Are You Languishing? Escape the Epidemic of Emptiness | Corey Keyes
Update: 2025-03-20
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Are you languishing - feeling that gnawing sense of emptiness despite checking all the society's boxes?
Renowned sociologist Corey Keyes, author of "Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down," reveals powerful practices to reignite your passion, purpose and human connections - the key ingredients to flourishing mental health. Discover an insightful path to feeling vibrantly alive.
You can find Corey at: Google Scholar | Episode Transcript
If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Daniel Kahneman about the way we make decisions.
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Transcript
00:00:00
"Human beings are like most living things in this world. We are created to feel emotion.
00:00:04
And whether we like it or not, whether it's good or bad,
00:00:07
at least when you feel emotion, you feel alive."
00:00:10
Our guest today, Corey Keyes, is a renowned sociologist and psychologist,
00:00:15
best known for his research on flourishing and languishing.
00:00:18
And his groundbreaking work, explored in his book "Languishing,"
00:00:22
had to feel alive again, in a world that wears this down.
00:00:26
When you're languishing, suddenly you stop doing, and you rest,
00:00:32
and suddenly you don't feel anything. And when you feel this way,
00:00:36
it's telling you you've left behind the good things that gave your life meaning.
00:00:41
"So the same languishing, like I think I kind of get it. How do I know if I have it?"
00:00:49
You can feel it when you've lost some of those things.
00:00:53
You're starting to feel like what was a fullness to your life is empty.
00:00:59
So I'd left to drop into that a little bit more.
00:01:01
"The risk of depression and anxiety among other mental disorders
00:01:05
is so much higher among those who are languishing and yet we're not taking it serious.
00:01:11
At all, we're not even measuring it in our public health system."
00:01:21
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I didn't know about depression, so that was a godsend because I think what happens to a lot of
00:03:52
people is they don't have a word for it and they can't describe it.
00:03:56
And so I think a lot of well-intentioned clinicians and psychiatrists will just lump it in with depression.
00:04:03
But what I was feeling then, and I still experience it personally, several on many days, is this
00:04:09
knowing sense of emptiness, like there's a huge void.
00:04:15
Literally, physically, there's this void in me.
00:04:19
And the desire is that I want to fill it up immediately and get rid of that feeling.
00:04:27
And so that sense of emptiness and that sense of a void being inside of me is what helped me understand.
00:04:36
I think that we were talking about something different from depression.
00:04:42
And especially from not only depression, but burnout as well.
00:04:47
Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
00:04:48
I know you write, it was more like I was on autopilot,
00:04:52
compelled to keep doing to throw myself at activity after activity, leaving little room for the
00:04:57
thoughts that rose up when I was alone with myself. And I have to imagine that a lot of people
00:05:03
listening to that and probably nodding along, thinking to themselves, "Oh, yeah, I felt that or
00:05:08
I'm feeling that or some version of that." But really not understanding what that means.
00:05:16
I had to describe it in a meaningful way.
00:05:19
Or whether even is there something wrong with this or is this just grown up life?
00:05:24
It's been with us. It's part of life, Jonathan.
00:05:29
Yes. And that's what I learned as I began to go down the historical road to understand
00:05:34
whether there was any equivalent in prior centuries. And it turns out, yes, I write about this
00:05:42
eighth deadly sin that did exist prior to the 12th century in Christianity.
00:05:48
And it was called Asidia. And Asidia, when it's described by these religious adherents in the monks,
00:05:55
particularly they were the desert monks as they were known back then. They were writing about this
00:06:00
feeling of having no feeling. That's the irony. We have to talk about it as a feeling. But really,
00:06:06
when you're languishing, suddenly you stop doing and you rest and suddenly you don't feel anything.
00:06:15
And that's the amazing thing. Human beings are like most living things in this world.
00:06:19
In this world we are created to feel emotion. And whether we like it or not, whether it's good or bad,
00:06:25
at least when you feel emotion, you feel alive because you're responding to the vicissitudes of life,
00:06:31
languishing back then was this stagnation and emptiness and feeling numb.
00:06:39
And it often led these religious adherents to stray from the path, which is not good if you are
00:06:49
you're seeking God in this life. And so it was considered a source of sin. And then
00:06:57
any got removed in the 12th century. I could tell you the exact Pope, Pope Gregory, the great,
00:07:04
but we don't know why. We don't know why. And I can only speculate that it didn't quite fit neatly in
00:07:10
the other deadly sins that we now know as the seven. So it's there. It's been with us and it will
00:07:19
always be with us because here's what the way I think of it. It's an existential wake-up call
00:07:24
or an alarm clock. When you feel this way, it's telling you you've left behind the good things that
00:07:32
gave your life meaning, direction, purpose, and all those good things that make life worth living.
00:07:38
So it's like an alarm clock that goes off when you started to do things that take you away
00:07:46
from those things that were giving your life purpose, belonging, contribution, and meaning.
00:07:51
And it's telling you it's like knocking on the door saying, wake up, you don't leave me behind too long
00:07:57
because if you stay there at this point of emptiness too long, as I say, it becomes pathological.
00:08:04
Previously, it's a normal response. Telling us, you need to go back to doing the things that
00:08:10
we're giving you meaning, or you need to stop devoting all your time to things that are taking
00:08:16
you away from those things that gave your life meaning. So I think what happens is that we hit the
00:08:22
snooze bus button on that existential alarm clock, much like we hit the snooze button when we say,
00:08:27
I want to get up at six o'clock in exercise and I go, I don't want to. And when we do that,
00:08:32
then it goes from a normal response to the loss of meaning to a pathological place where
00:08:39
lots of bad things start to happen as I detail in the book. It seems like you also, you describe,
00:08:45
this is actually straight out of I think it's some of the research that you did. I think you published
00:08:52
around 2002 where you were analyzing some data from 1995, like this data set of midlife experiences,
00:08:59
and kind of identified this spectrum from flourishing to moderate mental health, to languishing,
00:09:06
to depression. So it does seem like this is sort of like a state that falls within the broader
00:09:09
spectrum of mental health. Yes, the way I think of it is it's a state of being mentally unhealthy.
00:09:17
You don't necessarily end up a good and go from being mentally healthy to immediately, mentally ill.
00:09:23
You sort of, you can fall in this in-between category where you spend a lot of time being
00:09:30
mentally unhealthy. And as we know the equivalent is, we do a lot of physically unhealthy things that
00:09:36
don't immediately create disease and help physical illnesses. But if you persist,
00:09:44
don't get enough sleep, your diet isn't very good and you don't exercise and you smoke or you drink
00:09:50
too much alcohol for too long, eventually it creates, it goes from physical unhealthy to physical
00:09:57
illness. And that's the way to think of languishing. It's a place where you are mentally unhealthy.
00:10:02
And in and of itself, it's not very good for you to be there. But if you stay there too long,
00:10:09
you can begin to slide into what we now consider, you know, the mental disorders that we now are
00:10:17
taking far more serious. Yeah. So it's almost like a, um, not necessarily a leading indicator of where
00:10:24
you're heading, but a warning light to a certain extent of where you might head. Does that land?
00:10:29
I love the way you put that. That's exactly it's it or it's sort of a diversion of the wake-up call.
00:10:36
And it's telling us, okay, this can go one of two ways. It's telling you, you need to engage in
00:10:45
activities that restore, right? Restoration of good mental health, which I call flourishing,
00:10:51
or you are going to persist in doing the things that are leading you away from those things that
00:10:58
create flourishing because you think they're more important, right? They're part of your career,
00:11:03
they're part of a variety of other things that society has taught you. Those are more far more important.
00:11:09
And if you do that far too long, well, it'll go in a much worse direction. So it's a leading indicator
00:11:18
in the sense that we should be as a society or even argue public health needs to take this far more
00:11:23
serious because we need to respond to it before it leads to even worse problems. I know in that same
00:11:31
early data set, we learned that the risk of major depressive episode was two times more likely
00:11:39
among languishing than moderately mental healthy adults and nearly six times greater
00:11:44
among languishing than flourishing adults. So that is huge. That is quite the wake-up call.
00:11:53
You would have thought so. And I want to step back and correct something that I should have
00:11:57
thought about ahead of time. I use the word moderate mental health. And that sounds like it's okay,
00:12:04
that's good enough. What it really means is that you're languishing mildly to moderately.
00:12:10
If you're not flourishing, here's the thing, you're languishing to some degree. And even if you're
00:12:17
languishing in the moderate category, you have a much higher elevated risk for a variety of problems,
00:12:24
not the least of which is if you've never had depression, your risk has gone up pretty high
00:12:29
compared to people who are mentally healthy. That is flourishing. So even with those who are
00:12:35
moderately mentally healthy who are languishing moderately need to be, they need our attention
00:12:41
because it will continue to get worse. They will go from moderate and slide into what I call now
00:12:46
severe languishing. What I used to just call languishing is a severe form of languishing. And that's
00:12:53
where you get risk and odds ratios that go to five to six times of what you just talked about. That's
00:12:59
alarming risk. And yet here, here I am, 25 years later from publishing that data and publishing
00:13:08
more studies. And I'm not the only one showing this, that the risk of depression and anxiety among
00:13:13
other mental disorders is so much higher among those who are languishing. And yet we're not taking
00:13:20
it serious at all. We're not even measuring it in our public health systems.
00:13:24
I want to get more granular and understand this more and also understand how to really
00:13:29
sus out maybe how it's showing up in our lives and what we can potentially do about it. But also,
00:13:33
I want to zoom the lens out before we get there and explore, how do we get here? From a societal
00:13:41
level, you described that all the way back, there was this ascent that kind of functionally equated
00:13:46
to languishing then was, you know, like doesn't appear in the late attorney more. But the human
00:13:52
condition and really focusing sort of like on the moderate state of the human conditions.
00:13:56
What do you see as the really the significant contributors to this experience? And are you seeing this
00:14:07
become a more pervasive experience in people? I wish we had the historical data to answer that
00:14:14
question that is becoming more pervasive. I can say that during the pandemic, it was very clear
00:14:21
that languishing was among the most severe problems when it came to the mental health area.
00:14:31
For instance, I can cite you some data that in Australia where they were using my measure along
00:14:37
with measures of depression, anxiety and measures of stress and stress, anxiety and depression rose
00:14:45
roughly 10 to 13%. So, and stress was around 10. Anxiety was around 12. The depression was 13 to be
00:14:53
exact. Yeah, I'm surprised that she wasn't higher. No, but this was, now this was 2019 comparing 2019
00:15:01
to 2021. I'm pretty sure that was just within the first year. Right. And what happened was that
00:15:09
languishing increased by 24% within that same timeframe. And there's now data that I just saw
00:15:17
published within the last six months on teenagers within the first year and across 15 different
00:15:25
countries within 2021. Roughly 8 to 13% increase in languishing among females and males.
00:15:35
And even though males were doing slightly better male teenagers on average,
00:15:39
than the females, they had a slightly larger increase in languishing than the females. But it is very
00:15:50
responsive to changes in our life. And so, I suspect historically we could actually go through some
00:16:00
monumental changes that have really sort of happened in our lifetime. Not the least of which was
00:16:07
that a fundamental change in the basis of our economy. In our, in you and I, in our lifetime,
00:16:15
we saw our economy shift from a primary manufacturing to a primarily service-driven economy,
00:16:23
where in the latter, educational attainment and more of it is the critical if you're going to succeed.
00:16:31
And if you don't have access to good education and continued education and achieving higher levels
00:16:36
of education in this economy, you will end up in the low level end of service jobs where you have
00:16:42
to cobble together more than one job just to get through. But here's the thing, and I write about this
00:16:47
in the book, people who have higher education have more work than they've ever had. They're working
00:16:53
more hours than ever. And they're stressed out now in this new world, just as much as the people
00:16:59
who are stressed out because they're working fewer hours on average and have to put together two,
00:17:04
sometimes three jobs and can barely make ends meet. So they're stressed out because they're working so
00:17:09
much, but they can barely put food and health care in their household. And that's, that is just one
00:17:17
fundamental change that we don't seem to recognize in the previous economy,
00:17:21
getting a high school education and getting some sort of apprenticeship was enough to get some
00:17:27
pretty decent jobs in a manufacturing economy. Those are gone. Those are almost all gone. And the key
00:17:35
to doing well in this world today is full access to really good education for the very beginning
00:17:42
of life. And we were not addressing any of that right now in terms of inequalities.
00:17:46
So I mean so much in our life has changed. And then the last one has a sociological point out,
00:17:54
literally we have had the rug that comforted our feet from the coldness of the floor of life
00:18:02
pulled out from under us. Think of my parents had pensions. Now if you go online now, nobody's prepared
00:18:12
for retirement and lots of people are now having to say, I'm going to have to work until I'm 70 to,
00:18:18
you know, sometimes 80 that they're living in a world where they're told to save for retirement,
00:18:24
but they don't have enough money to even deal with today's debts, let alone save enough money
00:18:32
to retire. Those are just two ways in which I think we feel like the rules of the game have changed,
00:18:38
nobody asked us and now we're told to be resilient. And smile and get along and be thankful we have
00:18:46
work if right. Yeah, I mean, when you look at the bigger socioeconomic situation, it kind of
00:18:53
makes sense that so many people would be feeling this experience of languishing, especially if you
00:18:59
came up with a certain set of expectations, you know, and sort of like in the middle, it feels like
00:19:05
everything changed. But I was doing all the right things. You know what? I guess I was traveling
00:19:10
the path. I checked the boxes and there was a certain implicit promise. And now it feels as you
00:19:16
just had the rug's been pulled out, I wonder as you described that as we, you know, we move into what
00:19:25
I see as the next major evolution in contribution and work, which is AI, how that is going to shake
00:19:32
all of this to the core as well, because it seems like now actually the people who feel most exposed
00:19:41
and are questioning the promise the most are actually those who invested substantial years and
00:19:48
money in higher education. And they're seeing the work that is a part of like the knowledge work
00:19:54
generation, being the work that is potentially going to transition the quickest. We're such an
00:20:02
interesting window when it comes to this right now. I don't think anybody really knows how it's
00:20:05
going to shake it out. No. And you've you put your finger on a really important issue that I
00:20:12
think if we as a, if we want to succeed in whatever is to come next, I think, and if we want people
00:20:21
to still invest themselves into something of the knowledge economy, we have to be prepared to say
00:20:29
that there is something of use beyond just being a brain dump, right? That we're more, that you
00:20:37
can't just take all that we've created and thought and simply say, now you're smarter than us,
00:20:42
because you did a massive brain of all of humanity without saying, you know, we still need people
00:20:50
because of their amazing ability to be creative. Now, I'd like to think that there is going to be
00:20:59
a challenge posted to people that we can't rest on our laurels and maybe this will motivate a lot of
00:21:07
us to really be motivated to be as creative and thoughtful and as useful in the way human beings
00:21:18
can be. And to have a really deep conversation, are we really necessary? And I'd, I know the answer to
00:21:26
that is yes, but we're now going to be challenged. What's going to be the next great thing that we as
00:21:32
human beings can do that machines will not do? And I'd love to hear what people think. Let's unleash that
00:21:42
because we have been a pretty amazing, we respond when things get really tough. And I'd like to believe
00:21:50
it will get tough and we're going to respond and say, yeah, but there's so much more elect in humanity.
00:21:55
We haven't begun to scratch the surface. You wait. Yeah, I'm right there with you and I feel like
00:22:01
moments like these can be challenging in maybe the next five years or so, but also it pushes you
00:22:06
into the existential questions that so often we just kind of push to the side and we put our heads
00:22:11
down, we do the work, you know, like we push through, we strive for what are the, you know, the cultural
00:22:16
expectations of, you know, like, quote, success are for us. And we just kind of assume this is it rather than
00:22:21
saying, but what is this? You know, like, and what is our, like, what is our role? Like, how do we take the
00:22:27
seat and, you know, like the culture of humanity and just individually, like, what does it mean to me?
00:22:32
Like, what am I, how do I contribute in a way that makes me feel alive? And I think it's forcing a
00:22:37
lot of people who've been able to ignore those questions to actually return to them. And of course,
00:22:45
that's going to be some hard thinking. But my hope and my senses on the other side of that that
00:22:51
we really start to to examine how we show up in the world and don't in new ways that allow us to
00:22:58
to not just continue to thrive and flourish, but to feel better in the moment, you know, along the way.
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00:26:24
I feel like we're emerging out of the generation of happiness, not that we're leaving happiness behind,
00:26:31
but there's been so much literature and so many popular books and so many conversations and so
00:26:36
many talks and videos about pursuing happiness. Not that happiness is a bad thing, but you know,
00:26:44
you sort of say like, is that really the thing that we should be focusing on here?
00:26:50
Yeah, and the father of capitalism, that's what he's considered. Adam Smith wrote about this.
00:26:55
It's a remarkable tone when he and he uses this word, it's a deception.
00:27:02
And I don't think economists who even who talk about this really do justice to saying to getting
00:27:09
at what Smith was talking about, because what he was really talking about before psychologist
00:27:14
came along and studied the hedonic treadmill was that's exactly what putting happiness
00:27:20
in the material pursuits of things does to us. You can never ever have enough because we respond
00:27:29
to change. We adapt to the way things who, when we have a change in our life and in improvement,
00:27:36
we adapt to it. We get used to it. Nothing wrong with that. That's the nature of it. So we will want
00:27:43
more of what felt good. But he steady goes on in the theory of moral sentiments to talk about,
00:27:50
we need something besides the pursuit of material goods to correct that deception, which is
00:27:58
when you look at every spiritual tradition. Let's take Buddhism, for example, which we deconstructed
00:28:04
into just mindfulness. There's the a full path, right? Yoga, every yoga tradition, I'm a
00:28:12
person who really loves yoga. It's not enough just to go on the mat and do poses. That's what I call
00:28:19
the sun-based camp for focusing on what you need to do to be a better kind of person in this world.
00:28:27
The ethical stuff. That's what I think missing in this conversation. While we talk about it,
00:28:37
it seems like humanity has a really hard time getting their hands around
00:28:43
religion and spiritual traditions. What should we keep and what should we throw up?
00:28:51
Right now we want to throw out a baby with the bathwater. Yet there's something about the fact that
00:28:58
human beings need to study and think about and be mentored and encouraged to work on their character.
00:29:10
Right? To become better at doing the things that human beings are meant to be doing, which is to
00:29:19
help each other, to live for something beyond yourself, right? And so I think that's what we're
00:29:26
missing. It's not like I'm going to prescribe religion for everyone, but I think we need to stop and think.
00:29:33
It is leaving behind the sacred stuff that we've kind of are uncomfortable with and not putting
00:29:44
something in its place. It's going to leave us languishing in this world and without answers to
00:29:53
those existential questions. Yeah, that's such an important notion. I was talking to a dear friend
00:29:59
of mine who's a Buddhist teacher. She's in lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, she's studying teaching
00:30:06
30 years now. And we've had a similar conversation. As you described so often, the meditation,
00:30:12
mindfulness has been kind of sanitized and just dropped as this stand-alone solo practice.
00:30:17
Now there's nothing wrong with doing that practice. It's research. It has some really powerful
00:30:22
benefits. But when you take it out of the bigger basket of ethical considerations and thoughts and
00:30:30
ideas and explorations, we just lose so much. It's like as you described in yoga, you know, like we,
00:30:36
so many people come to yoga for the posture of the asana, right? Not realizing that part of,
00:30:41
you know, that's really the traditional eightfold path of yoga is what they're also, you know,
00:30:46
like the Yamas and the Niyamas, the ethical considerations, like, you know, like what,
00:30:50
how we show up and don't show up, you know, like they're the outer limbs that move us towards,
00:30:54
you know, like focusing and samadhi, the experience of unification and that this was that core of
00:31:00
just the physical part of it, that was just intended to get you ready. Like so you could actually,
00:31:05
you know, like sit long enough and be comfortable to explore the other things. And again,
00:31:10
those pieces have standalone value. They're good. But when we strip all the other stuff out,
00:31:16
they're not enough. No, and there's some research that shows us. And I love the way you've described
00:31:21
this because I think the other part of the ethical path and why we need to quiet the mind and the
00:31:29
body before we can really work on those things is because if we can become non-reactive to the things
00:31:37
that have nothing to do with us personally, then we can direct our attention
00:31:43
on ourselves and our own weaknesses, our own shortcomings, our own sins and vulnerabilities
00:31:53
and not be overwhelmed by them and understand that, you know, that took in pass if I work on them.
00:32:02
So to me, the quiet mind is about to become a better person so that you become a better person in the
00:32:11
world. And I've always said, and I said this in the book, if you want to flourish, you can't just
00:32:19
demand these things to come to you. You have to give them as well. Like if you want a sense of
00:32:26
belonging, which is one of the eleven indicators of functioning well in this life, a sense of social
00:32:33
belonging or integration. I challenge you, when was the last time you welcomed anybody into your
00:32:40
own community or circle and said, you belong here, I want you here, you're a part of my community,
00:32:49
especially people who might not think and look like you. So if you want a sense of belonging and you
00:32:54
want to be welcomed, the question is, start with yourself. How welcoming and are you and do you
00:33:00
invite others in? It's an amazing thing that we seem to want to throw that away and we think the
00:33:08
world needs to give us all these things. Well, they're going to come if you give them as well.
00:33:16
So I'm like, I have to live that lesson myself. I don't say this in the preacher way. I have to
00:33:24
learn those lessons. And I have to work on every day. I think we all do like nobody gets
00:33:30
stopped out of this. We're all stumbling forward in our own unique ways. What I'd like to do is
00:33:40
narrow us or focus a little bit. I think it's been really interesting to look at the macro picture here
00:33:44
and the broader notions, but no doubt somebody's going to be listening to this watching it. And in
00:33:51
their mind, one of the big questions is going to be, okay, so the thing languishing. I think I kind of
00:33:55
get it. But what does it really look like on a day-to-day basis? And how do I know if I have it?
00:34:05
So I'd love to drop into that a little bit more. Yeah, there. Yeah, this gets me to the
00:34:12
some of the questions that are used in what my measure in the tool. I call it the mental health
00:34:20
continuum. And it's there's a short form because, you know, as we scientists, we start out trying
00:34:27
to be as inclusive as possible. And there used to be 40 questions we would ask. And I'd narrow it
00:34:35
down to 14 at least. And maybe in the future, we can narrow it down a little more. But those 14
00:34:42
questions get at three kinds of well-being. And the first is what we talk when I call it emotional
00:34:49
well-being, which is that happiness tradition. And I ask people, you know, how often in the past two
00:34:55
weeks or past month, did you feel either happy, satisfied with your life, or interested in life?
00:35:02
And you have to have one out of those three, at least one of the three, feeling good stuff.
00:35:11
Every day or almost every day, to begin to meet the criteria for what I call flourishing or to be
00:35:17
mentally healthy. But then there are 11 other questions, five of which get at what I call social
00:35:23
well-being. We ask, I ask you, often in the past two weeks, did you feel that the things you do
00:35:28
contribute anything of worth or value to your community or to your society? How often in the last
00:35:36
two weeks did you feel that you belonged to a community? And I give some examples. How often in the
00:35:42
last two weeks were you able to make sense of what's going on in the world around you? All right,
00:35:47
those are just three out of the five. And then there's six psychological well-being. How often did you
00:35:52
did you like most parts of your personality? How which is self-acceptance? How often in the last
00:35:58
week did you feel that your life had direction or meaning, which we call purpose? And the third
00:36:03
example I'll give you out of psychological well-being is how often in the last week did you feel
00:36:07
confident to think and express your own ideas and opinions? Right? So to flourish, it's not enough
00:36:14
to feel good every day or almost every day. You have to have at least six out of the 11
00:36:20
signs of functioning well, right? The five social well-being and six psychological or representations
00:36:26
of that you're functioning well in this life. So you have to have at least six out of those of the
00:36:32
11 every day or almost every day combined with at least one of the feeling good. And so I like to think
00:36:40
of flourishing as you can put together, right? If you think of all the dip various combinations,
00:36:47
right? You only have to have seven out of the 14 one out of the feeling good. There's lots of
00:36:52
different ways human beings find a way to flourish. Some might prioritize purpose, some might prioritize
00:37:00
personal personal growth and self acceptance, right? And so I love that notion that there's a
00:37:08
variety of different ways people can flourish and that you only need seven out of the 14.
00:37:13
When people sometimes hear the word, they jump right to the conclusion that I've given them
00:37:19
another standard for perfectionism. No, you don't have to be good at all of them in order to flourish.
00:37:28
It's just half seven out of the 14. But it's got to be that combination, Jonathan, it has to be
00:37:36
that you feel good about a life in which your life has those examples of functioning well. It has
00:37:45
purpose. It has belonging. It has to do your contributing things to your community. It's that you're
00:37:50
accepting of others, you're accepting of yourself. You exercise some confidence and you participate
00:37:56
in the common good with giving your opinions. So it's a kind of feeling good that's premised on
00:38:03
something that's I would consider has substance. I mean, what's interesting also is tell me what the
00:38:10
three different conditions were for the first question. Again, the three different states it was
00:38:14
interested. Yeah, interested in life, satisfied with life, or happy. Okay. So what's interesting to me is
00:38:22
you don't have to check all three of those boxes. You know, it's if you can say yes to one,
00:38:28
which means you can be going through an experience or maybe a season where happiness feels really
00:38:37
hard to access. And we've all been there and we all will be there again. Maybe you're struggling
00:38:42
with the laws. Maybe there's challenge at work, whatever it is. And you're saying that doesn't opt
00:38:50
you out of the possibility of flourishing just because you can still like you can still say like
00:38:58
I'm not happy right now. You know, like there's things are really hard, but I'm actually interested.
00:39:05
There's things that are happening around me and within me that are interesting to me. And I get
00:39:11
to check that box. And then you're like, I want to look at some of the other ones also, but like
00:39:16
it's not about you can flourish, you can sort of like find your way out of or not be in the space
00:39:23
of languishing. Even if in the moment, you're not necessarily happy, which is interesting to me.
00:39:28
Yeah. I love that you pointed that out because you know, there are times in our life. And I was there
00:39:34
when I was in college sometimes and when I was getting my graduate degrees and when I was a
00:39:40
professor, there were times in my life where I really had to buckle down and work on some things and
00:39:47
get better as a scholar, as a teacher, as a colleague. And that was hard. I did feel particularly good,
00:39:57
but I was working on something that mattered felt worthwhile. It was engaging and it was interesting
00:40:04
to me. I never lost interest in life, but it didn't always feel good. But when I was working on things
00:40:13
that engaged myself and my interest, that was a leading indicator that I was moving in a really good
00:40:24
direction. And so I love that point. It doesn't have to always feel like off the charts, like happiness
00:40:32
or satisfaction. But are the things you're doing in your life? Do they engage what you would say
00:40:38
your interest? Because those things pull you forward into life, not away from life.
00:40:45
Yeah. And so, I mean, not so often, but at times those interests, you know, more regularly invested
00:40:53
in can grow in two passions. You know, they can grow into something that really becomes more of a
00:40:58
fire within you. I love that notion. I think I have a better central what languishing is now. And
00:41:06
also, I think that sort of checklist, you know, the fundamental assessment of 14 different things
00:41:11
is really useful for somebody to do it. Even if you're not going to formally fill something out,
00:41:17
to just kind of glance through and say, huh, you're like, how am I doing according to this? To just
00:41:22
get a sense for, you know, what might be going on? Part of my curiosity is, and this is something
00:41:27
you write about as well, is also what languishing isn't. You know, you reference things like burnout
00:41:34
earlier. We talked about, you know, or who think about depression, anxiety, burnouts, you know,
00:41:41
stress overwhelmed. What's the relationship there? Because my sense is that languishing is not those
00:41:48
things. No. And it's not to say that they don't have a connection, but you're right. And just going
00:41:56
through a few of the questions that I use to measure flourishing, you write all of those questions
00:42:02
are about the presence of good things. Interest, happiness, satisfaction, a sense of purpose,
00:42:08
a sense of belonging, your sense of contribution, acceptance of other people, a sense that you can
00:42:14
make sense of out of the world, you're confident, languishing is the loss of that good stuff. And that's
00:42:20
why I said it's a one-learn call because suddenly you can feel it when you've lost some of those things.
00:42:26
You're starting to feel like what was a fullness to your life is empty. It's disappearing.
00:42:35
And languishing is the absence of those good things, purpose, belonging, contribution, confidence,
00:42:41
autonomy, growth, all of those things. Along with, you're suddenly, you're not feeling
00:42:47
interested in life, not satisfied much, not happy. Depression is all about the presence of negative
00:42:55
things, negative emotions and malfunctioning, right? Psychiatrist measure it as the presence of
00:43:03
either sadness or a loss of pleasure in the things that you used to bring you pleasure. That's kind of
00:43:10
close to interest, but you know, and then there's seven signs of malfunctioning. Things like you're
00:43:17
sleeping more or less than you used to. You're eating more or you're eating less than you used to.
00:43:22
You're thinking about not wanting to live much more or even ending your life when you never
00:43:27
thought about that before. So when you're not depressed, it means you don't have any of those negative
00:43:35
symptoms or you don't have enough of them. But the absence of depression doesn't mean. Suddenly,
00:43:43
you have all those good things, right? Purpose, belonging. You can land right in between. There's
00:43:49
nothing bad. There's nothing good. And that's why I called it and Adam used this phrase, it's the
00:43:57
middle child. It's the middle child way between depression and flourishing or good mental health.
00:44:06
Now, burnout is an interesting one because that's when we feel completely exhausted from
00:44:12
having gone through a period in life where we have had a lot of demands and challenges.
00:44:20
And that happens for people of all walks of life. Even the high-end professionals with high
00:44:30
educational degrees, right? The difference is that a lot of people who have a lot of high
00:44:36
challenges with really good jobs and good education have a lot more discretion and can manage those
00:44:43
high challenges. And they have choice over how and when. Sometimes they do those things compared to
00:44:51
people with lower prestige or lower socioeconomic standing and jobs where they don't have choice or
00:44:58
discretion over anything that has to do with their work. So burnout is about when you meet a lot of
00:45:05
challenges with very little personal discretion or choice or support. Now, I love the fact that,
00:45:15
you know, there's lots of studies that have come out and I write about many of them and that I like
00:45:22
the user word. People can do hard as long as they have support and camaraderie and choice and
00:45:31
discretion. And there's also lots of data now showing that when people are flourishing, they can
00:45:37
handle a lot more challenge. So burnout is what happens when we meet challenge without good mental
00:45:45
health, when we're languishing and when we don't have much support or very little control over our
00:45:54
life at a very little discretion over when things happen and how they happen. And so I like to think
00:46:02
if, you know, burnout can land you in languishing, but languishing can also be a source of burnout. You
00:46:08
can feel completely without control and without any sense of choice over your life. And so you just
00:46:18
are dealing with all of this adversity without any sense of agency,
00:46:24
overhandling it and how to handle it. And so it gets to people when they have very little control
00:46:32
or choice or discretion over how they meet challenge. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And the whole
00:46:39
effort to describe then the past, maybe as in literature as a locus of control, like when we feel like
00:46:43
we don't have the ability to both have enough control over the means to actually achieve something
00:46:50
or the outcome that we're responsible for delivering on, it's a brutal effect. And especially if you're
00:46:57
just kind of like heads down grinding towards it, but you feel like you judge that you don't have what
00:47:02
you need to either opt out of it or to do what's being asked of you and you just go and go and go until
00:47:08
there's nothing left to grind. I have been there. I pretty much anybody I know has been there. Sometimes
00:47:15
at my own hand, and I have to pull out naturally asking like, what am I doing here? But it's really
00:47:22
interesting that distinguishing you made as well between languishing and conditions like depression
00:47:27
where languishing is more like the absence of the feeling of empty of all these things. And depression
00:47:32
is the presence of all these other things that really become heavy for us. It's an interesting
00:47:39
way to think about teasing out what maybe is going on internally. And by the way for anyone listening
00:47:44
or watching, we are not offering mental health advice here. You know, we're not your therapist. We're
00:47:53
not like this is these are ideas that I think are just really interesting and valuable. And if you
00:47:58
feel like you're feeling any of these things and a level where it's really intruding into me for
00:48:02
when your life, please, please reach out to other people who are qualified to help you on an individual
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When you sort of think about then looking forward, okay, so you know, we've developed this tool to
00:51:06
help identify and the experience of languishing the 14 point questionnaire that you walk through.
00:51:12
There's also sort of like a bit of a new flourishing framework that you offer. Now I'm familiar
00:51:19
with frameworks like Perma or Perma V or Perma Plus 4, which I think is the Claremonts or
00:51:25
like modification of that that has come out of the world a positive cycle for the last 30 years or so.
00:51:30
How do you look differently? Like when you look at that, do you have an adaptation or
00:51:39
such a modification of that model when we think about, okay, so this is what really needs to be present
00:51:45
to fully be in flourishing? My work proceeded by over a decade, all those other models that came out
00:51:52
I Perma and others and later and they're they all share in common the roots of the well-being literature
00:52:03
that when I sat down to look at them, I was bringing together what was two very separate research
00:52:09
traditions in psychology. There was a whole set one tradition that focused all on the hedonic stuff.
00:52:16
They're feeling good and they're happy in a satisfaction and they called that subjective well-being.
00:52:21
And then I ended up working at Wisconsin when I was getting my PhD in sociology with Carol Riff,
00:52:27
who was championing suddenly this other tradition of well-being that came out of Aristotelian
00:52:34
philosophy which was about human excellence and she created those six dimensions of psychological
00:52:40
well-being and she was arguing in her classic article said happiness is not everything, right? That's
00:52:47
the type, there's more to it, to this well-being stuff. And I remember in our first meetings and I
00:52:55
said, well, you know, we can test this empirically. Do these two traditions sort of, are they, do they
00:53:02
really sort of operate independently, but need to be brought together empirically? And it turns out,
00:53:08
yeah, we did research on it, that there's lots of people in the world who are feeling good, but not,
00:53:13
they don't have very high psychological well-being. And there's a whole bunch of people who are
00:53:18
doing well on the well psychological well-being, but they're not feeling all that happy or sad
00:53:23
display. And then there's a whole group where they brought it together. They feel good about life where
00:53:28
their life also has high levels of psychological well-being. That was the beginning of what I saw
00:53:34
the opportunity to build a model of mental health because the way psychiatrists deal with mental
00:53:42
illness is to look at anhidonia, that's depression, right, combined with malfunctioning. And what,
00:53:51
when I finally started to work with Carol Riff, I realized the literature that offered us
00:53:57
this opportunity to look at feeling good and functioning well. And my aha moment was, you know what,
00:54:04
when you put those together, that's mental health. And so that's always been my framework. When I
00:54:12
use the word flourishing, I'm talking about mental health, not something that anyone else is talking
00:54:18
about. I offered a diagnosis, nobody else offers a diagnosis. So to me, it's not enough to just create
00:54:26
measures of flourishing without providing some basis in either engaging what came before you,
00:54:33
that somehow you're adding to mental health or you're saying something different from what I
00:54:39
first proposed. So I think there's some unnecessary confusion that was created in the field because
00:54:45
there's now all these people measuring flourishing, but they don't mean the same thing.
00:54:50
I've been very clear. I'm measuring mental health and its absence from the get go. And I will not change,
00:54:58
because I think the feeling good and the functioning is just like turning depression on its head,
00:55:03
and we need to do that. Because we need to focus on mental health and its absence
00:55:09
if to prevent the very things that we're not doing here to job fixing, which is mental disorders.
00:55:17
So yeah, I'm happy that people are interested in this field, but I'm not happy because
00:55:22
they never really bothered to offer any distinction from what I met by flourishing. And I published
00:55:30
this 10 to 12 years before anyone else, and I'm like, well, if I had to do what you were doing,
00:55:36
I would be asked to say, well, what do I mean by flourishing and how am I different from what came
00:55:42
before me? And so, you know, it's just confusing to the world right now. And I think, I'm glad I think
00:55:50
we'll sort this out, but I'm not going to change because I think it's clear. I'm talking about
00:55:57
mental health and its absence. I don't know what everyone else is talking about when they're talking
00:56:01
about flourishing. Yeah, it is interesting how everyone puts their own stamp and their own model
00:56:05
and their own naming convention. And then you have to figure out like, are we all talking about
00:56:10
the same state? Or are we talking about like something slightly to the left, something slightly to the
00:56:15
right? So if we shift gears a bit into some of the things that we might think about saying yes to,
00:56:22
you know, like to help us move from languishing to flourishing. One of the things that you explore
00:56:27
that I was really interested in is this notion of the importance of self-narratives, the stories
00:56:32
that we tell ourselves about who we are and how that shapes how we feel, how we move through life,
00:56:40
talk to me a bit more about this. Yeah, I love that we start there because I think that's all based on
00:56:48
this, what makes human beings feel alive isn't just about feeling an emotion, that's part of it.
00:56:55
But the fact that we like most living things were planted here to grow and we grow when we learn.
00:57:03
And when we're learning something we want to learn and grow on, you see it. People act like they're
00:57:10
fully alive. You use the word passion. We see passion coming out of them. And it's not all great
00:57:17
because it's hard sometimes to learn and to grow. But I think that narrative of the ability to always
00:57:26
learn the ability that means we can always change is that I will tell you, I just came back from one
00:57:35
of my regular meetings that I go to almost every day, my AA meeting. Now, in the rooms of alcoholics
00:57:43
anonymous, there are hundreds and thousands of stories of redemption. Redemption doesn't happen
00:57:50
without the ability to change your narrative from what Dan McCattam's called contaminated in a
00:57:57
bottom to the fact that I can get through this, not only can I get through this, I can learn, I can
00:58:02
grow and that I can continue that throughout my life. So hitting a bottom doesn't mean the end.
00:58:12
Sometimes for many people it's the beginning of a redemption story and redemption only happens
00:58:18
because we're always capable of learning and growing and changing and becoming better.
00:58:23
And if we, that wasn't true, you know, I don't know why we would, why keep doing it? Why not
00:58:30
end your life, really? Once you failed, if you don't have the story to change the ability to change
00:58:36
your own narrative, which happens because you have the ability to learn and grow, I don't know why
00:58:42
we would keep at it. I guess that's why some people hit that point and they ask that very question
00:58:47
because they don't have the ability in that moment to see a possibility that is to see them
00:58:53
living a story that is different than what they're currently feeling, which often I think is
00:58:59
when other people can be so helpful in this equation, you know, and that's kind of one of the
00:59:06
next things that you reference, which is this notion of the importance of those warm and trusting
00:59:11
relationships. That's the perfect segue because I mean, none of us would have, would it ever have
00:59:18
believed that we could, the story of alcoholism can be transformed into sobriety and recovery.
00:59:24
If we didn't see, in enter those rooms and see other people having worked together and helped
00:59:32
each other and using sayings like the following, I'm going to love you till you learn to love yourself
00:59:39
again. Can we do that and they believe it and we do that for each other and we wouldn't do, we
00:59:45
couldn't change that narrative of shame due to an addiction, into a story of recovery where we could
00:59:55
help others without others having comfy for us and wanting to share all the gifts that they've been
01:00:02
given. I just think that's an amazing language in this story and I, you know, I'm not being
01:00:09
anonymous here now because I wanted, you know, I, I simply am one of many in different ways who have,
01:00:17
I found a way out of something that I thought was impossible and I did it because I had warm,
01:00:22
trusting relationships and I had a place where I belonged and I had a place where I could contribute.
01:00:30
Those are three questions I ask that are part of my inventory of flourishing and languishing and
01:00:37
those are three qualities of connection that we need in our lives in order to flourish. A place
01:00:43
where I belong and a place where I can contribute, you know, and a place where there's warmth and there's
01:00:52
trust. Yeah, I mean, so powerful. And I guess part of the challenge here also is that at the moments
01:01:01
where we probably need that most, we often find ourselves having the greatest amount of trouble.
01:01:09
Not, I don't want to say finding it because I want to say seeing it because often it is there,
01:01:16
but there's something about the state that we're in that doesn't allow us to see the fact that
01:01:21
this is actually available to us in the here and now. Yeah, because we don't feel we deserve it
01:01:26
anymore. We've gotten the message because of the pain that we're, it's usually some form of pain
01:01:34
that we're dealing with. It has to do with some form of vulnerability in us that hurts so much
01:01:42
that when people touch it and trigger it, we react and we hurt other people. And then if you add
01:01:51
addictions on top of that, we really do make ourselves hard to be loved because we want to disappear.
01:01:57
And so we get, we get to that place where when people do extend warmth, trust a sense that you
01:02:05
belong here, we can't see ourselves as worthy of it. And so that's why the message that I'm going to
01:02:13
love you because you're worthy of loving belonging until you get in and learn, relearn that.
01:02:20
So we others have to believe that we're worthy of it before we can even see it.
01:02:27
Yeah, I think probably everybody has felt that at some point. Oh gosh. Yeah, I think we have.
01:02:33
You know, which actually brings us an interesting way to one of the other ideas.
01:02:39
It's this idea of transcending, but it's not transcendence in the way that I think a lot of people
01:02:44
think about it. Like it's not sort of transcending the human condition or like being enlightened or
01:02:49
it's, my understanding is it's more this idea that like, there can be a lot of twists and turns
01:02:54
in your life. And it's the capacity and tell me from getting this right to to know that, you know,
01:03:02
like there will be adversity and challenges that drop and that we have within ourselves.
01:03:07
Like some capacity to actually find a way through. Yes. And I talk about all these
01:03:14
forms of religious practice and spiritual practice as rehearsal. I tried to bring all that stuff.
01:03:24
I hated using the word transcendence because I, oh, but it's really, what we're really trying to
01:03:30
transcend is our ego and our reactivity because when we get beyond thinking only of ourselves and
01:03:39
when we can respond rather than react, there's an a better versions of us show up. And every time that
01:03:48
better version shows up when somebody has done something to us that's pissed us off or has heard
01:03:53
our feelings or some form of adversity has visited me, I can slow it down and start to
01:04:00
realize, I want to respond to this out of what I, what are my deeply held values, what I really care
01:04:07
about rather than react, which usually makes it worse. And then I leave the situation high off
01:04:14
and feel kind of ashamed that I didn't act like a better version of myself. So it's sort of like
01:04:21
the way we all rehearse before we have to get on stage. Right. When we feel other eyes looking at
01:04:29
us and they're judging us and it gets stressful, rather than let it overwhelm us. If we rehearse
01:04:38
enough ahead of time using these spiritual and religious tools, we can meet adversity
01:04:45
with, in move beyond our ego, our ego-tistical and reactive self and respond to it.
01:04:54
Which usually is a better way. It doesn't mean you have to be warm, fuzzy and loving just because
01:05:02
somebody just insulted you, but you can stand up for yourself without denigrating them.
01:05:08
Right. I can say, you don't ever write to hurt my feelings and I don't hurt. Don't do that again,
01:05:16
please. Thank you. Goodbye. And that might be enough. You'll be proud of yourself. You didn't
01:05:22
make that worse and you probably made that person think. I love that. Where I could have said
01:05:27
a UMF, or dot, dot, dot, dot, right, and do this and then, oh yeah, that made things better, didn't it?
01:05:34
Right. For a hot second. And it's like, then they're the seconds they come after and you're like,
01:05:44
boy, I'm not. And that's exactly why I call it. It's all about rehearsal. It's funny as you're describing
01:05:52
that. I have an automatic signature on my emails. It just gets dropped into every email and the
01:05:58
language is with a whole lot of loving gratitude. And there are times where I'm having an email
01:06:05
exchange, which may be a little bit adversarial or a little bit heated or I don't have good feelings
01:06:10
for this person. And I like, I say what I want to say and I try and say it in a way that's direct
01:06:15
and respectful and kind if that's available to me. And then I stand down and I see that, you know,
01:06:19
that signature line has been placed in the email just automatically because that's my standard
01:06:23
signature. And I don't feel that, you know, I don't feel a whole lot of loving gratitude towards
01:06:28
this person in the moment. And there have been a few times where I'm like, do I delete this now? I
01:06:33
just put, you know, like regards. And on occasion, I do, but more often than not, if that happens,
01:06:40
I leave it there. And the reason I leave it there is because it's aspirational for me. You know,
01:06:45
like, I want that to serve as a reminder to me that this is how I want to try and I want to try
01:06:50
and find a way to feel this way, even in moments like this. And this is more of a reminder to me
01:06:56
to try and step into this relationship, this exchange with a particular intention.
01:07:02
So it's a little tiny, innocuous thing, but it's been interesting how it's caught me sometimes.
01:07:09
And this momentary reminder of how I want to be in relation with other people.
01:07:13
I love that honesty because we all know that. And human beings need to know what's expected
01:07:21
of them normatively. There's that's a deep sociological tradition in my field where we learn
01:07:29
very early on from Emile Durkheim that without clear norms in a society, human beings, the rails come
01:07:36
off. And we see that right now. We need guidance. We need standards of excellence. We need constant
01:07:44
reminders that we're working towards this not alone, but for something bigger than ourselves,
01:07:50
a place called a community, a society, which doesn't work unless we are aspirational.
01:07:59
And I'll constantly be doing the little work that you just taught, that's big work actually.
01:08:03
Even the most misunderstood philosopher in the well-being literature, Epicurus said,
01:08:10
we need constant reminders of the things that really matter that are good for us. And usually
01:08:18
that is what you're talking about. I need to be reminded I could be a better version of myself.
01:08:23
Yeah. I love Durkheim's works. His concept of collective effervescence is just we can come together as
01:08:32
a collective and just feel this just stunning feeling of, you know, it's almost like non-duality,
01:08:38
like brought into the modern age. Oh, you just, I saw a picture. I didn't know the Dodgers one.
01:08:45
Cheers. Last night, look at the pictures. Those people collectively had that effervescence.
01:08:55
They felt the belonging to their setty city. They felt the belonging to each other.
01:08:59
They felt part of something bigger than themselves. And that's when sports, like, does what religion,
01:09:07
according to Durkheim, was doing for us. It gave us a symbol of something that represented society
01:09:14
that was good. And we attached to it and we realized we're in this together. We're a team.
01:09:20
You, throughout this conversation, you've referenced the notion of purpose a number of times.
01:09:26
And I think this is probably something that most a lot of people probably connect with. And
01:09:30
this notion of purpose and also as an interesting way to help us navigate out of languishing.
01:09:37
But I think the sort of teased out nuance here, at least in my reading, is this notion of
01:09:44
we're not talking about one big unifying capital P life purpose, which I think a lot of people
01:09:50
are stymied by. They feel rejected by it. I don't have it. I can't find it. Therefore,
01:09:54
I can't ever feel the way I want to feel. I want to live the way I want to live. It's much more about
01:09:58
just having a sense of purpose in everyday life and every activity is everyday interactions,
01:10:03
which pretty much everyone does have some level of access to.
01:10:08
Yeah, I talk about how I think I sometimes, and I did this, we're very good at we humans,
01:10:15
at complicating things. And purpose is really about wanting to help something or someone
01:10:24
in this world. Or think of it this way. In your own little way, in your own little part of the
01:10:30
universe, you want to leave the world as good or even better than what you found it. And normally,
01:10:38
what's good about helping or taking it up to the level of purpose? When I say purpose, I'm saying,
01:10:43
you've chosen to devote a part of your life to helping something that has no direct value to you,
01:10:53
but you care about it. And you want to help somebody else or something else be better,
01:11:00
where you want to address some form of suffering or injustice in the world. There's all kinds of
01:11:06
ways. But I think what happens is we don't think it's a purpose unless it's grandiose. And I don't believe
01:11:13
that's true. You could be leading an amazing purpose quietly in a small community of 100 people.
01:11:22
Right there. They're all right. And the sad part of it is, and here I am coming into you from
01:11:32
North Carolina, where just 100 miles down the road, they were devastated by Helene. And sometimes it takes
01:11:40
enormous disasters like that for people to be reminded that, you know, I can be as useful right here
01:11:48
in my community because I have to be. And we have to do this together. And so you see an enormous
01:11:55
outpouring of people getting involved in doing just what is I call this sense of purpose. They might
01:12:02
I call it that, but they're probably feeling the sense that I'm contributing something that's
01:12:11
worthy and valuable because it's needed. And that's just go where there's something that the world
01:12:18
where there's a need and where you're drawn to. And you'll find that kind of feeling where I'm being
01:12:25
of use. That's what human beings really want. We just want to be useful to some degree.
01:12:31
Yeah. And it really doesn't take much to find that if you let go of the illusion that
01:12:38
it's got to be this big thing or else it doesn't count. Like literally if you take 24 hours and
01:12:44
just open your eyes and just say like, what are the tiny little ways I could be useful to a person
01:12:50
to an animal to the environment? Where it may be. It's like, I feel like when you prime your brain
01:12:57
to start to actually look for it, you start to see it in a way that you didn't realize. It was just
01:13:03
all around you all the time. Yes, yes, because even if you don't see it, if you just take a moment and
01:13:12
look into somebody's eyes and talk to them, you'll sense that there is a huge hunger for connection
01:13:22
in our world. In our society in particular, we are just hungry for connection. You can feel it. It's
01:13:29
almost electric. And what you need to do is just look each other in the eye and say, how are you doing
01:13:36
really? You can mean it. And before you know it, it's like, wow, you don't realize how much somebody
01:13:44
needed that. Yeah. Unless you're in my scene. Did we heard.
01:13:48
Unless you're in my former home of 30 years New York City, in which case people look at you and
01:13:54
think that you're just some weirdo who wants like money from there or something and go across the
01:13:59
street. But we do. We all need it. And you know, and it is this little thing that's just to be seen
01:14:04
for a moment, I think, is can be so powerful. You also talk about the importance of play, which I
01:14:12
thought was really interesting and probably really devoid in a lot of people's lives who are doing
01:14:20
the adult thing thing. You're like, oh, that's the thing we used to do. But now I'm a serious adult.
01:14:25
Like now I have responsibilities. There's like, there's no import of play in my life. Like if it
01:14:32
happened, if I get an opportunity randomly here and there, sure, that's lovely. But like, there's
01:14:37
actually no, I don't need to actually have this in my life too. And you make an account or argument
01:14:45
to that. And what I love when I talk about play, it becomes even more obvious how these
01:14:50
activities or what I call the five items, start to bleed into each other and encourage each
01:14:57
other because when you usually, even as kids, when we start to play up, taking imagine it or play
01:15:05
aside, but even imagine it or play, we do with each other. We engage and connect. We are part
01:15:11
something social and collective. And so to me, play is all about doing something just because it's
01:15:20
fun. Only because it's fun. Now, fun, it gets in our way because we think, just check your notions
01:15:29
of what fun needs to be at the door. In the same way that you think about happiness as an American.
01:15:34
Because happiness doesn't mean the same thing all around the world. It varies in intensity.
01:15:38
Here, happiness has to be out of the scale of zero to 10 and eight to higher. Fun doesn't have to
01:15:45
be off the charts either. It can be enjoyable. That can be your version of it. And, you know,
01:15:52
lots of games. I'm not a play researcher, so I can be free with this notion. You know, play
01:15:58
researchers argue, well, games had rules and structures, blah, blah, so it can't be played. Well,
01:16:04
in adulthood, I'm fine. Whatever allows you to step outside of the time where everything is
01:16:12
commodified, where time is money, and just do because you just want to be with others and enjoy life,
01:16:23
you are stepping into the realm of play. But there's so much more. When I learned about why
01:16:31
pinball machines were created, I was astonished to find out that the man, the person who created pinball,
01:16:42
created it because he wanted people to experience during the Great Depression at the sense that
01:16:48
what they do matters. And to enjoy life because they can get better at accomplishing things and
01:16:57
making things happen in the world. And that's what pinball, the whole story of pinball is. And the man
01:17:04
who saved pinball that movie in book is all about showing the people in Chicago that it wasn't
01:17:11
gambling. It wasn't a game of chance. It was a game that you developed skill. Yes, you had fun. Yes,
01:17:19
you had to put a little money in there. But he showed them. I learned to get better at better at
01:17:26
something. And I learned that whatever I can focus my mind on and do, I can accomplish something.
01:17:32
So out of all the things you would think is that could lead to that play,
01:17:38
can can teach your children and continue to teach adults that what you do matters. Yeah, I love that.
01:17:45
And I've been actively trying to cultivate more opportunities for play in my life for all those
01:17:51
reasons. I think it's just we leave it behind, like sometimes forgetting that it's really fun
01:17:58
to do things for no other reason than the feeling it gives you in the moment. And then if you can
01:18:02
actually build skill around that and gain competence at it also. I mean, you look at the world of
01:18:14
online gaming these days. And I'm not a part of that world, but I know folks who are. And they will
01:18:20
spend hours and hours not getting paid to do this. In fact, they're paying for the privilege of
01:18:25
having access to the games and the machines. And and yet it's just and it's effort. They're working hard.
01:18:33
You know, they're probably working harder from a sort of a creativity and a cognitive and a
01:18:38
collaborative standpoint. Then they may be doing at their jobs. And yet they're doing it simply because
01:18:45
they love doing it. You know, it's to them. It is that thing. It's play and they get better at it
01:18:50
over time. And they do it with other people. You know, and it's there's something kind of magical about it.
01:18:55
I love it. And we misconstrued so much. We tell them they're wasting their time. And I'm like,
01:19:02
not maybe not. That's I think that's a great example of where they're probably finding some
01:19:11
emotional well-being from getting better at something and realizing they can be an actor in this
01:19:19
world and agent. They can make things happen. Yeah. And they have connection. They have a community.
01:19:24
They're a place where they belong. It's all right there for the taking. Well, I so appreciate
01:19:30
just the larger frame around this concept of languishing. And your lens on what flourishing is
01:19:36
and these ideas that we've explored. And you're like, here are some ways to get a beat on like
01:19:40
whether this is something you may be experiencing. And then here are some very specific notions that
01:19:45
you can bring and explore to to start to make the journey from this experience of languishing
01:19:52
into a state of flourishing is I think we all are going to probably find ourselves at some point
01:19:59
in some level of this experience and understanding what it is and isn't. And then the fact that it's
01:20:04
not it's not a thing that we have to just live in. It's not a sort of a thing, well, this is just
01:20:08
life. But they're actually they're things that we can do to move through it and out of it is
01:20:14
it gives us a sense of agency, right? It gives us that sense of like I have some agency on autonomy
01:20:20
in this process, which I think is really powerful. It feels like a good place for us to come full
01:20:25
circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of good life project, if I offer up the
01:20:30
phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I use the phrase and I know other people have used this
01:20:36
phrase. To me flourishing is what I consider the good life. It's always been my north star.
01:20:45
And I think it's really what people deserve when they think about a good life because I think
01:20:53
right now I think we're satisfied with something my a good version of life is good enough. At least
01:21:00
it's not terrible. But there's so much more and I don't think it's a luxury at all. The research
01:21:07
makes that very clear. And so I think you have to believe that you deserve more. And that's
01:21:15
good mental health because that's what I mean when I talk about flourishing. A good life is being
01:21:22
mentally healthy. It's more than the absence of illness. It's the presence of flourishing. Thank you.
01:21:29
Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe that you'll also love the conversation we had
01:21:35
with Daniel Kahneman about the way we make decisions. You'll find the link to that episode in the show
01:21:39
notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and
01:21:44
me Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young, Christopher Carter, crafted our theme music and
01:21:49
special thanks to Shelley Del Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't
01:21:54
already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or
01:21:59
on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are
01:22:06
you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A seven second favor,
01:22:11
share it with just one person. And if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just
01:22:15
one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect
01:22:21
and explore ideas that really matter because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time,
01:22:28
I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
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