside and then
can't you furish the next day?
Speaker 1 (52:23):
Oh my god, yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
The 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 (52:51):
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, it's an agerous 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 for 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 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. 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 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 of So.
Speaker 1 (58:43):
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 to 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, yes.
Speaker 1 (59:57):
Something exactly. It's it's a good point because it's something
I'm working on to take it and and savor. Sometimes
I don't do that, and there you go. I'm all human.
I'm human, hardly, hardly perfect, nowhere close to it. And
(01:00:18):
that's the point. I love the way Brene 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 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
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.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
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,
Colombe 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 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 it around flourishing. But it's a good lesson.
We have to meet people where they're at, and my
(02:43):
research 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. There is quite a body of evidence now
that supports what I'm calling the to 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,
(03:52):
as I read a button 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 rowing
a miles to court. You know, you can 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 receide 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 frattornity 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 seene 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 that they could throw out them.
And they also scored sky high on almost every measure
of mental health and 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
(08:00):
so 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 we are,
(08:28):
That's how we are composed. And this too, 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
(08:52):
mean 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 and right, I mean it's.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
It's I wrote her a bittersweet scale, actually the scale
that the 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
the first thing we found was that flourishing was just
(09:37):
as heritable 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 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 you
(10:18):
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 genetic
(10:39):
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 lead
(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. 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 percent
(11:56):
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 at 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 your 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're 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
(13:27):
because right because I think some people might 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 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
(14:16):
not 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
(14:37):
the languish is not just to be blah, No, 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?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I mean will 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,
(15:27):
you 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 that
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 sight.
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 in 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,
can 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 this was about your
Monday and she has asked them also a variety of
(18:55):
adjectives that 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. In
(19:15):
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 that day.
(19:37):
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 engaged in some form of what
(19:59):
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 is giving and getting. And so those
(20:22):
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 of those five things, and they had
(20:44):
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 from severe languishing all the
(21:05):
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. And then I talk
(21:27):
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. And I talk about
(21:49):
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 we 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 equipped qualities without going
(23:14):
out 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 aren't doing better than everyone else.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's tough because, as you describe, it's
possible to be flourishing and also to suffer with the
mental illness, you know, and so it's that concept can
be hard for people to to recognize, you know, and
(25:27):
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):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why in the book, in my
work comes from a deep lived experience with a lot
of adversity and suffering.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
Can you talk me a little bit more about that
with me?
Speaker 1 (25:52):
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. I
(26:16):
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 out of there,
(26:39):
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 in choir,
(27:05):
in sports, the school quarterback. I was doing just really well,
and suddenly all that bad stuff was gone. 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 that 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 ourselfs 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 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.
(32:47):
The sixth to means of human excellence 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 domeans, that you're flourishing, how does it map on
(33:08):
to the five vitamins of flourishing? Learning, connection, transcendence, help,
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 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 every vitamin.
(33:46):
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 that's one
(34:11):
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
heart of dealing with things we want to push away, right,
(34:38):
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
found acceptance to be a hard one because, oh boy,
(35:00):
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 far
better even when things aren't going well for me, because
(35:21):
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 are
hard lessons, Scott, Those are really hard things. So all
(35:44):
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,
oh where I felt like there was no use for me.
(36:14):
Oh goodness, yes, I write about that and about it.
It's happened when other people started writing books about flourishing.
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
(36:38):
fact that that sense that I didn't belong and I
had nothing to give anymore. Was I almost let that
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
(37:04):
oblivion to hang myself and she got there and I
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 behavioral 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 first hand that I
thought somebody had taken my purpose from me and not
what came from a cognitive distortion. And so those journeys
(39:01):
of 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 forishing 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 creating
(40:22):
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 Actualcation. I did 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 probably it's probably play. I love playing,
(41:07):
stepping 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 myself. Well,
if I'm feeling down, I'd like to just go to
a coffee shop and I'd like to just be nice
to people, and I feel better. I just smile. Let's
say I smile. You know it's someone in a warm,
caring way, and they smile back, and you're like, you
know that was put in a positive vibration in the universe,
(42:14):
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
(42:41):
focal right, 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
(43:01):
are doing something amazing by simply helping people who you
may see 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
(43:22):
wish I could solve that problem. And then I was like,
I can't. That's not something for me. I know it
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
(43:44):
unless their heart is ready to say yes to that
first question that I ask in that chapter, which is
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,
(44:06):
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,
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
(44:29):
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
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
a 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 vitamins God is when you start to
(46:03):
really 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
(46:25):
to me that happens in spirituality too. My own example
is I've 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
(46:45):
with these people that you talk with before and you
talk 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
(47:07):
is a skill, and if you don't practice it, you're
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
(47:28):
a darker version of yourself. You have a choice.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Here, right, Wow, Wow, that hit, that hit, Corey.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Wow. So I these vitamins are are I mean I
balked using that word, but I know it made sense
to eat. Yes, well, yes, And here's the thing. Languishing
feels sometimes a lot like anemia.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
It makes sense after my talking some song, 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 what 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
(49:27):
to 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 little of
(50:52):
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 this in
(51:12):
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, Scott about going to the coffee shop when
you need a jolt, But I mean the studies showed
that a social yeah, you're going to need to do
(51:36):
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.
But you will experience better days, and those better days
(51:57):
are what's going to reenforce. Yeah, you won't get to
flourishing overnight. You won't, and I didn't.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Either, But I think there's a deeper point. There's even
a deeper point there that you just made. Then forshing
is not a state, a final state. You can't you
have a day where you feel dead inside and then
can't you furish the next day?
Speaker 1 (52:23):
Oh my god, yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
The 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 (52:51):
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, it's an agerous 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 for 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 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. 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 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 of So.
Speaker 1 (58:43):
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 to 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, yes.
Speaker 1 (59:57):
Something exactly. It's it's a good point because it's something
I'm working on to take it and and savor. Sometimes
I don't do that, and there you go. I'm all human.
I'm human, hardly, hardly perfect, nowhere close to it. And
(01:00:18):
that's the point. I love the way Brene 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 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
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