Speaker 1: There's such beautiful research on mindsets now about just change
Speaker 1: the way you think about the things you have to
Speaker 1: do so you get the things you need from the
Speaker 1: things you have to do.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, them how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: When I saw the title of today's guests book, Languishing,
Speaker 3: How to Feel Alive Again in a world that wears
Speaker 3: us down, I knew this conversation had to happen, because really,
Speaker 3: who hasn't felt worn down by life and is someone
Speaker 3: who's wrestled with staying connected to what makes me feel alive.
Speaker 3: This topic hit home today. I'm talking with Corey Keys,
Speaker 3: the researcher who coined the term languishing. It's that space
Speaker 3: between mental illness and thriving, a state of stagnation that
Speaker 3: often goes unnoticed. Corey's work explores how we can move
Speaker 3: from this gray zone into flourishing, where purpose, connection, and
Speaker 3: vitality live. If you've ever felt stuck in neutral, just
Speaker 3: getting through your days but not really living them, this
Speaker 3: conversation is for you. Let's explore what it takes to
Speaker 3: feel alive again. Hi, Corey, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Greetings Eric.
Speaker 3: When I heard the title of your book, I immediately
Speaker 3: was like, all right, I need to talk to this guy.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I see a book where we have a guest
Speaker 3: idea and I send it to my producer Nicole, and
Speaker 3: we talk about it and we debate. But every once
Speaker 3: in a while, I'm like, just book this one. So
Speaker 3: you were in the just book this one category based
Speaker 3: on the title, which is languishing, how to feel alive
Speaker 3: again in a world that wears us down? And as
Speaker 3: we get into the conversation, I think we will talk
Speaker 3: about my own thoughts and challenges around feeling alive, and
Speaker 3: so it's a topic that means a lot to me.
Speaker 3: But we'll start like we always do, with the parable.
Speaker 3: And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 3: their grandchild and they say, in life, there's two wolves
Speaker 3: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 3: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 3: and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents
Speaker 3: things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild
Speaker 3: stops think about it for a second. They look up
Speaker 3: at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
Speaker 3: And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 3: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 3: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 3: that you do.
Speaker 1: Well, it means the world to me. I used it
Speaker 1: in my book, and I have used it in almost
Speaker 1: every talk I believe it or not. I usually use
Speaker 1: it right at the end because I use that parable
Speaker 1: and I talk about the wolf being motivated by fear
Speaker 1: or love, and we're feeding the wolf of fear when
Speaker 1: it comes to illness, disease, and death. And that's where
Speaker 1: public health and even medicine has been focused. And we're
Speaker 1: not feeding the wolf that comes from love, health well
Speaker 1: being what I would call the health span. And I
Speaker 1: usually end by saying, I'm very hungry to start focusing
Speaker 1: on health and feeding the wolf of love, because I
Speaker 1: think we've been focused too much, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: on illness and increasing life expected see and putting death
Speaker 1: at day, and yet we're struggling to add healthy longevity
Speaker 1: to our lives. Yeah, and that's what my book is
Speaker 1: really about when it comes to mental health, adding good
Speaker 1: mental health rather than focusing only on mental illness.
Speaker 3: So something I'm going to be doing a little more
Speaker 3: often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on what
Speaker 3: you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power, but
Speaker 3: only if combined with action and integration. So before we
Speaker 3: move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming up
Speaker 3: for you as you listen to this. Are there any
Speaker 3: things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf that
Speaker 3: might make sense to remove, or any things you could
Speaker 3: do to feed your good wolf that you're not currently doing. So,
Speaker 3: if you have the headspace for it, I'd love if
Speaker 3: you could just pause for a second and ask yourself,
Speaker 3: what's one thing I could do today or tonight to
Speaker 3: feed my good Wolf. Whatever your thing is. A really
Speaker 3: useful strategy can be having something external, a prompt or
Speaker 3: a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges you back
Speaker 3: towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year, I've been
Speaker 3: sending little Goodwolf reminders to some of my friends and
Speaker 3: community members, just quick, little SMS messages two times per
Speaker 3: week that give them a little bit of wisdom and
Speaker 3: remind them to pause for a second and come off autopilot.
Speaker 3: If you want, I can send them to you too.
Speaker 3: I do it totally for free, and people seem to
Speaker 3: really love them. Just drop your information at oneufeed dot
Speaker 3: net slash sms and I can send them to you.
Speaker 3: It's totally free, and if you end up not liking
Speaker 3: the little reminders, you can easily opt out. That's one
Speaker 3: you feed dot net slash sms. And now back to
Speaker 3: the episode. I'm glad you use that parable and I'm
Speaker 3: glad you set us up in that way. I think
Speaker 3: it gives us a lot of fruitful directions we can go.
Speaker 3: I want to start off by just asking a question
Speaker 3: to see if I can orient what you're doing in
Speaker 3: the context of psychology in a broader sense. Certainly. For
Speaker 3: most of psychology's history, it was focused on mental illness, right,
Speaker 3: It was solving neurosies and the various different things we
Speaker 3: called it and all of that. And then there was
Speaker 3: a period of time where there became a movement called
Speaker 3: positive psychology that was really about, like, well, what does
Speaker 3: it look like for humans that are thriving? Where is
Speaker 3: what you're doing oriented in that? It sounds like it's
Speaker 3: on the positive psychology side, And yet I don't see
Speaker 3: that as a term that you're using, So help me
Speaker 3: place you. This is just more for my nerdiness probably
Speaker 3: than any actually useful, useful conversation. But I can't resist asking.
Speaker 1: I straddle both worlds actually because I want to take
Speaker 1: mental illness very seriously, and I believe we can prevent
Speaker 1: it by going in the direction that I'm trying to chart,
Speaker 1: which is focus on mental health is more than the absence.
Speaker 1: I was there at the beginning of positive psychology. But
Speaker 1: long before positive psychology came along, there was the successful
Speaker 1: aging research networks that came into existence easily a decade
Speaker 1: or more before, and it was funded very generously and
Speaker 1: graciously by the MacArthur Foundation, and I was one of
Speaker 1: the members of a very select group of people from
Speaker 1: around the world that were brought in as young scholars
Speaker 1: to work with also very senior scholars around the world
Speaker 1: who were focusing on successful aging, knowing that we were
Speaker 1: living in an aging world right and that we needed
Speaker 1: to be prepared and we needed to learn from people
Speaker 1: who are aging. What we were calling successfully now that's
Speaker 1: a bit of a loaded word, and people of trying
Speaker 1: to deconstruct it, I don't even want to go there.
Speaker 1: I know what they were talking about. They wanted to
Speaker 1: look at how people maintain health and well being despite
Speaker 1: the challenges and the losses that come with aging. How
Speaker 1: do we adapt, compensate, optimize, call.
Speaker 4: It what you want.
Speaker 1: And if it was not for the MacArthur Foundation that
Speaker 1: supported this research, which created a longitudinal studies that are
Speaker 1: still going today. Eric in twenty five we will have
Speaker 1: our third wave of data that we will collect on respondents.
Speaker 1: And this data set is available to people around the
Speaker 1: world and they have been mining it for beautiful things
Speaker 1: that actually fed positive psychology. And I was there at
Speaker 1: the beginning, but I really don't identify much with positive
Speaker 1: psychology because I didn't know what their why was, what
Speaker 1: their purpose was I want to just focus on the
Speaker 1: positive so we could address suffering in the world that
Speaker 1: wasn't being addressed very effectively, and also a problem if
Speaker 1: there were that we weren't even paying attention to. And
Speaker 1: that's why languishing came into a being, because that was
Speaker 1: a problem that wasn't on anybody's radar. And so to me,
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough to say, I want people be happy.
Speaker 1: Why why what are you going to fix in the world?
Speaker 1: And to me, languishing was an unidentified problem. And I
Speaker 1: also believe that if we promoted what I call flourishing,
Speaker 1: we could prevent a lot of mental illness, not all,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it, because we can't cure mental
Speaker 1: illness and we're not even doing a very good job
Speaker 1: at managing it, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the things that's really interesting in your
Speaker 3: book is this idea of flourishing. And we're going to
Speaker 3: define flourishing and languishing here in a second, But was
Speaker 3: this idea that you can be flourishing and we'll talk
Speaker 3: about what that means and have a mental health condition,
Speaker 3: and that flourishing doesn't necessarily eliminate the mental health condition,
Speaker 3: but makes it better or more livable, and can have
Speaker 3: a certain amount of prevention. But that being mentally well
Speaker 3: doesn't mean the absence of all mental illness. It also
Speaker 3: can mean the of these positive things. Yeah, so say
Speaker 3: what you'd like about that, and then let's maybe define
Speaker 3: languishing and flourishing before we get too far in here.
Speaker 1: I love that you brought that up right away, because
Speaker 1: it is central. Now. I could go on about all
Speaker 1: the studies that verify back up what I'm about to say.
Speaker 1: It's there in the book. But for people who have
Speaker 1: mental disorders depression, anxiety, even schizophrenia, when they experience full
Speaker 1: recovery I call full recovery, when they're moving towards flourishing,
Speaker 1: they're much less likely to relapse or have a recurrence
Speaker 1: of that mental disorder. And the way I think of
Speaker 1: it is they stay in recovery, full recovery far longer.
Speaker 1: For me personally, because I have two mental disorders, actually three.
Speaker 1: When I am flourishing, my mental illness recedes into the background. Indeed,
Speaker 1: even go I put it away in the closet, so
Speaker 1: to speak, it's there. Yeah, every time I wake up
Speaker 1: and I go into my clauset, I know it's there,
Speaker 1: it's hanging on the rack. But today I'm not wearing
Speaker 1: it because my life has purpose, I have a sense
Speaker 1: of contribution, I'm growing, I have all those things that
Speaker 1: we'll talk about shortly that go into the ingredients of flourishing.
Speaker 1: So in order to really recover from mental illness, as
Speaker 1: we say in the addiction world, you're recovered, but your
Speaker 1: disease is always there, but it recedes into the background,
Speaker 1: and what's foreground is your mental health or what I
Speaker 1: call flourishing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think a lot of people will debate, you know,
Speaker 3: and they do debate what recovery in addiction looks like, Right,
Speaker 3: what does that mean? I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic,
Speaker 3: and this time around, I'm sixteen, coming up maybe on
Speaker 3: seventeen years sober, and so I like the way you
Speaker 3: said it. It's kind of in the closet. In my case,
Speaker 3: it's way back in the clause. It hasn't been pulled
Speaker 3: out in years. But I've had experiences in the past
Speaker 3: when I say this go around, it means I had
Speaker 3: sobriety before and then didn't you know. I tend to
Speaker 3: believe that, like you said, it's there but I think
Speaker 3: what's so interesting also is in how we define ourselves
Speaker 3: according to those things. It's easy for me to sort
Speaker 3: of think of addiction as I've recovered and it's kind
Speaker 3: of in the background, it's still there. Something like depression
Speaker 3: is a whole different sort of animal to kind of
Speaker 3: wrap my head around what's my relationship to it. Because
Speaker 3: sobriety is easy to measure, just not there, use you
Speaker 3: don't use, But things like depression start to look like
Speaker 3: things that you call languishing. And these are more subtle distinctions.
Speaker 3: I almost wish that the clarity of addiction was was
Speaker 3: able to bring it to other areas.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think for me at least because I also
Speaker 1: have depression and alcoholism as well as PTSD, I agree
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly with you. I mean, the issue for me alcoholism
Speaker 1: is that in one sense we all think about it,
Speaker 1: I'm just not picking up right. Well, it's so much
Speaker 1: more than that. It is about regaining a whole different
Speaker 1: new way of living in a world right, And that
Speaker 1: I think is true of depression as much as it
Speaker 1: is of alcoholism. Except it I don't love it or
Speaker 1: hate it for some people. I love my AA program
Speaker 1: because we do it with each other and for each other,
Speaker 1: because nobody else.
Speaker 4: Can do it for us.
Speaker 1: And yet when it comes to depression, we've kind of
Speaker 1: given it over to experts, as if I can't really
Speaker 1: take care of myself, And so sometimes we create a
Speaker 1: mindset that we catastrophize. When I start to feel sad,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, oh, no, here comes the beast, when in fact,
Speaker 1: it's like I should just say, wow, isn't that interesting,
Speaker 1: just like my Buddhist friend. Oh, I'm feeling sad. Now,
Speaker 1: let's explore that. And we are talking with some people
Speaker 1: about this, I have no one to talk about when
Speaker 1: it comes to depression.
Speaker 3: So let me ask a question there, because I've often
Speaker 3: wondered about this, and as somebody who's been on the
Speaker 3: inside of the mental health world, something like addiction has
Speaker 3: these support groups. I mean, I think it's wonderful today
Speaker 3: that twelve step groups are one of the support group
Speaker 3: options that are available. There's more of them, but there's
Speaker 3: a host of them, and people do tend to turn
Speaker 3: to them for this thing. And I've often wondered, why
Speaker 3: does that sort of thing not exist for something like
Speaker 3: depression or anxiety or mental health more broadly, and I'm
Speaker 3: curious if you have any theories on why why doesn't
Speaker 3: it exist. We see peer support groups pop up in
Speaker 3: lots of areas, but we just have never seen peer
Speaker 3: support group gain much traction in this area. And I
Speaker 3: don't fully understand why.
Speaker 1: It's perplexing to me. Because doctors admitted early on to
Speaker 1: Bill and Bob that there's nothing I can do for you.
Speaker 1: That's not the case when it comes to depression. We're
Speaker 1: given this false sense of hope. And people won't like
Speaker 1: when I say it, because I'm on those damn medications myself,
Speaker 1: but they don't cure me anywhere close to it. And
Speaker 1: yet we have these experts who keep telling me and
Speaker 1: everyone else, well, I can help you, I can make
Speaker 1: you better. That wasn't the case for most addictions, and
Speaker 1: it certainly wasn't a story that I know right when
Speaker 1: Bill and Bob were starting, right, so they had to
Speaker 1: figure it out for themselves. And yet we go into
Speaker 1: therapies with clinical psychologists and we do all this talking,
Speaker 1: so it's not unlike sharing that we do in the
Speaker 1: rooms in NA or AA. And yet I think because
Speaker 1: we have this expert out there that we share with,
Speaker 1: we don't believe that we have much to learn from
Speaker 1: each other, the other patients, And I think that's such
Speaker 1: a wrong headed thing because I think we've handed over
Speaker 1: our own ability to help each other to these experts,
Speaker 1: these clinical psychologists and psychiatrists. And they're necessary, but I
Speaker 1: don't think they're sufficient.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts and theories myself
Speaker 3: also of why we don't have more of that. I
Speaker 3: agree talking to an expert is sharing, but it's a
Speaker 3: different kind of sharing. It's a very different kind of
Speaker 3: sharing because generally you're a psychologist or your therapist or whatever,
Speaker 3: isn't then turning around and going me too.
Speaker 1: Me too right, me too right?
Speaker 3: Oh I've been there, yeah, I mean, god just last week.
Speaker 3: I also think that what twelve step programs have and
Speaker 3: what a lot of other support groups that I've seen have,
Speaker 3: is they have a clear, defined program. I mean, talking
Speaker 3: and sharing and identifying is a big part of it,
Speaker 3: but there's also here are the things that we do
Speaker 3: right right. I think most attempts at peer groups around
Speaker 3: depression or mental illness lack that. There's not Yes, I
Speaker 3: understand you, I recognize what you're doing. You feel heard
Speaker 3: by me, you feel seen by me, and now you
Speaker 3: can do the things that I did. I think that's
Speaker 3: an element of you know, if you look at what
Speaker 3: makes some of these programs work, there's the people, the connection,
Speaker 3: but there's also a program, and you can argue how
Speaker 3: useful a particular program is. Is the twelve steps the
Speaker 3: best way? Probably not, but you know what, it's a way, right,
Speaker 3: It's a path, and it's a way of allowing you
Speaker 3: to take very specific actions in a direction that points,
Speaker 3: at least for a lot of people towards health.
Speaker 1: It is, and I blok sometimes when I hear people say, well,
Speaker 1: let's take the AA twelve step kind of approach and
Speaker 1: apply it to mental illness, I think that it's of
Speaker 1: Eric would be a little wrong headed, because I love
Speaker 1: the steps because there's so closely allied with the fact
Speaker 1: that we've reached the level of demoralization and humiliation and
Speaker 1: a loss of a sense of life that we have
Speaker 1: to rebuild that are baked into those steps, agreed, So
Speaker 1: we have to redeem ourselves, reclaim ourselves. Yes, and mental
Speaker 1: illness has enough of the morality issues hanging over to
Speaker 1: stigmatize it. So we need to really think a new
Speaker 1: agreed when it comes to a program that would be
Speaker 1: step like for depression and anxiety. But I think we
Speaker 1: could if we really put ourselves to the task.
Speaker 3: I think that you're right. I mean, the twelve steps.
Speaker 3: I would argue, even for a lot of people who
Speaker 3: have addiction issues, may not even be the right path, right. Certainly,
Speaker 3: people who are wrestling with severe depression don't need to
Speaker 3: be focusing on their character defects, right, Like they've got
Speaker 3: that pretty well, pretty well sorted. All right, So this
Speaker 3: is a rabbit hole we could spend the whole conversation on.
Speaker 3: And I'd love to just sit here and brainstorm what
Speaker 3: this program looks like. But we're going to move on
Speaker 3: so that we get sort of re anchored here a
Speaker 3: little bit. And I want to talk about languishing. So
Speaker 3: what is languishing? Give us the history of sort of
Speaker 3: how it evolved for you as a way of thinking,
Speaker 3: and what it is, and how is it different from
Speaker 3: other things that it sort of looks.
Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, well, let's start with that last part of
Speaker 1: your question. For most people, it seems a lot like depression,
Speaker 1: even shall we say minor depression. Let's course distinguish it.
Speaker 1: Then I want to jump back into how they blend together. Okay,
Speaker 1: first thing is depression is the presence of negative symptoms.
Speaker 1: If we were to look at the psychiatric manual, we
Speaker 1: would see the presence of negative emotions and a loss
Speaker 1: of interest in life, and then several forms of malfunctioning,
Speaker 1: really problematic functioning. Languishing is the absence of very positive things,
Speaker 1: very positive symptoms. What you're missing are the feelings that
Speaker 1: come around what we might call joy, happiness, interest in life,
Speaker 1: and interest in life is the only overlapping symptoms, right right, Yes,
Speaker 1: and then the rest are what I call these signs
Speaker 1: of functioning. Well, I measure purpose. Does your life have
Speaker 1: direction and meaning? I measure a sense of contribution. Are
Speaker 1: you contributing things of worth and value to your family, community, workplace,
Speaker 1: sense of growth, and so forth? So you can be
Speaker 1: free of negative things right that go to depression and
Speaker 1: not have any of the positive things are either. And
Speaker 1: that's an interesting category because that's why I've used the
Speaker 1: phrase and that I'm picked up on what I've used
Speaker 1: in my talks. That why languishing is the middle child
Speaker 1: in between things like depression and flourishing. It's stuck there,
Speaker 1: right in the middle. There's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are free of negative symptoms like anxiety and depression. They
Speaker 1: might have a few, but they don't meet the criteria
Speaker 1: diagnosable disorder. And yet they don't meet the criteria for
Speaker 1: flourishing either. They're stuck in the middle, but by the
Speaker 1: same token. Here's where things get really confusing, because clinicians
Speaker 1: want to tell me languishing is part of the depression,
Speaker 1: and I say, yes, it is. For most people with
Speaker 1: a mental disorder. They're languishing to some degree, mildly, moderately,
Speaker 1: or sometimes severely. Just because you've gone into the realm
Speaker 1: of a mental disorder, it doesn't mean you've left languishing
Speaker 1: at the door. It comes along with you, and often
Speaker 1: it's the gatekeeper. It's often why people end up with
Speaker 1: mental illness. And so here's the thing. You could be
Speaker 1: trussed and languishing at the same time. Most people are.
Speaker 1: And yet here's the mystery to me. We attribute all
Speaker 1: the problems that people with a mental illness have to
Speaker 1: their mental disorder. When languishing is they're causing easily half,
Speaker 1: if not more, of the problems. It's not just depression
Speaker 1: causing the problem. It's the languishing that comes along, it's
Speaker 1: also causing the problem, and so you can have both.
Speaker 3: You talked about depression being a lot of negative symptoms
Speaker 3: and poor functioning, and I love the idea that with
Speaker 3: certain people you can remove And I would say this
Speaker 3: is the case for me, right, Like the real gross
Speaker 3: levels of suffering are gone, right. I mean I used
Speaker 3: to be a homeless heroin addict. Right, I am so
Speaker 3: much better. I used to suffer with depression that made
Speaker 3: it hard to get out of bed. I never have
Speaker 3: that problem, right that, That's not what I'm talking about
Speaker 3: at all. And in my more honest moment, right, if
Speaker 3: I were to chart my journey, I would say something
Speaker 3: very similar to what you said, which is I've gotten
Speaker 3: rid of the real suffering. And I think if you
Speaker 3: put the twenty three year old me in my brain,
Speaker 3: he would think he was enlightened. The difference is so stark.
Speaker 3: But the fifty three year old me doesn't know as
Speaker 3: much about joy and peak moments of happiness and all
Speaker 3: these different things that he would like. You know, I
Speaker 3: figured out how to eliminate a lot of suffering, but
Speaker 3: I haven't figured out how to strongly amplify good feelings.
Speaker 3: Now here's where things get tricky. I'm a former Heroin addict.
Speaker 3: Right to me, feeling good is way up here, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I have this idea in my mind, you should feel
Speaker 3: like that. People don't feel like they feel like when
Speaker 3: they're on Heroin. Like that's not normal day to day functioning.
Speaker 3: So where I get caught up A lot is going Okay,
Speaker 3: we talk about having more joy, more positive emotions, what
Speaker 3: are we talking about? What's the reasonable level of someone?
Speaker 3: And that's where I kind of get hung up and
Speaker 3: I don't know what to say. Am I languishing? If
Speaker 3: you look at functioning and a lot of your book
Speaker 3: is about functioning. If you look at functioning, I'm in
Speaker 3: no way, shape or form languishing. My life is filled
Speaker 3: with purpose. I play, I learn, I mean, all your vitamins, connection,
Speaker 3: Like I function, I think at a pretty high level
Speaker 3: on all those things. But my mood is not like
Speaker 3: way up there. It's in this sort of grayer area.
Speaker 3: So is that languishing? Is that flourishing? And like I
Speaker 3: said to you before, sometimes I'm like, well, maybe that's
Speaker 3: just my temperament. Maybe I need to stop monkeying with
Speaker 3: it all worrying about it and just go, you know what,
Speaker 3: that's just kind of who you are. I love the
Speaker 3: nuance of it, but I also dislike the ambiguity of
Speaker 3: it when it comes to trying to sort things out
Speaker 3: in my own head. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the feeling functioning thing. That's the real challenge for
Speaker 1: us who are trying to come off of this artificial,
Speaker 1: almost explosive dopamine rush that you can't get anywhere else right,
Speaker 1: You just can't. It takes a long time to recalibrate that,
Speaker 1: and for many of us it takes a lifetime because
Speaker 1: I don't think you quite want to trust it, because
Speaker 1: there is this sneaking suspicion even if you're just feeling
Speaker 1: it and you're not using it, you're like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't go down there. But having said that, even
Speaker 1: though I would call what you're experiencing some degree of languishing,
Speaker 1: there's interesting combinations that are worth mentioning here. Now when
Speaker 1: I split apart the criteria for feeling good versus functioning
Speaker 1: well in my research, let's nerd out just a little
Speaker 1: bit so I can get to your point. There was
Speaker 1: twelve to thirteen percent of US college students who would
Speaker 1: be flourishing according to my criteria when it came to
Speaker 1: functioning well, that meant that every day or almost every day,
Speaker 1: they experienced at least six out of the eleven signs
Speaker 1: of functioning well. But they did not meet the criteria
Speaker 1: for feeling good because they didn't report either interest in life, happiness,
Speaker 1: or satisfaction with life every day or almost every day
Speaker 1: in the past two weeks or past month. That group,
Speaker 1: thirteen percent of them had one of three mental disorders
Speaker 1: in the past two weeks, compared to less than four
Speaker 1: percent of those students who were flourishing, who put the
Speaker 1: feeling good with the functioning well. Every study I've ever done, eric,
Speaker 1: when you're flourishing, when you meet the criteria for feeling good,
Speaker 1: you just have to have one out of three interested
Speaker 1: in life, satisfied or happy every day or almost every day,
Speaker 1: just one combined with at least six out of eleven
Speaker 1: signs of functioning well. They're always doing better than the group,
Speaker 1: even the group that's functioning well. They're flourishing when it
Speaker 1: comes to functioning well. But here's the interesting thing. There's
Speaker 1: a even larger group of young people who would meet
Speaker 1: the criteria for flourishing only when it came to feeling good,
Speaker 1: but they're not flourishing when it comes to functioning well. Now,
Speaker 1: that group too, is almost twenty five percent of the
Speaker 1: US college student population. They feel good about life where
Speaker 1: they're not functioning well, their life doesn't have purpose, belonging, contribution,
Speaker 1: growth and all that. Twenty one percent of them met
Speaker 1: the criteria in the past two weeks for depression, anxiety,
Speaker 1: or a panic attack, compared to less than four percent.
Speaker 1: But it gets worse the more severe you're languishing. It's
Speaker 1: better to be flourishing in at least one out of
Speaker 1: the two than it is to have moderate to severe languishing. Right,
Speaker 1: But it's always better eric to be flourishing for some reason.
Speaker 1: That combination is just magical. So you're doing well, and
Speaker 1: I know those moments you're describing where I'm functioning well,
Speaker 1: I'm growing, I'm learning. But you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of times when you're functioning well that you've had to
Speaker 1: go through a lot of effort to get there, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't feel good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Harry.
Speaker 1: Growth is not everything it's cracked up to be. It
Speaker 1: doesn't create happiness. So there's people it makes sense when
Speaker 1: it comes to mental illness. They're not doing as well
Speaker 1: as those people who are flourishing, but it's always better
Speaker 1: than having severe language and trust.
Speaker 3: Me right, And I think where this gets even more tricky,
Speaker 3: There's two things I want to push on here. The
Speaker 3: first is when we say things like interest in life, well,
Speaker 3: how interested? Like you know what I mean? Like this
Speaker 3: is really to me very subtle, like I would say
Speaker 3: I'm interested in life. But that's where I sort of
Speaker 3: get hung up, is like it's this question of what
Speaker 3: is enough right anything? And then I think the second
Speaker 3: thing that's really interesting and I've thought a lot about
Speaker 3: this since I had the conversation. I had the conversation
Speaker 3: with the psychologist Paul Bloom, and he talked about two
Speaker 3: sort of ways that people measure well beings generally, and
Speaker 3: the one is you ask people how satisfied they are
Speaker 3: at intervals, You say, how satisfied are you with your
Speaker 3: life in these various areas, and people report things. The
Speaker 3: other is you ask people how are you feeling right now?
Speaker 3: And so what I think is interesting is that you
Speaker 3: can have a gap between those things. You can have
Speaker 3: people who say I'm satisfied with my life. My life
Speaker 3: is good. You know, I would fall into this category.
Speaker 3: I'm satisfied. I mean, my life is great, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I mean, in so many ways my life is outstanding.
Speaker 3: But if you ask me at certain moments, how do
Speaker 3: you feel, I might say, eh, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: that would be my reaction, you know. And this gets
Speaker 3: to also thinking about like what is our mood system
Speaker 3: wired up to look? Like, you know, does everybody have
Speaker 3: the same capacity or you know, I've heard about like
Speaker 3: happiness set points. You know, where do these things land?
Speaker 3: And so I also think that when we start to
Speaker 3: take on labels, that gets interesting. It's a different way
Speaker 3: of viewing myself in the world. If I say I'm
Speaker 3: very satisfied with my life, things are going really well.
Speaker 3: The things that matter to me are all in place,
Speaker 3: and you know what, I have sort of a lower
Speaker 3: than average mood system versus to say I'm languishing. That
Speaker 3: difference there matters in how I see and view myself.
Speaker 3: And I'm just I don't mean to turn this into
Speaker 3: a conversation about me, but I'm like close to the
Speaker 3: target audience. Now, there's a lot of people who are
Speaker 3: languishing much more severely, and I think I want to
Speaker 3: turn my attention to that in a second. But I
Speaker 3: think what we're talking about are these these sort of
Speaker 3: edge states, And I'm just curious how you think about
Speaker 3: those things for yourself, because I suspect you're similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I go round and I with psychologists about this.
Speaker 1: Daniel Konnaman wanted to say, there's experienced happiness, which is valid,
Speaker 1: and then there's remembered happiness, which is I can't trust
Speaker 1: it right exactly. Yes, Well, my take on that always
Speaker 1: is we're storytellers.
Speaker 4: For you.
Speaker 1: Sometimes ten moments in one day of happiness will not
Speaker 1: equal the summary that this was a good day, because
Speaker 1: you could have been dedicating yourself to moments of happiness
Speaker 1: that had very little meaning to you, yet they felt
Speaker 1: right at the moment. If I recorded your experience, it
Speaker 1: felt good because I was working on something interesting.
Speaker 3: Or conversely, I could have slept bad last night and
Speaker 3: be working on really meaningful things and just sort of
Speaker 3: been like, you know, I didn't feel great, but I
Speaker 3: was there, right, I did what mattered to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you did it, and you did it to
Speaker 1: the best of your ability, and you could end up saying, well,
Speaker 1: that was a day well spent. That was a really
Speaker 1: good day even though you know it didn't feel great.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So to me, life is not made up of moments,
Speaker 1: even though it is in reality, and whether we have
Speaker 1: peak moments or valleys, you know, I think the way
Speaker 1: stories end matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I had this argument with Konomy because I do
Speaker 1: think endings matter. So if an ending is really triumphant
Speaker 1: and everything up to that was miserable, you're telling me
Speaker 1: it's invalid for me to say this. My story is
Speaker 1: to me a really good one. I feel really good
Speaker 1: about it, even though I suffered most of it. I prevailed,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, moments, where we start, our
Speaker 1: peaks and our lows and where it ends matters greatly.
Speaker 4: To human beings.
Speaker 3: It seems to be based on all studies, that's what
Speaker 3: we affix. And I think there's also the whole idea
Speaker 3: of what meaning do we give to certain things? Is
Speaker 3: what most important? How I'm feeling, which is transient and
Speaker 3: affected by a thousand things. It's affected by the weather outside,
Speaker 3: It's affected by how I slept, it's affected by how
Speaker 3: many carbs. I mean, whatever your thing is right a
Speaker 3: thousand factors, and yet the things I do in the
Speaker 3: world that matter that have meaning. Those are different, right,
Speaker 3: They're not based on mood, and I'm always, at least
Speaker 3: for me personally, I've tried to orient myself away from
Speaker 3: mood being the driving factor in my life, because if
Speaker 3: you have a mood system like me, that could be
Speaker 3: rocky territory. Whereas values and what matters, that's a place
Speaker 3: I can affix my attention to that really steadies things
Speaker 3: and allows me, to your point, to have a story
Speaker 3: that feels like it's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and get your other point about trying to get
Speaker 1: granular about sort of the questions I ask. I decided
Speaker 1: early on I would use these terms but not getting
Speaker 1: this instead of trying to create an objective metric or
Speaker 1: even think I could get inside somebody else's head if
Speaker 1: you say that. Almost every day in the last two
Speaker 1: weeks I felt interested in, like, who am I I'm
Speaker 1: to get in the business of saying, well, okay, now
Speaker 1: you know I'm going to get real granded on you.
Speaker 1: Now your interest might be at a different sort of
Speaker 1: objective level than mine. But when I can come to
Speaker 1: that conclusion, I'm probably the best judge in many respects
Speaker 1: than anyone else, And so all I can say in
Speaker 1: some people would say I'm punting. I know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: going to allow you to make that assessment. And all
Speaker 1: I can say is, in the scientific world, when people
Speaker 1: actually meet these criteria, it is remarkable to see how
Speaker 1: much better or how much worse they are doing.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I'm telling you it's the sol warse third years
Speaker 1: now of research, nobody's come up with a better diagnostic
Speaker 1: set of criteria for good mental health flourishing or languishing
Speaker 1: that could replace where I just started. It was a
Speaker 1: starting point. And by the way, what I did was
Speaker 1: take depression and literally turn it on its head. When
Speaker 1: I looked at all the signs and symptoms of well being,
Speaker 1: so you had to have one out of two antiedonia
Speaker 1: combined with four out of the seven malfunctioning to meet
Speaker 1: the criteria for depression every day or almost every day.
Speaker 1: When I looked at all the well being measures and
Speaker 1: reduced them down to the fourteen questions in my questionnaire,
Speaker 1: you have to have one out of the three feeling
Speaker 1: good almost every day, combined with at least six out
Speaker 1: of the eleven functioning well seven out of fourteen. Any combination.
Speaker 1: The beauty of my diagnosis there's multiple ways people can flourish,
Speaker 1: there's multiple ways that people can languish.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined action and integration.
Speaker 3: It can be transformative to take a minute to synthesize
Speaker 3: information rather than just ingesting it in a detached way.
Speaker 3: So let's collectively take a moment to pause and reflect.
Speaker 3: What's your one big insight so far and how can
Speaker 3: you put it into practice in your life. Seriously, just
Speaker 3: take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can
Speaker 3: be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and
Speaker 3: be present, can't it. If you want to keep this
Speaker 3: momentum going that you built with this little exercise, i'd
Speaker 3: encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders SMS list.
Speaker 3: I'll shoot you two texts a week with insightful little
Speaker 3: prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a nice little
Speaker 3: nudge to stop and be present in your life, and
Speaker 3: they're a helpful way to not get lost in the
Speaker 3: busyness and forget what is important. You can join at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't like them,
Speaker 3: you can get off a list really easily. So far,
Speaker 3: there are over one and seventy two others from the
Speaker 3: one you feed community on the list, and we'd love
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Speaker 3: wolves together.
Speaker 1: When I sit down with people and try to help them,
Speaker 1: I get the questions out and I put them in
Speaker 1: front of them, and I say, you don't have to
Speaker 1: be doing well in all of these things, just seven
Speaker 1: out of the fourteen and they have to be at
Speaker 1: least one out of the feeling good and six or
Speaker 1: more out of the functioning will And by the way,
Speaker 1: the only thing I will recommend focus on functioning well
Speaker 1: because you will feel good when you reach that level
Speaker 1: of functioning well, and it will be based on something sustainable, yeah,
Speaker 1: not external to you. You will know that your effort
Speaker 1: and your accomplishments are creating that feeling good. Because normally,
Speaker 1: and I studied this in young people, they put feeling
Speaker 1: good before functioning well. Sure, they value feeling good way
Speaker 1: over functioning well. And if you could find a way
Speaker 1: to feel good without functioning well, trust me, most people
Speaker 1: aren't going to stick with that.
Speaker 3: Course well, sure, and generally it's a road that has
Speaker 3: an end to it, right, meaning there are ways to
Speaker 3: feel good without functioning well. I mean you and I
Speaker 3: have explored you know, explore or explored them you know,
Speaker 3: I mean I took that seeking about as far as
Speaker 3: you can take it, right, and it didn't end well.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about what do we mean by functioning well?
Speaker 3: What are we talking about when we say someone is
Speaker 3: functioning well?
Speaker 1: There were six criteria called psychological well being because they
Speaker 1: focused primarily on the pronouns me and I. So there's
Speaker 1: self acceptance, do you like most parts of your personality?
Speaker 1: There's positive relations which is do you have warm, trusting
Speaker 1: relationships with other people? There's a sense of personal growth.
Speaker 1: Are you being challenged to grow and become a better person?
Speaker 1: There's something called a mastery, which is are you able
Speaker 1: to manage the daily responsibilities of your life? Autonomy which
Speaker 1: is do you feel confident that think and express your
Speaker 1: own ideas and opinions? And last, but certain and not
Speaker 1: least purpose in life? Does your life have meaning or
Speaker 1: direction to it? And then there's five qualities or criteria
Speaker 1: called social well being that privileged to pronouns we and us.
Speaker 1: So there's self acceptance. On this self side, there's acceptance
Speaker 1: of other people. Are you trusting? Do you view other
Speaker 1: people with some sense of trust you believe that other
Speaker 1: people are basically good by nature. There's a thing called coherence.
Speaker 1: Are you able to make sense of what's going on
Speaker 1: in the world around you, your society, your community, the world.
Speaker 1: It's called coherence. I know that.
Speaker 3: What's that old saying? It's not a sign of wellness
Speaker 3: To see a six society is.
Speaker 1: To be well adjusted to a six society. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: a sense of integration. Do you have a sense of belonging?
Speaker 1: Do you have a community? There's a dimension called social contribution.
Speaker 1: Do the things you do on a daily basis matter
Speaker 1: to the world around you, to other people? And last
Speaker 1: is this sense of social growth. We're members of teams
Speaker 1: literally and figuratively. Are we being challenged? Do I feel
Speaker 1: like I as a member of something? Am I being
Speaker 1: challenged to grow as a better member of something? And
Speaker 1: so those are eleven signs of functioning well. And you
Speaker 1: can have six from either group. You just need six
Speaker 1: or more at minimum of six almost every day. And
Speaker 1: I toyed early on in my research you had to
Speaker 1: have a few from social well beings, some from psychological world.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Yeah, it really doesn't matter. Having said that,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing. Almost everywhere we've looked in
Speaker 1: the world, social well being is the hardest thing for
Speaker 1: people to achieve almost every day. Yeah, it's really the
Speaker 1: hardest thing for us social animals, believe it or not.
Speaker 3: There are days that my social life is very fulfilling
Speaker 3: and rich, and there are other days that I sit
Speaker 3: here and I'm working on a book, so I spend
Speaker 3: most of my day writing and then you know, I
Speaker 3: see my partner and we're doing fine, and we have dinner,
Speaker 3: but there's nothing really that you know, it's all right. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, like there's just not a lot of social
Speaker 3: interaction in that day. It's not necessarily a bad day, no,
Speaker 3: But that's the way I think a lot of our
Speaker 3: lives are. All right. Now, let's turn our attention to
Speaker 3: what are the vitamins of flourishing? Yeah, what are the
Speaker 3: five sort of things that people can look at doing
Speaker 3: or investing in that add up to flourishing. And I
Speaker 3: assume what you're saying is if you integrate these things
Speaker 3: into your life to some degree, then you're going to
Speaker 3: answer yes to more of those measures of wealth being
Speaker 3: that we just talked about.
Speaker 1: Yes. This comes from a longitudinal study that followed these
Speaker 1: folks who were either depressed, not depressed, languishing, or they
Speaker 1: were flourishing. And what they found was that, regardless of
Speaker 1: your category, if you were doing more of these five things,
Speaker 1: now you don't have to do all in one day.
Speaker 1: But if you picked one of them, which was either play,
Speaker 1: learn something new, some form of spiritual or religious activity,
Speaker 1: helping others, and connecting or socializing, if you did more
Speaker 1: of one of those things the day prior to the interview,
Speaker 1: you recorded and had a much better day. And even
Speaker 1: if you were depressed or languishing, if you continued over
Speaker 1: time to do more of those five viamins daily or
Speaker 1: weekly basis, you began to move out of those places. Now,
Speaker 1: you didn't jump all the way to flourishing. It takes time,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't know the exact amount of time.
Speaker 1: But the good news was you began to move up
Speaker 1: the continuum closer and closer to flourishing. But here is
Speaker 1: the thing. If you were flourishing and you stop doing
Speaker 1: those things, it didn't take long and you began to
Speaker 1: drift away into languishing. I call that the couch potato effect.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter if you're flourishing. You can't just say I'm flourishing.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to put that in the bank. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ignore all those things that got me
Speaker 1: there because I got something more important, Like I got work,
Speaker 1: i got careers, I got success to tackle, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to leave all those things behind because they are
Speaker 1: a waste of my time. People at my workplace don't
Speaker 1: really care about those things. Well guess what, Well, if
Speaker 1: you don't care about them, of course they don't, and
Speaker 1: before you know it, you're languishing. So those five things
Speaker 1: were very clearly addressing a deficiency flourishing, whether you were
Speaker 1: depressed or languishing. And I think of languishing kind of
Speaker 1: like the physiological equivalent of anemia. M It feels like
Speaker 1: that too, because the way I found out that I
Speaker 1: had Celiac's disease is I became very anemic. I didn't
Speaker 1: know it. One day I was up there hiking with
Speaker 1: my wife and I could not make it back to
Speaker 1: our car. She put me on the side of the road,
Speaker 1: went back, got the car, picked me up. I said
Speaker 1: something wrong, and I went to the doctor and I
Speaker 1: was very low in iron, and she said, there's only
Speaker 1: one of two reasons. You're bleeding internally, or you're not
Speaker 1: taking up iron because you've got celiacs or little intestines
Speaker 1: has been destroyed. Boom. Yes. And so when I thought
Speaker 1: about my celiac and what I had done and how
Speaker 1: it felt languishing. Is a deficiency of those five vitamins?
Speaker 3: Yep? Okay, So let's dive into those five vitamins a
Speaker 3: little bit. I want to go to something you said
Speaker 3: kind of at the end there, which is like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm doing these things. I decide I'm going to put
Speaker 3: them in the bank and I'm just going to focus
Speaker 3: on other things, like work or success or. I think
Speaker 3: the thing of it, though, is that the wise approach
Speaker 3: seems to me that you integrate those things into the
Speaker 3: work that you do, into the success that you seek.
Speaker 3: They become the way in which you approach things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I approach my work from a perspective of what can
Speaker 3: I learn today here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: There's opportunities to learn there? Who can I connect with
Speaker 3: here today? Like I think that we often think that
Speaker 3: we have to go do these other things in other
Speaker 3: places and other ways. And where so many people get
Speaker 3: hung up is there's no time to do that. There's
Speaker 3: no time if you're going to work, which most people
Speaker 3: have to do, if you have let's say children, or
Speaker 3: the flip side of it and soon need care or both.
Speaker 3: You know where a lot of people find themselves. It's
Speaker 3: so hard to get time away to do things. So
Speaker 3: we have to think, at least for me strategically, about
Speaker 3: how do I integrate these approaches to things into my
Speaker 3: day to day life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that you bring that up, because I
Speaker 1: remember I was just marveling at Epicurus, the great philosopher hedonism.
Speaker 1: I read about him in the book, and he said,
Speaker 1: what you really need in life are three things. Friends, freedom,
Speaker 1: and by freedom he meant really autonomy to do as
Speaker 1: much for yourself as you can and for each other,
Speaker 1: rather than giving over your life to a boss. And
Speaker 1: then the last one is examined life. When things go bad,
Speaker 1: you need time to reflect and learn. Now everyone was
Speaker 1: at Epicurius, this is so obvious, why did you put
Speaker 1: that on the stove up? And he said, well, tell me,
Speaker 1: if it's so obvious, why don't.
Speaker 4: You do these things exactly. Yes, you need con reminders.
Speaker 4: He said this again and again. Human beings the constant
Speaker 4: reminders because we are so easily led to believe something
Speaker 4: else is so much more important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so much more important. And people have said this
Speaker 1: about my five vitamins, and I think back and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. You think this is obvious, then why
Speaker 1: don't you do it? Why do you think you can
Speaker 1: only do five minutes of it and it's dumb.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, you have to do exactly exactly what you said.
Speaker 1: Create a mindset. There's such beautiful research on mindsets now,
Speaker 1: about just change the way you think about the things
Speaker 1: you have to do so you get the things you
Speaker 1: need from the things you have to do.
Speaker 3: I love that, But I have to ask, when you
Speaker 3: talk about some of this research on mindset, is there
Speaker 3: any places you could point me.
Speaker 1: Well, there's some that I talk about in the book.
Speaker 1: There's this wonderful young scholar. She's out in Stanford and psychology,
Speaker 1: Alijah Crumb.
Speaker 3: You just freaking me out because I've recorded an interview
Speaker 3: before this and the woman was a mentor of that woman,
Speaker 3: and I've never heard her name till now, and now
Speaker 3: I've heard her twice. No, I'm sorry, she's a mentee
Speaker 3: of that woman. She's a younger student that has worked
Speaker 3: with Aliah.
Speaker 1: Who is it?
Speaker 3: But I've never heard Carrie Leebowitz.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my student. Oh well, hell yeah, she's in
Speaker 1: my book as well.
Speaker 3: And I've never heard of Aliah Crumb until an hour ago.
Speaker 3: But all right, Yeah, that is fascinating. Let's come back
Speaker 3: to what you were just saying, which is, talk to
Speaker 3: me about this idea of taking what we quote unquote
Speaker 3: think we have to do, which we actually don't in
Speaker 3: a lot of cases. Right, there's no law that requires
Speaker 3: we do certain things. Talk about reclaiming autonomy there and
Speaker 3: using that to give us some of the things that
Speaker 3: we need for flourishing, because I think this is a
Speaker 3: really key point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and oh I just love this study. When Leah
Speaker 1: was working with Helen Langer, the psychologist Harbor, they were
Speaker 1: looking for a group of people who do some very
Speaker 1: physically demanding work yet probably don't view their work as exercise.
Speaker 1: And they chose a group of people who take care
Speaker 1: of the hotel rooms right clean, and I'll do all
Speaker 1: that work. And it did an intervention and they did
Speaker 1: an assessment of all the physical activities they did, and
Speaker 1: then looked at the Surgeon General's report and it was
Speaker 1: very clear that these mostly women, almost all women, were
Speaker 1: easily surpassing the Surgeons generals recommended physical activity for every day.
Speaker 3: Every day, moving all day, all day.
Speaker 1: And yet they do not view their work as exercise.
Speaker 1: And so Langer and Crumb decided to work with these
Speaker 1: women and create a mindset intervention with one group that said,
Speaker 1: look at what you're doing here. You're lifting this and
Speaker 1: doing this, and they intervene to help them look at
Speaker 1: not just the work, what the physical activity they were doing,
Speaker 1: and lo and beho adding the mindset that their work
Speaker 1: isn't just work, it's also physical activity that's very healthy,
Speaker 1: change their physical biomarkers.
Speaker 3: And health that's crazy.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't because they went and got a gym
Speaker 1: membership or started eating differently. And there's lots of research
Speaker 1: on this now that if you change your mindset about
Speaker 1: what you're doing or what you're eating, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: ignoring the reality of what you're doing and trying to romanticize.
Speaker 1: It is simply adding layers of nuance to the reality
Speaker 1: that most of the time we're doing one thing that
Speaker 1: has ten or more different elements and we only look
Speaker 1: at it one way.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, Carrie and I in our previous conversation talked
Speaker 3: about this very idea, and I think it's a really
Speaker 3: important one, which is reality isn't just what actually occurs
Speaker 3: or what the fact are, nor is reality all what
Speaker 3: we think about reality. It's a co creation of those things.
Speaker 3: And to your point, every situation you can look at
Speaker 3: from multiple angles. And I talk about this a lot.
Speaker 3: Listeners to the show will have heard it, this idea
Speaker 3: of like when I realized at one point, I was like,
Speaker 3: I found myself saying to myself all the time, I
Speaker 3: have to do X. The example I often give is
Speaker 3: I have to take my son to soccer practice. I
Speaker 3: have to take him here, I have to take him there.
Speaker 3: And one day I went, wait a second, no, I don't.
Speaker 3: There's no law in the books that a father has
Speaker 3: to take his son to soccer practice. That's preposterous. So
Speaker 3: I'm doing it. Why am I doing it? Oh? I'm
Speaker 3: doing it because I care about his well being. I
Speaker 3: care about his happiness. I think playing team sports helps
Speaker 3: him develop. Whatever the things are. All of a sudden,
Speaker 3: the exact same activity has gone from something I have
Speaker 3: to do to something I'm doing out of a value
Speaker 3: you that I have. And you know, this is kind
Speaker 3: of what you're saying. When we take the right mindset
Speaker 3: about what we're doing, when we take the right mindset
Speaker 3: about what we do in our lives, our lives can
Speaker 3: look very, very different without anything changing. It's not to
Speaker 3: say that sometimes things don't need to change. They do,
Speaker 3: of course, and there's a lot of change that can
Speaker 3: happen by looking at things differently. And I love your
Speaker 3: five vitamins because they give them a lens we can
Speaker 3: look at. Can I take what I'm doing? Is there
Speaker 3: a way that it fits into a learning category or
Speaker 3: a connecting category, or a transcending category or a helping category,
Speaker 3: or is there a way to make this thing a
Speaker 3: little bit more playful? It gives us sort of almost
Speaker 3: to use the words or are just using five mindsets
Speaker 3: exactly that I might slot things into that suddenly give
Speaker 3: them a value they didn't have before.
Speaker 1: Love it, Love it. And this is when I talk
Speaker 1: to businesses in workplaces, I think of managers is also
Speaker 1: sort of co creators of this reality? Is well an opportunity, right,
Speaker 1: you don't have to change much but maybe a little,
Speaker 1: about the workplace to add these vitamins to people's lives.
Speaker 1: And it is a win win because, I mean, the
Speaker 1: evidence was very clear that languishing was costing businesses as much,
Speaker 1: if not more than depression was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 1: It was costing them a lot. Yeah, mistays of work
Speaker 1: and presenteeism is why they were there. But they weren't
Speaker 1: really there.
Speaker 3: And there's a cynical view of all that that has
Speaker 3: taken place a little bit that I understand and I
Speaker 3: also don't fully agree with. And that cynical view is
Speaker 3: that companies are investing in wellness only to serve their
Speaker 3: bottom line. And that may or may not be true.
Speaker 3: But the fact is, if you can bring wellness into
Speaker 3: where you spend most of your time as a worker,
Speaker 3: that benefits you. It doesn't matter what the underlying reason is.
Speaker 3: We spend so much time at work, we have to
Speaker 3: find a way to embody it with meaning and purpose
Speaker 3: and your five vitamins, right, because most of us don't
Speaker 3: have an option but to be there or something similar
Speaker 3: to it, right, We just don't right now. So I
Speaker 3: think this viewing all of this workplace wellness with cynicism.
Speaker 3: I understand you know, right, you don't want to use
Speaker 3: workplace wellness as just a way to convince you to
Speaker 3: spend more and more of your life at work. That's
Speaker 3: that's not it. But it can be used as to say,
Speaker 3: the time that I spend there, how do I make
Speaker 3: it more meaningful? And that benefits the employer and it
Speaker 3: benefits everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I played that game politically and scientifically. I mean
Speaker 1: it's very clear. I could brow out all the statistics
Speaker 1: of how and scare everyone who's listening to this that
Speaker 1: languishing is a pretty pump and cause of all cause
Speaker 1: mortality for females and males. Yeah, it's very clear, and
Speaker 1: there's good biological reasons for that that I talk about
Speaker 1: in the book. It's a very strong risk factor for
Speaker 1: a variety of mental illnesses depression, anxiety, even PTSD and
Speaker 1: frontline healthcare workers we found shortly or off during COVID,
Speaker 1: and I could go on and on. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: deeply genetic, you know, I mean it's all there. It's like, okay, now,
Speaker 1: the question is, you know, I'm not going to play
Speaker 1: this cynical game because I know in order to get
Speaker 1: places like the National Institute of Health interestedness. You have
Speaker 1: to show all those things. If it shortens lives, if
Speaker 1: it's jamic, it has biological biomarkers, it has neuroscientific substrates.
Speaker 1: It's all there now. It also addresses the bottom line
Speaker 1: of a very important one that nobody's paying attention to. Nobody,
Speaker 1: and we need to raise awareness because there's so many
Speaker 1: more people languishing who have mental illness, and the sheer
Speaker 1: amount of people eclipses and causes a lot more problems
Speaker 1: for the world economically, socially, educationally than mental illness. It
Speaker 1: eclipses it. Yeah, and if we want to deal with
Speaker 1: the burden of mental health problems along with mental illness,
Speaker 1: we're going to have to deal with this problem languishing.
Speaker 1: So it's a bottom line issue for public health, for medicine,
Speaker 1: for workplaces, and it is for you, dear listener, you
Speaker 1: and your family and yourself. It's a bottom line issue,
Speaker 1: and we ignore it to our peril because it's a problem.
Speaker 3: Given the genetic nature of it. For some of us,
Speaker 3: languishing is a big step up from the previous genetic generations.
Speaker 3: I'll take it now. I'm discussing.
Speaker 1: It's remarkable about.
Speaker 3: That mocking my ancestors. It's a joke.
Speaker 1: You know that genes that we inherit for flourishing or
Speaker 1: languishing operate more or less independently from the genes we
Speaker 1: inherit for mental illness. And again we're back to the
Speaker 1: wolf you feed because it's about epigenetics and environments, and
Speaker 1: we're feeding that wolf of illness, and we're trying to
Speaker 1: lower genetic risk when we're ignoring what resides over here
Speaker 1: in the parable, which is the genetic potential. We're not
Speaker 1: even there. But my point is we've shown this in
Speaker 1: our research that they operate independently, and the one that
Speaker 1: wins is the one that gets attention and gets fed,
Speaker 1: and we're not paying an attent at all to genetic
Speaker 1: potential for flourishing. Yeah, and that's my dream before I
Speaker 1: pass on to some other spiritual realm, that I see
Speaker 1: somebody who actually sees this from what it is. It's like,
Speaker 1: why aren't you feeding that wolf.
Speaker 3: Let's wrap up here because we're about the hour mark.
Speaker 3: I want to end on what you just said, which
Speaker 3: is where you've tied things back to the pair. I'd
Speaker 3: love if you could just take us out with what
Speaker 3: is one very basic way that an individual listening to
Speaker 3: this show could feed the wolf of flourishing. Let's end there,
Speaker 3: and then in the post show conversation, I want to
Speaker 3: explore a little bit of what you said about what
Speaker 3: we're not paying attention to. I think that's interesting, But
Speaker 3: I want to leave listeners with something that they can
Speaker 3: take away as a way of feeding the wolf of flourishing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, languishing is a normal response that can become problematic
Speaker 1: if we don't listen to it, because I call it
Speaker 1: the existential alarm clock. When you start to feel that
Speaker 1: creeping in, that emptiness, that numbness, that feeling of starting
Speaker 1: to die inside, it's telling you you've left behind something
Speaker 1: that's very good for you, that you need, that was
Speaker 1: feeding your flourishing. Now sometimes we have to do that,
Speaker 1: but don't ignore it for too long, because it is
Speaker 1: an alarm clock that if you keep hitting the existential
Speaker 1: snooze button, you will languish in a way that's pathological.
Speaker 1: It's very dangerous. So listen to it because it's telling
Speaker 1: you you are leaving behind the very things like that
Speaker 1: go into the vitamins and also go into the ingredients
Speaker 1: of flourish that feed your spirit wonderful.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Corey. Like I said, you and
Speaker 3: I are going to talk in the post show conversation
Speaker 3: and listeners if you'd like access to that where we're
Speaker 3: probably going to nerd out on some things. If you
Speaker 3: like that part of what we do, become a member
Speaker 3: of our community at when Youfeed dot net slash join
Speaker 3: and you can hear Corey and I nerd out on
Speaker 3: that stuff. And thanks Corey, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having you.
Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure.
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