Are You Languishing? (with sociologist Corey Keyes)

0:03Don't hold anything too tightly. Just wish for it, want it, let it come from the intention of real truth for you and then let it go. For me, our soul is like it's unbound. It's limitless. But we will use words to limit ourselves. When people stop believing that somebody's got your back or Superman's coming, we turn to ourselves. And that's where you become empowered. Courageous participation attracts positive things. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow, and this is the Goop Podcast, where we bring together visionaries, scientists, healers, artists, and seekers. I'm so grateful that I get to interview these extraordinary thought leaders and share their wisdom with you.

0:51And I love listening to the conversations that are led by my co-host and dear friend, Cleo Wade. Cleo is a beautiful poet and author. I deeply admire her and the way she keeps her heart open to the world. Together, we believe that engaging in open-minded, honest, and sometimes difficult conversations has the power to change our lives. All right, over to Cleo. I'm excited to introduce today's guest, author and sociologist, Corey Keyes. Corey's new book is called Languishing, How to Feel Alive Again in a World that Wears Us Down. In it, he explores and gives language to that kind of feeling we've all had, the meh or blah feeling.

1:37Corey and I talk about the difference between languishing and flourishing, and the ways in which we can measure these states for ourselves. Corey says we live in a world that sees mental health as the absence of illness. But he explains how mental health should be thought of more as a constellation, not a singular solution. Where we focus on the presence of good things such as community and being of service to others in even the smallest ways. like showing up for a walk with a friend or being more intentional with your time. As you'll hear, Corey shares a bit about his own search for meaning and what sparked his research back in 2002.

2:17Corey describes feeling like a lost soul who is trying to find his way home. And that's where our conversation begins today. Let's get to my chat with Corey Keyes. Hi, Corey. How are you? hi i'm good thank you the the cover of your book kind of made me giggle because you realize now i'm like oh that was the languishing emoji yes well i didn't realize that that emoji is relatively new it was it is yes and when we came upon it yeah it really hadn't gained a sort of identity. And I think maybe. I think you influenced it. Well, we'll see. I've so enjoyed going through your book and your work in general.

3:07So thank you for not only these contributions into, I mean, as someone who writes poetry for a living, the idea that we are naming these things we feel as a starting point to find some type of journey to heal or transform these things we feel has been truly so unbelievably valuable to me in my life. And so anyone who's creating language for our lives is really doing the Lord's work, in my opinion. Well, thank you, because I take words and writing very serious. And there was a poem I came across shortly after I was no longer allowed to edit anything. by a woman named Athe Thompson. I don't know if you've heard her, a British poet.

4:01And they've asked, people have asked me sometimes, why did you write the book? And her poem nails it for me. Do you have it on hand to read by chance? I do. And I may actually tear up because it's really hits why my story is so intertwined with my search for flourishing. Sometimes people have wondered why I wrote the book, and there's a variety of reasons, but this poem captures it the most. And it's by A.T. Thompson. It's taken from her book, A Little Book of Poetry. And here it is. I shall gather up all the lost souls that wander this earth, all the ones that are alone, all the ones that are broken, all the ones that never really fitted in.

4:52I shall gather them all up and together we shall find our home. That is so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. And so by the time you went to publishing, it was a little too late to add that poem into the book. Yes. And I do believe that in some respects you could describe languishing and I've felt it many times and throughout my life and I still do I do feel like a lost soul I do resonate with that that terminology lost souls trying to find our way in this place and trying to find a way to feel at home because the truth is when I've discovered this way of looking at the world and studying it, flourishing really encapsulates, when I'm feeling that, put it this way, I feel at home here.

5:52Your book is called Languishing, and it's, you have created this definition of what this word means for us and, and very importantly gifted us kind of this new space to rest and have moments of contemplation in that is not called depression, which is what I found very helpful in reading your book, because as I went through it, I was like, yes, I, I actually, I know so many people in this who, you know, perhaps this would have been called depression or something else, but they don't feel that sense of helplessness and doom, but they do feel that stuckness. And so tell me about languishing versus flourishing.

6:43Well, languishing has been described in some ways that I feel a little uncomfortable with because it's a shorthand, but it doesn't do it justice. And some people describe it as being blah and and adam grant and others have used the descriptor math and while i understand where they were coming from and it does convey a bit of it i worry about that because a lot of people feel blah because they go through three days of consecutive cloudy days and rain and cold. And, you know, it's, that's not what I'm talking about. That's a normal reaction. And by the way, even languishing can be a normal state of being.

7:32We'll get to that. But here's what it is. Now, in the book, I give you my 14 questions that I've used scientifically as a way to measure and diagnose the presence and absence of good mental health. Flourishing is the word I chose to be the stand in for mental health, because when you use that word mental health without anything else, some people think you're talking about mental illness. And so I'm very clear when I talk about mental health, I'm talking about the presence of good things. And those 14 questions helped me diagnose flourishing. And three of the questions refer to what I call emotional well-being.

8:17So I asked people in the past two weeks or past month, how often did you feel either happy, satisfied, or interested in life? Pretty straightforward questions. And we talk a lot about happiness in this country and the world. When we talk about well-being, that's what people usually think about. But the remaining questions have to do with what I call functioning well. And there's two groups, one's psychological well-being and the other's social well-being. And the difference between the two reflects the very nature of being human. Psychological well-being privileges the pronouns I and me. And social well-being privileges the pronouns me, I mean we, and us.

9:04And human beings just shift fluidly, unconsciously between the two every day. And so here are some of the things I measure with psychological well-being. Does your life have meaning and direction? That's called purpose in life. Are you having experiences that are challenging you to grow and become a better person? That's called personal growth. Do you feel confident to think and express your own ideas and opinions? That's called autonomy. Are you able to manage your life? We call that mastery, a very basic notion of mastery. Do you like most parts of your personality? That's called self-acceptance.

9:46Do you have warm, trusting relationships? That's called positive relations. So it's that sort of thing that measures psychological well-being. Social well-being is in the past month, how often did you feel that you belong somewhere to a community? A lot of us would say we're part of something, but we don't necessarily feel we belong just because we are part of something. That's called integration. Another question I ask in social well-being, do the things that you do on a daily basis matter to the world around you or people or your community? Are you contributing anything? Are you able to make sense of what's going on in the world?

10:27That's called coherence. Do you believe you're part of a society where it's becoming better or it's a good place for most people? That's called social growth. And so those are the kinds of questions when it comes to functioning well as a human being. And to flourish is to feel at least six out of the 11 signs of functioning well every day or almost every day in at least one of the feeling good every day or almost every day. And languishing is just the opposite. You rarely, if ever, feel at least six or more of those 11 questions that represent social or psychological well-being. So you don't have a lot of good things going on in your life.

11:15And you don't feel rarely, if ever, happy, satisfied, or interested in life. So languishing is the absence of feeling good about a life that matters or has meaning or is worth living. It's the absence of good things. What I find is so interesting and cool and also feels intuitive is the ways in which all of the kind of me stuff is intertwined with the we stuff. Because I do think in a lot of the ways that helping oneself or what what we would call the self-help world has really centered it on almost, we've almost taken that kind of American dream template, like pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentally and go it alone.

11:59And then when you get to this destination, then you arrive and all of these things will arrive with you. You know, I say this all the time when someone says, I'm not doing this, this, and this, because I'm focusing on myself right now. And I always feel that it's so important to toggle between the focus on oneself because Because the world doesn't take a break from you. And this re-entering and exiting is actually, to me, difficult. So there's this idea where there's this micro way to kind of have those moments to focus on oneself, to restore, relax, reflect, but to completely remove yourself from the experience of us in being in beloved community, actively wanting to build beloved community.

12:47I imagine that that leaving that practice makes it harder to value it, which makes you more estranged from it. And then much harder to reenter it, which ends up being a critical link. Yeah. Yeah. I think in addition to sort of like pull yourself up, I think people, at least in our society, feel that they don't deserve to feel many of the things that go into flourishing until they've earned it. So you have to work hard and you have to be hard on yourself. And I had a version of that. Trust me. I've been there, done that and realized just because you're doing the hard work of personal growth doesn't mean you have to be hard on yourself.

13:33It's just the opposite. Passion and self-compassion. passion is the ingredient. And I write about that. But in addition to that, is this, this, this notion that somehow we can gain our wellbeing. If I do something good for me, do something nice for me, treat myself. And I get that. And I understand that it has its place. But when we get to talking about what I call the five vitamins, what you've done is set them up beautifully because when you're doing any one of those things, you're not only doing something good for yourself, generally speaking, you're also doing something good with or for other people.

14:16And here's the thing. I don't think we realize how much when the things that we want to belong and to contribute and to accept ourselves comes when we do the same thing for others. I love this notion that we get by giving and that's the nature of flourishing. If we want warm, trusting relationships, be that for other people and surprise, surprise, you will get those things. Well, and wouldn't you say that service and a connection to being of service to others is a huge part of having any relationship? because I think a lot of the times when we think about, especially if someone's feeling stuck, it's kind of hard to ask them to do for others.

15:07You know, I would imagine we need these momentum builders and getting into community and starting to do for others and decentering the self so that you can find flow perhaps in someone else's experience. I think it's still an energy that probably, I know for myself has helped me find flow. If I was feeling that kind of stuckness in my own stuff, But I do think that sometimes people think, okay, well, what's the big organizing thing I have to do to be of service when really calling the one family member who perhaps doesn't have a lot of listeners in their lives to just say, how are you? and allowing them to monologue on in their kind of fashion that they do, or knowing that if your friend is going through a hard time and, you know, you're going to have a kind of unidirectional conversation, looking at a service to say, yeah, some days you have this really great bi-directional flow with how you're in conversation and it's really collaborative and it's really even.

16:05And some days your friend is in need and they really need a listener and that's truly all they need. And perhaps if they request counsel at the end, you could give some, but mostly that that service will also create some type of way in which you're kind of channeling another human experience. And that giving ends up being a greater energetic receiving. You're right. When people feel stagnant or stuck, it's hard to sort of think, well, if I get out of myself, get outside of myself, I will suddenly start to feel something that's alive. I will start to be alive. And what's remarkable about helping, and that's one of the five vitamins I recommend, is that you can do it really small, but you have to really have hope.

17:02Remember the intention. I talk about the intention. Always check your intention. So go out there and help and keep it small. And one of the most amazing things you can do to help somebody is to really be interested in them and what's going on in them or with them. And I've heard recently people talking about learning to listen in the corporate world, and they train people to listen, to listen well. We don't listen as much and we're not as interested in each other. And I think it would go a long way to connecting meaningfully, warmly, and building trust, which is for a moment, just be really interested in that family member or that friend or that colleague, and ask them some questions, and do it out of kindness and trying to help.

18:01And that if you're socializing, connecting at the same time you're helping, that's two of the five vitamins right there. And it's a wonderful way in which they always seem to bleed into each other. At Goop, we believe the spaces we spend time in shape how we feel and how we connect. That's why we're drawn to Convene, a global hospitality brand reimagining work in meeting spaces centered around design and care. Convene's sophisticated purpose-built locations are designed to inspire connection, whether it's a board meeting for 10, a team offsite, or a workplace membership that gives you and your team a home base.

18:40With hospitality at its core, every detail is taken care of, so your in-person time feels seamless, elevated, and intentional. If you're looking for a new workspace or planning your next offsite or meeting, schedule a tour today at convene.com. And for our Goop listeners, mention Goop to receive up to$500 off your next meeting or event reservation rental fee. This promotion is valid for all new clients on select spaces booked and actualized prior to December 30th, 2025 and subject to availability. Convene for the moments that move your business. Something I've thought a lot about when it comes to listening lately is it being a practice similar to meditation in that in awareness there's, and when you're trying to create a period of 15 minutes or 20 minutes of awareness in meditation, there's the drifting off and the consistent, you know, homecomings that you have to ask of yourself.

19:40And I think that in a world or, and I, and I wonder what you would say about that. We, we bring very little awareness to most activities now. So it's, you know, even if you're watching a movie at home, you might be on your computer and on your phone at the same time, or, or we have, you know, one of my kind of rules for my life is that I don't think multitasking is possible and I don't try to do it. I really do feel that I can only do one thing at a time well, or with, with awareness and intention. I have two small children and that's how I'm able to intentionalize my time with them. So if I know I'm going to sit in the car with them and maybe be in the back seat with them, you know, I won't bring my phone into the car because I don't feel that I can bring awareness to our connection and also be able to order paper towels on Amazon at the same time.

20:29My partner and I go on a walk every day together pretty much. And when we do, I ask that we don't bring phones because I don't think that with this, our ability to multitask that we can have meaningful connection. And, you know, those meaningful connective moments, even if they're just for 20 minutes or a seven minute car ride to school are, I think, hugely beneficial to our relationships. And this idea that we're trying to optimize every minute too, I'm sure, contributes to our languishing, our burnout. Yeah. Well, there's this study I talk about when it came to the vitamin of play and leisure that some people have the mindset that it's not a good use of their time.

21:17And some even go to the extreme and say it's a waste of time. And others, in part because we've commodified time. It's sort of like time is money. And when you do that, when you're engaging in leisure, especially the good stuff, the active stuff, right? Remember that the passive stuff, which we're doing a lot more today, the passive kind of play and leisure is really not beneficial to flourishing. but the active stuff if the mindset is that that's not a good use of your time right you're probably multitasking and you're you're not present and you're not a culture of no hobbies anymore there's this disappearance of hobbies I've been talking about this with a lot of friends lately partially because I have one friend who as she has as her as she transitioned out of her marriage I saw her picking up these hobbies all of a sudden and I remember thinking wow this is so novel because I haven't seen someone just be doing paint by numbers all the time or learning to cook a perfect steak at a cooking thing.

22:18You know, we're like, even if we learn to knit, we think we should have a hat stand somewhere nearby or, or set up a shop online. And as, as a, this idea that, you know, hobbies are ways that we organize space for play and, and, and awareness to, you know, mental, spiritual, physical connection into art or something of interest to us, which has got to be pretty medicinal, I would imagine. Yeah. Well, that's the beauty of all the five vitamins where when you're doing them with the intention, which is to become a better person for others, rather than the intention, which is the external path, which is to become better than others at what you're doing.

23:03you're stepping out of time and into the experience itself there's nothing more beneficial you use the word flow but i would thought you we don't even have to talk about flow when when you're really engaged in play are you really connecting with somebody if you're really helping somebody if you're really engaging in the spiritual vitamin or the religious one right? And so forth. With the intention to become a better person, you're stepping out of the commodification of time for a moment to do something that has no other use in the marketplace. It may benefit, but the real benefit is that you become a better person for others.

23:46The wonderful benefit of focusing on that, I call it the internal path, is that suddenly the things that go into functioning well and flourishing, like purpose, belonging, contribution, acceptance, they come, they come to you, they emerge. They begin to be present in your life. Because we need to step out of this notion of time, that time has got to be all useful and productive. And if we do anything, we have to make money off of it and show it to others. if the external path is the only way we pursue flourishing, and I'm not saying you can't get some of the things in flourishing if you're sort of flexing the muscle of competition.

24:32That's right. That's the external, right? I don't think that kind of flourishing is a sustainable one. Well, I was wondering when you were talking earlier about words like blah or meh or like, you know, needing days of, you know, not necessarily, You didn't say needing days of blah, but a block had come from just a three day stretch of bad weather. But I was also when you were saying that I was wondering, because we are in this culture of overdrive that we truly call hustle and grind culture, this idea that we hustle, constant movement, ground ourselves into pieces or into dust. you know do we also mistake blah for like a relaxing afternoon because we have associated you know guilt or as you were saying most people think that play or time for restoration is or a lot of people call that a waste of time if not don't value it at all because something I thought was also really interesting you talk about in the book is finding this kind of um movement in your feelings rather than going from uncomfortable feeling to comfortable feeling this idea that we have movement in our feelings and that they happen and we can kind of move with them in a way.

25:45And so don't you think that maybe the law could be mistaken for that someone who is uncomfortable relaxing? A lot of people describe languishing itself as an uncomfortable place to be right in part because you were talking about moving with your feelings here languishing is is feeling very little good or very little bad it's it's it's the absence of either set of feelings and some people describe it as feeling like you're dead or dying inside and some people describe it as numb. And a lot of people talk about it as emptiness. And that blah, I suspect people would be able to distinguish that blah, which is in that emptiness from serenity and contentment.

26:47Or even there are moments in my afternoon, and I do this a lot more in the afternoon. I don't know why. I kind of daydream. I'll disappear for a moment where it's like, oh, and then when I come back, it's kind of like, that was kind of a nice disengagement. But that feels really good. And languishing is a normal reaction. But if you stay there too long, just like sadness and fear, both you know sadness if it's too long and too strong becomes depression fear if it comes becomes it persists too long and it's too strong it becomes anxiety languishing if it persists it it becomes a very detrimental thing and i described that early on in the book all of the things i've charted even if you've not been mentally ill if you stay too long and languishing one of the reasons where I'm convinced that more and more people are ending up mentally ill is they spend too much time in languishing.

27:55And I'm not saying it's a conscious thing. They stay there. But I think they get stuck. At most, 10 % of the world has a common mental illness in any typical year. As much as 40 to 50 % of people are languishing, depending on what subgroup or country you're measuring. It's an enormous, unrecognized, invisible problem that I want to be careful about saying, well, it's comfortable there. I think people will distinguish between a place where like I went to daydream a bit and that felt good, or I feel just calm and I want to do nothing today because I'm serene and I'm content. I'm content. Right. Yeah.

28:41How much do you think our phones are contributing to languishing? I think to the extent that we use that as a surrogate for the things I recommend in the second half of the book, where you're not really helping somebody, you're not really connecting warmly, where you're not engaging anything spiritual or religious, where you're not playing, where you're not learning something new and growing personally. I think to that extent, media and the phone can really get in your way because, but I want to reserve a little space for the fact that some people will use it as a portal in which to learn and grow and to connect with others in a community.

29:28And it depends, right? I mean, I've heard them, I've seen their social media, iPhone research, and it really depends on your intention and the reason you're going there. Yeah, because I've definitely watched fandom bring people together. I mean, we look at Taylor Swift fans, or I've seen two people be fans of the same major pop artists and then meet and get married and all their friends are all in that same group of fans. and perhaps without the internet, none of them would have been able to meet if they couldn't have tweeted at each other. And I think that that's really cool and fascinating. And then I also see how, you know, men who I know that struggle to make friends, they really find a lot of warmth, connection, growth by these kind of talky podcasts around the sports or whatever it is.

30:25And that's very connective. But then there's the scroll, which to me, I feel like even when I'm reading about languishing, languishing is the kind of deeper, grander thing. But I think my symptom of if I feel that I can even have micro moments of languish, it's in the scroll where it's like there is a commitment to nothing. there's this kind of glazed over movement where you intentionalize no way in which you're here and there's no presence but somehow your brain is involved it is in in tracking and that's about it it's like i like to say and i we human beings are like anything else that's been planted on this earth we were planted here to grow literally and figuratively and and those things that i described in the second half book are ways in which we are doing the equivalent of what plants do to photosynthesize and really flourish that's our version of feeling alive and i don't think scrolling if it's doesn't feel alive if it's not giving you this sense that you're growing and going somewhere as a person.

31:41Yeah. But you, you brought up men. And I thought this was an interesting example, another way, where two of the vitamins would be very important. I remember what men were they're engaging in some form of hobby or leisure, have an interest in common with other men. That's how they also connect meaningfully. Yeah. Right. That's where two vitamins, again, come together, connecting meaningfully around a version of leisure is a particularly, not exclusively, but a particularly conducive way for connecting men with each other. My girlfriends and I talk about this all the time because I am obsessed with friendship.

32:23And I was saying that, you know, ways in which I observe men struggling in friendship is actually because they happen to, to bond over hobbies and not kind of emotional states. So when you bond over emotional states, no, you have a new emotional state all the time. So you're calling your friend being like, and then I felt this today. And then this made me feel this and did it done. And all of these things are kind of an emotional bond. And men say they have a surgery and stop doing, being able to play basketball with the guys that they played pickup basketball with once a week, then all of the relationships fall by the wayside.

32:57Or if you're, you know, I, I live in Los Angeles and it's a very much an industry town of Hollywood and you'll see people be on set and, you know, all the men are best friends while they're all working on the same movie. And then you wonder, okay, we're, because to me, I mean, I'm still best friends with my friend from my best girlfriend from Little League and my best friends from seventh grade homeroom, we're still, I was at her baby shower yesterday. So it's, it's where to me, that's a very purposeful part of my, that's the, a lot of my relationships are a lot of how I find and feel purpose in life.