Best of 2024- How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down w/ Corey Keyes

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. 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 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. Linguishing creeps in after a period of extreme stress, grief, isolation, discrimination, trauma, moral injury, or demoralization.

a sense of low-grade mental weariness that 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 for 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 hope it can help you increase your own sense of aliveness.

So without further ado, I bring you Corey Keys. Corey Keys. Wow. So glad to have you on the psychology podcast. It's good to be here, Scott.

I'm a long time admirer of your work. You know, I teach this course, The Science of Living Well at Bernard College Columbia 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 do. Thank you.

Yeah, and congratulations on your new book. I'm glad that you 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. Yes, I never imagined it would take a pandemic to raise the awareness of my work because I 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 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. No, we're not. Well, I was thinking about various inroads into the languishing construct. And I thought we could start off with discussing the 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. Wow.

Oh, 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. Yes, and edits.

there, it would be safe to say there, there is quite a body of evidence now that supports what I'm calling the to continue a model. And before me, people did talk about this to continue a model, but didn't do any of the empirical science. And strangely enough, as I write about in the book, I'm always, I always do a deep dive into history before I move forward to know what's

where philosophers and thinkers have been on this topic, and it turns out the ancient Greeks in the stories, origin story of medicine, proposed to continue a model.

Right, Esclepius, the myth of Esclepius, the father 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 Hijia. And Hijia was about a healthcare approach that dealt with maintaining the presence of good health and 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 stealing was something that has been with humanity for a while.

Yeah, well, that ain't that the truth. But can you explain a little bit to people what that means, that they're only a mouse equivalent? You could have any configuration, right? You can be high mental illness and high mental health at the same time? 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 presence of good mental health and be mentally ill at the same time. And it, it's not surprising to me because I talk about my own, my own mental disorders. And when I'm in recovery, they, 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 us with mental illness aren't symptomatic 24-7. That doesn't mean the mental illness is going away. It's there, it's affecting us, but as it recedes into the background, and I think often it does recede 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 even a study in Hong Kong of schizophrenia, people with schizophrenia. And 28% 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 it's everywhere that people can flourish with a mental illness as long as it's being well managed.

Mm.

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 60s. And I believe he did some work in the 70s as well. They took an old fraternity house, renovated fraternity house and they brought some of the greatest thinkers and creators of the day. I think like Truman Company, they brought in to study and they studied these creative people.

And he has a, Frank Grant has this great quote, which I'm trying to remember the exact words, but something like the creative person is both sane and mad, you know, at the same time. What he found is that, that they scored, these creators scored sky high on

almost all the measures of mental illness that you could throw at them. And they also scored sky high in almost every measure of mental health and in what he called ego strength, ego strength, which is basically resiliency resilience. So that was a major finding from the from the Frank Barron studies on creativity. And so I just wanted to kind of integrate that that literature into what you're talking about.

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 minerals and some symptoms of flourishing.

And I think that's just human nature. That's how we are composed. And this to continue a model, Scott, I review 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 uncommon.

All right, so just because you're sad doesn't 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 Cain just wrote a book about bittersweet.

Yeah, right. I mean, it's, it's, I wrote her a bittersweet scale. Actually the scale that she uses. I wrote that scientifically with David Eden. Oh, you did. Yes. It is. It's amazing. And then, and then to finish up this topic that you raised, it's even at the genetic level and the dual continuum exists and we, I've done studies there. And let me step back because it,

The first thing we found was that flourishing was just as heritable as things like depression and anxiety. Literally 60 to 72 percent, those numbers hold them loosely, but it suggests that there's a high genetic component.

And that the three kinds of well-being that I use to measure, flourishing the emotional, psychological, social, 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 50%.

And what that means is you can inherit a high genetic risk for depression, but it doesn't mean you didn't also inherit a high genetic potential to flourish. And by the same token, you may not have inherited any genetic risk for depression, but the absence of genetic risk doesn't mean you inherited high genetic potential to flourish.

So it's just remarkable to me that this to continue model then has huge implications because it suggests even if we're here to cure mental illness tomorrow, it doesn't mean we have solved all the problems because if you just leave people languishing,

You've just pushed them into a different category of suffering that's nearly as bad and sometimes just as bad as things like depression. 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 for us.

Right? Yes, yes. Is it possible? Have you met anyone? Yes, it's remarkable. There's the variation. In the healthy mind study, which was an ongoing study, and get cross-section every year in a array of college campuses,

Early on, it used my measure. And it was remarkable that there was a huge variation from 40 up to 60% of students flourishing. But again, even in the best scenario, the highest levels we could find on college campuses was 60%. 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 surveillance.

Over 70% of Canadians admit the criteria for flourishing, which is the highest I've seen internationally, because some estimates suggest other countries have no more than 30% to 40%.

flourishing. So they're out there, Scott. There are mentally healthy people out there. But what's remarkable to me is that we've been assuming that if you're free of mental illness, everyone's mentally healthy, and that's simply not true. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I think it'd be good to define what these different points can continue on mean though. So okay, what is languishing?

You know, that could have been my first question. Let's not bury the lead to this episode. Well, everyone's been describing it. We're trying to find a word that just captures it. And some people want to use the word blah.

And that made me true. And Adam Grant, I know Adam, and Adam used the word math. And both of those, I don't think do it justice. Right. Because I think some people might come away from that thinking, well, that's

You're languishing because you're bored or you're languishing because it's rain in 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 14 signs of flourishing absent. So there are seven out of the 14 questions. You have to say that

You're not experiencing these things very much, things like purpose, things like belonging. You don't have a sense that you're contributing anything of worth and value to the world. You don't like most parts of your personality. You don't have warm trusting relationships. You're not 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 at least seven or more things where you're deficient in what makes life really quite meaningful. So the language is not just to be blah. No, you're not functioning well and you're not feeling good at all about your life.

You're essentially running on empty. Is this kind of like a scale of aliveness? Like kind of feelings of aliveness is, I mean. Well, it's remarkable. Yes, my subtitle is how to feel alive again.

in, you know, how to feel alive again in a world that wears us down. I think it's, yes, I think to answer your question, yes, you 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 feel like we are starting to die. And people talk about languishing as if they feel like they're dying inside. Yeah, that feels tough. Feel that tracks.

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 very contagious. He became a new form of a positive virus that infected everyone else around him. It's like when you're flourishing, you can't keep it to yourself.

You want to share it. And without even trying, you share this kind of zest and aliveness with the rest of the people around you. 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 to know what the heck to do do about it. I have one criticism. I have not one. I have a couple criticisms of positive psychology, but one criticism I have of it.

Um, is that a lot of it's very circular. And what I mean about that is that you'll see people say things like to flourish. You need to fight. Perma. Yeah. You need to have 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, 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. They 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. So I would love to really discuss practical, tangible things and go beyond just saying,

You know, you're, you're, you're languishing because you're not flourishing. It's like, okay. Yeah. We just keep it real for a second. Right. Well, I want to, I agree with you. And 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 and it's called the Tuesday in the Life of Flourisher's Study by Lana Catalino. Yeah, and every Tuesday she called up these adults and asked them what activities they engaged in the prior day. So this was about your Monday. And

She asked them also a variety of adjectives that describe having a good day. Did you feel proud of serene, content, joy, grateful, and so forth?

And what she found was there are five activities that Flourishers did more of than those who were languishing or depressed in her study. But hold on, I'm going to get to the languishing and depressed. So that's what I call the five vitamins.

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. 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 10-minute exercise. So they helped others.

They learned something new and focused on personal growth. Third, they engaged in some form of what I'm calling transcendence, some spiritual or religious activity. Fourth, they played

And fifth, they socialized, but they socialized and prioritized the kind of quality relationships where there's warmth and trust, where there's belonging and where there is giving and getting. And so those five activities, remarkably, if you were languishing or depressed and did more of one of those five activities that Monday,

You had a way better day than anybody else who did nothing. That includes flourishers. Because some days people were flourishing, did none of those five things, and they had as bad a day.

as those who were depressed or languishing who did nothing. But if you were depressed and languishing and did more of those activities, you had a better day and over time. Longitudinally, they began to move now slowly. They didn't jump from severe languishing all the way up to flourishing in a month.

But every week, she would find them having better days. And as they had better days, they were more motivated to do more of those five things. It was kind of like a virtuous cycle. So those five vitamins, and then I talk about a few other studies that show the benefits of moving in the direction.

of flourishing. But I'm trying to meet people where they're at. And I loved that study because it showed that small steps

And I talk about my own experiences in therapy being told to start small, Corey. I don't know if you remember that section, but they told me meditate one minute and I laughed. My ego was like, oh my God, no. And no, I had to start with one minute, small, small, small.

And so that is amazing how much big changes can happen just by like we think we're like depressed, but maybe someday is like we just haven't eaten yet. And then we eat and we feel better and we're like, oh, that's all I needed to do.

I know. And so I'm not, I'm not trying to be Pollyanna-ish in this book. And I'm not trying to be Ra-Ra. And I'm also not recommending that you can sit on, sit on your couch and meditate or practice gratitude and you, you will function better in the world because here's the thing that people are missing. It's not languishing isn't happening because people aren't feeling good. There are a lot of people who would meet the criteria for flourishing if it only was about emotional well-being.

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 gonna get those functioning well qualities without going out and doing something, engaging, because those vitamins are about doing something good for yourself. But when you're doing those things, you're also often doing good things for other people.

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? What's the relationship between them? And let's talk about what the six domains of human excellence are as well. Well, yeah, 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 I tried to steer 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 in psychology and sociology of what would it look like if human beings were doing well in life?

beyond just feeling good. So whether it's the six domains of excellence, it's, I really, really, those questions are, there's something about those questions that get at something that is deeply important, because I can't tell you a study, Scott, where I've found that flourishers aren't doing better than everyone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's tough because as you describe, it's possible to be flourishing and also to suffer with a mental illness. And so that concept can be hard for people to recognize and to understand. And I think that's a big theme of today's episode is kind of the complexity of being human. Yeah, that's right.

The book in my work comes from a deep lived experience with a lot of adversity and suffering. You might give me a little bit more about that, wouldn't you? Sure, because for the first 11 years in my childhood, 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 learned to dissociate and disappear. That was the all I had because nobody was there to protect me. But when they realized, when someone realized that, and that's an historian to itself,

My grandparents pulled me and my sister out of there. And at the age of 12, I was suddenly in a very different environment with love, warmth, safety, nurturing. And suddenly I went from deep being in detention literally every day and degrades to honor all.

Every semester, participating in choir, in sports, the school quarterback, I was doing just really well. And suddenly, all that bad stuff was gone, yeah. So the 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.

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 that when I heard Jackson Brown's 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 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 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 1986, and I was just finishing college, and flourishing came from this notion of trying to figure out

What I had experienced in that household with my grandparents was something very good. I had tasted something I would later call flourishing. 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, 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

And every time I looked at 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. 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. It's the image of what's gonna guide you to a place where you too can feel at home.

Absolutely. I really love this notion of just feeling like you belong to yourself, you know, because there's so much 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, I think that if you matter yourself, it doesn't almost doesn't matter what other people, what validation you get from others.

No, and it is, yeah, you're talking about 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, and I think we all have something to give.

I want people to realize 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, I truly believe we're all gifts.

I just believe that we have the gift to give of ourself, and that is the most precious thing I've experienced in this life, where others have given me the gift of themselves, because after my grandparents passed, I had nobody.

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 from my undergraduate years. We were still in contact and those people gave me the gift of themselves. And it made a huge difference.

It's beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful. Um, I, I'm not sure we actually listed the six domains of human excellence though. We can't just assume that our audience knows everything. So let me read the list. Yes. Acceptance. Yes. Autonomy connection. Let's teach some things here. The six domains of human excellence are acceptance, autonomy, connection, competence, mastery and mattering.

Now, 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 domains that you're flourishing, how does it map on to the five vitamins of flourishing, learning, connection, transcendence, helping others in play? Because play is not in one of the domains of human excellence.

No, but autonomy, the ability to determine your own, what you want to do, what brings you joy, right? And what you consider useful, and rather than somebody else telling you from the work of day world, telling you how you're useful. Autonomy is a spark that's represented in almost every vitamin.

the ability to decide to become a better person for other people. That's, to me, that's autonomy is sort of the foundation. But I mean, I could say that of every domain because I talk a lot about how acceptance, especially in the spiritual slash religious vitamin, how that's one of the many ways that spirituality and religion

When they're doing the job of helping us become better people, they don't always do that. But when they're doing their job, they're helping us to understand that acceptance is at the heart of dealing with things we wanna push away, right? The pain and the suffering, the loss and death and all those things.

and even our own imperfections and the others imperfections. And I found in my own journey, I found the acceptance to be a hard one because, oh boy, and I'm still working on that. So when I understand that I'm only in charge of my own thoughts, feelings and behavior and not anyone else's.

The world generally works far better, even when things aren't going well for me, because then I understand that I have to take responsibility and change something about me if I want something else to change in the world. But that's the direction you have to go, rather than the other way, demanding that the world change before I start acting. I completely agree, right? So those are hard lessons, Scott. Those are really hard things. So all of them,

Like, maddering, oh boy, that sense that you have something to give to the world. Oh, I've been on the opposite end of that where, oh, where I felt like there was no use for me.

Oh, goodness, I write about that. 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 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.

drank myself into 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 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 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 inpatient and learn about myself. And that's what I mean.

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 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 write about this in the section where a purpose, when you have a purpose that it can also be lost. So finding your purpose, it doesn't mean it's guaranteed it's going to stay there because I experienced firsthand that I thought somebody had taken my purpose from me. And that would came from a cognitive distortion.

And so those journeys 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,

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 absence of those domains of X and where they came from.

Thanks for being so vulnerable and sharing your own personal struggles with us. I'm sure it'll inspire a lot of people listening to this episode. I'd like to really zoom in on the definition of these five vitamins of flourishing 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 stories of self-growth, following your curiosity to learn something new. Connection is building warm and trusting relationships. Transcendence, you call it transcend, which is the title of my book, Transcend the new science of self-actualization.

I did not know that. God, thank you. But I love that. That was probably my favorite part of your book. Help finding your purpose even in the mundane. I want to circle back to that in a second. Sure. And then play.

Yeah, which is the fifth vitamin of washing, which is I'm conflicted whether or not my favorite is transcend or play, but probably it's probably play. I love playing. I'm 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, um, the help one. Um, I think that a lot of times when we talk about purpose, um, we, we kind of feel like, um, it's this, you know, like we're a loser if we don't have this big humongous, you know, calling and life and, and I like to, you know, a lot of my students, right? Like they're like 19 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 feel better. I'll tell you a little bit myself. Well, if I'm feeling down, I'd like just go to a coffee shop and I like to just be nice to people. And I feel better. I just smile and let's say I smile, you know, at 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. That, you know, that, you know, I matter for even those small vibrations. Do you agree? Yes. And I think we over-complicate 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 even started.

So I've always recommended keep it small, keep it local so that you can keep it focal, right? Start small, keep it local so you can stay focused because the do what's really within your reach, literally and figuratively, and that's right around you in your small little community or in your neighborhood or your school.

You are doing something amazing by simply helping people who you may see quite regularly in town. Rather than trying to solve, say, the crisis in Syria and the people who have been displaced, I saw that on the news this week. And I'm like, my heart went out and I was like, God, I wish I could solve that problem. And then I was like, I can't.

That's not something for me. I know it requires a big system. So I agree with you wholeheartedly. But the other thing about purpose is I don't think we should be pushing people to move in that direction unless their heart is ready.

to say yes to that first question that I ask in that chapter, which is, do you want to help somebody or something else? You don't always want to. So if that's the case and you've got other things you need to be doing, well, don't be sitting there trying to say you want your purpose, but you're not going to go

find it because if you, Michael Steger and others have shown that the process of searching can be pretty detrimental to your wellbeing. So if you're going to keep that open, go do something about it rather than, right? Just say, I'll get to it and keep it in my mind, but I'm not going to do anything about it right away. So I talk about making a plan for young people. It's enough to have a plan for your purpose and that can come later.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the play, which brings us to play, play is planless. Yes. Well, that's intrinsically enjoyable. Yes. And the point is, we have gotten so immersed in a world where we think of our time in terms of 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 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, 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 waste of time. 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 that is when you start to really think about practical examples, they start to bleed into each other.

You start playing and engaging in some forms of leisure. You're often affirming warm, trusting relationships and building community and belongingness. Yeah, it's amazing to me that happens in spirituality, too.

My one example is I've practiced yoga for 25 years. In my yoga community, you don't do yoga alone or some people might, but I love the fact that you go to the studio and you do an hour and a half work with these people that you talk with before and you talk 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 and working on that spiritual muscle. Because all of these things are skills. All of life is a skill. And if you don't practice it, you 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 game is on, when something comes into your life that says you can be a better angel or you can be a darker version of yourself. You have a choice here, right? Wow. Wow, that hit, that hit Corey. Wow. So these vitamins are, I mean,

I balked at using that word, but I know it made sense to you. I did brain vitamins. Yes. Well. Alpha brain. Yes. And here's the thing, languishing feels sometimes a lot like anemia.

Yeah. And I thought it made sense after my talking some songs, some of my agents 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 mind and your soul.

You're, you're deep human. Corey, you're, you're deep. Um, 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, uh, I wrote acceptance of others twice.

accepted of others, warm and trusting relationships, autonomy, personal growth and more. Forishing is filled with the things that make life worth living that bring quality to whatever quantity of life we are granted. And that's pretty deep. And so there are a couple of points there. One is that we're talking more than just feelings of happiness. Good mental health is more than just momentary feelings of just feeling happy.

Um, and then another point is a, that's not so much a point, but can you leave our audience with another tangible thing to improve that? Again, I don't want it. 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, tell people how to have it. Tell people how to have it.

Well, it is, it is a journey. I and I write about mine, mine 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 noon day demon of languishing some days and 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 a lot of work to get there.

I hope I made that clear in the book that this is not a simple one and done thing. This is a lifelong process and commitment, but it is your North Star.

And if the ingredients of flourishing aren't as 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 each of those five vitamins,

is about bringing life back where you felt dead and not alive. And it's not about taking 10 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 could do this in 10 minutes and not change anything about your life. You're going to probably have to add and subtract a few things.

Like, you can't just help. I mean, your example is great. It's got about going to the coffee shop when you need a jolt. But I mean, the study showed that a social jolt. Yeah, you're going to need to do a little more on many of those days to help others. And that's 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 are what's going to reinforce

Yeah, you won't get to flourishing overnight. You won't. And I didn't either. But I think there's a deeper point. There's even a deeper point there that you just made then forcing is not a state, a final state. You can't you have a day where you feel dead inside and then can't you force the next day?

Oh, my God, yes. Yes. And the next day after that, you can go down inside again. Yes. 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. I mean, they're annoying those people because they're, it's not, am I right? It's not a, it's not a final state of destination. It's a direction, not a destination. It is.

I'm constantly going home. I'm coming home. I'm always coming home. And you do that literally figuratively. You have to leave home sometimes to do, come home. It's a normal reaction. Language is a normal reaction to a lot of life's adversity. Now, the only problem is if 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 day. Let's just say it's dangerous thing. Some people start thinking about ending their life like I did, right? But 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 I'm going, how I accept myself. This is how I accept others. And that's what I'm going to live for.

Love it. Yes, this is wonderful. I just want to give people hope where 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 so thanks for this dialogue. You know, you get it. You get it.

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 14 signs. You only have to have seven out of the 14, half. And there's, think of all the permutations because there's 11 signs of functioning well. You only need six out of the 11 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 our all of our reach. And you get to choose. What are the dimensions of functioning well?

that you want to 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 14 signs. It's seven out of the 14. Let me end here with the notion of building a community of foresters. Yeah. How can we contribute to building such a world?

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 as somehow everything we've done is done with, oh, it just came, fear out of me. No, I relied in fear.

and it benefited from other people in multiple ways. And the spiritual path reminded me also, nobody does it without a community that's invested in the same things.

So, as I could imagine a 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 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 that 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 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. And it's not hyperbole. I waited 25 years to do the science to 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.

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 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 the big book to matter. As I said in the beginning of this interview, you know, like when I teach my course, I've been teaching for years, you know, I start off my and frame the whole, you know, course through your medical 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 the book is kind of gravy really when you think it's nothing you waited 25 years for you're probably not fully aware of how much you've influenced people in the field so no I'm not that's I've kept

a little profile because 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. I did retire early, 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've been trying to deal with it, which is treatment alone.

I appreciate what you just said, Scott. And, 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 be done. Always. Yeah. And there are always will be. But that also doesn't mean the work that hasn't been done. You know, like you're a lot of savor it sometimes. Yes.

It's a good point because it's something I'm working on to take it in and savor sometimes. I don't do that. There you go. I'm all human.

Hardly, hardly perfect, nowhere close to it. And 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.

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. Thank you very much, Scott. And thanks for having me.