Corey Keys

Cameron: [00:00:00] Flow. Unleashed. Unleashed. Have you ever felt disconnected or dispirited about what you're doing in the world? Not depressed, but just meh. Well, I'll pod today unpacks the state of languishing. The overlooked middle child of mental health and examines how we can be flourishing instead.
Welcome to Flow Unleashed. I'm Dr. Cameron Norsworthy, scientist and high performance coach to multiple world champions. In this show, we unpack key insights on specific topics so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and practice of human performance.[00:01:00]
Today we're diving into a concept that might feel all too familiar for us all languishing. Picture mental health is a spectrum with the depths of depression on one end, and the heights of flourishing on the other. Flourishing is the ultimate state of wellbeing, A place where purpose, mastery, and connection fuel your everyday depression.
On the other hand, is the valley of ill being a place of despair. Exhaustion and worthlessness. But what about the space in between that gray fog, foggy area where you're not deeply unwell, but you're far from thriving? Well, that's languishing the neglected middle child and mental [00:02:00] health. It's the subtle feeling of stagnation or muddling through life without energy or joy.
It dulls your motivation, clouds your focus and makes each day feel like a blur. The term languishing was coined by sociologists and psychologists, Corey Keys, who noticed that many people who weren't clinically depressed, still weren't thriving. His groundbreaking research revealed a startling truth.
Those who are languishing today are at higher risk of developing depression or anxiety tomorrow. In times of global stress, like COVID-19 pandemic, languishing becomes more than just an individual struggle. It's a shared collective experience. Part of the danger is that when you are languishing, you might not notice the dulling or delight of the dwindling drive.
You don't catch yourself slipping slowly into solitude. You are [00:03:00] indifferent to your indifference. When you can't see your own suffering, you don't seek help or even do much to help yourself, even if you're not languishing, you probably know people who are and understanding it can better help you, help them.
I guest today, Dr. Cory Keys is the pioneering voice behind this concept. Most noticeably through his book, languishing How to Feel Alive Again in a World that wears us down. A distinguished professor at Emory University at in Atlanta, north America, and a leader in the field of positive psychology. He is a member of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Aging, and has been called on to participate in several US intricacies of mental health flourishing in the often naval look space in between.
And he's here now to help us understand why languishing matters. How it affects us, and most [00:04:00] importantly, what can we do to move toward thriving? To set the tone for our conversation, I'd like to share a line from Athe Thompson's poem, A little book of poetry.
I shall gather up all the lost souls that wander this earth, all the ones that are broken, all the ones that are. Never really fitted in. I shall gather them all up and together we shall find our home. This poem is a poignant reminder of why this conversation matters. So if you've ever felt like you're drifting stuck in a fog or simply me, this episode is for you.
We will unravel the mystery of languishing. And discover the pathways back to meaning, joy, and connection. Welcome to the show, Cory. Good morning. From North Carolina. [00:05:00] United States. Good morning. I used to live in South Carolina, actually in Hilton Head Island. Probably not too far away from you. Once upon a time, long time ago.
Not too
Corey: far. Not at all. No.
Cameron: Spent many a time on the shores there. Um, all right, let's crack into it. So, what is flourishing?
Corey: Well, that was a word I chose a long time ago to, uh, stand in. For the words mental health, and I learned very early on when I used the words mental health. It was very confusing to people, believe it or not.
They more often than not, they felt they believed I was referring to mental illnesses and disorders, or they thought if I was lucky. I was talking about the absence of mental illness and flourishing is the presence of wellbeing. To put it succinctly. There is a diagnosis, you're probably aware of it. We have to have at least seven out of the 14 questions on my [00:06:00] mental health continuum every day or almost every day, with the combination being at least one feeling good and the six or more of the functioning well and that's flourishing.
It's a sense of purpose perhaps, and sense of belonging. A sense of warmth and trust in your relationships and so on. So some really good things are happening when people are flourishing.
Cameron: And how did you get into the study of flourishing and also the antithesis? Languishing?
Corey: I. It helps to enter academia.
Very naive. I was a first generation student. I came in wanting to study health, especially mental health, and I thought, and by that I meant the presence of good things. Um, and so I went searching for measures. That's the first thing. Most scientists will look, well, there's got to be some existing measures and scales out there, and I couldn't find one.
[00:07:00] And then I was kind of shocked, to tell you the truth. I was like, well, why isn't everyone's talking about health but nobody's studying it? What they're studying is illness and mortality, as if we were to wipe out premature mortality and all illnesses, that suddenly we would be healthy. And the naive Cory entering his PhD said, oh no, that can't be true.
Just because you're free of what doctors and psychiatrists call illnesses doesn't mean you're healthy. And just because you have an illness such as a chronic illness like say diabetes, doesn't mean you can't be at the same time mentally healthy. So that that's where it started. And. Of course I had some very personal experiences, Cameron, with languishing early on in my life and I start my book with the story of when I discovered Jackson Brown's very famous live album.
And when he sang that song on the radio that [00:08:00] night, there I was this kid in a very small town in northern Wisconsin and, and he was singing about running on empty. And the lyrics just spoke to my. Feelings about the way life was going. And there I was with a PhD and an opportunity to say, whoa, go out, go study what you want to study.
And so there it happened. I began the journey and to, in order to do that, it was clear to me. I started working with Carol Riff, who was studying psychological wellbeing, but I was a sociologist and I said, you know what? What's missing is social wellbeing. People don't just operate under the pronouns. I and me, we shift fluidly between the pronouns I and we, and me and us.
And there has to be some EL element of assessing whether people are doing well in their communities and when they're functioning in the we and in the [00:09:00] us. And so once I had done my work as PhD in social wellbeing, I felt the picture was complete. There was emotional wellbeing, that stuff that Dean Ed Diener and others were doing, and champion.
There was the new direction that Carol RIF was championing about Uday wellbeing, but only psychological, and then i I com I completed the PIC picture. In my PhD there was also social wellbeing and then I felt we have all the ingredients to actually sit down and begin to create a diagnosis. Believe it or I used it and I created a diagnosis for mental health in its absence.
Cameron: It's amazing when a concept can take over, especially in the realms of psychology for so long, and become so used anecdotally by, by everyone, but yet doesn't have a framework, doesn't have a measurement, doesn't have a [00:10:00] substructure towards it. What have you found as the difficulties in terms of creating that?
Corey: Well, I learned very early on that each generation is confronted with a challenge, and this will happen, I'm sure every generation, because we enter a world as young people, where others before us have defined what is important and should get attention and resources. And also what's unimportant and should remain invisible.
And it was very clear to me that when I started this work on mental health is more than the absence that was considered even by my colleagues as something unimportant. And that should remain invisible. And in fact, I got a lot of pushback from people. They, they were even writing about how, how useless it is to, to even assess this.
In [00:11:00] populations because what's really important is mental illness. And don't get me wrong, I, I know that, and the global burden of disease study put mental illness, especially depression on the map for the first time in 1996. And yet, oh my God, Cameron, and I'm telling you, when you, as a young scholar want to take something that the previous generation says is unimportant and should stay invisible, and you wanna make it visible.
You're gonna get pushback and boy did I ever, and I thought that's when I just stuck to my guns. I was like, I don't care. That point of each generation is to carve out a new direction. A new way. That's our job, every generation. So I fought back. I didn't fight per se, but I produced research, and then [00:12:00] my strategy was not to publish it in positive psychology, where it would be easily welcomed.
I deliberately tried to publish it in, in very esteemed existing journals where they had not been exposed to this because I wanted it to ha be, be held to a very high standard because if it could make it in those journals, one it, it was breaking some barriers. Second people who would not normally read our work were starting to read it.
And now there's several people publishing in journals like the Journal of Affective Disorders, believe it or not, that that seems to me progress. And so that was the, that was. What I experienced and what in retrospect, I believe Friedrich Nietzche got it right. Nothing worth accomplishing does. It comes without suffering and sacrifice [00:13:00] and hard, hard work because the views, as he says, are always more beautiful at the top.
I.
Cameron: Yeah, I, I empathize somewhat with my own research on flow and doing my PhD. There was countless people lining up, telling me to study something else, something with a bit more, perhaps, let's say, funding behind it and mm-hmm. Yeah. And, but my curiosity prevailed and, and like you, I wanted to get proper criticism, not from just the familiar context, but also from other realms.
It. Was really helpful to go through that rigor, but I was constantly asking myself as I'm sure you, you have, why am I reinventing the wheel here? Mm-hmm. You know, those religions and thousands of years worth of thoughts carefully put together and perhaps targeted towards presence or targeted towards other concepts.
Why did you feel [00:14:00] that? You've now called languishing and flourishing was so important piece of the jigsaw puzzle to focus on.
Corey: Well, the more I spread my wings, it became interdisciplinary, which was extremely helpful to me is as I ventured out into public health, I learned very quickly that nothing at that was considered a public health problem, which means it's at a level in terms of prevalence and severity that it's affecting.
Significant portions of populations, not just in one country, but often globally. Nothing at the public health level has ever been solved through treatment alone. Never. And yet our modus operandi, Cameron, when it comes to mental illness remains well, let's create more effective treatments. Let's train [00:15:00] more clinicians and psychiatrists because we simply do not have enough, uh, people to provide services for those in need Now.
Doesn't that sound logical to you? And on the face of it? And I bet when the public hears that, they say, Hmm, keep on producing more clinicians, keep on producing more psychiatrists, keep on making more medications because my kid is, can't get services. My kid can't get in quick enough, or my friend or my family right now.
It, it's simply a losing battle if that's all you're gonna do. And so I wanted to prevent some of this in the first place. And in order to prevent, I wanted to take a slightly different approach. I wanted to look at whether there was a gateway that we're missing, something we're not looking at. Because that's often a [00:16:00] problem when we can't reduce levels of something in the population and treatment isn't helping at least a little bit.
Maybe we're not looking in the right place. It's kinda like that story of somebody who lost their keys at for their car and it's nighttime and they're looking under the lamppost and somebody comes along. Well, what's going on? What are you doing? I'm trying to find my keys. I can't find them. Well, where did you lose 'em?
Well, up the street. Well, why are, aren't you looking up there? Because there's light here. You're shining the light right here. There's it's dark up there. My job I saw was to shine some light on something that isn't visible to people. And it turned out what I experienced as a teenager is something that millions and millions of people around the world experience, they're not mentally ill, but they're not flourishing, they're not mentally healthy, they're stuck in between, and that condition of languishing needs to [00:17:00] be.
A lot more attention because it causes a lot of problems for people, not the least of which is early mortality. But if that doesn't scare you, let me tell you some more stories. It, it actually leads to mental illnesses. If you've had mental illness and been treated for Cameron, the studies show that most treatments for things like anxiety and depression, even if they're effective in lowering mental illness, those symptoms leave most patients languishing.
And guess what? We have now have three studies that your level of languishing after treatment determines how quickly you're going to relapse. So the more severe you're languishing, the more likely you are to relapse or have a recurrence of your anxiety disorder or depression. So what's remarkable to me is that languishing on its own [00:18:00] is often as problematic, is presence of depression, but when it leads to depression, there it is on top of depression and it causes all kinds of problems.
In addition to the depression, I. And we only treat the mental illness and we leave most patients languishing. And so it's a revolving door. Languishing is relevant without a mental illness, and languishing is relevant for people with a mental illness. I can't say this loud enough. We have to stop ignoring the mental health continuum if we want to prevent mental illnesses and if we want to have effective treatments.
That lead to long-term recovery for people with mental illnesses.
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And how would you distinguish between languishing and depression? You know, depression's used all the time. There's clinical depression, but there's also, I feel depressed today on one end of that, on one end of that spectrum.
Corey: Well, I, if you were to put, uh, the symptoms and the nine symptoms in the diagnostic and statistical manual.
Side by side with my questionnaire, there would not be one question that overlapped except maybe [00:20:00] one. And the clinical assessment for depression often asks, have you lost interest or pleasure in the things that used to bring you pleasure? And I have one out of the 14 questions where, for mo emotional wellbeing, I asked them how happy, satisfied, and or interested in life have you been?
In the past two weeks or past this month, the rest of the questions are diametrically opposed With, to diagnose depression, you have to have, uh, at least four out of the seven symptoms of malfunctioning. That's, those are qualities like you're sleeping more than you have ever. You're not sleeping very much.
You are overeating, you're undereating, things like that. There's fair no overlap. So depression is the presence and absence of negative symptoms. Flourishing and [00:21:00] languishing is the presence or absence of positive symptoms of wellbeing. And as we know now in the research I've done in the two continuum model, the absence of the negative does not mean you have the presence of the positive.
So there is. Uh, and then between category, and the last thing I'll say is it's easy to think depression is some aqua languishing is a quality of depression. And for the reason I, I just said earlier, it's when you slide into depression, it's not like you leave your languishing at the door. It comes with you.
Along with your depression. The problem is most clinicians and psychiatrists don't know that their patients more often than not, are languishing to some degree, and they attribute all the dysfunction to the depression when languishing is causing a lot of the [00:22:00] dysfunction that they're attributing to the mental disorder.
And so patients will sometimes be talking about their sadness, and then they'll shift into their, their feeling kind of empty, like they're dying inside. And those last two qualities are about languishing. It doesn't surprise me that sometimes people who treat depression think languishing is part of it because it's there.
They just don't use my measurement tool to actually assess their patients level. Of languishing and they need to, so there's a lot of unnecessary confusion going on because most people with mental illnesses, they, we completely ignore their level of wellbeing and that needs to stop.
Cameron: Yeah, and I think there's probably a lot of misdiagnosis of people saying that they're depressed when actually that they're [00:23:00] potentially not and they're languishing instead.
Corey: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That happens a lot. I'm reminded of when you say that, that there's some researchers in Spain using my measure for postpartum conditions. And what they found was postpartum depression is prevalent, but roughly around 15 to 17% is the meta-analysis average. The Spanish researchers found that it's upwards of 40% of mothers postpartum are languishing but not depressed, and they, they have lower maternal confidence than the mothers with postpartum depression.
And yet they're completely ignored or they assume because these mothers aren't functioning well and doing well, they probably get put in the category sometimes of those with postpartum depression when they're languishing. So yes, that [00:24:00] happens to a lot of people. Cameron and I suspect it's happening to them.
A lot of mothers who come in saying, I'm not well, something's wrong.
Cameron: And perhaps a lot of people who have retired or a lot of professionals who have stopped doing things where perhaps they're injured or perhaps they have a break or they have a family and they, their void of all those amazing feelings that they might have got from being at the, the, the top of their performance.
Corey: Yeah. Yeah. There's two phases in the lifespan where languishing is, forgive the phrase, but it's off the charts very high. It's early in life before you begin your adulthood and your work. Working phase and at the end of life after you've retired. [00:25:00] But thankfully there is a brief reprieve. Early retirement remains, the languishing remains pretty low, in part because early retirement is where people are actually, you know, they're healthy, they're, many of 'em are excited.
They have the resources and the abilities to go out and engage the world on, on their terms. We don't do well in helping older adults as they go into that second and that third phase of late life and languishing takes over and it causes a lot of problems at the end of life. Boy, is it ever causing problems for our teenagers and our young people.
And all we're focusing on is the mental illness crisis, which deserves a lot of attention, but we're, we're not paying attention at all to the fact that kids are languishing and there's, we're doing nothing really, truly nothing [00:26:00] to help them with that.
Cameron: I had love the fact that you've put the spotlight on it, and I often look at, I guess, the history of psychology and realizing that most of the research and consequential practice came out of the funding from war war budgets, and to help war veterans and to help PTSD and to help clinical.
Psychology deal with mental illness and, and there's a lot of research and growing research and positive psychology is looking at all the virtues and strengths and things that can help us be in flow and be our best. But there's that space in the middle that kind of just gets dropped off 'cause it's not that bad enough and it's not really hurting the economy enough.
And it's not that important because we don't win prizes. And we don't earn medals for it. So it's amazing for you to put a spotlight on it. And I, I guess I'd see this as the natural [00:27:00] evolution of humans studying development and studying optimal functioning. We can't just get rid of the negative or just take a look at the polars.
We need to actually create the foundation and have the building blocks in place. And so how, with all the,
Corey: Hmm. That's a great point, Cameron. Yeah, no, and and what's remarkable is it, it is causing a lot of more problems than people realize. I was just looking at a study about what Covid did to rates of anxiety and depression globally.
And, and believe it or not, this study published in 2021. The Lancet estimated that 52. Million cases of anxiety were generated by Covid. In 73 million cases of depression were generated by Covid. Now, here, I, I say you're wrong. It wasn't covid. [00:28:00] There's research showing that it was languishing. The people who are languishing going into the pandemic or during the pandemic.
Were far more likely than those who were flourishing to develop anxiety or depression. And among frontline healthcare workers in Italy, the study showed that if they were languishing, they were far more likely than their colleagues who were flourishing on the frontline to develop PTSD. So don't tell me Covid caused these problems.
If you were mentally healthy, you were mentally prepared. To deal with this deep, unusual challenge. But if you are not mentally prepared and you were languishing and a lot of the world was, that's what caused the rise of mental disorders. So Covid is a stressor. What we're not looking at is [00:29:00] this diathesis, right, that we talk about in the field, the vulnerability that nobody's paying attention to, and that's what I want to draw attention to.
And then I could, I could tell you the research we did that I wrote about in the book, I didn't get a chance to publish this. How many missed days of work are generated by languishing PE employees? And here's the thing, if you look at the following way, if you just look at the mean number of days that languish miss compared to those who are depressed, here's the numbers.
Roughly in a typical year, languishing employees miss five to six days compared to about 20 days for those who are depressed. Now, you would think the bigger problem is depression, wouldn't you? But. The prevalence of languishing is often three to five times higher than people who are depressed. Now, the multiplier effect [00:30:00] when you do that, languishing employees generate as much as or as many missed days of work as to depressed workers.
We just don't pay attention to it because we only look at depression versus not depressed. When you add my measure, it, it, it, it brings out that invisible middle category, which is usually quite large compared to the prevalence of depression. So, Al so we're not miss, we're missing something really important here.
We could be doing so much better and we're simply settling for a world where we're free of mental illness and we're missing a huge problem, which is the absence of good mental health.
Cameron: So when you add the statistics of depression and languishing together. And I'm not sure I want to hear this answer. I don't,
Corey: I know where you're going.[00:31:00]
Cameron: Yeah. What are we, what do you think, what are, what are we looking at?
Corey: Well, I got, I have to tell you about a project I'm working on right now and I'm very excited about it. Um, I'm now an external scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign in the school of business. There. A Center for Social Responsibility for business and society, and we're working on an annual report card for mental health in the workplace and at home.
And we just piloted the data in over 2000 employees, and we take my questionnaire and we ask people randomly the in, in, in different order, answer the 14 questions when you're at work. Does your life have direction and meaning when you're at work? Do you feel confident that they can express your ideas when you're at work?
Those are just two of the 14 questions on my questionnaire, and [00:32:00] then they answer the same 14 questions. When you're not at work, when you're at home with your family and your community, are you confident that they can express your ideas and opinions? Does your life have direction and meaning? And you know what we found, and I have the numbers right here that are quite well.
Here's maybe some good news. 35% of US employees flourish in both places. That was the highest number we found, but the only 35%, 31% were languishing in both work at and at home. 25% were languishing at work, but they were flourishing when they were at home, away from work. The last lowest was 9%. Were flourishing at work, but languishing at home.
Another way to look at it is the following, Cameron, 40% of US adult workers are languishing when at [00:33:00] home and 56% of the same workers are languishing when they're at work. So yes, you're more likely. It's a languish at work, but isn't it remarkable? Even at home, 40% of us working age adults who are employed are languishing, and then if you add depression on top of that, the statistic is usually five to 10%.
So you're talking, almost half of the US adult population is either languishing or depressed, and that's just depression. Anxiety disorders. On top of that, we are not doing well and we are not facing this very serious problem by simply writing more and more articles in newspapers and having these documentaries about the problem of mental illness.
I'm ton, I'm done. I'm sick of hearing it. Mental illness is a problem and so is the absence of [00:34:00] mental health. They're huge together. They're enormous. What we're working and doing to try to solve it isn't working. So we need a new direction. We will always need treatment, but boy, if we don't start by preventing, by promoting the things we want, I'm convinced we're not gonna change course.
Cameron: So what does it feel like to languish? It's a life that lacks meaning, it's feeling disconnected from others, unfulfilled in our contributions and uncertain about our direction. It's a sense of stagnation where we aren't growing, aren't challenged, and aren't satisfied with our relationships or even ourselves.
It's a lack of motivation, a dimming, a purpose, and a sense of simply getting by that. Almost all of us feel at some time or another. Yet naming languishing might also help us rethink the way we respond to that casual question. [00:35:00] How are you instead of the perfunctory great or fine. Imagine I if we answered honestly, I'm languishing.
How might we be better understood if offering a refreshing and genuine response?
On the other side of the spectrum is flourishing. The vibrant state of thriving, where meaning, connection, and growth fuels your day. And people who are flourishing have the lowest rate of mental illnesses like depression, flourishing individuals. As Corey's research shows, actively engages us in behaviors that sustain wellbeing.
Interestingly, a study by. We seeing it all published in the journal, applied research and quality of life explored the experiences of people with high flourishing versus low languishing levels of positive mental health. In three cross-sectional survey design studies, wising [00:36:00] reported that the reasons behind our goals, relationships, and meaning we take from things differed greatly for a group reporting high and languishing compared to a group reporting high and flourishing.
Languishing people manifested a self-focus and often motivated responses in terms of their own needs and hedonic values, such as happiness. Whereas flourishes were more other focused and motivated responses in terms of EU demonic values focusing on the greater good. Suggesting that a good, meaningful life, such as deep engagement for a purpose being part of something bigger than ourselves or helping others may be a better directive for our goals.
What do we do about it?
Corey: My book was only at a very simple attempt to give people five activities that they could do on their own with each other to begin. [00:37:00] To move away from depression and languishing or if they were flourishing to stay there. And those five vitamins, right? That's what I call them, helping other people, learning something new simply because you wanna learn it, not because it's instrumental to your career success, engaging in some transcendent form of ritual behavior, which is spirituality or religion.
Cameron: Um,
Corey: connecting. Connecting around quality rather than quantity around warmth, trust, belonging, and mattering. And finally, play an active leisure. Stop the passive leisure, which is taking over our life and start playing and getting out off your, off your couch and doing things. 'cause they're fun. Just because they're fun and enjoyable and exhilarating.
And those are five things we can do. And while we wait. For public health, public and our governments to catch up with us. Don't wait for [00:38:00] public health and to do this. That was the point of my book.
Cameron: You mentioned that playfulness, and I think that's so important. I was with my kids today and we had this backstage pass to a theater and there was this actor who, who just played and had fun and showed kids everything about what happens behind the scenes of the theater.
And it started with this massive bubble machine that put bubbles all around the place. And, you know, we were all jumping up and down and, and actively being playful. And you've talked a bit about we can't just rest our laurels on emotional intelligence and just focus about feeling good. We've actually got to function well.
And yeah. And I think that's such an important point and, and. I often get confused with creating meaning in life. Meaning [00:39:00] for me is possibly my why and why I've gone down flow. Because flow just creates meaningful action. Yeah. And it creates a deep engagement where we can have rich, quality experience, but we can find such meaning in such meaningless acts, such as chasing bubbles around a courtyard.
So how important do you feel that. Finding meaning is to everyday acts of flourishing. And, and in your experience, how, how do we best go about achieving that?
Corey: Yeah. Well, I, I do think that's one beautiful quality of most of the five vitamins and meaning is made with and through other people, of course, but a lot of it is often done in solitary pursuits like learning.
And I don't think we champion that enough. I do understand that a lot of meaning is made through connection in people, but I, I think we [00:40:00] underappreciate the following two things, how it's often done alone and how people face moments of meaninglessness is also really important.
I think there's a lot of activity in human existence where nothing makes sense and how you face that. It, I think, is going to determine whether you can make meaning out of nothing or if you let nothing or your life meaningless. That's, I think, really deeply underappreciated, and I wish more people would study that because I'm, I don't know about you, but my own personal assessment of my daily life is that a lot of things don't make sense.
And just trying to make meaning on the spot as if that will help you sometimes seems artificial. [00:41:00] And so you have to embrace the fact that sometimes. Life is a puzzle. It's a mystery and it doesn't make sense until maybe 10 miles down the road, literally and figuratively. I don't know. Sometimes when I'm going through something that's co requiring sacrifice and suffering, if it's all gonna make sense, all I know is I have to keep trying.
If I stop, I know for sure it's not gonna be meaningful and it's gonna suck me into this void. So I wish more people would face the fact that life isn't always meaningful, and I'm okay with that sometimes. And if I face that with courage and in the sense that somehow it will all be okay, it usually works out.
That's the amazing thing about life. [00:42:00] It's when we give up, that's when it destroys us. The myth of Sisyphus is just a great example of this. It seems absurd sometimes, but the point isn't the rock going up or down. The point is that he doesn't stop. It didn't make sense, does it? I didn't, it doesn't make sense to me.
But the myth is, is what really makes sense is if, if the rock rolls down once and you stop, oh, then that emptiness and that void takes over your life.
Cameron: And you mentioned in one study the importance of personal growth initiative as a predictor to mental health. Yeah, tell me a bit more about that and are there other predictors?
Corey: Well, at work I collaborated with Christine Ek, who, who is a counseling psychologist who [00:43:00] created this measure out of this construct that she was very interested in.
Remains is a very important idea because the point that she's making, she wants to know before you come into counseling, do you want to change? How much do you have a plan for change and is it achievable? And are you ready to change? When is it now or 10 years from now? So if, if you really want to change, you have, and you have a good plan for it and you're ready, then let's talk.
And what's remarkable is, uh, the people who are flourishing are higher on all of those qualities. They want to change. They, they have plans for change and they're ready for change. The remarkable thing about languishing, and I get it because languishing is kind of like a, a force of gravity, it sticks you somewhere in this stagnation.[00:44:00]
People who are languishing are less likely to want to change, and if they're ready, if at all, it's somewhere down the road, they're always punting it forward. Right. And there's something about languishing because it's a place where people get stuck and it makes sense, and that's why I think some of those vitamins are crucial.
You start small and you create a little community around people doing those things in small steps. And I learned this myself going through a period of languishing and depression. And having to go through treatment. And I write about it in the book and my, my core therapist said, well, we're gonna do meditation, but guess what, Cory, we're gonna do one minute for two weeks straight and then we'll graduate to two minutes.
And I chuckled at her. My ego suddenly got real big and said, oh God, what a waste of time I can do. [00:45:00] I could do more. She said, she said, uh, very patiently sat there and kind of smiled and said, no, we're gonna start with one minute. We're gonna start small. And I was like, are you kidding me? That's not gonna help me.
And boy oh boy. That's the place where I needed to start small. Yeah. So it's, that's the problem. 'cause I would've bit off more than I could have chewed at the moment. They were, I was screaming back at one minute saying it's a waste of time. And then I would've jumped in and said, let me do 20 minutes, and then I couldn't do it.
And I was, we'll say, yeah, what a waste of time. Isn't it remarkable how the ego just gets in our way?
Cameron: I spent some time with the Brahma Kamari once, and they have a practice of one minute every hour, which I just absolutely love because at the time I was doing the long form [00:46:00] meditation, feeling like a spiritual ego, and then probably behaving in completely the opposite for the rest of the day.
Mm-hmm. That that consistency. And, and was just, was, was really tough, but really important to, coming back to my comment earlier about getting the building blocks in place and getting those foundations and not just going from one extreme to another. Or chasing happiness. Right. Or chasing wellbeing or doing things to fill that void, but actually living through it.
Yeah. And trying to flourish moment to moment, not just the peaks of flourishing.
Corey: Yeah. I love that example, Cameron. That's a great example. I get the sense of what the small steps do is they bring more order to our personal life. Again, where there's been chaos and disorder. We don't see it happening until [00:47:00] we start to feel like, oh my God.
I have things to do, and then when I do them, I'm more centered and I'm more stable. And the tree that is stable also can bend. When the wind comes along, when it's chaotic and disordered, the tree doesn't bend. It gets rigid and it breaks when the wind comes along. And the fact of the matter is when things aren't going well, we're usually rigid and fixed.
And it, and we need perfection or the day won't go well. And I'm telling you, there was a study I wrote about where they looked at employees for three weeks straight and every day asked them about sources of stress. And 18 out of the 21 days, people experienced sources of stress. What was remarkable is it wa there was no difference between those who were languishing and flourishing in terms of sources of [00:48:00] stress.
They measured negative mood at the end of the day, and people who are languishing in that fixed, stagnant state who had more sources of stress, had a far worse day, more negative mood. They were angrier, more resentful, sadder, um, fearful that people who are flourishing or had the same amount of sources of stress that day.
Had a far less worse day. So it's not like flourishers have better days and fewer sources of stress, it's just that when the stress happens, it doesn't create a, a whole bunch of negativity. It, it gets inside, it affects you, but not nearly as much as when you're languishing. And that, that's the point. I mean, when we're stuck, there's very little order to our life and we can't bend.
We pray.
Cameron: [00:49:00] Yeah. We become in tropic. Yeah. Yeah. As evident by many a soul who's gone to a beautiful remote island, only to love it for a month or two and feel very lonely, depressed, and languishing for a long time, myself included.
Thank you so much for the chat. We're gonna have to come to an end, but I've really enjoyed it and. Lots of nuggets. I did as well to pull out, we, we always ask guests a couple of questions. One, a book or a film that has impacted you that others could pick up.
Corey: Hmm. David Attenborough's film of Mahat, ma Gandhi or Gandhi is was the title.
It changed my life and it actually was one of the reasons I moved in this direction because as a young man, I [00:50:00] often thought the only way you can respond to injustices through aggression and violence or complete disengagement and passivity his life in that film showed me there was a middle way, and I read everything I could about Gandhi after that, and I watched that movie countless times.
Inspired me to the, for, to really think about life as and addressing injustice through ethical means. Mm.
Cameron: Yeah. I'm just trying to place the film of GaN. I'm not sure I've watched David Attenborough's. Was it a documentary?
Corey: No, no. It was a film and it was historically very accurate. Um, yes. Oh,
Cameron: sorry. By Richard or David.
Corey: Oh, Richard Attenborough. Richard, sorry. I got the, sorry. Yes. This, I want David is the, sorry. Yeah. Got the, thank you for the correction. Yes. I've seen it almost three up, three hours' seen. That's amazing. Remarkable, [00:51:00] remarkable story of how, yeah, because that was the point. Be the change you want to see in the world.
Hmm. You can't overthrow injustice. Expect suddenly the world that you've changed is suddenly just for you. You can't create peace through violence and expect if you overthrow something through violence, it suddenly everyone's going to enjoy peace. He and King showed us a path to address injustice in a way so that we, we do it in a way that creates the change we want.
To experience at, at the end time to flip the mic. If you were to do one thing different in your life, what would it be?
Cameron: Just one.[00:52:00]
Corey: Yeah. That's very honest that that would be true for us all. Just one.
Cameron: It it's around the concept of. Slowing down. It's around the concept of a bit more compassion, a bit more. Quality, not quantity. I'm, I'm quite headstrong, achievement focused and love a challenge, and my younger years has, has been go, go, go, go, go.
And I've done some amazing things, but I also think with a bit more, but compassion slowing down a bit more, a bit more focus on the quality of things. There might have been a bit more richness or it may be a different decision here or there or so. That would be my answer. Yeah,
Corey: I think that's honest and what it resonates with me as well and I suspect lots of people, so thank you for being vulnerable.
Cameron: My pleasure. [00:53:00] Thank you so much for your time. Cory must let you go and yeah, really enjoyed the chat.
Corey: Well thank you Cameron and I enjoyed it as well.
Cameron: Flow unleashed, unleashed. We still have a lot to learn about what causes languishing and how to cure it, but naming it might be a first step. One thing psychologists agree on is that naming our emotions can be a powerful tool.
Giving languishing a name is like cleaning a smudged window. It helps to give clarity to that foggy state in which you're not actively struggling with depression, but you're far from thriving. And Cory's work has helped us. To see our experience more clearly and reminds us we're not alone. Languishing is shared by many, even if we don't always talk about it, if we want to be flourishing.
But what if you're stuck in that gray space of languishing? How do you begin to [00:54:00] climb out? Yeah, the answer might lie in the concept flow. Flow is almost the antithesis being a deep state of absorption in a meaningful challenge or activity. A moment in which we are deeply connected, engaged, and feeling fully alive.
Interestingly, during the pandemic, the best predictive of wellbeing wasn't mindfulness or optimism. It was flow. People who found ways to immerse themselves in engaging projects or meaningful connections managed to avoid languishing and maintain their happiness despite the challenges. So to find flow, start small.
Seek out just manageable challenges that stretch your skills without overwhelming yourself. Whether it's solving a puzzle, diving into a creative project, or having an enriching conversation, these small wins can rekindle your sense of purpose. And languishing doesn't have to be a permanent state. By recognizing it, naming it, and taking steps to reengage with meaningful challenges, we can begin to transition towards [00:55:00] flourishing.
It's about finding purpose in the every day. Connecting with others and striving for something greater than ourselves. So if you're feeling stuck, remember even small steps towards flow and purpose can light the way forward. And if you're flourishing, consider how you can support those around you who might not be together.
We can move from simply surviving to truly thriving. If you want to find out more about Cory Keys, please see the show notes.
Thank you for listening to Flow Unleashed. If you enjoyed listening, please subscribe to get notified when our next episode drops. The more people that subscribe, the better I can make the show for you. Equally, please leave a review. Your review will go a long way to helping others find this pot until the next time.
Thank you for [00:56:00] listening to Flow Unleashed.