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