Are You Languishing? Escape the Epidemic of Emptiness | Corey Keyes

Are you languishing - feeling that gnawing sense of emptiness despite checking all the society's boxes? Renowned sociologist Corey Keyes, author of "Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down," https://amzn.to/418cxHt reveals powerful practices to reignite your passion, purpose and human connections - the key ingredients to flourishing mental health. Discover an insightful path to feeling vibrantly alive. You can find Corey at: Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rWtJNsUAAAAJ&hl=en | Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/languishing-and-flourishing-corey-keyes If you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Daniel Kahneman https://episodes.fm/647826736/episode/NjQwNzhlZWQ1NDkzNzUwMDExY2EwZTI2 about the way we make decisions. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Human beings are like most living things in this world. We were created to feel emotion. And whether we like it or not, whether it's good or bad, at least when you feel emotion, you feel alive.

• 0:10Jonathan Fields?

  Our guest today, Corey Keyes, is a renowned sociologist and psychologist, best known for his research on flourishing and languishing. And his groundbreaking work, explored in his book, Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  When you're languishing, suddenly you stop doing, and you rest, and suddenly you don't feel anything. And when you feel this way, it's telling you you've left behind the good things that gave your life meaning.

• 0:43Jonathan Fields?

  So this thing, languishing, like I think I kind of get it. How do I know if I have it?

• 0:50Speaker 00

  You can feel it when you've lost some of those things. You're starting to feel like what was a fullness to your life is emptying.

• 0:59Jonathan Fields?

  So I'd love to drop into that a little bit more.

• 1:01Speaker 00

  The risk of depression and anxiety, among other mental disorders, is so much higher among those who are languishing. And yet, we're not taking it serious at all. We're not even measuring it in our public health system.

• 1:54Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Stio. So I am not in the studio today. I'm actually out on the trail and the Rockies at about 6,000 feet above sea level and boulder. The leaves are exploding with color and it's just stunning out. And yes, I'm wearing my favorite Stio hat and just last night I was wearing one of my favorite Stio jackets, which if you know me is not unusual. I wear the hat almost every day and my Stio jackets pretty much live on me all fall and winter. There's even a Stio shop back in town practically in my backyard. Here is why I love them. Stio is designed and tested in Jackson Hole at the base of the Tetons by locals who ski and bike and hike and climb and fish there pretty much every day. They have been at it since 2011, so they know warmth and they also know style.

• 2:39Jonathan Fields?

  Everything I have from them, it works great. It holds up in every condition and also looks awesome. And their hometown down is 800 filled down, but it feels more like just your favorite hoodie than a puffy. And ski season is almost here, so gear up now the way that the locals do. Go to stio.com/goodlife for 20% off your order. That's S-T-I-O dot com slash good life. Stio dot com slash good life. Stio, designed and tested in Jackson Hole. Good Life Project is supported by Ernesta rugs. So a small confession, our front porch has been the most neglected corner of our home since we moved in. It's the first thing anyone steps onto and it's been kind of greeting people with a sad, too small mat. Ernesta sent me their samples and now they're making us a rug.

• 3:24Jonathan Fields?

  And the cool thing is for $10, you get five oversized 12 by 12 samples. So you see the colors at real scale in your own space before you even get it. So we lived with all five colors for a few days and cool morning light and golden afternoon light. And we're sure to be roasting the sky, but Caldwell just kind of kept quietly winning. The thing you're certain about isn't always the thing that fits. And because Ernesta rugs are custom size, cut to the ends, the one we ordered is made to our exact six and a half feet by nine feet space, not close enough. Visit ernesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you'll get $50 toward any rug of your choice. That's E-R-N-E-S-T-A dot com.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  I didn't know about depression, so that was a godsend because I think what happens to a lot of people is they don't have a word for it and they can't describe it. And so I think a lot of well-intentioned clinicians and psychiatrists will just lump it in with depression. But what I was feeling then, and I still experience it personally, several, many days, is this gnawing sense of emptiness, like there's a huge void. Literally, physically, there's this void in me. And the desire is that I want to fill it up immediately and get rid of that feeling.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  And so that sense of emptiness and that sense of a void being inside of me is what helped me understand, I think that we were talking about something different from depression, and especially from not only depression, but burnout as well.

• 5:05Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I know you write, "It was more like I was on autopilot, compelled to keep doing, to throw myself at activity after activity, leaving little room for the thoughts that rose up when I was alone with myself." And I have to imagine that a lot of people are listening to that and probably nodding along, thinking to themselves, "Oh, yeah, I felt that," or "I'm feeling that," or some version of that, but really not understanding like what that's, what that means, like how to describe it in a meaningful way, or whether even, is there something wrong with this or is this just grown-up life?

• 5:42Speaker 00

  It's been with us. It's part of life, Jonathan, yes. And that's what I learned as I began to go down the historical road to understand whether there was any equivalent in prior centuries.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  And it turns out, yes, I write about this, this eighth deadly sin that did exist prior to the 12th century in Christianity. And it was called assidia. And assidia, when it's described by these religious adherents, and the monks, particularly, they were the desert monks, as they were known back then, they were writing about this feeling of having no feeling. That's the irony. We have to talk about it as a feeling, but really, when you're languishing, suddenly you, you stop doing, and you rest, and suddenly you don't feel anything. And that's the amazing thing. Human beings are like most living things in this world. In this world, we were created to feel emotion. And whether we like it or not, whether it's good or bad,

• 6:43Speaker 00

  at least when you feel emotion, you feel alive? Because you're responding to the vicissitudes of life. Languishing, back then, was this stagnation and emptiness and feeling numb? And it often led these religious adherents to stray from the path, which, you know, is not good if you're, you're seeking God in this life and to, right? And so it was considered a source of sin. And then, and it got removed in the 12th century. I could tell you the exact Pope, Pope Gregory the Great. But we don't know why. We don't know why.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  And I can only speculate that it didn't quite fit neatly in the other deadly sins that we now know as the seven. So it's there. It's been with us, and it's, it will always be with us. Because here's what, the way I think of it. It's an existential wake-up call, or an alarm clock. When you feel this way, it's telling you, you've left behind the good things that gave your life meaning, direction, purpose, and all those good things that make life worth living. So it's like an alarm clock that goes off when you started to do things that take you away from those things that were giving your life purpose, belonging, contribution, and meaning.

• 8:10Speaker 00

  And it's telling you, it's like knocking on the door saying, wake up, you don't leave me behind too long, because if you stay there at this point of emptiness too long, as I say, it becomes pathological. Previously, it's a normal response, telling us you've, you need to go back to doing the things that were giving you meaning, or you need to stop devoting all your time to things that are taking you away from those things that gave your life meaning. So I think what happens is that we hit the snooze buzz button on that existential alarm clock, much like we hit the snooze button when we say, I want to get up at six o'clock and exercise. And I go, I don't want to. And when we do that, then

• 8:51Speaker 00

  it goes from a normal response to the loss of meaning, to a pathological place where lots of bad things start to happen, as I detail in the book.

• 9:01Jonathan Fields?

  It seems like you also, you describe, this is actually a straight out of, I think it's some of the research that you did, I think you published around 2002, where you were analyzing some data from 90, 95, like this data set of midlife experiences, and it kind of identified this spectrum from flourishing to moderate mental health, to languishing, to depression. So it does seem like this is sort of like a state that falls within the broader spectrum of mental health.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Yes, the way I think of it is, it's a state of being mentally unhealthy. You don't necessarily end up and go from being mentally healthy to immediately mentally ill, right? You sort of, you can fall in this in-between category, where you spend a lot of time being mentally unhealthy. And as we know, the equivalent is, we do a lot of physically unhealthy things that don't immediately create disease and ill physical illnesses. But if you persist, right, don't get enough sleep, your diet isn't very good, and you don't exercise, and you smoke, or you drink too much alcohol for too long, eventually

• 10:12Speaker 00

  it creates, it goes from physical unhealth to physical illness. And that's the way to think of languishing. It's a place where you are mentally unhealthy. And in and of itself, it's not very good for you to be there. But if you stay there too long, you can begin to slide into what we now consider, you know, the mental disorders that we now are taking far more serious.

• 10:37Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, so it's almost like a, um, not necessarily a leading indicator of where you're heading, but a warning light to a certain extent of where you might head. Does that land?

• 10:48Speaker 00

  I love the way you put that. That's exactly, it's, it, or it's sort of the version of the wake up call. And it's telling us, um, okay, this can go one of two ways.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  It's telling you, you need to engage in activities that restore, right? Restoration of good mental health, which I call flourishing. Or you are going to persist in doing the things that are leading you away from those things that create flourishing because you think they're more important. Right? They're part of your career. They're part of a variety of other things that society has taught you. Those are far more important. And if you do that far too long, well, it'll go in a much worse direction. So it's a leading indicator in the sense that we should be as a society. I even argue, public health needs to take this far more serious

• 11:43Speaker 00

  because we need to respond to it before it leads to even worse problems.

• 11:48Jonathan Fields?

  I know in, um, in that same early data set, you, um, we learned that, um, the risk of major depressive episode was two times more likely among languishing than moderately mental healthy adults and nearly six times greater among languishing than flourishing adults. So that, that is huge, you know, like that, um, that is quite the wake up call.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  You would have thought so. And I want to step back and correct something that I should have thought about ahead of time. Are you, I, I use the word moderate mental health and that sounds like it's okay. That's good enough. What it really means is that you're languishing mildly to moderately.

• 12:29Jonathan Fields?

  Hmm.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  If you're not flourishing, here's the thing, you're languishing to some degree. And even if you're languishing in the moderate category, you have a much higher elevated risk for a variety of problems, not the least of which is, if you've never had depression, your risk has gone up pretty high compared to people who are mentally healthy, that is flourishing. So even those who are moderately mentally healthy or languishing moderately need to be, they need our attention because it will continue to get worse. They will go from moderate and slide into what I call now severe languishing. What I used to just call languishing is a severe form of languishing.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  And that's where you get risk and odds ratios that go to five to six times of what you just talked about. That's alarming risk. And yet, here, here I am, 25 years later from publishing that data and publishing more studies, and I'm not the only one showing this, that the risk of depression, anxiety, among other mental disorders, is so much higher among those who are languishing. And yet, we're not taking it serious at all. We're not even measuring it in our public health systems.

• 13:43Jonathan Fields?

  I want to get more granular and understand this more and also understand how to really suss out maybe how it's showing up in our lives and what we can potentially do about it. But also, I want to zoom the lens out before we get there and explore, you know, what, how did we get here? You know, from a societal level, you described that all the way back, you know, there was this ascent that kind of functionally equated to languishing and then was, you know, like doesn't appear and later turned into more. But the human condition and really focusing sort of like on the modern state of the human conditions. What do you see as the, really the significant contributors to this experience?

• 14:24Jonathan Fields?

  And are you seeing this become a more pervasive experience in people?

• 14:29Speaker 00

  I wish we had the historical data to answer that question that it's becoming more pervasive. I can say that during the pandemic, it was very clear.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  That languishing was among the most severe problems when it came to the mental health area. For instance, I can cite you some data that in Australia, where they were using my measure along with measures of depression, anxiety, and measures of stress. And stress, anxiety, and depression grows roughly 10% to 13%. So, and stress was around 10, anxiety was around 12, depression was 13, to be exact. Yeah, I'm surprised. Actually, it wasn't higher. No, but this was, now, this was 2019, comparing 2019 to 2021. Got it, got it. So I'm pretty sure that was just within the first year. Right.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  And what happened was that languishing increased by 24% within that same timeframe. And there's now data that I just saw published within the last six months on teenagers within the first year, across 15 different countries, within 2021, roughly 8% to 13% increase in languishing among females and males. And even though males were doing slightly better, male teenagers on average, than the females, they had a slightly larger increase in languishing than the females.

• 16:05Speaker 00

  But it's so, it's, it is very responsive to changes in our life. And so I suspect historically, we could actually go through some monumental changes that have really sort of happened in our lifetime. Not the least of which was that a fundamental change in the basis of our economy. In our, in you and I, in our lifetime, we saw our economy shift from a primarily manufacturing to a primarily service-driven economy, where in the latter, educational attainment and more of it is critical if you're going to succeed.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  And if you don't have access to good education and continued education, and achieving higher levels of education in this economy, you will end up in the low-level end of service jobs, where you have to cobble together more than one job just to get through. But here's the thing, and I write about this in the book. People who have high education have more work than they've ever had. They're working more hours than ever. And they're stressed out now in this new world. Just as much as the people who are stressed out because they're working fewer hours on average and have to put together two, sometimes three jobs and can barely make ends meet. So they're stressed out because they're working so much, but they can barely put food and healthcare in our household.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  And that's, that is just one fundamental change that we don't seem to recognize. In the previous economy, getting a high school education and getting some sort of apprenticeship was enough to get some pretty decent jobs in a manufacturing economy. Those are gone. Those are almost all gone. And the key to doing well in this world today is a full access to really good education for the very beginning of life. And we're not addressing any of that right now in terms of inequalities. So, I mean, so much in our life has changed. And then the last one, as a sociological point out. Literally, we have had the rug

• 18:17Speaker 00

  that comforted our feet from the coldness of the floor of life pulled out from under us. Think of my parents had pensions. Now, if you go online now, nobody is prepared for retirement. And lots of people are now having to say, I'm gonna have to work until I'm 70, sometimes 80. That they're living in a world where they're told to save for retirement, but they don't have enough money to even deal with today's debts, let alone save enough money to retire. Those are just two ways in which I think we feel like the rules of the game have changed. Nobody asked us, and now we're told to be resilient.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  And smile and get along and be thankful we have work, if, right?

• 19:06Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, the, you know, when you look at the bigger socioeconomic situation, it kind of makes sense that so many people would be feeling this experience of languishing, especially if you came up with a certain set of expectations, you know, and sort of like in the middle, it feels like everything changed, like, but I was doing all the right things, you know?

• 19:27Speaker 00

  I was.

• 19:28Jonathan Fields?

  Like, as I was traveling the path, I checked the boxes and there was a certain implicit promise. And now it feels, as you described, the rug's been pulled out. I wonder, as you describe that, as we, you know, we move into what I see as the next major evolution in contribution and work, which is AI, how that is going to shake all of this to the core as well, because it seems like now, actually, the people who feel most exposed and are questioning the promise the most are actually those who invested substantial years and money in higher education. And they're seeing the work that is a part of like the knowledge work generation,

• 20:14Jonathan Fields?

  being the work that is potentially going to transition the quickest. I think we're in such an interesting window when it comes to this right now. I don't think anybody really knows how it's going to shake out.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  No, and you've you put your finger on a really important issue that I think if we as a, if we want to succeed in in whatever's to come next, I think, and if we want people to still invest themselves into something of the knowledge economy, we have to be prepared to say that there is something of use beyond just being a brain dump. Right? That we're more that you can't just take all that we've created and thought and simply say, now you're smarter than us because you did a massive brain of all of humanity,

• 21:05Speaker 00

  without saying, you know, we still need people because of their amazing ability to be creative. Now, I'd like to think that there is going to be a challenge posted to people that we can't rest on our laurels and maybe this will motivate a lot of us to really be motivated to be as creative.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  And thoughtful and as useful in the way human beings can be. And to have a really deep conversation. Are we really necessary? And I know the answer to that is yes. But we're now going to be challenged. What's going to be the next great thing that we as human beings can do that machines will not do? And I'd love to hear what people think. Oh, let's unleash that because we have been a pretty amazing. We respond when things get really tough. And I'd like to believe that it will get tough and we're going to respond and say, yeah, but there's so much more left in humanity. We haven't begun to scratch the surface.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  You wait.

• 22:17Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I'm right there with you. And I feel like moments like these can be challenging and maybe the next five years or so. But also it pushes you into the existential questions that so often we just kind of push to the side and we put our heads down and we do the work, you know, like we push through. We strive for whatever the, you know, the cultural expectations of, you know, like quote, success are for us. And we just kind of assume this is it rather than saying, but what is this? You know, like, and what is our like, what is our role? Like, how do we take the seat in, you know, like the culture of humanity? And just individually, like, what does it mean to me? Like, what am I, how do I contribute in a way that makes me feel alive? And I think it's forcing a lot of people who've been able to ignore those questions to actually return to them.

• 23:02Jonathan Fields?

  And of course, that's going to be some hard thinking. But my hope and my sense is on the other side of that, that we really start to, to examine how we show up in the world and don't in, in new ways that allow us to, to not just continue to thrive and flourish, but to feel better in the moment, you know, along the way. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Good Life Project is sponsored by Talkiiatry. So you know that moment when you finally say, "Okay, I need some help"? That takes courage. And then you start calling psychiatrists and hear, "We're not taking new patients," or "Our next opening is months away." Talkiiatry exists to change that. Unlike therapy-only platforms, Talkiiatry is psychiatry.

• 23:47Jonathan Fields?

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• 24:32Jonathan Fields?

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• 25:16Jonathan Fields?

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• 26:00Jonathan Fields?

  First sip, I actually laughed. It's that good. Rich caramel, a little salty edge, and none of the sugary drawbacks. And it's still the Kachava that I count on. Two scoops for complete nutrition with plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, no fillers, no nonsense. Which if you're feeling a little salty yourself is kind of the point. Embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com and use the code GOODLIFE for 15% off your order. That's Kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code GOODLIFE. I feel like we're emerging out of the generation of happiness. Not that we're leaving happiness behind, but there's been so much literature and so

• 26:45Jonathan Fields?

  many popular books and so many conversations and so many talks and videos about, you know, like pursuing happiness. Not that happiness is a bad thing, but you know, you sort of say like, is that really the thing that we should be focusing on here?

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, and the father of capitalism, that's what he's considered. Adam Smith wrote about this. It's a remarkable tome when he, and he uses this word, it's a deception. And I don't think economists who even, who talk about this really do justice to saying, to getting at what Smith was talking about. Because what he was really talking about before psychologists came along and studied the hedonic treadmill was that's exactly what putting happiness in the material pursuits of things does to us. You can never, ever have enough because we respond to change.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  We adapt to the way things, when we have a change in our life and an improvement, we adapt to it. We get used to it. Nothing wrong with that. That's the nature of life. So we will want more of what felt good. But he said he goes on in the theory of moral sentiments to talk about we need something besides the pursuit of material goods to correct that deception, which is when you look at every spiritual tradition, let's take Buddhism for example, which we deconstructed into is just mindfulness, there's the Eightfold Path, right? Yoga, every yoga tradition, and I'm a person who really loves yoga, it's not enough just

• 28:27Speaker 00

  to go on the mat and do poses. That's what I call the sun base camp for focusing on what you need to do to be a better kind of person in this world, the ethical stuff, right? So that's what I think is missing in this conversation. And while we talk about it, it seems like humanity has a really hard time getting their hands around

• 28:57Speaker 00

  religion and spiritual traditions, like what should we keep and what should we throw out? Right now, we want to throw out baby with the bathwater. And yet, there's something about the fact that human beings need to study and think about and be mentored and encouraged to work on their character, right? To become better at doing the things that human beings are meant to be doing, which is to help each other, to live for something beyond yourself, right? And so I think that's what we're missing. And it's not like I'm going to prescribe

• 29:40Speaker 00

  religion for everyone, but I think we need to stop and think.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  This leaving behind the sacred stuff that we've kind of are uncomfortable with and not putting something in its place. Is going to leave us languishing in this world and without

• 30:04Speaker 00

  answers to those existential questions.

• 30:06Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that's such an important notion. I was talking to a dear friend of mine who's Buddhist teacher. She's in lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. She's studying, teaching 30 years now. And we've had a similar conversation, like there, as you described, so often, just the meditation, mindfulness has been kind of sanitized and just dropped as this standalone solo practice. Now, there's nothing wrong with doing that practice. It's research. It has some like really powerful benefits. But when you take it out of the bigger basket of ethical considerations and thoughts and ideas and explorations, we just lose so much. It's like, as you described in yoga, like we, so many people come to yoga for the posture, the asana, right?

• 30:51Jonathan Fields?

  Not realizing that part of, you know, this early, the traditional eightfold path of yoga is, well, they're also, you know, like the yamas and the niyamas, the ethical considerations, like, you know, like what, how we show up and don't show up. They're the outer limbs that move us towards, you know, like focusing and samadhi, the experience of unification, and that this was, that core of just the physical part of it, that was just intended to get you ready. Like, so you could actually, you know, like, sit long enough and be comfortable to explore the other things. And again, those pieces have standalone value. They're good. But when we strip all the other stuff out, they're not enough.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  No, and there's some research that shows us, and I love the way you've described this, because I think the other part of the ethical path and why we need to quiet the mind and the body before we can really work on those things, is because if we can become nonreactive to the things that have nothing to do with us personally, then we can direct our attention on ourselves and our own weaknesses, our own shortcomings, our own sins and vulnerabilities, and not be overwhelmed by them, and understand that, you know,

• 32:11Speaker 00

  that too can pass if I work on them. So to me, the quiet mind is about

• 32:18Speaker 00

  To become a better person so that you become a better person in the world. And I've always said, and I said this in the book, if you want to flourish, you can't just demand these things to come to you. You have to give them as well. Like if you want a sense of belonging, which is one of the 11 indicators, of functioning well in this life, a sense of social belonging or integration. I challenge you, when was the last time you welcomed anybody into your own community or circle and said, you belong here, I want you here.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  You're a part of my community, especially people who might not think and look like you. So if you want a sense of belonging and you want to be welcome, the question is, start with yourself. How welcoming are you and do you invite others in? It's an amazing thing that we seem to want to throw that away. And we think the world like needs to give us all these things. Well, they're going to come if you give them as well. So I'm like, I have to live that lesson myself. I don't say this in a preachy way. I have to learn those lessons and I have to work on every day.

• 33:39Jonathan Fields?

  I think we all do, like nobody gets stopped out of this. It's like we're all stumbling forward, you know, in our own unique ways. The, what I'd love to do is narrow us, our focus a little bit. I think it's been really interesting to look at the macro picture here and the broader notions. But no doubt, somebody's going to be listening to this, watching it. And in their mind, one of the big questions is going to be, okay, so this thing languishing, like I think I kind of get it. But what does it really look like on a day to day basis? And how do I know if I have it? So I'd love to, I'd love to drop into that a little bit more.

• 34:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, there, yeah, this gets me to the, sort of with some of the questions that are used in what my measure in the tool, right? I call it the mental health continuum. And it's, there's a short form because, you know, as we scientists, we start out trying to be as inclusive as possible. And there used to be 40 questions we would ask. And I've narrowed it down to 14 at least. And maybe in the future, we can narrow it down a little more. But those 14 questions get at three kinds of well-being. And the first is what we talk, when it comes, I call it emotional well-being, which is

• 35:01Speaker 00

  that happiness tradition. And I ask people, you know, how often in the past two weeks or past month, did you feel either happy, satisfied with your life, or interested in life? And you have to have one out of those three, at least one of the three, feeling good stuff, every day or almost every day, to begin to meet the criteria for what I call flourishing, or to be mentally healthy. But then there are 11 other questions, five of which get at what I call social well-being. We ask, I ask you, how often in the past two weeks, did you feel that the things you do contribute anything of worth or value

• 35:43Speaker 00

  to your community or to your society? How often in the last two weeks, did you feel that you belonged to a community? And I give some examples. How often in the last two weeks, were you able to make sense of what's going on in the world around you? Right? Those are just three out of the five. And then there's six psychological well-being. How often did you, did you like most parts of your personality? How, which is self-acceptance? How often in the last week, did you feel that your life had direction or meaning, which we called purpose? And the third example I'll give you out of psychological well-being is how often last week, did you feel confident to think and express your own ideas and opinions? Right? So to flourish, it's not enough to feel good every day or almost every day.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  You have to have at least six out of the 11 signs of functioning well, right? The five social well-being and six psychological are representations of that you're functioning well in this life. So you have to have at least six out of those of the 11 every day or almost every day, combined with at least one of the feeling good. And so I like to think of flourishing as you can put together.

• 36:55Speaker 00

  Right, if you think of all the various combinations, right? You only have to have seven out of the 14, one out of feeling good. There's lots of different ways human beings find a way to flourish. Some might prioritize purpose. Some might prioritize personal growth and self-acceptance, right? And so I love that notion that there's a variety of different ways people can flourish. And that you only need seven out of the 14. When people sometimes hear the word, they jump right to the conclusion that I've given them another standard for perfectionism. No, you don't have to be good at all of them in order to flourish.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  It's just half, seven out of the 14. But it's got to be that combination, Jonathan. It has to be that you feel good about a life in which your life has those examples of functioning well. It has purpose, it has belonging, it has, you're contributing things to your community. It's that you're accepting of others, you're accepting of yourself. You exercise some confidence and you participate in the common good, giving your opinions. So it's a kind of feeling good that's premised on something that's, I would consider, has substance.

• 38:19Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, what's interesting also is, tell me what the three different conditions were for the first question, again, the three different states of was interested.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, interested in life, satisfied with life, or happy.

• 38:30Jonathan Fields?

  Okay, so what's interesting to me is you're not, you don't have to check all three of those boxes. You know, if you can say yes to one, which means you can be going through an experience or maybe a season where happiness feels really hard to access. And we've all been there and we all will be there again. Maybe you're struggling with a loss, maybe you're, you know, there's a challenge at work, whatever it is. And you're saying that doesn't opt you out of the possibility of flourishing? Just because you can still, like, you can still say, like, I'm not happy right now.

• 39:11Jonathan Fields?

  You know, like, there's, um, things are really hard, but I'm actually interested. There's things that are happening around me and within me that are interesting to me. And I get to check that box. And then, you know, like, I want to look at some of the other ones also. But like, it's not about, you know, you can, you can flourish. You can sort of, you know, like, find your way out of or not be in the space of languishing, even if in the moment, you're not necessarily happy, which is interesting to me.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I love that you pointed that out because, you know, there are times in our life, and I was there when I was in college sometimes, and when I was getting my graduate degree. And then when I was a professor, there were times in my life where I really had to buckle down and work on some things and get better as a scholar, as a teacher, as a colleague. And that was hard. I did feel particularly good, but I was working on something that mattered, felt worthwhile. It was engaging and it was interesting to me. I never lost interest in life, but it didn't always feel good.

• 40:22Speaker 00

  But when I was working on things that engaged myself and my interest, that was a leading indicator that I was moving in a really good direction. And so I love that point. It doesn't have to always feel like off the charts, like happiness or satisfaction, but are the things you're doing in your life? Do they engage what you would say your interest? Because those things pulled you forward into life, not away from life.

• 40:57Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and so, I mean, not so often, but at times those interests, you know, like more regularly invested in can grow into passions, you know, they can grow into something that really becomes more of a fire within you. I love that notion. I think I have a better sense for what languishing is now. And also, I think that sort of checklist, you know, the fundamental assessment, the 14 different things is really useful for somebody to be able to just, even if you're not going to formally fill something out, to just kind of glance through and say, huh, you know, like, how am I doing according to this? To just get a sense for, you know, what might be going on. Part of my curiosity is, and this is something you write about as well,

• 41:40Jonathan Fields?

  is also what languishing isn't. You know, you reference things like burnout earlier. We talked about, you know, or if we think about depression, anxiety, burnout, you know, stress, overwhelm. What's the relationship there? Because my sense is that languishing is not those things.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  No, and it's not to say that they don't have a connection, but you're right. And in just going through a few of the questions, and I use the measure flourishing, you write, "All of those questions are about the presence of good things. Interest, happiness, satisfaction, a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, your sense of contribution, acceptance of other people, a sense that you can make sense of all of the world, you're confident." Languishing is the loss of that good stuff. And that's why I said it's a one-larn call. Because suddenly, you can feel it when you've lost some of those things. You're starting to feel like what was a fullness to your life.

• 42:44Speaker 00

  Is emptying, it's disappearing. And languishing is the absence of those good things. Purpose, belonging, contribution, confidence, autonomy, growth. All of those things along with, you're suddenly, you're not feeling interested in life. Not satisfied much, not happy. Depression is all about the presence of negative things. Negative emotions and malfunctioning, right? Psychiatrists measure it as the presence of either sadness or a loss of pleasure in the things that used to bring you pleasure. That's kind of close to interest, but you know. And then there's seven signs of malfunctioning.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  Things like you're sleeping more or less than you used to. You're eating more or you're eating less than you used to. You're thinking about not wanting to live much more or even ending your life when you never thought about that before. So when you're not depressed, it means you don't have any of those negative symptoms, or you don't have enough of them. But the absence of depression doesn't mean suddenly you have all those good things, right? Purpose, belonging, you can land right in between. There's nothing bad, there's nothing good. And that's why I called it, and Adam used this phrase, "It's the middle child."

• 44:10Speaker 00

  It's the middle child way between depression and flourishing or good mental health. Now, burnout's an interesting one because that's when we feel completely exhausted from having gone through a period in life where we have had a lot of demands and challenges. And

• 44:35Speaker 00

  That happens for people of all walks of lives, even the high-end professionals with high educational degrees, right? The difference is that a lot of people who have a lot of high challenges with with really good jobs and good education have a lot more discretion and can manage those high challenges. And they have choice over how and when sometimes they do those things compared to people with lowered prestige or lower socioeconomic standing in jobs, where they don't have choice or discretion over anything that has to do with their work. So burnout is about when you meet a lot of challenges

• 45:18Speaker 00

  with very little personal discretion or choice or support. And I love the fact that, you know, there's lots of studies that have come out and I write about many of them. And that, I like to use the word, people can do hard as long as they have support and camaraderie and choice and discretion. And there's also that lots of data now showing that when people are flourishing, they can handle a lot more challenge. So burnout is what happens when we meet challenge without good mental health, right, when we're languishing, and when we don't have much support

• 46:03Speaker 00

  or very little control over our life and very little discretion over when things happen and how they happen. And so I like to think, you know, burnout can land you in languishing, but languishing can also be a source of burnout. You can feel completely without control and without any sense of choice over your life. And so you just are dealing with all of this adversity without any sense of agency. Overhandling it and how to handle it. And so you, it gets to people when they have very little control or choice or discretion over how they meet challenge.

• 46:47Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, that makes so much sense. And that the whole, I've heard it described in the past, maybe it was in literature, is locus of control. Like when we feel like we don't have the ability to both have enough control over the means to actually achieve something or the outcome that we're responsible for delivering on, it's, it's a brutal effect. And especially if you're just kind of like heads down grinding towards it, but you feel like you don't have what you need to either opt out of it or to do what's being asked of you. And you just go and go and go until there's nothing left to grind. I have been there. Pretty much anybody I know has been there, sometimes at my own hand. And I have to pull out and actually ask like, what am I doing here?

• 47:32Jonathan Fields?

  But it's really interesting, the distinction you made as well, between languishing and conditions like depression, where like languishing is more like the absence of, the feeling of I'm empty of all these things. And depression is the presence of all these other things that, that really become heavy for us. It's an interesting way to think about teasing out what maybe is going on internally. And by the way, for anyone listening or watching, we are not offering mental health advice here. This is, you know, we're not your therapist. We're not like this is, these are ideas that I think are just really interesting and valuable. And if you feel like you're feeling any of these things and a level where it's really intruding into me for your life, please, please reach out to other people who are

• 48:17Jonathan Fields?

  qualified to, to help you on an individual level. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Good Life Project is sponsored by Bumbus. So my wife Stephanie has been one of the great gift givers in our family. And her secret is that the best gifts Often aren't the flashy ones, so the ones that people reach for on any given day without even thinking about it. That's why so much of my list ends up at Bombas. Fuzzy Sunday slippers for the friend who lives in sweatpants from November to March. Merino wool and cashmere blend socks for anyone who runs cold. That would be me, by the way. Ski and running socks for the ones who refuse to slow down. Also me, by the way. And water resistant suede booties. So cushy. My executive producer Lindsay actually

• 49:01Jonathan Fields?

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• 49:46Jonathan Fields?

  in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. Good Life Project is sponsored by Vinted. So here's a question that I have been sitting with. How many things in your closet were bought for, let's say, a version of you who

• 50:31Jonathan Fields?

  never quite showed up? Maybe it's the tailored jacket for the dinners you were going to go to, or someday pieces with the tag still on them. They're lovely clothes. They're just not yours anymore. That's where Vinted comes in. So Vinted is a secondhand marketplace. App where everyday people sell the clothes that they're not wearing to people who actually will. Listening on Vinted is quick and simple. You take a few photos, write a short description, and you're done. Once something sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. There are also no seller fees on Vinted, so whatever your piece sells for, you keep. What I love about that is how it turns letting go into something that actually feels good. You get more room, a little extra money, and maybe a closet that reflects who you are right now.

• 51:12Jonathan Fields?

  So see what's hiding in your closet. You might be surprised how much you can earn with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees, so you keep everything you earn. When you sort of think about then looking forward, okay, so you know, we've developed this tool to help identify the experience of languishing, the 14-point questionnaire that you walked through.

• 51:39Jonathan Fields?

  There's also sort of like a bit of a new flourishing framework that you offer. Now, I'm familiar with frameworks like PERMA or PERMAV or PERMA PLUS 4, which I think is the Claremont sort of like modification of that that has come out of the world, the positive psycho for the last 30 years or so.

• 51:57Jonathan Fields?

  How do you look differently? Like, when you look at that, do you have an adaptation or sort of a modification of that model when we think about, okay, so this is what really needs to be present to fully be in flourishing?

• 52:11Speaker 00

  My work preceded by over a decade all those other models that came out, like PERMA and others, and later, and they're, they all share in common the roots of the wellbeing literature that when I sat down to look at them, I was bringing together what was two very separate research traditions in psychology. There was a whole separate, one tradition that focused all on the hedonic stuff, the feeling good and the happiness satisfaction, and they called that subjective wellbeing.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  And then I ended up working at Wisconsin when I was getting my PhD in sociology with Carol Riff, who was champion suddenly this other tradition of well-being that came out of Aristotelian philosophy, which was about human excellence, right? And she created those six dimensions of psychological well-being. And she was arguing in her classic article, said happiness is not everything, right? That that's the title. It there's more to it, to this well-being stuff. And I remember in our first meetings and I said, well, you know, we can test this empirically. Do these two traditions sort of, are they, do they really sort of operate independently, but need to be brought together empirically?

• 53:32Speaker 00

  And it turns out, yeah, we did research on it, that there's lots of people in the world who are feeling good, but not, they don't have very high psychological well-being. And there's a whole bunch of people who are doing well on the well, psychological well-being, but they're not feeling all that happy or satisfied. And then there's a whole group where they brought it together. They feel good about life where their life also has high levels of psychological well-being. That was the beginning of what I saw, the opportunity to build a model of mental health. Because the way psychiatrists deal with mental illness is to look at anhedonia, that's depression, right? Combined with malfunctioning.

• 54:15Speaker 00

  And what, when I finally started to work with Carol Riff, I realized the literature offered us this opportunity to look at feeling good and functioning well. And my aha moment was, you know what? When you put those together, that's mental health. And so that's always been my framework. When I use the word flourishing, I'm talking about mental health, not something that anyone else is talking about. I offered a diagnosis. Nobody else offers a diagnosis. So to me, it's not enough to just create measures of flourishing without providing some basis in either engaging what came before you, that somehow you're adding to mental health,

• 55:00Speaker 00

  or you're saying something different from what I first proposed. So I think there's some unnecessary confusion that was created in the field, because there's now all these people measuring flourishing, but they don't mean the same thing.

• 55:15Speaker 00

  I've been very clear, I'm measuring mental health and its absence from the get-go, and I will not change because I think the feeling good and the functioning is just like turning depression on its head, and we need to do that. Because we need to focus on mental health and its absence

• 55:35Speaker 00

  to prevent the very things that we're not doing a good job fixing, which is mental disorders. So yeah, I'm happy that people are interested in this field, but I'm not happy because they never really bothered to offer any distinction from what I meant by flourishing. And I published this 10 to 12 years before anyone else, and I'm like, "Well, if I had to do what you were doing, I would be asked to say, 'Well, what do I mean by flourishing? And how am I different from what came before me?'" And so, you know, that's, it's just confusing to the world right now. And I think, I'm glad, I think we'll sort this out, but I'm not going to change because I think it's clear.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  I'm talking about mental health and its absence. I don't know what everyone else is talking about when they're talking about flourishing.

• 56:26Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, it is interesting how everyone puts their own stamp and their own model and their own naming convention, and then you have to figure out like, are we all talking about the same state? Or are we talking about like something slightly to the left, something slightly to the right?

• 56:41Jonathan Fields?

  So if we shift gears a bit into some of the things that we might think about saying yes to, you know, like to help us move from languishing to flourishing. And one of the things that you explore, I thought was really interesting, is this notion of the importance of self-narratives, the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, and how that shapes how we feel, how we move through life. Talk to me a bit more about this.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. I love that we start there because I think that's all based on this, what makes human beings feel alive isn't just about feeling and emotion, that's part of it. But the fact that we, like most living things, were planted here to grow, and we grow when we learn. And when we're learning, something we want to learn and grow on, you see it. People act like they're fully alive. You use the word passion. We see passion coming out of them. And it's not all great, because it's hard sometimes to learn and to grow. But I think that narrative of the ability to always learn

• 57:51Speaker 00

  and the ability that means we can always change, is that I will tell you, I just came back from one of my regular meetings that I go to almost every day, my AAA meeting. Now, in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, there are hundreds and thousands of stories of redemption. Redemption doesn't happen without the ability to change your narrative from what Dan McAdams called "contaminated in a bottom", to the fact that I can get through this. Not only can I get through this, I can learn, I can grow, and I can continue that throughout my life. So hitting a bottom doesn't mean the end.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Sometimes for many people, it's the beginning of a redemption story. And redemption only happens because we're always capable of learning and growing and changing and becoming better. And if that wasn't true, you know, I don't know why we would, why keep doing it? Why not end your life, really? Once you've failed, if you don't have the story to change, the ability to change your own narrative, which happens because you have the ability to learn and grow, I don't know why we would keep at it.

• 59:08Jonathan Fields?

  I guess that's why some people hit that point and they ask that very question, because they don't have the ability in that moment to see a possibility that is, to see them living a story that is different than what they're currently feeling, which often, I think, is when other people can be so helpful in this equation, you know? And that's kind of one of the next things that you reference, which is this notion of the importance of those warm and trusting relationships.

• 59:37Speaker 00

  That's a perfect segue, because I mean, none of us would have, would ever have believed that we could, the story of alcoholism can be transformed into sobriety and recovery. If we didn't see and enter those rooms and see other people.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Having worked together and helped each other, and using sayings like the following, "I'm gonna love you till you learn to love yourself again." And we do that, and they believe it, and we do that for each other. And we wouldn't do, we couldn't change that narrative of shame due to an addiction into a story of recovery, where we could help others without others having compy for us and wanting to share all the gifts that they've been given. I just think that's an amazing language in this story. And I, you know, I'm not being anonymous here, not because I wanted, you know, I simply am one of many

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  in different ways who have found a way out of something that I thought was impossible. And I did it because I had warm, trusting relationships, and I had a place where I belonged. And I had a place where I could contribute. Those are three questions I ask that are part of my inventory of flourishing and languishing. And those are three qualities of connection that we need in our lives in order to flourish. A place where I belong,

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  and a place where I can contribute,

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  you know, and a place where there's warmth and there's trust.

• 1:01:17Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I mean, so powerful. And I guess part of the challenge there also is that at the moments where we probably need that most, we often find ourselves having the greatest amount of trouble. Not, I don't want to say finding it, because I want to say seeing it. Because often it is there, but there's something about the state that we're in that doesn't allow us to see the fact that this is actually available to us in the here and now.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, because we don't feel we deserve it anymore. We've gotten the message because of the pain that we're, it's usually some form of pain that we're dealing with. It has to do with some form of vulnerability in us that hurts so much that when people touch it and trigger it, we react.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  And we hurt other people. And then if you add addictions on top of that, we really do make ourselves hard to be loved because we want to disappear. And so we get, we've, we get to that place where when people do extend warmth, trust, a sense that you belong here, we can't see ourselves as worthy of it. And so that's why the message that I'm going to love you because you're worthy of loving belonging until you get in and relearn that.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  So we, others have to believe that we're worthy of it before we can even see it.

• 1:02:52Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I think probably everybody's felt that at some point.

• 1:02:55Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, yeah, I think we have.

• 1:02:58Jonathan Fields?

  You know, which, which actually brings us in an interesting way to one of the other ideas. It's this idea of transcending, but it's not transcendence in the way that I think a lot of people think about it. Like, it's not sort of transcending the human condition or like being enlightened or it's, my understanding is it's more this idea that like, there can be a lot of twists and turns in your life. And it's the capacity, and tell me if I'm getting this right, to, to know that, you know, like, there will be adversity and challenges that drop and that we have within ourselves, like some capacity to actually find our way through.

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Yes. And I talk about all these forms of religious practice and spiritual practice as rehearsal. I tried to bring all that stuff. I hated using the word transcendence because I, oh, but it's real, what we're really trying to transcend is our ego and our reactivity. Because when we get beyond thinking only of ourselves and when we can respond rather than react, there's a better versions of us show up. And every time that better version shows up, when somebody has done something to us

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  that's pissed us off, or has hurt our feelings, or some form of adversity has visited me, I can slow it down and, and start to realize. I want to respond to this out of what are my deeply held values, what I really care about, rather than react, which usually makes it worse. And then I leave the situation, I often feel kind of ashamed that I didn't act like a better version of myself. So it's sort of like the way we all rehearse before we have to get on stage, right? When we feel other eyes looking at us and they're judging us and it gets stressful,

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  rather than let it overwhelm us. If we rehearse enough ahead of time using these spiritual and religious tools, we can meet adversity with, and move beyond our egotistical and reactive self and respond to it, which usually is a better way. It doesn't mean you have to be

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  warm, fuzzy and loving just because somebody just insulted you, but you can stand up for yourself without denigrating them. Right? I could say, you don't have a right to hurt my feelings and that hurt. Don't do that again, please. Thank you. Goodbye. And that might be enough. You'll be proud of yourself. You didn't make that worse and you probably made that person think.

• 1:05:49Jonathan Fields?

  I love that.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Or I could have said, you MF, right? And do this and then, oh yeah, that made things better, didn't it?

• 1:05:59Jonathan Fields?

  Right. For a hot second.

• 1:06:04Jonathan Fields?

  And then it's like, then there are the seconds that come after and you're like, oof.

• 1:06:08Speaker 00

  Ooh, boy, that's exactly why I call it, it's all about rehearsal.

• 1:06:15Jonathan Fields?

  It's funny as you're describing that I, my, I have an automatic signature on my emails. It just gets dropped into every email and the language is with a whole lot of love and gratitude. And there are times where I'm having an email exchange, which may be a little bit adversarial or a little bit heated, or I don't have good feelings for this person. And I like, I say what I want to say and I try and say it in a way where that's direct and respectful and kind if that's available to me. And then I scan down and I see that, you know, that signature line has been placed in the email just automatically because that's my standard signature. And I don't feel that, you know? I don't feel a whole lot of love and gratitude toward this person in the moment. And there have been a few times where I'm like, do I delete this now? I just put, you know, like regards.

• 1:07:00Jonathan Fields?

  And on occasion I do, but more often than not, if that happens, I leave it there. And the reason I leave it there is because it's aspirational for me. You know, like I want that to serve as a reminder to me that this is how I want to try and, I want to try and find a way to feel this way, even in moments like this. And this is more of a reminder to me to try and step into this relationship, this exchange with a particular intention. So it's a little tiny innocuous thing, but it's been interesting how it's caught me sometimes. And been this momentary reminder of how I want to be in relation with other people.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  I love that honesty because we all know that. And human beings need to know what's expected of them normatively. There's, that's a deep sociological tradition in my field, where we learned very early on from Emil Durkheim that without clear norms in a society, human beings, the rails come off. And we see that right now. We need guidance. We need standards of excellence. We need constant reminders that we're working towards this not alone, but for something bigger than ourselves, a place called a community, a society, which doesn't work unless we are aspirational

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  and are constantly doing the little work that you just talked. It's big work, actually. Even the epic, the most misunderstood philosopher in the well-being literature, Epicurus, said, We need constant reminders of the things that really matter, that are good for us. And usually that is what you're talking about. I need to be reminded. I could be a better version of myself.

• 1:08:48Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah. I love Durkheim's works. His concept of collective effervescence is just, we can come together as a collective and just feel this just stunning feeling of, you know, it's almost like nonduality like brought into the modern age.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  Oh, you just remind, I saw a picture. I didn't know the Dodgers won the World Series last night. Look at the pictures. Those people collectively had that effervescence. They felt a belonging to their city. They felt a belonging to each other. They felt part of something bigger than themselves. And that's when sports like does what religion, according to Durkheim, was doing for us. It gave us a symbol of something that represented society that was good. And we attach to it and we realize we're in this together. We're a team.

• 1:09:45Jonathan Fields?

  You, throughout this conversation, you've referenced the notion of purpose a number of times. And, and I think this is probably something that most, a lot of people probably connect with. And this notion of purpose and also as an interesting way to, to help us navigate out of languishing. But I, I think the, you know, the sort of teased out nuance here, at least in my reading, is this notion of, we're not talking about one big unifying capital P life purpose, right? Which I think a lot of people are stymied by. They feel rejected by it. Like I don't have it. I can't find it. And, you know, therefore I can't ever feel the way I want to feel or live the way I want to live. It's much more about like, just having a sense of purpose in, in everyday life and every activities,

• 1:10:27Jonathan Fields?

  everyday interactions, which pretty much everyone does have some level of access to.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, that I talk about how I think I sometimes, and I did this, we're very good at, we humans, at complicating things. And purpose is really about wanting to help something or someone.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  In this world, or think of it this way, in your own little way, in your own little part of the universe, you want to leave the world as good or even better than what you found it. And normally, what's good about helping or taking it up to the level of purpose, when you're, when I say purpose, I'm saying you've chosen to devote a part of your life to, to helping something that has no direct value to you, but you care about it. And you want to help somebody else or something else, um, be better. Or you want to address some form of suffering or injustice in the world. There's all kinds

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  of ways. But I think what happens is we don't think it's a purpose unless it's grandiose. And I, I don't believe that's true. You could be leave, leading a, an amazing purpose, quietly in a small community of a hundred people.

• 1:11:48Speaker 00

  Right there, there, all right. And, and now, and the sad part of it is not, here I am coming to you from North Carolina where just a hundred miles down the road, they were devastated by Helene. And sometimes it takes enormous disasters like that for people to remember, be reminded that, you know, I can be as useful right here in my community because I have to be. And we have to do this together. And so you see an enormous outpouring of people getting involved and doing just what is, I call this sense of

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  purpose. They may not call it that, but they're probably feeling this sense that I'm contributing something that's worthy and valuable because it's needed. And that's just go where you, there's something that, the world where there's a need and where you're drawn to. And you'll find that kind of feeling where I'm being of use. That's what human beings really want. We just want to be useful to some degree.

• 1:12:56Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, and it really doesn't take much to find that. If you let go of the illusion that it's got to be this big thing or else it doesn't count. Like, literally, if you take 24 hours and just open your eyes and just say like, what are the tiny little ways I could be useful to a person, to an animal, to the environment, to whatever it may be? It's like, I feel like when you prime your brain to start to actually look for it, you start to see it in a way that you didn't realize was just all around you all the time. Is that your sense?

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  Yes, yes, because even if you don't see it, if you just take a moment and look into somebody's eyes and talk to them, you'll sense that there is this huge hunger for connection in our world. In our society in particular, we are just hungry for connection. You can feel it. It's almost electric. And what you need to do is just look each other in the eye and say, how are you doing, really? And mean it. And before you know it, it's like, wow, you don't realize how much somebody needed that.

• 1:14:10Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, unless you're in my-

• 1:14:11Speaker 00

  To be seen, to be heard.

• 1:14:14Jonathan Fields?

  Unless you're in my former home of 30 years, New York City, in which case people look at you and think that you're just some weirdo who wants like money from them or something like that and go across the street. But we do, we all need it. And it is those little things, just to be seen for a moment, I think can be so powerful. You also talk about the importance of play, which I thought was really interesting. And- Probably really devoid in a lot of people's lives who are doing the adulting thing. You're like, oh, that's the thing we used to do. But now I'm a serious adult, like now I have responsibilities. There's like, there's no import of play in my life.

• 1:14:56Jonathan Fields?

  Like if it happened, if I get an opportunity randomly here and there, sure, that's lovely. But like, there's actually no, I don't need to actually have this in my life to. And you make a counter argument to that.

• 1:15:10Speaker 00

  And what I love when I talk about play, it becomes even more obvious how these activities, or what I call the five items, start to bleed into each other, encourage each other. Because when you usually, even as kids, when we start to play up, taking imaginative play aside, but even imaginative play, we do with each other. We engage and connect, but we are part of something social and collective. And so I, to me, play is all about doing something just because it's fun. Only because it's fun. Now, fun, it gets in our way because we think, just check your notions of what fun needs to be

• 1:15:55Speaker 00

  at the door, in the same way that you think about happiness as an American. Because happiness doesn't mean the same thing all around the world. It varies in intensity. Here, happiness has to be out of a scale of zero to 10, an eight or higher. Fun doesn't have to be off the charts either. It can be enjoyable. That can be your version of it. And, you know, lots of games. I'm not a play researcher, so I can be free with this notion. You know, play researchers argue, well, games had rules and structures, blah, blah, blah. So it can't be play. Well, in adulthood, I'm fine. Whatever allows you to step outside of the time where everything is commodified,

• 1:16:37Speaker 00

  where time is money, and just do because you just want to be with others and enjoy life, you are stepping into the realm of play. But there's so much more. When I learned about why pinball machines were created, I was astonished to find out that the man, the person who created pinball, created it because he wanted people to experience during the Great Depression the sense that what they do matters.

• 1:17:16Speaker 00

  And to enjoy life because they can get better at accomplishing things and making things happen in the world. And that's what pinball, the whole story of pinball is. And the man who saved pinball, that movie and book, is all about showing the people in Chicago that it wasn't gambling. It wasn't a game of chance. It was a game that you developed skill. Yes, you had fun. Yes, you had to put a little money in there. But he showed them.

• 1:17:49Speaker 00

  I learned to get better at better at something. And I learned that whatever I can focus my mind on and do, I can accomplish something. So out of all the things you would think is that could lead to that play, can can teach your children and continue to teach adults that what you do matters.

• 1:18:08Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah, I love that. And I've been actively trying to cultivate more opportunities for play in my life for all those reasons, you know, I think it's just, we leave it behind, like sometimes forgetting that it's really fun to do things for no other reason than the feeling it gives you in the moment. And then if you can actually, you know, like,

• 1:18:30Jonathan Fields?

  build skill around that and gain competence at it also.

• 1:18:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Jonathan Fields?

  You know.

• 1:18:35Speaker 00

  Connection and all those other.

• 1:18:36Jonathan Fields?

  I mean, you look at the world of online gaming these days, and I'm not a part of that world, but I know folks who are. And they will spend hours and hours and not getting paid to do this. In fact, you know, they're paying for the privilege of having access to the games and the machines. And and yet, it's just, and it's effort. They're working hard. You know, they're probably working harder from a sort of like creativity and a cognitive and a collaborative standpoint than they may be doing at their jobs. And yet they're doing it simply because they love doing it. You know, it's to them, it is that thing. It's play and they get better at it over time and they do it with other people, you know? And it's, there's something kind of magical about it.

• 1:19:21Speaker 00

  I love it and we misconstrue it so much. We tell them they're wasting their time. And I'm like, not, maybe not.

• 1:19:29Jonathan Fields?

  Nah.

• 1:19:30Speaker 00

  That's, I think that's a great example of where they're probably finding some emotional well being from getting better at something and realizing they can be an actor in this world, an agent. They can make things happen.

• 1:19:46Jonathan Fields?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 00

  And they have connection. They have a community, a place where they belong.

• 1:19:51Jonathan Fields?

  It's all right there for the taking. Well, I, I so appreciate just the larger frame around this concept of languishing and your lens on what flourishing is. And these ideas that we've explored and you're like, here are some ways to sort of get a beat on like, whether this is something you may be experiencing. And then here are some very specific notions that you can bring and explore to, to start to make the journey from this experience of languishing into a state of flourishing. As I think we all are going to probably find ourselves at some point in some level of this experience and understanding what it is and isn't. And then the fact that it's not, it's not a thing that we have to just live in. It's not a sort of a thing, well, this is just life, but there are actually, there are things that we can do

• 1:20:36Jonathan Fields?

  to move through it and out of it is, it gives us a sense of agency, right? It gives that, that sense of like, I have some agency and autonomy in this process, which I think is really powerful. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  I use the phrase, and I know other people have used this phrase. To me flourishing is, is what I consider the good life. It's always been my north star.

• 1:21:10Speaker 00

  And I think it's really what.

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  People deserve when they think about a good life because I think right now I think we're satisfied with something, a good version of life is good enough. At least it's not terrible. But there's so much more and I don't think it's a luxury at all. The research makes that very clear. And so I think you have to believe that you deserve more. And that's good mental health. Because that's what I mean when I talk about flourishing. A good life is being mentally healthy. It's more than the absence of illness. It's the presence of flourishing.

• 1:21:53Jonathan Fields?

  Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Daniel Kahneman about the way we make decisions. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And special thanks to Shelley Del Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube, too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seven second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's

• 1:22:38Jonathan Fields?

  awesome, too. But just one person even, then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:23:01Jonathan Fields?

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• 1:23:43Jonathan Fields?

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