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

Summary

The Psychology Podcast

Episode: Best of 2024 - How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down
Guest: Corey Keyes
Host: Scott Barry Kaufman
Date: January 1, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode features renowned sociologist and psychologist Corey Keyes, best known for his pivotal work in positive psychology and the concept of "languishing." Scott Barry Kaufman and Corey Keyes delve deep into what it means to languish versus flourish, the science behind the mental health continuum, and, most importantly, tangible strategies ("psychological vitamins") to revive aliveness in a world that often grinds us down. The discussion blends science, practical guidance, and personal vulnerability to help listeners better understand—and improve—their own mental well-being.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Languishing vs Flourishing: Understanding the Mental Health Continuum

• Two Continuum Model:

  • Mental illness and mental health are only modestly correlated; they are distinct but related axes ([06:30]–[08:50]).
  • One can experience elements of mental illness while also flourishing, and vice versa.

• Ancient Roots:

  • The dual-continuum idea goes back to the Greeks with Panacea (curing illness) and Hygeia (maintaining good health) ([07:04]).

• Genetics and Flourishing:

  • Evidence shows flourishing is as heritable as depression/anxiety—genetics for flourishing and mental illness overlap less than 50%, so absence of illness doesn’t guarantee presence of well-being ([12:52]).

  "You can inherit a high genetic risk for depression, but it doesn't mean you didn't also inherit a high genetic potential to flourish."
  — Corey Keyes [13:19]

2. Defining Languishing and Flourishing

• Languishing:

  • Not simply feeling "blah" or "meh"; it's defined as lacking at least 7 of 14 facets of flourishing—purpose, belonging, contribution, trusting relationships, self-acceptance, etc. ([16:43]–[18:30]).
  • People describe languishing as feeling “dead or dying inside,” “running on empty,” or “invisible/disappearing” ([18:41], [33:00]).

• Flourishing:

  • Feeling alive, purposeful, and contagious with positivity. Not the absence of distress, but the presence of thriving qualities ([19:40]).

  "When we're not growing and exploring, we feel like we are starting to die. And people talk about languishing as if they feel like they're dying inside."
  — Corey Keyes [03:36], [18:41]

3. Practical Steps: The Five Psychological Vitamins

• Keyes presents five actionable "vitamins" associated with flourishing, based on research ([21:39]–[25:44], [50:39]–[55:35]):

  1. Helping Others: Acts of service, even small ones, can boost aliveness and well-being.
  2. Learning / Personal Growth: Following curiosity and actively seeking new knowledge or skills.
  3. Transcendence: Engaging in spiritual, religious, or awe-inspiring activities; connecting with something larger than oneself.
  4. Play: Making time for joy, creativity, and activities done for their own sake—not for productivity.
  5. Connection: Building warm, trusting relationships and fostering belonging.
  • Even those who are languishing or depressed report better days when they do any of these in meaningful amounts ([24:30]).

  "You don't have to do all five of these every day, but if you do one of them, do enough of it… Remarkably, if you were languishing or depressed and did more of one of those five activities… you had a way better day."
  — Corey Keyes [21:39]

  “Those small steps, over time, create a virtuous cycle—better days lead to more motivation to keep going.”
  — Corey Keyes [25:44]

• Start Small:

  • Growth begins with incremental change ("meditate for one minute") and is a cumulative, lifelong process ([24:30], [60:06]).

  "Small, small, small. I had to start with one minute. Big changes can happen just by… maybe some days, like, we just haven't eaten yet, and then we eat and we feel better…"
  — Corey Keyes, Scott Barry Kaufman [25:44]

4. Domains of Human Excellence & Their Relation to Flourishing

• Six Domains of Human Excellence:

  • Acceptance, Autonomy, Connection, Competence, Mastery, Mattering ([39:33]).
  • Not a checklist to be perfected, but directions for personal growth. Play, for instance, is not explicitly a domain but is supported through autonomy ([40:28]).

• Mapping Domains & Vitamins:

  • The five vitamins often overlap with these excellence domains; autonomy and acceptance are particularly foundational.

  "All of these things are skills. All of life is a skill, and if you don't practice it, you won't be ready."
  — Corey Keyes [57:45]

5. Personal Story & Vulnerability

• Keyes candidly shares his childhood trauma, battles with depression, and a moment of suicidal crisis—underscoring the reality of suffering behind flourishing research ([33:00]–[37:30], [42:45]–[47:06]).

• Mattering and Belonging:

  • Feeling needed by even one person (“But I need you”—[42:45]) can be a life-saving force.
  • Flourishing is described as "feeling at home" in oneself and one's world.

  "Flourishing is what I created to feel at home in this world. When I'm flourishing, I feel at home…It always reminds me that I belong, I belong here."
  — Corey Keyes [36:47]

6. Hope, Normalization, and Community

• Flourishing is Not Perfection:

  • “You do not need to have all 14 signs…It’s not Superman or superwoman…You only need seven out of the 14.” ([65:04])

• Not a Final State:

  • Both languishing and flourishing can be experienced periodically. The real risk is stagnating too long in languishing ([63:02]).

• Importance of Community:

  • Individual thriving relies on supportive communities—families, teams, workplaces, spiritual groups ([66:13]).
  • Keyes stresses that “very little of anything any of us have accomplished was done alone.” ([66:19])

  "I needed a community and people who gave me the gift of themselves and caring about…my well-being. And in turn… my research has been all about caring about your well-being and giving whatever gift I have to give."
  — Corey Keyes [67:02]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The dual-continuum…has huge implications because even if we were to cure mental illness tomorrow, it doesn’t mean we have solved all the problems.” — Corey Keyes [14:20]
• "When you're flourishing, you can't keep it to yourself. You want to share it, and without even trying, you share this kind of zest and aliveness with the rest of the people around you.” — Corey Keyes [19:40]
• “Flourishing isn’t perfection... It’s well within all of our reach, and you get to choose the dimensions that you want to privilege and work on.” — Corey Keyes [65:04]
• “All of these things are skills. All of life is a skill, and if you don’t practice it, you won’t be ready.” — Corey Keyes [57:45]
• "I love the way Brene Brown talks about that. We're all imperfect, but we're wired to struggle. And because we're imperfect and we struggle, we're worthy of love and belonging." — Corey Keyes [71:09]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:36] - Keyes on “feeling like dying inside” and the origins of languishing.
• [06:30] - Discussion of the mental health continuum and the history of the two-continuum model.
• [12:44] - Flourishing’s heritability and genetics.
• [16:27] - What is languishing? Core definitions—absences, not just "blahs."
• [21:39] - The five psychological vitamins; real-world research.
• [33:00] - Keyes’s childhood trauma and the lived experience of languishing and flourishing.
• [39:33] - Six domains of human excellence explained.
• [42:45] - Keyes’s suicidal low point and the power of feeling needed.
• [50:39] - Rapid review of the five vitamins and practical ways to enact them.
• [63:00] - Flourishing is not a permanent state; the process is dynamic.
• [66:13] - Building community as the core for creating a world of flourishers.

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Actionable Takeaways

• Small Steps Matter: Even tiny acts of kindness, curiosity, connection, joy, or transcendence can break the cycle of languishing and lead to better days.
• Not Linear or Perfect: Striving for perfection in flourishing is unrealistic and unnecessary—progress is personal and cyclical.
• Community and Compassion: Seek and foster communities where mutual care and giving the “gift of ourselves” is valued.
• Focus on Practice Over Achievement: Treat flourishing as a direction, not a destination or an achievement badge.

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Final Note

This episode stands as a roadmap for feeling alive again amid adversity—not promising instant cures, but offering hope and practical approaches based both on robust science and lived experience. Flourishing is not reserved for the fortunate few: it is accessible to all through small but meaningful daily actions, cultivating connection, and caring for ourselves and others.

Transcript

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Corey Keyes]

From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all off as the forecast calls for football all across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.

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[Corey Keyes]

Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.

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[Corey Keyes]

Just like everything else that's put on this earth, we were planted here to grow. When we're not growing and exploring, we feel like we are starting to die. And people talk about languishing as if they feel like they're dying inside.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

On this episode of the Psychology Podcast, I had a very important chat with Corey Keys. Corey is a well respected sociologist and psychologist who who is a legend in the field of positive psychology. Corey is especially well known for his idea called languishing. To languish is to lose or to never have had a lot of the good things in life that make our lives matter and make it meaningful. This is why people who are languishing sometimes describe themselves as dead or dying inside. Languishing creeps in after a period of extreme stress, grief, isolation, discrimination, trauma, moral injury or demoralization. A sense of low grade mental weariness that can be easy to dismiss, especially since indifference is one of its symptoms. If you stay in the state of languishing too long, it will put you at risk for a whole host of problems, not the least of which is depression. Thankfully, Corey offers us some guidance on what we can do if we're languishing. To feel alive again in a world that wears us down. Including the five psychological vitamins. This is a really important discussion and I hope it can help you increase your own sense of aliveness. So without further ado, I bring you Corey Keys. Corey Keys Wow. So glad to have you on the Psychology podcast.

[Corey Keyes]

It's good to be here, Scott.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I'm a longtime admirer of your work. I Teach this course, the Science of Living well, at Barnard College, Columbia University. And I start off my introductory lecture with your mental health continuum. It's a really good way of introducing students. Students to positive psychology and kind of a different way of thinking about mental illness and mental health. So thank you so much for the amazing work that you do for our field.

[Corey Keyes]

Thank you.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah. And congratulations on your new book. I'm glad that you wrote this book. It's very much needed right now in the world. I think that a lot of people are feeling that sense of what you call languishing.

[Corey Keyes]

Yes. I never imagined it would take a pandemic to raise the awareness of my work because I'd always thought maybe I would be approaching this in my book about it around flourishing. But it's a good lesson. We have to meet people where they're at. My research has always been about trying to use the positive to deal with some serious forms of human suffering in the world that we're not dealing with very well.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

No, we're not. Well, I'm thinking about various inroads into the languishing construct. And I thought we could start off with discussing the idea of the mental health continuum. I think that's a really good way of framing a lot of this. You have this very provocative quote in your book. You say mental illness and mental health are correlated, but only modestly. Wow, that's some. First of all, that sounds like a lot of scientific jargon, but also that's for those who. Who know. They know. That's pretty, Pretty interesting finding.

[Corey Keyes]

Well, yes, and it's there. It would be safe to say there. There is quite a body of evidence now that supports what I'm calling the two continuum model. And before me, people did talk about this to continue a model, but didn't do any of the empirical science. Strangely enough, as I read about in the book, I always do a deep dive into history before I move forward to know where philosophers and thinkers have been on this topic. It turns out the ancient Greeks, in the origin story of medicine, proposed to continue a model. Right. Asclepius. The myth of Asclepius, the father of medicine, had two daughters, one of which was named Panacea. And you know, Panacea from our current medical healthcare system, which is about fixing illness. But he also had a daughter named Hygeia. And Hygeia was about a healthcare approach that dealt with maintaining the presence of good health and dealing with. With its losses. And so this idea has been around for a very long. And. And I always Appreciate the fact that when I'm working on something that, you know, it's, it's, it's dealing with something that has been with humanity for a while.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, yeah, well that's, that ain't that the truth? But can you explain a little bit to people what that means? That they're, they're only modestly cord. You know, you could have any configuration. Right. You can be high mental illness and high mental health at the same time.

[Corey Keyes]

Yes. And, and at first when I proposed this model, that was the, the category, the combination that really jarred people. It was hard for them to hold both of those ideas together. How could somebody be mentally healthy? Because. Right. I use the word flourishing as a stand in to indicate the presence of good mental health and be mentally ill at the same time. And it, it's not surprising to me because I talk about my own, my own mental disorders in recovery. And when I'm doing well on the mental health continuum and flourishing, my mental illness recedes into the background and it's well managed. So most of us with mental illness aren't symptomatic 24 7. That doesn't mean the mental illness has gone away. It's there, it's affecting us. But as it recedes into the background, and I think often it does recede in the background because we're really starting to live a life where we're getting those ingredients aflame, flourishing. And so I talk about even a study of, in Hong Kong of schizophrenia, people with schizophrenia. And 28 of them at the beginning of the study were diagnosed as flourishing on my measure. And yet they, they were, they had schizophrenia. It was being managed, but they, it's, it's, it's everywhere that people connect can flourish with a mental illness as long as it's being well managed.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

You know, you, yeah, you remind me of a famous study that I talk a lot about on a study of creative people that Frank X. Baron initiated in the 60s and I believe he did some work in the 70s as well. They took an old fraternity house, renovated fraternity house, and they brought some of the greatest thinkers and creators, creators of the day, I think, like Truman Campote. They brought in to study and they studied these creative people. And he has, Frank Brand has this great quote which I'm trying to remember the exact words, but something like the creative person is both sane and mad at the same time. What he found is that these creators scored sky high on almost all the measures of mental illness that he could throw at them. And they also scored sky high on almost Every measure of mental health and what he called ego strength. Ego strength, which is basically resiliency. Resiliency. So that was a major finding from the Frank Barron studies on creativity. And so I just wanted to kind of integrate that literature into what you're talking about.

[Corey Keyes]

Yes, I think it's a brilliant connection. And what I like to think about it is that we coexist in both worlds. All of us, some of us sky high as you talk about it, but some of us to lesser degrees with, with some symptoms of mental illness and some symptoms of flourishing. And I think that's just human nature. We are, that's how we are composed in this two continuum models. Got, I review a lot of evidence. It's the way our brain is designed as well. Because sadness and happiness have some things overlapping when it comes to their activation and deactivation cortically, but they, they have a lot that's not in common. Right. So just because you're sad doesn't mean you can't always can't be happy. And that's what we call bittersweet moments. You can be both happy and sad and they can coexist. And Susan Cain just wrote a book about bittersweet. Right. I mean it's, it's.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I wrote her bittersweet scale, actually the scale that she uses. I wrote that scientifically with David Yadin.

[Corey Keyes]

Oh, you did? Yes. It's amazing. And then, and then to finish up this topic that you raised, it's. Even at the genetic level, the dual continuum exists. And I've done studies there and let me step back because the first thing we found was that flourishing was just as heritable as things like depression and anxiety. Literally 60 to 72%. You know, those numbers kind of hold them loosely, but it suggests that there's a high genetic component and that the three kinds of well being that I use to measure flourishing, the emotional, psychological, social, all come from a common source of genetics. They don't come from different genes, so to speak, which is validation that they sort of represent an overall construct called mental health. But here's the kicker. The genetic variants overlapped less than 50%. And what that means is you can inherit a hygiene, you can inherit a high genetic risk for depression, but it doesn't mean you didn't also inherit a high genetic potential to flourish. And by the same token, you may not have inherited any genetic risk for depression, but the absence of genetic risk doesn't mean you inherited high genetic potential to flourish. So there, it's just remarkable to me that this two continuum model then has huge implications because it suggests even if we were to cure mental illness tomorrow, it doesn't mean we have solved all the problems, because if you, if you just leave people languishing, you've just pushed them into a different category of suffering. That, that's, that's nearly as bad and sometimes just as bad as things like depression.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah. It is profound. I think that it, it's good to talk about the different points on the continuum. Languishing is just one point. It's also possible. Flourish, right?

[Corey Keyes]

Yes. Yes.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Is it possible? Have you met anyone?

[Corey Keyes]

Yes, and it's remarkable. There's the variation in the Healthy Minds study, which was an ongoing study, again cross sectional every year of an array of college campuses. Early on, it used my measure and was remarkable. There was a huge variation from 40 up to 60% of students flourishing. But again, even in the best scenario, at the highest levels we could find on college campuses was 60%, but it also got quite low. And we see this also by country. Canada has been using my measure in the public health assessment or surveillance, and over 70% of Canadians met the criteria for flourishing, which is the highest I've seen internationally because some estimates suggest other countries have no more than 30 to 40% flourishing. So they're out there, Scott, though. People. There are mentally healthy people out there. But what's remarkable to me is that we've been assuming that if you're free of mental illness, everyone's mentally healthy, and that's simply not true.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I think it'd be good to define what these different points in the continuum mean, though. So. Okay, what is languishing? You know, this. That could have been my first question I asked.

[Corey Keyes]

Yeah, let's.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Let's just get. Let's not bury the lead too deep into this episode.

[Corey Keyes]

Well, everyone's been describing it. They were trying to find a word that just captures it. And. And some people want to use the word blah. And. And that may be true. And. And Adam Grant. I know Adam and Adam used the word meth and the. Both of those, I don't think do it justice because.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Capture it.

[Corey Keyes]

Yeah, right. Because I might come away from that thinking, well, that. That's. You're languishing because you're bored or you're languishing because you. It's rain three days in a row and it's been cloudy. No. So let's put some meat on this. To languish, you have to have at least seven out of the 14 signs of flourishing. Absent. Right. You. So there are seven out of the 14 questions. You have to say that you're not experiencing these things very much. Things like purpose, things like belonging. You don't have a sense that you're contributing anything of worth and value to the world. You don't like most parts of your personality. You don't have warm, trusting relationships. You're not confident to think and express your ideas and opinions. And on top of that, you might not feel very happy or satisfied or interested in life. So it's a constellation of at least seven or more things where you're deficient in what makes life really quite meaningful. Total language is not just to be blah. No, you're. You are. You do. You're not functioning well, and you're not feeling good at all about your life. You're essentially running on empty.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Is it. Is this kind of like a scale of aliveness? Like kind of feelings of aliveness? Is. I mean, well, my. How you define alive.

[Corey Keyes]

Yes. Well, it's remarkable. Yes, I. My subtitle is how to Feel Alive Again. Right. How to Feel Alive Again in a World that Wears Us Down. I think it's it. Yes. I think, to answer your question, yes, you could think of it, flourishing as coming to life. And in a draft of the book, and I don't think this survived, but I was using the analogy that humans are just like everything else that's put on this earth. We were planted here to grow. Right. To grow and to explore. And. And when we're not grow and exploring, we feel like we are starting to die. And people talk about languishing as if they feel like they're dying inside.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, that. That feels. That feel that tracks.

[Corey Keyes]

Yeah. And when you're flourishing, you do feel alive. And you can see it. You can see it because there's a story of Scott in my book, and he's a prison guard in Australia, and he went from feeling very dead inside to feeling very alive. And it was very contagious. He became a new form of a positive virus that infected everyone else around him. It's like when you're flourishing, you can't keep it to yourself. You want to share it, and without even trying, you share this kind of zest and aliveness with the rest of the people around you.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It makes complete sense. Well, I guess what I really want to do the rest of this episode, now that we've laid that out there, is to know what the heck to do about it. I have one criticism, not one. I have a couple criticisms of positive psychology. But one criticism I have of it is that a lot of it is very circular. And what I mean about that is that you'll see people say things like, to flourish, you need the perma, you need these five things. Positive emotions, purpose, relationships. And if you don't have them, you're not flourishing. Now how does that help someone who doesn't have them? How does it help someone to just go to the person and say, well, the reason why you're not flourishing is because you don't have these things? Yeah, the person knows they don't have those things. Okay, told you they don't have those things. So that's what I mean by a lot of it is very circular. It's saying, well, in order to do it, you need to have it. But it's, you know, it's. So I really would love to get to really discuss practical, tangible things and go beyond just saying, you know, you're, you're languishing because you're not flourishing. It's like, okay, yeah, can we just keep it real for a second?

[Corey Keyes]

Let's keep it real. I, well, one, I agree with you and I, I have, I have spent a lot of time out of the limelight, so to speak, because I did not want to publish anything unless I had a very good body of scientific evidence. And I came across some research and it's called the Tuesday in the Life of Flourishers study by Lana Catalino. And yeah, and every Tuesday she called up these adults and asked them what, what activities they engaged in the prior day. So this was about your Monday. And she asked them also a variety of adjectives that describe having a good day. Did you feel proud, serene, content, joy, grateful, and so forth. And what she found was there are five activities that Flourishers did more of than those who were languishing or depressed in her study. But hold on, I'm going to get to the languishing and depressed. So that's what I call the five vitamins. If the. Right. So flourishing people engaged in more helping behavior. So if they were going to go do something about helping someone, they did more of it that day. You don't have to do all five of these every day, but if you do one of them, do enough of it. Right. It's not like a 10 minute exercise. So they helped others. They learned, they learned something new and focused on personal growth. Third, they engaged in some form of what I'm calling transcendence, some spiritual or religious activity. Fourth, they played. And fifth, they socialized, but they socialized and prioritized the kind quality relationships where there's warmth and trust, where there's belonging and where there is giving and getting. And so those five activities, remarkably, if, if you were languishing or depressed and did more of one of those five activities, that Monday, you had a way better day than anybody else who did nothing. That includes flourishers, because some days people who are flourishing did none of those five things. And they had as bad a day as those who were depressed or languishing who did nothing. But if you were depressed and languishing and did more of those activities, you had a better day. And over time, longitudinally, they began to move. Now slowly, they didn't jump from severe languishing all the way up to flourishing in a month. But every week she would find them having better days. And as they had better days, they were more motivated to do more of those five things. It was kind of like a virtuous cycle. So those five vitamins. And then I talk about a few other studies that show the benefits of moving in the direction of flourishing. But I'm trying to meet people where they're at. And I loved that study because it showed that small steps. And I talk about my own experiences in therapy, being told to start small. Corey, I don't know if you remember that section, but they told me meditate one minute and I laughed. My ego was like, oh my God, no. And no. I had to start with one minute. Small, small, small.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

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

[Corey Keyes]

I know. And so I, I'm not, I'm not trying to be Pollyannish in this book and I'm not trying to be rah rah. And I'm also not recommending that you can sit on, sit on your couch and meditate or practice gratitude. And you, you will function better in the world because here's the thing that people are missing. It's not languishing isn't happening because people aren't feeling good. There are a lot of people who would meet the criteria for flourishing if it only was about emotional well being, but they're not functioning well. Their lives don't have enough purpose, belonging, contribution, autonomy, growth and acceptance and all those other good things. And you're not going to get those functioning well qualities without going out and doing something engaging because those vitamins about about doing something good for yourself. But when you're doing those things, you're also as often doing good things things for other people and with people.

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[Corey Keyes]

From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all on. As the forecast calls for football all across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.

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[Corey Keyes]

Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Absolutely. How would you describe the relationship between the five vitamins of flourishing and the six domains, domains of human excellence? Do you map them on to each other? Like what's the, what's the relationship between them? And let's talk about what the six domains of human excellence are as well.

[Corey Keyes]

Well, yeah, I, I did. I was trying to boil down the qualities of flourishing into six domains of excellence. And to tell you the truth, it that may not be as helpful to people as if. Right. I, I tried to steer away from thinking I had the answer to the ultimate qualities of life. I don't, I humbly submit to you a concept called flourishing and languishing. And the questions that go into it come from a deeply rooted theoretical notion in psychology and sociology of what would it look like if human beings were doing well in life beyond just feeling good? So whether it's the six domains of excellence, it's, I really, really, those questions are, there's something about those questions that get at something that is deeply important because I, I can't tell you a study, Scott, where I found that flourishers aren't doing better than everyone else. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

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

[Corey Keyes]

Yeah. Yeah. That's why. And in the. The book in my work comes from a deep lived experience with a lot of adversity and suffering.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Talking a little bit more about that with me.

[Corey Keyes]

Sure. Because. Yeah, it. I. For the first 11 years of my childhood, there was just. I never felt safe in my home and for good reason. And I never talked when I was in my home. Never talked. I dissolved. I learned to dissociate and disappear. That was my. The. All I had because nobody was there to protect me. But when. When they realized. When someone realized that. And that's a story unto itself. But my grandparents pulled me and my sister out of there. And at the age of 12, I was suddenly in a very different environment with love, warmth, safety, nurturing. And suddenly I was. Was. I went from being in detention literally every day and. And D grades to honor roll every semester, participating in choir, in sports, the school quarterback. I was doing just really well. And suddenly all that bad stuff was gone. Yeah. So the bad stuff was absent. But when I sort of let my guard down and I was done with the day I write about this at the very beginning of the book, how it started for me, suddenly this emptiness would creep in, so I was free of all the negative. And I would. I was experiencing what I would later describe as a flourishing life, but I was experiencing languishing a lot as well. Right. As a young person. Yeah, I was experiencing it. I didn't have that word, but that. When I heard Jackson Brown's album and song called the Pretender and Running on Empty, I heard somebody who understood what I was experiencing. That emptiness, that sense that you were invisible and you were disappearing, and no matter how things got, how much goodness was in your life, there was something missing. And so I tasted flourishing and I tasted languishing. And I. My grandparents, of course, when they adopted us, they were in retirement and they died shortly after I was married. My. My grandmother died. My grandfather died shortly after I was adopted about a second year. I. We were there then. My grandmother died within three months after I was married in 1986, and I was just finishing college. And flourishing came from this notion of trying to figure out what I had experienced in that household with my grandparents, which was something very good. I had tasted something I would later call flourishing. And it was helping address. It was really helping me move away from that emptiness. But I had a long journey ahead of me, and suffice it to say to end this story is. It's been a lifelong journey working through the trauma and the mental illness. But I had to face those things. I couldn't run from them. I thought I could create distance, and every time I looked in my rear view mirror, they were right behind me. And so flourishing is what I created to feel at home in this world. When I'm flourishing, I feel at home. We earlier described it as feeling alive, but I think also for me, it always reminds me that I belong, I belong here. And it's. I feel at home. And that's why I also call it my North Star. And I hope other people use that, that imagery, that it's the, it's the image of what's going to guide you to a place where you too can feel at home.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Absolutely. I really love this notion of just feeling like you belong to yourself, you know, because there's so much discussion about this kind of, oh, I really need to belong to a group, you know, in order to have to. In order to matter. But, you know, it. I think that if you matter yourself, it doesn't. Almost doesn't matter what other people, what validation you get from others.

[Corey Keyes]

No, and I, it is. Yeah. You're talking about belonging and the com. To me, the combination of, of purpose. Right. Where, where there is something. I just felt alive and at home when I realized that I had something to give to the world. Yeah. And I think we all have something to give. And I, and, and I want people to realize when, when they're flourishing, that they, regardless of whatever stories that they don't want to talk about, you don't. Right. But if they're able to work through those stories that they usually want to hide, I truly believe we're all gifts. I, I just believe that's. That we, we have the gift to give of ourself and that, that is the most precious thing I've experienced in this life where others have given me the gift of themselves. Because I, after my grandparents passed, I had nobody. And so I had to create and find people who were like my synthetic family. I call it in the book the Wall of Love. In that email to my professor from my undergraduate years, we were still in contact and those people gave me the gift of themselves. And it made a huge difference.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It's beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful. I'm not sure we actually listed the six domains of human excellence, though. We can't just assume that our audience knows everything. So let me read the list. Acceptance, autonomy, connection. Let's teach some things here, Professor. The six Domains of human excellence are acceptance, autonomy, connection, competence, mastery, and mattering. Now, this is my question I'm trying to wrap my head around. Would you say that if you are cooking on all cylinders on all these six domains that you're flourishing, how does it map onto the five vitamins of flourishing? Learning, Connection, transcendence, Help, helping others in play. Because play is not, not in one of the domains of human excellence.

[Corey Keyes]

No, but autonomy, the ability to, to determine your own what, what, what you want to do, what, what brings you joy. Right. And what you consider useful. And rather than somebody else telling you from the workaday world telling you how you're useful, autonomy is, is a spark that, that's represented in almost every vitamin. The ability to decide to become a better person for other people. That's. To me, that's. Autonomy is sort of the foundation. But I mean, I could say that of every domain, because I talk a lot about how acceptance, especially in the spiritual slash religious vitamin, how that, that's one of the many ways that spirituality and religion, when they're doing the job of helping us become better people, they don't always do that, but when they're doing their job, they're. They're helping us to understand that acceptance is at the heart of dealing with things we want to push away. Right. The pain and the suffering, the loss and, and death and all those things and even our own imperfections and the others imperfections. And I found in my own journey, I found acceptance to be a hard one because, oh boy. And I'm still working on that. So. But when I understand that I'm only in charge of my own thoughts, feelings and behavior and not anyone else's, the world generally works far better, even when things aren't going well for me because then I understand that I have to take responsibility and change something about me if I want something else to change in the world. But that's the direction you have to go, rather than the other way demanding that the world change before I start acting.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I completely agree.

[Corey Keyes]

Right. So those, those are hard lessons, Scott. Those are really hard things. So all of them, like mattering. Oh boy. Is that sense that you have something to give to the world. Oh, I've been on the opposite end of that where. Oh, where I felt like there was no use for me. Oh goodness, yes. I write about that and about it. It's happened when other people started writing books about flourishing. I was about to sit down and write my own book. And then when it came out ahead, I thought, well, I'm not needed here anymore. And I write about the fact that sense that I didn't belong and I had nothing to give anymore was. I almost let that convince me that suicide was the answer. Oh my gosh, yes. If my wife and I write about this in the book, hadn't come home early, I. I had. I drank myself into a oblivion to hang myself. And she got there and I was sitting in the dark and she was like, what's going on, Corey? And we. And to jump to the bottom line, she said four words that I will never forget. And these are the most powerful words anyone can hear. But I need you. But I need you. And I was like, okay, well, I'm gonna have to work on some things and I'm gonna have to take a semester off at least. And it's not going to be once a week for an hour therapy. This is good. I had to go into intensive inpatient and learn about myself. And that's when I experienced cognitive behavioral therapy very intimately and had to deal with all these distortions that were in my mind from my trauma. And now I have a user's manual and I'm prepared for when they come along and I can talk back to them and not let them trigger me. But that was a moment where I came very close. That's how powerful that idea of mattering and belonging is. Because I write about this in the section where a purpose, when you have a purpose, that it can also be lost. Right? So finding your purpose doesn't mean it's. It's guaranteed it's going to stay there. Because I experienced firsthand that I thought somebody had taken my purpose from me and that what came from a cognitive distortion. And so that those journeys of dealing with these six domains of excellence are deeply personal. And I think of them as ways of. The first thing you have to deal with is how those things, the absence of those domains are really holding you back, how they're triggering and making you vulnerable first. And then you can get to the part where you start to bring them into your life. Because doing it the other way, trying to bring them into your life without dealing with the triggers and the vulnerability will continue to derail you. So I had to stop and deal with the triggers and the vulnerability where I was missing and where the. The absence of those domains of excellence, where they came from and to understand that.

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[Corey Keyes]

From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all off. As the forecast called for football all across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.

[PayPal / Today Show Announcer]

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[Corey Keyes]

Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Thanks for being so vulnerable and sharing your own personal struggles with us. I'm sure it'll inspire a lot of people listening to this episode. I'd like to really zoom in on the definition of these five vitamins of flourishing real quick. I want to go through this so we don't get some of the most essential information lost at all. So the learn one is about creating stories of self growth, following your curiosity to learn something new. Connection is building warm and trusting relationships. Transcendence. You call it transcendence, which is the title of my book, the New Science of Self Actualization.

[Corey Keyes]

Oh, I didn't know that. Cool.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Did you know that?

[Corey Keyes]

I did not know that.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Scott.

[Corey Keyes]

Thank you.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

But I love, I loved, I love that. That was probably my favorite. My favorite part of your book, help finding your purpose, even in the mundane. And I want to circle back to that in a second and then play, which is the fifth vitamin A flourishing, which is I'm conflicted whether or not my favorite is transcend or play, but probably it's probably play. I love playing. Stepping out of a time, stepping out of time, making time for activities where you enjoy the process, not the outcome. I want to circle back to the help one. I think that a lot of times when we talk about purpose, we kind of feel like it's this, we're a loser if we don't have this big humongous calling in life. And I like to a lot of my students, they're 19 years old and they're like, I'm a loser because I don't have a big call yet. It's like, calm down. Isn't it possible to satisfy this need for help just through small actions? You know, for instance, I feel better. I'll tell you a little about myself. Well, if I'm feeling down, I like to just go to a coffee shop and I like to just be nice to people and I feel better. I just smile and let's say I smile, you know, at someone in a warm, caring way and they smile back and you're like, you know that that was put in a positive vibration in the universe that you know that, that you know I matter for even those small vibrations. Do you agree?

[Corey Keyes]

Yes. And I think we over complicate purpose and we give people, if they're not solving some world problem that can't be a purpose. And I think it stops us before we've even started. So I've always recommended keep it small, keep it local so that you can keep it focal. Right? Start small, keep it local so you can stay focused because do what's really within your reach, literally and figuratively. And that's right around you in your small little community or in your neighborhood or your school, you are doing something amazing by simply helping people who you may see quite regularly in town rather than trying to solve say the crisis in Syria and the people who have been displaced. I saw that on the news this week and I'm like, my heart went out and I was like, God, I wish I could solve that problem. And then I was like, I can't. That's not something for me. I know it requires a big system so I agree with you wholeheartedly. But the other thing about purpose is I don't think we should be pushing people to move in that direction unless their heart is ready to say yes to that first question that I ask in that chapter which is do you want to help somebody or something else. You don't always want to. So if that's the case and you've got other things you need to be doing, well, don't be sitting there trying to say you want your purpose but you're not going to go find it. Because if you, Michael Steger and others have shown that the process of searching can be pretty detrimental to your well being. So if you're going to keep that open, go do something about it rather than right, just say I'll get to it and keep it in my mind but I'm not going to do anything about it right away. So I talk about making a plan for young people. It's enough to have a plan for your purpose and that can come later.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes. Well, the play which brings us to play play is planless.

[Corey Keyes]

Yes. And well that's intrinsically Enjoyable. Yes. And the point is, we have gotten so immersed in a world where we think of our time in terms of an economic commodity. Time is money to most people, and there's been research on this. When you get people to think of their time as money, they're less likely to go help others, and they're less likely to think play is useful. The worst mindset for play is to think it's a waste of time, of course. And yet, you know, we need studies on that. Of course, it's a horrible mindset to say I'm wasting my time when and even if you're having fun. What waste of time? What a way to dampen the benefits. And yet the point here is simply do things because they bring you joy. And more often than not, we play not alone, but we do these things often with others. And so what's amazing about the vitamins, Scott, is when you start to really think about practical examples, they start to bleed into each other. You start playing and engaging in some forms of leisure. You're. You're off often affirming warm, trusting relationships and. And building community and belongingness. Yeah. It's like. It's amazing to me that happens in spirituality, too. My own example is I practice yoga for 25 years in my yoga community. You don't do yoga alone, or some people might. But I love the fact that you go to the studio and you do an hour and a half work with these people that you talk with before and you talk with after, and it's often the same people, and you create this wonderful community and sense of belonging, and yet you're also practicing and working on that spiritual muscle, because all of these things are skills. All of life is a skill, and if you don't practice it, you won't be ready. And I talk about how religion is just a rehearsal. Prayer and spirituality are all rehearsals to get you ready when the game is on. When something comes into your life that says you can be a better angel or you can be a darker version of yourself, you have a choice here. Right?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Wow. Wow. That hit. That hit Corey. Wow.

[Corey Keyes]

So I. These vitamins are. Are. I. I mean, I balked at using that word, but I know it made sense to use green vitamins. Yes. Well, alpha brain. Yes. And here's the thing. Languishing feels sometimes a lot like anemia.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Corey Keyes]

And I thought it made sense after my talking some. Some of my. My agent and others saying, I think the vitamins is a great way to think about this because you're nourishing, you're putting into your body something that nourishes your. Your mind and your soul.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

You're a deep human, Corey.

[Corey Keyes]

You're deep.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I want to read a quote. I actually want to read a few quotes, but one quote. You said good mental health is not an old category. It is filled with ingredients of flourishing, purpose in life, belonging, contribution to society, acceptance of others, acceptance. I wrote acceptance of others twice. Acceptance of others, warm and trusting relationships, autonomy, personal growth and more. Flourishing is filled with the things that make life worth living, that bring quality to whatever quantity. Quantity of life we are granted. That's pretty deep. There are a couple points there. One is that we're talking more than just feelings of happiness. Good mental health is more than just momentary feelings of just feeling happy. And then another point, not so much a point, but can you leave our audience with another tangible thing to improve that? Again, I don't want people to just be left with like, okay, I'm lacking it. So what I need to do is have it.

[Corey Keyes]

No.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Tell people how to have it. Tell people how to have it.

[Corey Keyes]

Well, it is. It is a journey I. And I write about. My mind has been a very long and difficult one. And that doesn't mean that yours has to be. But I bet some. Some of my readers will be able to resonate with that. And I still taste the noonday demon of languishing some days, many days. But I know. I know. I know when it's coming. I can feel it. I used to not. It's kind of like a fog. You don't know it's coming, engulfing you. But now I'm aware of it. But it took a long time and a lot of work to get there. And I hope I made that clear in the book, that this is not a simple one and done thing. This is a lifelong process and commitment. But it is your North Star. And if. If the ingredients of flourishing aren't as sufficient to motivate you, then I. There's nothing I can say or do because don't tell me that I should want it more than you want it, because I can't do that for you. You're going to have to do it for you. But trust me, I have to. To trust in yourself as well. That moving in that direction, doing a little of each of those five vitamins, is about bringing life back where you felt dead and not alive. And it's not about taking 10 minutes out of a schedule and a life that you're not willing to change. I don't even go there I don't say you can do this in 10 minutes and not change anything about your life. You're going to probably have to, to add and subtract a few things. Like you can't just help. I mean, your example is great Scott, about going to the coffee shop when you need a jolt. But I mean, the, the studies show that a social jolt. Yeah, you're going to need to, to, to do a little more on many of those days to help others. And that requires either engaging in a commitment to be a volunteer at least once a week or doing right. But you will experience better days, and those better days are what's going to reinforce. Yeah, you won't get to flourishing overnight. You won't, and I didn't either.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

But I think there's a deeper point, there's even a deeper point there that you just made. Then flourishing is not a state, a final state. You can't, you have a day where you feel dead inside and then can't you flourish the next day?

[Corey Keyes]

Oh my God, yes. Yes.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

And the next day after that inside again?

[Corey Keyes]

Yes, there are.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That's what I'm wondering. That's what I'm wondering. It's not like, it's not like, I don't know these people who are like, I'm flourishing like his. No, look, I mean, they're annoying those people because it's not, am I right? It's not a, it's not a final state of destination. It's a direction, not a destination.

[Corey Keyes]

It is. I'm constantly going home. I'm coming home. I'm always coming home. And you do that literally and figuratively. You have to leave home sometimes to do come home. It's a normal reaction. Languishing is a normal reaction to a lot of life, life's adversity. Now the only problem is if you stay there too long, just like if you stay in sadness or fear too long, they become mental illnesses. If you languish too long, you get stuck there. It becomes, and I show you there's evidence, it becomes a day. Let's just say it's dangerous. It's a dangerous thing. Some people start thinking about ending their life like I did, right? But, but it's a normal reaction. So don't be overwhelmed or think that you've lost everything, because the next day you have an opportunity to say, this is my life and this is what I'm, I'm going to believe in. This is my purpose. This is how I belong. This is where I'm going, how I accept myself. This is how I accept others. And that's what I'm going to live for.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Love it. Yes. This is wonderful. I just want to give people hope who, where the flourishing person models just feel so out of reach for some of these, for some people. And that's what I'm trying to do here.

[Corey Keyes]

Yeah.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

And I, and so thanks for this dialogue. You know, you, you get it. You get it.

[Corey Keyes]

Yes. And the other thing to remind people, because I think when people hear the word, they think, think. Flourishing is like another form of enticing people into perfection and success. You do not need to have all 14 signs. You only have to have seven out of the 14 half. And there's. Think of all the permutations because there's 11 signs of functioning well. You only need six out of the 11 combined with one of the three feeling good. It's not, not Superman or superwoman word you, you need to accomplish. It's not that at all. It's well within our, all of our reach. And you get to choose what are the domain, the dimensions of functioning well that you want to privilege and work on. Is it, is it a sense of belonging? Is that absent? Well, go, go for it. But flourishing isn't perfection. It's not all 14 signs. It's seven out of the 14. Love it. Love it.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Let me end here with the notion of building a community of flourishers.

[Corey Keyes]

Yeah.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

How can we contribute to building such a world?

[Corey Keyes]

Well, by admitting that very little of anything any of us have accomplished was done alone. We academics have a bad habit of portraying to the world that somehow everything we've done is done with. It just came fiat out of me. No, I relied and studied and benefited from other people in multiple ways in the the spiritual path reminded me also, nobody does it without a community that's invested in the same things. So as I could imagine a family saying, I want to bring more of those five vitamins into all of our lives and we're going to do this as a family. Can you imagine as a work team? I could imagine people saying, I want to do more of these five vitamins and find ways to bring them into our daily, our weekly lives. Life in a religious community. I could see people getting together to practice these in their spirituality and their religious traditions. But here's the thing. I know for a fact I couldn't have done this alone. I needed a community and people who gave me the gift of themselves and caring about the things not, not just that I cared about, but caring about me and my well being and in Turn. My research has been all about caring about your well being and giving whatever gift I have to give. And this is it. This is my life's work. I hate and I'm not, it's not hyperbole. I waited 25 years to do the science, to write this book. I was not going to write it until I felt like there was something there that was more than just talking. There was a body of scientific evidence and that is the greatest gift any scholar can give.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

You know, this book is very, very important and I'm really, really glad you wrote it. But I want you also to know something. You know, you, you don't know the extent to which your work has ripple effects. You're not aware of it. You think that you need to write this big book to matter. As I said in the beginning of this interview, you know, like when I teach my course, I've been teach, you know, I start off my, and frame the whole, you know, course through your mental health continuum model. Your work has profoundly impacted me and the work I do and the way that I inspire students and I, and you know, every cohort of students I inspire through your work. So the book is kind of gravy really, when you think it's the thing you waited 25 years for. You're probably not fully aware of how much you've influenced people in the field.

[Corey Keyes]

So, so no, I'm not. That's. I, I've kept a low profile because I'm, I'm, I'm a worker at heart and, and I, I, I, I love what I get to do and I think it's a privilege to, to be able to teach and be a scholar. I did retire early.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I agree.

[Corey Keyes]

Right. I did retire early because I, I think my next step in life is to try to become a more active advocate for mental illness and languishing and try to get health care systems change in this direction because I don't think we're going to deal with the crisis of mental illness with the way we've been trying to deal with it, which is treatment alone. So I appreciate what you just said, Scott, and it does warm my heart. I have the paid attention to that stuff because I've always been, said, I've always been looking. There's more work to be done.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Always. Yeah.

[Corey Keyes]

And there always will be.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

But that also doesn't mean the work that hasn't been done, you know, like you're allowed to savor it sometimes.

[Corey Keyes]

Yes, exactly. No, no, no. It's, it's, it's a good point because it's. It's something I'm working on, to take it in and savor. Sometimes I don't do that. And there you go. I'm all human. I'm human. Hardly. Hardly perfect. Nowhere close to it. And that's the point. I love the way Brene Brown talks about that. We're all imperfect, but we're wired to struggle. And because we're imperfect and we struggle, we're worthy of love and belonging. I will never forget the first time I heard that, because that made me cry.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Absolutely.

[Corey Keyes]

Yeah. And that's the point. And I'm still working on those imperfections.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Well, thank you, Corey so much for bringing your full humanity to the podcast and for your work. And all the best for the book.

[Corey Keyes]

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

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[Corey Keyes]

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[Scott Barry Kaufman]

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[Corey Keyes]

JP Morgan Chase bank and a member.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

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[Corey Keyes]

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This is an I Heart podcast.