#40 - Professor Corey Keyes - Rediscovering Connection Beyond Languishing

WEBVTT
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:13.109
I found as a sociologist, the literature on social connection and, and networks, um, almost over encouraging people to view.
00:00:13.619 --> 00:00:16.769
The problem with connection is a problem of quantity.
00:00:17.399 --> 00:00:17.699
Oh, yeah.
00:00:17.699 --> 00:00:17.969
Alone,
00:00:18.239 --> 00:00:19.500
not quality.
00:00:19.829 --> 00:00:22.140
The quality with which you comport yourself.
00:00:22.530 --> 00:00:26.609
It almost gets second, if any attention.
00:00:27.179 --> 00:00:31.829
But it's as if we talk about connection as only quantity.
00:00:31.829 --> 00:00:32.850
Like that matters.
00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:40.679
Like, and you hear it again and again when an article's published, oh, we've lost one average friendship over the last decade.
00:00:40.890 --> 00:00:43.950
Like, that's somehow some monumental important thing.
00:00:43.950 --> 00:00:48.149
And everyone then gets the idea, well, oh, I, I need more.
00:00:48.509 --> 00:00:49.289
Let's, right.
00:00:49.289 --> 00:00:51.030
It's sort of like a to-do list.
00:00:51.030 --> 00:00:53.909
Let's add more, and they forget quality.
00:00:54.359 --> 00:00:56.280
So I was very careful there.
00:00:56.280 --> 00:01:03.210
I did not want to encourage this quantitative obsession with connection to the exclusion.
00:01:03.299 --> 00:01:10.319
And the reason being is there's this beautiful research in aging literature showing that with age.
00:01:10.709 --> 00:01:19.980
Um, the amount of time we spend in connection declines, and yet wellbeing increases up until the very end of life.
00:01:20.670 --> 00:01:39.150
And it's because we start to prioritize quality over quantity, and we prune and cut out all the, the chaff and the useless and the relationships that are just there, but, but don't add anything to meaningful contact.
00:01:39.269 --> 00:01:43.980
And so I think we're, we're missing that so much.
00:01:43.980 --> 00:01:47.099
So in that chapter, I really wanted people to get the message.
00:01:47.519 --> 00:01:50.310
It's quality people and it's not quantity.
00:01:51.405 --> 00:02:10.995
Which is the complete opposite to what we've been taught in the social media emergence, which is numbers, numbers, likes, likes, and uh, and meanwhile, the levels of loneliness and perceived disconnection has skyrocketed.
00:02:10.995 --> 00:02:17.745
And that was really for me, uh, a realization that I needed to be part of the change.
00:02:21.675 --> 00:02:28.455
Hello and welcome to season two of Rediscovering Connection with me, Shelly Doyle.
00:02:28.844 --> 00:02:34.064
If you are new here, welcome and if you are returning, then hello.
00:02:34.125 --> 00:02:36.104
And thank you for your patience.
00:02:36.435 --> 00:02:41.985
I've had a six month hiatus whilst I've been completing my masters, which is now done.
00:02:42.384 --> 00:02:48.324
I'll be collecting my parchment paper this Thursday, and I have my graduation ceremony in a couple of weeks.
00:02:48.655 --> 00:02:55.794
So, um, I've been focused on the social health and wealth of remote and hybrid people leaders.
00:02:56.634 --> 00:03:05.814
My guest today is someone whose work has deeply, supported my understanding of social wellbeing.
00:03:06.305 --> 00:03:18.705
Professor Corey Keys, leading up to this interview, I have been listening to your book on Audible or weekend, uh, called Languishing, how to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears us Down.
00:03:18.705 --> 00:03:24.865
So, I'd love to just welcome you here and, um, brand new book this year.
00:03:24.865 --> 00:03:30.235
Like how is life for you right now and how is this new book being received in your life?
00:03:31.764 --> 00:03:35.604
Well, thank you for having me, Shelly, and it's wonderful to meet you.
00:03:35.784 --> 00:04:00.534
And, and I, I cherish the time and the opportunity to talk about social connection, which, um, given all the podcasts I've done regarding, you know, coming in after the way in the wake of my book, I, we rarely, it's funny how none of the interviews really engaged much of that topic, it really is, um, a distillation of my life's work.
00:04:00.534 --> 00:04:09.925
And frankly, I don't think it did it justice because editors and publishers want things differently than we academics do.
00:04:10.104 --> 00:04:25.704
And so I tried to thread a needle in between being a little scientific, which, which is where my heart is, but I'm also an artist, a, a storyteller, and that, so this felt, the book felt really good to write.
00:04:25.704 --> 00:04:28.134
It was therapeutic, to tell you the truth.
00:04:28.285 --> 00:04:37.915
So I, I get these amazing emails out of the blue from people, um, that who have been deeply affected by the book.
00:04:37.915 --> 00:04:43.855
But the story that I told, which was the background.
00:04:44.980 --> 00:04:58.660
About my own journey on, on,'cause there was a personal journey that accompanied the scientific journey that, and I never told anyone about that for, for all the years I did my science.
00:04:58.689 --> 00:05:04.240
And yet everyone just assumed it just comes out of nowhere, you know?
00:05:04.240 --> 00:05:06.759
And it's just this amazing creative process.
00:05:06.759 --> 00:05:12.910
But in fact it was part of healing, um, a lot of trauma for me.
00:05:13.990 --> 00:05:19.959
We, we teach what we need to learn and, and passion comes from pain.
00:05:20.649 --> 00:05:23.980
There are a few things that I've learned over the last few years.
00:05:23.980 --> 00:05:24.490
Yeah.
00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:25.810
Yeah.
00:05:26.649 --> 00:05:36.069
Either it'll break you for a while, um, or badly or that, that it will form you in ways.
00:05:36.170 --> 00:05:43.459
If you can let it in, but be gradual and kind with yourself as you let it in, because I had to face it.
00:05:43.459 --> 00:05:53.089
I, I thought I could outsmart and outrun it and out, you know, perform it and know I was there.
00:05:53.089 --> 00:06:00.709
So, but I learned to be gentle and kind and, and patient with myself in the process.
00:06:01.879 --> 00:06:06.290
And how have you, you had decades of researching this topic.
00:06:06.740 --> 00:06:07.279
Um.
00:06:07.745 --> 00:06:17.375
I would love to understand how, how it's felt to be researching a topic that you, that you feel deep down or mm-hmm.
00:06:17.555 --> 00:06:32.495
You certainly felt for many years, and I understand you must have so many of the tools and strategies to get beyond it, to get to flourishing, but we, we all have a set point in all facets of our life.
00:06:32.495 --> 00:06:34.475
So we might have a set point for happiness.
00:06:34.714 --> 00:06:45.995
We can still have the tools and strategies to, to work our way up, but there's gonna be, without proactive effort, perhaps we come down to a certain set point.
00:06:46.295 --> 00:06:47.855
Would the same be true of flourishing?
00:06:49.654 --> 00:06:59.735
The last time I taught my seminar on happiness, which was in 2021, um, I, we had been reviewing evidence to on that very fact.
00:06:59.735 --> 00:07:08.254
And, and the evidence was that there are definite ways in which life events can change your set point.
00:07:08.944 --> 00:07:14.165
You really need, if you want to flourish, you need to be prepared to deal with bad things.
00:07:14.314 --> 00:07:14.404
Mm-hmm.
00:07:15.334 --> 00:07:18.485
Without, don't let them, um.
00:07:19.504 --> 00:07:23.944
Take down your set point and, and change your course in your life.
00:07:25.235 --> 00:07:25.745
Right?
00:07:25.845 --> 00:07:30.464
If we continue to negatively ruminate on them.
00:07:31.485 --> 00:07:32.865
Mm, yeah.
00:07:32.925 --> 00:07:33.704
Well, yes.
00:07:33.790 --> 00:07:50.235
Um, I think it's also, I love this, uh, work, um, on acceptance and commitment therapy because I'm deeply, uh, influenced by Buddhism and I, I, I think there's this notion that people just, they want, they just want the good stuff.
00:07:50.295 --> 00:07:59.324
Now, if the bad stuff I want, you know, I want to get through it quickly and move on'cause, but that, that idea of suppressing it or moving on.
00:08:00.105 --> 00:08:03.345
Is is not a way to deal with negativity.
00:08:03.345 --> 00:08:06.435
And I think rumination is, it will come back.
00:08:06.435 --> 00:08:09.975
It's just like the white bear studies that Dan Wagner did.
00:08:10.574 --> 00:08:17.264
He would, he would point out and uh, and have his research subject say, think about a white bear.
00:08:17.654 --> 00:08:19.485
Um, imagine a white bear, right?
00:08:19.485 --> 00:08:24.254
And then now don't think about this while we're working on the next, next task.
00:08:24.704 --> 00:08:31.605
But having just suggested it and then told them not to think about it, it became more available.
00:08:31.814 --> 00:08:32.595
Mm-hmm.
00:08:32.835 --> 00:08:37.245
And they kept intruding into their thoughts while they were trying to do something else.
00:08:37.245 --> 00:08:41.924
And that's the point I take away from acceptance commitment there you must.
00:08:42.674 --> 00:08:48.014
Um, sit with and deal with the bad things when they come.
00:08:48.855 --> 00:08:48.975
Mm.
00:08:49.725 --> 00:09:00.105
There's, there's something I've heard recently, um, about, you know, when you get a song trapped in your heads and it just, it's like an earworm, it just keeps going, right?
00:09:00.375 --> 00:09:02.384
You have to, to, to get rid of it.
00:09:02.504 --> 00:09:04.095
You play out the whole song.
00:09:05.384 --> 00:09:07.634
So it's the same with circumstances, right?
00:09:07.634 --> 00:09:11.745
You play it out, get it done, and then you can have the acceptance.
00:09:12.254 --> 00:09:12.585
Mm-hmm.
00:09:13.335 --> 00:09:13.875
Yeah.
00:09:14.085 --> 00:09:14.235
Yeah.
00:09:14.235 --> 00:09:16.639
There, there, I think it was the zar effect, right?
00:09:16.740 --> 00:09:17.639
You have to let, right.
00:09:18.019 --> 00:09:26.205
But I'm, I'm, now I'm really testing my intro psychology information, but for me, and I love music.
00:09:26.205 --> 00:09:29.174
I don't know if you're a musical, but my wife and I love it.
00:09:29.174 --> 00:09:41.504
I will get a song in my, I'll call it my mental Repertoire and it will be there because there's a period I'm going through and I just think of it as it's, there's like these little epics.
00:09:41.894 --> 00:09:43.095
Like a couple days.
00:09:43.095 --> 00:09:43.845
That's life.
00:09:44.774 --> 00:09:46.065
Then things will shift.
00:09:47.085 --> 00:09:48.914
And I do that with a lot of things.
00:09:48.914 --> 00:09:50.475
Like I had long hair.
00:09:50.475 --> 00:09:54.225
You saw the, my book cover, I had long hair for a long, a long time.
00:09:54.945 --> 00:10:00.945
And then suddenly I went in, uh, in the last six months and I didn't tell my wife and I came home with the short hair and she was like.
00:10:01.365 --> 00:10:02.115
Oh my God.
00:10:02.475 --> 00:10:03.225
And I said, yes.
00:10:03.225 --> 00:10:09.495
I was putting down, I, I was leaving behind a period in my life and now I'm entering into a new period.
00:10:09.705 --> 00:10:10.154
Mm.
00:10:10.575 --> 00:10:11.384
Yes.
00:10:11.475 --> 00:10:12.225
I love it.
00:10:12.465 --> 00:10:13.125
I love it.
00:10:13.394 --> 00:10:18.345
And I've, I've recently gone kind of, uh, red kind of strawberry blonde, which I've never been before.
00:10:18.345 --> 00:10:24.644
So, uh, I guess I, this is me like finishing my thesis and it's taken me four years to get through this master's.
00:10:24.644 --> 00:10:25.754
So it's, uh mm-hmm.
00:10:25.784 --> 00:10:40.575
I've taken the scenic route as I, as I like to say, I, we spent, um, four months of it living in an eco village, um, to see how it was to live in community.
00:10:41.054 --> 00:10:45.014
Um, and it was an intense experience.
00:10:45.014 --> 00:10:51.315
We ate together 13 times a week, um, with like 12 to 20 other human beings.
00:10:51.315 --> 00:10:54.855
I wish you would've explained that in your talk, because I listened to your talk.
00:10:54.855 --> 00:10:55.514
Oh, really?
00:10:55.514 --> 00:10:56.149
10 next talk.
00:10:56.684 --> 00:10:57.975
And I thought it was rather.
00:10:58.450 --> 00:11:00.639
Intriguing I was trying to fill in.
00:11:00.639 --> 00:11:03.129
Well, why was that?
00:11:03.129 --> 00:11:08.679
Community immersion s challenging
00:11:09.820 --> 00:11:10.029
Uhhuh, and I
00:11:10.029 --> 00:11:19.450
suspect it because it's comes out like you, you're not used to in this day and age community being much like water coming out at the end of a fire hose.
00:11:19.720 --> 00:11:22.299
It takes a while to get used to that kind of togetherness.
00:11:22.799 --> 00:11:27.059
There was so many parts of your book that spoke to me.
00:11:27.269 --> 00:11:27.809
Um.
00:11:29.414 --> 00:11:33.345
One, one of which was just about friend versus friendship.
00:11:33.345 --> 00:11:38.565
Like what conversations in friendships mean in comparisons, just being a friend.
00:11:39.144 --> 00:11:54.485
I really appreciated how practical, these insights and illustrations were to really let people know how it feels and, helping people to emulate what it is to be in friendship.
00:11:55.144 --> 00:11:55.504
Yeah.
00:11:56.195 --> 00:12:15.424
Well, you, and I'm almost going to raise this as a question to you as well, because, because I found as a sociologist, the literature on social connection and, and networks, um, almost over encouraging people to view.
00:12:15.934 --> 00:12:19.085
The problem with connection is a problem of quantity.
00:12:19.715 --> 00:12:20.014
Oh, yeah.
00:12:20.014 --> 00:12:20.284
Alone,
00:12:20.554 --> 00:12:21.815
not quality.
00:12:22.144 --> 00:12:24.455
The quality with which you comport yourself.
00:12:24.845 --> 00:12:28.924
It almost gets second, if any attention.
00:12:29.495 --> 00:12:34.144
But it's as if we talk about connection as only quantity.
00:12:34.144 --> 00:12:35.164
Like that matters.
00:12:35.195 --> 00:12:42.995
Like, and you hear it again and again when an article's published, oh, we've lost one average friendship over the last decade.
00:12:43.205 --> 00:12:46.264
Like, that's somehow some monumental important thing.
00:12:46.264 --> 00:12:50.465
And everyone then gets the idea, well, oh, I, I need more.
00:12:50.825 --> 00:12:51.605
Let's, right.
00:12:51.605 --> 00:12:53.345
It's sort of like a to-do list.
00:12:53.345 --> 00:12:56.225
Let's add more, and they forget quality.
00:12:56.674 --> 00:12:58.595
So I was very careful there.
00:12:58.595 --> 00:13:05.524
I did not want to encourage this quantitative obsession with connection to the exclusion.
00:13:05.615 --> 00:13:12.634
And the reason being is there's this beautiful research in aging literature showing that with age.
00:13:13.024 --> 00:13:22.294
Um, the amount of time we spend in connection declines, and yet wellbeing increases up until the very end of life.
00:13:22.985 --> 00:13:41.465
And it's because we start to prioritize quality over quantity, and we prune and cut out all the, the chaff and the useless and the relationships that are just there, but, but don't add anything to meaningful contact.
00:13:41.585 --> 00:13:46.294
And so I think we're, we're missing that so much.
00:13:46.294 --> 00:13:49.414
So in that chapter, I really wanted people to get the message.
00:13:49.835 --> 00:13:52.625
It's quality people and it's not quantity.
00:13:53.720 --> 00:14:13.309
Which is the complete opposite to what we've been taught in the social media emergence, which is numbers, numbers, likes, likes, and uh, and meanwhile, the levels of loneliness and perceived disconnection has skyrocketed.
00:14:13.309 --> 00:14:20.059
And that was really for me, uh, a realization that I needed to be part of the change.
00:14:20.389 --> 00:14:31.820
'cause I moved over here during the pandemic, and I, I've been blessed with being part of really rich friendship groups through my life.
00:14:32.210 --> 00:14:38.539
So thankfully I haven't had to face feelings of loneliness.
00:14:39.504 --> 00:14:50.575
Um, I'd say acutely during my life up until when I came to Canada and then we were thrown back into lockdown just as we were starting to make a few connections.
00:14:50.815 --> 00:14:52.404
Didn't have anyone to bubble up with.
00:14:52.644 --> 00:15:00.955
My children were so young at the time that they weren't kind of giving me the social interaction that I needed.
00:15:01.345 --> 00:15:12.894
I kind of think now four years later, even my relationship with my kids is very different, so they, they can give me a lot back now, but at that time I was feeling deeply disconnected.
00:15:13.455 --> 00:15:21.014
Albeit having access to everybody I've ever worked with, been friends with, you know, on social media.
00:15:21.014 --> 00:15:27.164
But I just felt going on there, it was like being, you know, punched in the guts.
00:15:27.404 --> 00:15:33.434
It didn't help to see people that used to be part of my life having a wonderful time.
00:15:33.794 --> 00:15:35.355
It, it made it worse.
00:15:35.835 --> 00:15:38.565
So I was like, we need a new way.
00:15:38.955 --> 00:15:42.075
And to go to that, yeah, we need to think smaller.
00:15:42.674 --> 00:15:54.404
One of the really curious findings from my research with 1200 leaders, one of the questions was, how many people do you feel at ease discussing private matters with?
00:15:54.825 --> 00:16:04.934
And we look to local friends, um, friends more than 30 minutes away, relatives, professional connections of the.
00:16:05.330 --> 00:16:07.730
People more than 30 minutes away.
00:16:08.000 --> 00:16:19.850
The numbers were so small, I think it was 58% had zero to one connection beyond 30 minutes that they felt at ease discussing private matters with obviously some others.
00:16:19.850 --> 00:16:25.100
There was like some others would have nine, but the majority, the numbers were incredibly small.
00:16:25.370 --> 00:16:32.419
And really it was those people in that 30 minute proximity that they have these trusted relationships with.
00:16:32.690 --> 00:16:45.139
When you think how amazing technology is, and we are not trees, we do move around, but still we keep kind of our trusted connections very, very close.
00:16:45.950 --> 00:16:48.585
Um, well, isn't that it?
00:16:48.830 --> 00:17:02.179
I think there is, this is, this is interesting because I don't think, I don't feel comfortable talk, talking to people about private matters in any other setting except one-on-one in person.
00:17:03.559 --> 00:17:07.009
So I, you, you, you can, you can text a little.
00:17:07.009 --> 00:17:08.539
I I, but I wouldn't.
00:17:08.630 --> 00:17:16.640
And, um, I, I sense more people are, are, I'm not the exception and I think we missed the point, right.
00:17:16.670 --> 00:17:24.890
The loss of confidants that researchers in my field have documented isn't that we don't want them or don't take the time.
00:17:25.339 --> 00:17:36.170
It's just that we, especially Americans, have been encouraged to, to simply disperse and go wherever your career takes you.
00:17:36.470 --> 00:17:42.019
And we damn with any loss of any closeness that comes with it.
00:17:42.019 --> 00:17:53.029
And so you don't, you, you, you have to recreate shop in a new place, in a new town with nobody, you know, and you don't, the people you used to confide in, you left behind.
00:17:54.289 --> 00:18:00.769
And I am not gonna confide, and I suspect your most people in your study would say, I'm not gonna confide, um, online.
00:18:00.769 --> 00:18:03.859
And no, even the telephone seems awkward to me.
00:18:04.880 --> 00:18:16.160
It doesn't seem like the place where I talk of my, my deepest concerns and my fears and my vulnerabilities, it's just doesn't feel right to me.
00:18:16.670 --> 00:18:20.779
Maybe others are okay with it, but I'm telling you, we missed the point.
00:18:20.809 --> 00:18:22.670
I don't think people are losing confidence.
00:18:22.670 --> 00:18:24.710
They're moving away from confidants.
00:18:25.805 --> 00:18:26.674
Exactly.
00:18:26.795 --> 00:18:27.815
We're moving away.
00:18:28.055 --> 00:18:28.244
That's the problem.
00:18:28.244 --> 00:18:32.884
And, and I think in all facets of our life, we leave jobs very easily.
00:18:32.884 --> 00:18:34.775
We leave home very easily.
00:18:35.134 --> 00:18:49.505
Uh, and I think if word got around of the importance of connection and grounding, um, there's this, there's this definite trend of like, the return isn't there.
00:18:49.505 --> 00:18:51.664
There's so many stories of the return.
00:18:51.664 --> 00:18:54.065
You go and you learn and then you return.
00:18:54.184 --> 00:18:58.295
Um, and, and you can understand why.
00:18:58.384 --> 00:19:05.015
You take all that wisdom back and then you can ground back in where you've got familiar faces and trust.
00:19:05.015 --> 00:19:14.375
But then I guess on the flip side, I go back to my hometown now and it's, you know, there's loads of people that I don't know anymore because loads of new people have moved there.
00:19:15.740 --> 00:19:16.029
Yeah.
00:19:16.234 --> 00:19:19.444
And it, same with my little town of three lakes in northern Wisconsin.
00:19:19.450 --> 00:19:24.605
It's, I, if I, and I went back there because my sister moved back because that's the only.
00:19:24.980 --> 00:19:26.569
Real home we ever knew.
00:19:26.569 --> 00:19:32.269
And that's when after we were adopted and a lot of people have, have, have left.
00:19:32.539 --> 00:19:57.470
And so I mean, you, you're in the same situation as you're saying that I'm remini, I'm trying to imagine myself in, in, uh, two centuries ago with my ancestors in their tribal settings where the journey would be, you would go out there for a couple days or a month and you would go on this journey and you would learn and you would bring it back to your group.
00:19:58.490 --> 00:20:00.769
You would always come home.
00:20:02.269 --> 00:20:03.920
Now there are animal species.
00:20:03.920 --> 00:20:04.220
Yes.
00:20:04.220 --> 00:20:13.250
Like I, every spring our, our bird feeders get ransacked by young male bears'cause they get kicked out of their f Right.
00:20:13.250 --> 00:20:15.710
And they have to go re and create a whole new one.
00:20:15.920 --> 00:20:20.809
We're not like bears and other animals where we, but at least in.
00:20:20.900 --> 00:20:30.799
A couple hundred years ago, and for thousands of years, our ancestors evolved in these tribal settings of hunting and gathering.
00:20:31.880 --> 00:20:38.569
And so the journey was you go out there and you learn, and then you bring everything you learned back and you, you share it with others.
00:20:39.440 --> 00:20:42.650
And that's not what happens today.
00:20:42.829 --> 00:20:45.829
I think that's one amazing predicament.
00:20:46.670 --> 00:20:51.500
We call it progress, but I don't know if I raised the problem, but I don't have a solution to tell you the truth.
00:20:51.500 --> 00:20:55.130
Shelly, I think we, we need to understand this one thing.
00:20:55.130 --> 00:21:05.309
I remember being in Italy and having, and, to give some talks, and then I hosted some Italian students and I asked them, what made you choose the college that you went to?
00:21:06.210 --> 00:21:08.819
They said it was the closest one to my family.
00:21:09.029 --> 00:21:09.599
Hmm.
00:21:11.805 --> 00:21:18.525
They wanna go home almost every weekend and, and cook and, and have break bread with their family and, right.
00:21:19.095 --> 00:21:22.545
That, that's not my, my US students.
00:21:22.605 --> 00:21:28.095
They look at, you're like, oh my God, you would choose close to home.
00:21:28.095 --> 00:21:32.505
Imagine if you got into Princeton, but you got into a state school close to home.
00:21:33.255 --> 00:21:36.825
You wouldn't, you're telling me you would choose close to home over Princeton.
00:21:37.904 --> 00:21:39.704
Yes, some of them would.
00:21:41.204 --> 00:21:43.724
But Americans, and I think it's a lot of Canadians.
00:21:43.785 --> 00:21:52.605
Oh my god, you know, I'm gonna leave it all behind because, ah, now I get to go into the top five university, and yet they're miserable.
00:21:52.605 --> 00:22:00.045
Some of'em disconnected, lonely, suicidal, depressed, languishing, and they wonder why.
00:22:00.704 --> 00:22:00.825
Mm-hmm.
00:22:02.444 --> 00:22:04.904
Because we leave behind the very thing.
00:22:06.375 --> 00:22:08.234
You know, I'm not gonna romanticize family.
00:22:08.234 --> 00:22:09.855
Family wasn't a great place for me.
00:22:09.855 --> 00:22:15.734
And, you know, we can talk about this double-edged sword that I write about in connection and social relationships.
00:22:16.335 --> 00:22:19.904
It's where I've experienced most of my deep, deepest pain and trauma.
00:22:20.505 --> 00:22:25.565
But it's also the place in the birthplace of the greatest and loves and laws.
00:22:25.654 --> 00:22:29.555
Um, so we just leave it behind.
00:22:29.555 --> 00:22:55.035
And, and with this idea of like accomplishment and resumes, But here's the fascinating thing that I didn't get a chance to write about EV and every study I've ever seen published, doesn't matter where you go in the world, out of the three components of wellbeing on my measure, emotional, psychological, and social, social wellbeing is always the lowest, always.
00:22:55.664 --> 00:23:05.954
I don't care if you go to Asian communitarian communal societies or you go to what we call our individualistic society social wellbeing.
00:23:05.984 --> 00:23:06.285
Pe.
00:23:06.525 --> 00:23:07.964
PE is dead last.
00:23:08.265 --> 00:23:14.775
In other words, it's much harder to achieve any of those five dimensions of social wellbeing.
00:23:15.194 --> 00:23:19.244
It's easier to to, to achieve the psychological and the emotional stuff.
00:23:20.625 --> 00:23:27.974
And I've been thinking lately this whole idea that human beings are social creatures may be overblown.
00:23:28.035 --> 00:23:33.045
Yes we are, but just because we're social creatures doesn't mean it's easy.
00:23:34.065 --> 00:23:40.095
It's, forgive my words, it's god damn hard being social as you know.
00:23:40.095 --> 00:23:47.414
And that's what I loved about what you're talking, you were very honest, put into a, an immersed into a very communals situ.
00:23:47.565 --> 00:23:48.765
It's overwhelming.
00:23:50.505 --> 00:23:50.984
Why?
00:23:50.984 --> 00:23:58.125
Because I think we're social creatures, but we also need, some of us as introverts, need more time alone.
00:23:58.125 --> 00:24:02.744
But even normal extroverts need solitude and time to reflect.
00:24:03.404 --> 00:24:08.535
So we may be social, but social is not easy.
00:24:09.035 --> 00:24:11.494
You spoke in the book about mattering.
00:24:12.394 --> 00:24:15.994
Um, and I often speak about the people that matter.
00:24:16.295 --> 00:24:18.964
And in the book you wrote about the people.
00:24:19.085 --> 00:24:20.345
Do people depend on you?
00:24:20.345 --> 00:24:21.605
Do people listen to you?
00:24:21.605 --> 00:24:23.315
Do people pay attention to you?
00:24:23.765 --> 00:24:26.884
Are you, are you an important part of someone's life?
00:24:27.154 --> 00:24:28.355
Would you be missed?
00:24:28.835 --> 00:24:29.509
Would you be missed?
00:24:29.650 --> 00:24:29.869
Mm.
00:24:29.900 --> 00:24:30.190
Yeah.
00:24:31.269 --> 00:24:32.470
And I wrote about this p.
00:24:33.325 --> 00:24:59.904
Professor, uh, um, that he, he, he's on my mind now and I wrote about, um, the email exchange we had as I was writing about this book and how we could have just sort of had treated this as a student professor relationship and just moved past each other on, but there was something there and we both felt it.
00:25:00.025 --> 00:25:04.285
And to this, I, I just lost him last week.
00:25:04.285 --> 00:25:07.974
He died at the age of 91 and he was like a father to me.
00:25:07.974 --> 00:25:26.244
And, and besides the dedication in the front of my book, which is the most important part of my book by the way,'cause those, my nana and papa were the most important earth angels I've ever, I will have ever known on this planet.
00:25:27.535 --> 00:25:31.674
And Bill Brown's right up there,'cause he was like a father to me.
00:25:32.410 --> 00:25:37.450
Ever since my college days as an undergraduate to this day.
00:25:37.690 --> 00:25:41.529
And I am so happy and I'm sad and happy at the same time.
00:25:41.559 --> 00:25:53.109
'cause he saw that, he read the book and he knows, he mattered so much to me.
00:25:53.619 --> 00:25:58.539
And I tell people in that chapter, don't wait to tell people this.
00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:03.880
Tell'em now you may miss the opportunity.
00:26:04.779 --> 00:26:15.609
I never ever left my house once I was adopted, ever without hugging and, and giving a small kiss to my nana because if I never came back, that would be the last thing I wanted her to know.
00:26:16.119 --> 00:26:20.200
I loved her because she mattered so much to me.
00:26:20.289 --> 00:26:20.529
Mm-hmm.
00:26:21.190 --> 00:26:23.319
We don't come on people.
00:26:23.650 --> 00:26:29.710
It's such an important act that we can do every day, every day.
00:26:31.240 --> 00:26:36.220
Like I have this curse that I miss.
00:26:36.609 --> 00:26:38.710
People all the time.
00:26:38.890 --> 00:26:42.579
I miss people come to my mind all the time that I miss.
00:26:43.000 --> 00:26:45.339
But the same was true when I was back in the uk.
00:26:45.339 --> 00:26:48.039
I have, I come from a very distributed family.
00:26:48.380 --> 00:26:51.230
I'm always thinking of people, I'm always missing people.
00:26:51.680 --> 00:26:56.299
Um, so sometimes I will reach out and say, just thinking of you, I miss you.
00:26:56.305 --> 00:26:56.585
Mm-hmm.
00:26:56.960 --> 00:27:05.450
And they say it can take seven seconds to send a message and you never know how that might impact someone's day.
00:27:05.500 --> 00:27:06.160
Yeah.
00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:10.869
And I also love adding, like I was thinking of this time Mm.
00:27:10.869 --> 00:27:12.880
Together when we did this.
00:27:13.240 --> 00:27:14.470
Oh, I love that build.
00:27:14.470 --> 00:27:19.119
That is a beautiful addition to a sort of, I'm thinking about you.
00:27:19.480 --> 00:27:19.839
Mm.
00:27:19.839 --> 00:27:19.869
I,
00:27:20.230 --> 00:27:22.210
I just have to let you know this.
00:27:22.930 --> 00:27:26.319
You might, you, you might, you are not out of my heart or mind.
00:27:26.980 --> 00:27:28.599
We're, we're not, we're separated now.
00:27:28.599 --> 00:27:36.069
But this is the beautiful thing about human beings having just talked about the fact that we're distant and we can't always share the things that we wanna share.
00:27:36.099 --> 00:27:40.450
'cause we want do that in person there, but.
00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:44.730
They're in our hearts and our minds all the time.
00:27:44.789 --> 00:27:46.829
And we don't tell people that.
00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:49.730
'Cause I wrote about that wall in my book.
00:27:49.809 --> 00:27:53.349
They're there symbolically, but they're here.
00:27:53.859 --> 00:27:55.150
Yes, yes,
00:27:55.599 --> 00:27:56.109
they're here.
00:27:56.829 --> 00:28:08.079
And in Dunbar's number, um, he talks about, uh, consciousness being able to hold 150 people relationships.
00:28:08.079 --> 00:28:08.140
Yeah.
00:28:10.404 --> 00:28:29.755
I believe that with the emergence of social media and just so many, we're being exposed to so many people, those, some of those people that have been important to you that have mattered can drop out of that 150 consciousness because we are not.
00:28:29.880 --> 00:28:31.140
Exposed to them.
00:28:31.349 --> 00:28:40.859
So like, mapping can feel hard, but I think it can be really important, um, to, to map the people who have mattered in our life.
00:28:41.220 --> 00:28:58.779
Uh, whether or not we kind of reach out there and then, but doing so can help our natural impulses to reawaken, I have to be very, very mindful of the time that I spend exposed to other people.
00:28:59.109 --> 00:29:08.769
Uh, even in so much as during my master's journey, I started watching a series called Virgin River, which is basically like a soap opera.
00:29:09.279 --> 00:29:14.259
Um, but it helped because there was a set of characters.
00:29:14.710 --> 00:29:16.450
I got to know the characters.
00:29:16.630 --> 00:29:20.289
I didn't need to introduce new characters to my life at that stage.
00:29:20.289 --> 00:29:25.569
I had enough going on, so it was like when I needed to decompress, I'd put on this show.
00:29:26.079 --> 00:29:31.660
Um, so that, yeah, that helped me to kind of contain the people in my life.
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:32.170
Yeah.
00:29:32.170 --> 00:29:33.414
Anyway, I digressed.
00:29:34.005 --> 00:29:41.289
Well, well, I think it's intriguing to me and uh, that you said it was a curse to miss people, and I am.
00:29:42.095 --> 00:29:43.805
I don't think it's a curse.
00:29:43.894 --> 00:29:49.265
Having given what we just talked about, I think it's a blessing and it has to be cultivated.
00:29:49.565 --> 00:30:02.914
It just reminded me of my wife and I just celebrated our 39th anniversary and together we've, we've done so much together and traveled and exploit the world.
00:30:03.529 --> 00:30:15.575
But if you were to walk through our house and I could walk, walk you through, there's nothing hanging on the wall that doesn't represent moments that we had and experiences we had together through connection.
00:30:16.295 --> 00:30:25.954
So that every day my house is a constant reminder of all the things and people,'cause it wasn't just us.
00:30:26.450 --> 00:30:29.569
These are often other PE with other people.
00:30:29.720 --> 00:30:40.910
And usually people like my professor, like Bill Brown, people like parents and my grandparents, um, and friends in a, and a couple of friends that we had.
00:30:40.910 --> 00:30:57.859
So at my house is deliberately curated from lamps to art, a lot of art and tapestries that we picked up all over the world that were extremely embedded and saturated with moments of meaningful connection.
00:30:58.579 --> 00:31:02.059
And so it constantly reminds me, I live in it.
00:31:02.690 --> 00:31:05.750
Yes, I know why I did that, but that was a very deliberate thing.
00:31:05.750 --> 00:31:17.900
And I suspect because I knew up to the age of 12 what it was like not to be wanted and to be ultimately alone and disconnected when I was adopted and taken in by my grandparents.
00:31:18.230 --> 00:31:20.660
It changed so much for me.
00:31:21.809 --> 00:31:28.319
Yes, I needed to be transplanted, but I realized connection was at the heart of healing.
00:31:28.819 --> 00:31:38.509
But the first 12 years was connection is also about the traumas I carry, but the people, I realized that people really mattered.
00:31:39.009 --> 00:31:59.809
So when we, have a feeling that we miss someone, spending a few minutes to really like, tap in and remember a time when you were last together, the way that you feel when you are together, and then if you feel called to perhaps reach out, but otherwise just enjoying that you had the blessing of those times together.
00:32:00.230 --> 00:32:00.349
Yeah.
00:32:00.349 --> 00:32:03.470
So you can like relive the happy memories.
00:32:04.825 --> 00:32:11.934
When I was teaching, um, especially in the spring se semester, my, my happiness course was filled with seniors who were graduating.
00:32:12.894 --> 00:32:14.785
'cause it took'em a while to get into the class.
00:32:14.785 --> 00:32:20.184
But I was glad it happened at the end because it would make a couple points.
00:32:20.214 --> 00:32:22.765
One is that you could feel happy and sad at the same time.
00:32:23.815 --> 00:32:24.865
We're we're not wired.
00:32:24.865 --> 00:32:29.005
So that the absence, happiness is just the absence of sadness.
00:32:29.335 --> 00:32:33.684
And just because you're not feeling a negative emotion doesn't mean you're feeling good either.
00:32:34.555 --> 00:32:44.244
But they would resonate with this as the closer this they came to graduating, the more sad and happy they felt.
00:32:44.244 --> 00:32:46.404
And I said, this is a beautiful moment.
00:32:46.404 --> 00:32:47.575
Embrace both.
00:32:47.964 --> 00:32:51.684
Don't just embrace the happiness, embrace the sadness, and here's why.
00:32:52.375 --> 00:32:56.875
Because it is telling you, you are leaving behind something that meant something to you.
00:32:58.944 --> 00:33:03.535
Do not ever forget that sadness is not something to avoid.
00:33:03.535 --> 00:33:18.085
It's there to tell you you are losing something that matters to you and that you invested something here and that you will be leaving a sadness, but you're also happy because you all that work and achievement was worth it.
00:33:19.180 --> 00:33:37.029
The sadness is a beautiful thing too, because you invest yourself in things that you have to leave behind now, and they got it, and I got it just recently, uh, three weeks ago, my very senior dog and I still miss him.
00:33:37.029 --> 00:33:39.700
We, he, he had to pass on.
00:33:39.910 --> 00:33:44.950
He was just, we cared for him in, in his frailty as much as we could.
00:33:44.950 --> 00:33:51.039
And I'm like, and I heard this again and again with people who just lost a, a pet.
00:33:51.670 --> 00:33:55.539
Sometimes I felt when I was so sad that I didn't ever want to do it again.
00:33:55.839 --> 00:34:07.720
But then I realized that would be the greatest loss of life, to not reconnect and love something else as much as I loved the dog that just died.
00:34:10.329 --> 00:34:10.960
That's it.
00:34:11.619 --> 00:34:13.449
You can't have one without the other.
00:34:15.280 --> 00:34:17.590
And that's the beautiful thing about connection.
00:34:17.710 --> 00:34:25.119
It's, it's just this, uh, bittersweet thing that makes, that's what makes life so beautiful.
00:34:26.619 --> 00:34:28.840
And what about reconnecting?
00:34:28.989 --> 00:34:30.340
When I spoke to Dr.
00:34:30.340 --> 00:34:37.239
Kfi card, he said in all of his research, that was one of the hardest things for people to reconnect.
00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:50.980
Even though the positive benefits of reconnecting can be so great, if it is someone who's really mattered to you and still does matter to you, but something, you know, distance or time has come between you.
00:34:51.489 --> 00:34:59.949
Is there anything, anything in your work or in your, in your experience that might help people to, to reconnect?
00:35:02.320 --> 00:35:12.400
Not in my work, but personally, I, I think doing justice to grieving is so important.
00:35:13.735 --> 00:35:24.144
I can't tell you how many times I've, I've cried and, and, and, and I do that in front of my wife and I do that when I'm walking out there and with my friends and I go like, what's going on Cory?
00:35:24.144 --> 00:35:30.625
I just, oh, I, it hurts to lose something in someone you love.
00:35:31.889 --> 00:35:43.644
And I think that part of doing it justice, I'm using that word in a warm sense, giving it what it needs.
00:35:43.974 --> 00:35:48.204
You have to feel it so that you can let it go.
00:35:49.164 --> 00:35:56.605
'cause once I think I've, I'm over this, I will look at all those pictures and remember all the good stuff.
00:35:57.940 --> 00:36:01.420
Not, not the fact when he died and how much I miss him.
00:36:01.619 --> 00:36:07.050
I will live and relive all the good stuff, and that's all I'll carry forward.
00:36:07.469 --> 00:36:28.570
For me, that makes it possible to reconnect it's just something about that transition from feeling sad about seeing that, an image of that person or, or animal to suddenly feeling, oh, happy and joyous and content and serene at seeing the same image.
00:36:29.260 --> 00:36:36.760
When you do that transition, I suspect reconnecting is, is not only possible, it's almost ne necessary.
00:36:37.239 --> 00:36:38.380
It's like, wow.
00:36:38.829 --> 00:36:44.380
'cause I think there's a danger of not doing grieving justice that you will not want to get hurt again.
00:36:45.175 --> 00:36:45.744
Oh yeah.
00:36:45.775 --> 00:36:51.400
We, we have so many tools at our disposal to just suppress and distract.
00:36:51.699 --> 00:36:52.119
Mm-hmm.
00:36:52.204 --> 00:37:06.505
And as, as part of my research into loneliness, like what has come through multiple times is that people don't really know what that feeling feels like because they don't allow it to even come.
00:37:06.775 --> 00:37:10.195
They're just distracted with screens.
00:37:10.255 --> 00:37:12.144
And, um, yeah.
00:37:12.144 --> 00:37:18.894
So it is, part of my program that I took these leaders through the first two weeks was a social media detox.
00:37:19.255 --> 00:37:25.434
And like, that's not always easy'cause you start to feel feelings that you haven't allowed yourself to feel for a while.
00:37:25.945 --> 00:37:26.125
Mm-hmm.
00:37:26.994 --> 00:37:30.775
No, I read about this study that's been written about a good, a good amount, which is when.
00:37:31.284 --> 00:37:39.744
College students were brought into the lab and they had to sit in this, um, room, which was silent.
00:37:39.804 --> 00:37:46.375
It was sort of like an, uh, a room where audiologists test, hearing, so it was silent and they couldn't bring anything in with them.
00:37:46.375 --> 00:37:52.074
They had to leave their backpack, their phone, everything behind it was deeply disturbing to them.
00:37:53.364 --> 00:37:59.844
And, um, 50% of males shocked themself with a very toxic and obnoxious shock.
00:37:59.875 --> 00:38:11.184
25% of the females did the same, and they knew, they experienced the shock before they went in so that the researchers wanted them to, to, to be, choose something they knew would be painful.
00:38:11.755 --> 00:38:16.914
So what happens is this, I read about this, languishing is the same thing.
00:38:17.485 --> 00:38:22.554
It's such a deeply disturbing silence and invisibility and emptiness.
00:38:23.650 --> 00:38:26.949
That you will do anything to feel something rather than nothing.
00:38:27.309 --> 00:38:27.550
Mm-hmm.
00:38:27.610 --> 00:38:27.730
And
00:38:27.730 --> 00:38:29.409
that's the modern problem.
00:38:29.679 --> 00:38:31.960
And we're not facing it languishing.
00:38:31.989 --> 00:38:39.579
And, and'cause languishing by the way, is baked into a lot of, of languishing uh, loneliness is baked into a lot of languishing.
00:38:40.059 --> 00:38:40.539
Yeah.
00:38:40.780 --> 00:38:41.139
Yeah.
00:38:41.170 --> 00:38:48.489
And I think people don't realize that there's three questions that get at, um, a deep disconnection.
00:38:48.909 --> 00:38:54.039
And so a lot of people who are languishing are, are disconnected in addition to other things.
00:38:54.610 --> 00:38:57.099
And it's really disturbing so much.
00:38:57.130 --> 00:39:12.519
So the teenagers, when I was writing the book, a study comes out of Hungary and teenagers engaged in non-suicidal, self-harming behaviors at a much higher rate, the more severe they're languishing
00:39:14.619 --> 00:39:15.940
because they wanna feel something.
00:39:15.940 --> 00:39:16.480
They want
00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:17.829
something rather than nothing.
00:39:18.909 --> 00:39:31.210
So quietness today is, uh, when you enforce quietness, it feels like punishment and it's sort of an induction into languishing temporarily, and people run like it.
00:39:31.659 --> 00:39:40.750
And I write about the ancient Christian monks who talked about acedia, which became the eighth deadly sin, which is the precursor to languishing.
00:39:41.199 --> 00:39:42.909
They describe it the same way.
00:39:44.199 --> 00:39:54.670
They would seek distractions from it because that empty haunting feeling is so aversive.
00:39:55.239 --> 00:39:56.800
People will fill it with anything.
00:39:56.889 --> 00:39:59.980
Alcohol, drugs, sex, you name it.
00:40:00.849 --> 00:40:02.019
And even self-harm.
00:40:02.519 --> 00:40:11.289
Social connection is a, a skill that we're, we're now practicing and I think we, we want it to be orchestrated it's like you wanna go to events.
00:40:11.289 --> 00:40:16.780
So it happens rather than you thinking that you have the ability and skill to do it on your own.
00:40:18.159 --> 00:40:26.050
And we did it on our own for thousands and thousands of years, and we can do it on our own today because that's how we're built.
00:40:26.260 --> 00:40:28.480
It's just a skill we're not practicing.
00:40:29.050 --> 00:40:29.199
Hmm.
00:40:29.199 --> 00:40:29.320
It's,
00:40:29.409 --> 00:40:30.340
I write about that.
00:40:30.429 --> 00:40:34.719
I hear people always talking about, I got so much on my plate.
00:40:35.679 --> 00:40:46.929
And as an academic, I can't tell you how many times I heard that, and I got so sick of hearing it to the point where I got very snarky and told him, well, just sit down and eat a little bit so that you can make room on your plate.
00:40:47.030 --> 00:40:56.239
So it's because we're letting life pull us out of ourselves and we never practice the skills for creating the life we want.
00:40:56.525 --> 00:40:56.945
Mm-hmm.
00:40:59.539 --> 00:41:09.469
This feels like it's leading us really beautifully into the opposite of languishing, which is flourishing.
00:41:10.010 --> 00:41:10.070
Yeah.
00:41:10.130 --> 00:41:18.320
So I'd love to maybe just, uh, hang out in that space a little bit with you and just feeling like.
00:41:18.844 --> 00:41:20.824
What flourishing really is.
00:41:20.824 --> 00:41:25.894
I took a few notes from your, from your book about, uh, being a combination.
00:41:25.894 --> 00:41:29.855
I think there's 14 different points of what really makes up flourishing.
00:41:29.855 --> 00:41:38.465
Just a couple of them is, uh, warm and trusting relationships, but also having a purpose in your life.
00:41:38.914 --> 00:41:39.094
Yeah.
00:41:39.094 --> 00:41:49.985
So it's not only connection, but it is really that intrinsic motivation for knowing that you are doing what you are good at, what's leaning into your skills and talents.
00:41:49.985 --> 00:42:01.835
The thing I, I find fascinating is that more and more people are taking up this research on flourishing and, um, I just used the word to tell you the truth, be honest.
00:42:01.864 --> 00:42:07.684
Um, I wish I hadn't used the word because now it's every, everyone's sort of thinking they're studying flourishing.
00:42:08.405 --> 00:42:14.014
I used the word flourishing as a stand in for mental health.
00:42:14.764 --> 00:42:18.005
Because those two words are very confusing to people.
00:42:18.005 --> 00:42:19.625
And I found that personally.
00:42:19.625 --> 00:42:26.465
And then academically, personally, when I would say I'm studying mental health, they would think I'm studying mental health problems or mental illness.
00:42:26.764 --> 00:42:28.295
I said, that's not what I'm studying.
00:42:28.295 --> 00:42:33.784
And then this Canadian research study was done on, uh, almost 2000 adults.
00:42:33.784 --> 00:42:40.324
And they were asked a question, here's two, uh, a set of words, mental illness and mental health.
00:42:40.324 --> 00:42:45.034
Do they mean the same thing about the same thing or do they refer to different things?
00:42:46.594 --> 00:42:50.224
And 56% said they refer to the same thing.
00:42:50.855 --> 00:42:54.005
And that's not true because my research makes it very clear.
00:42:54.005 --> 00:42:57.724
The absence of mental illness does not mean you're mentally healthy.
00:42:58.625 --> 00:43:05.764
And so I couldn't use the word mental health until we tried to clear it up and it's taking a long time.
00:43:06.184 --> 00:43:07.804
And so they're not our people.
00:43:08.690 --> 00:43:13.369
You know, I, I don't study flourishing per se, because that's an abstraction.
00:43:13.369 --> 00:43:17.599
That's almost something we're inventing and placing on people's lives.
00:43:18.380 --> 00:43:20.300
Mental health, I think, has always been there.
00:43:20.300 --> 00:43:21.559
It's just been ignored.
00:43:22.909 --> 00:43:36.050
And I think of my work is, is discovering the presence and absence of good mental health because we were so focused on mental illness and its absence for so long that we didn't really understand there was anything beyond that.
00:43:37.190 --> 00:43:44.659
So I want to be very clear from here on out, all those people who coming along, they think that flourishing stuff is really great.
00:43:44.659 --> 00:43:45.559
Good, good luck.
00:43:46.670 --> 00:43:52.250
I study mental health in its absence because nobody before me paid attention to to it.
00:43:53.659 --> 00:43:55.369
And it was an empty category.
00:43:55.789 --> 00:43:57.980
It was the absence of mental illness.
00:43:58.550 --> 00:44:09.739
And so when I use the word flourishing, I'm referring to good mental health, and you only have to have seven out of the 14 signs that are measured in my questionnaire.
00:44:10.429 --> 00:44:16.699
So you also, when I use the word flourishing, I'm not saying you have to be superman or superwoman.
00:44:17.630 --> 00:44:18.255
There's a good enough.
00:44:19.909 --> 00:44:20.900
You get to pick.
00:44:20.900 --> 00:44:23.809
By the way, there's no prescription in my model either.
00:44:23.840 --> 00:44:24.650
I don't tell you.
00:44:24.650 --> 00:44:26.480
You have to have certain qualities.
00:44:26.989 --> 00:44:28.820
There's 11 signs of functioning well.
00:44:28.820 --> 00:44:34.699
You get to choose any six you want to prioritize in your life, and then you combine it with at least one of the three.
00:44:34.699 --> 00:44:37.219
Feeling good, happy, satisfied, or interest in life.
00:44:38.030 --> 00:44:48.679
Usually, you don't have to bother with the latter, Shelly because feeling good about your life is a, uh, outcome or a product, a prioritizing functioning well in your life.
00:44:49.730 --> 00:44:50.960
And isn't it interesting?
00:44:51.530 --> 00:45:01.039
Five out of the 11 are social and nobody talks about the social side of our health, or no, there are people now talking about it.
00:45:01.639 --> 00:45:06.980
But I did my dissertation in 1995 and it was the first, I was the first person who actually looked at.
00:45:08.030 --> 00:45:12.079
Social health is something that re represented our personal health.
00:45:12.079 --> 00:45:15.710
And you need to measure it just like blood pressure and other things.
00:45:16.400 --> 00:45:20.849
So if you don't have a good sense of contribution, there's a sign that something's potentially Right.
00:45:20.849 --> 00:45:21.960
With your mental health.
00:45:22.289 --> 00:45:27.389
'cause human beings need to feel like they have something to give to the world.
00:45:28.199 --> 00:45:37.860
And I'm not talking about mattering, I'm talking about do you have something of value to give to your community or your family or, right.
00:45:38.940 --> 00:45:39.750
I I'm wondering
00:45:39.750 --> 00:45:39.809
Yeah,
00:45:40.289 --> 00:45:40.739
go, go on, on the,
00:45:40.980 --> 00:45:42.570
on the social coherence one.
00:45:42.570 --> 00:45:48.119
I'm wondering if anybody could say yes, I can make sense of what is going on in the world right now.
00:45:49.019 --> 00:45:49.030
No.
00:45:49.079 --> 00:45:49.349
No.
00:45:49.349 --> 00:45:55.079
And here's the thing, I, I was just up in, um, Winnipeg, um, and they gave a talk to teachers.
00:45:55.079 --> 00:45:59.730
'cause there's this big initiative on teacher mental health because teachers are leaving the profession.
00:46:00.224 --> 00:46:07.394
Alarming rates and there's not gonna be enough teachers for our kids, people'cause we're not taking care of our teachers.
00:46:07.784 --> 00:46:10.454
But, but that's another side.
00:46:10.875 --> 00:46:19.635
When I talked about that dimension, there was this laugh in the crowd, but it was not a, a kind of, it was an uncomfortable laugh.
00:46:19.635 --> 00:46:24.974
Laugh like a ha ha Brene Brown epitomized it.
00:46:24.974 --> 00:46:28.034
When we talked about shame, she said that was not a comfortable laugh.
00:46:28.034 --> 00:46:29.925
That was an uncomfortable laugh.
00:46:30.375 --> 00:46:33.344
And it's true, but isn't it interesting?
00:46:33.344 --> 00:46:37.574
Human beings are meaning making sense, making creatures.
00:46:39.420 --> 00:46:43.244
Geal, psychologists put would put these dots out there on paper.
00:46:43.454 --> 00:46:44.324
And guess what?
00:46:44.565 --> 00:46:46.965
We see images, we connect the dots.
00:46:47.204 --> 00:46:48.974
They're not disparate in our mind.
00:46:50.385 --> 00:46:56.385
And when we can't make sense of what's going on in the world around us, we retreat.
00:46:57.644 --> 00:47:07.065
Or we let other people tell us what the hell is going on in politics and society and culture, and they'll just divide us into camps that serve their needs.
00:47:07.454 --> 00:47:08.744
So coherence.
00:47:09.525 --> 00:47:10.905
Oh my God, it's that.
00:47:10.905 --> 00:47:11.804
It's all time long.
00:47:11.804 --> 00:47:31.184
But here's the fascinating thing that I didn't get a chance to write about EV and every study I've ever seen published, doesn't matter where you go in the world, out of the three components of wellbeing on my measure, emotional, psychological, and social, social wellbeing is always the lowest, always.
00:47:31.815 --> 00:47:42.105
I don't care if you go to Asian communitarian communal societies or you go to what we call our individualistic society social wellbeing.
00:47:42.135 --> 00:47:42.434
Pe.
00:47:42.675 --> 00:47:44.114
PE is dead last.
00:47:44.414 --> 00:47:50.925
In other words, it's much harder to achieve any of those five dimensions of social wellbeing.
00:47:51.344 --> 00:47:55.394
It's easier to to, to achieve the psychological and the emotional stuff.
00:47:56.775 --> 00:48:04.125
And I've been thinking lately this whole idea that human beings are social creatures may be overblown.
00:48:04.184 --> 00:48:09.195
Yes we are, but just because we're social creatures doesn't mean it's easy.
00:48:10.215 --> 00:48:16.244
It's, forgive my words, it's god damn hard being social as you know.
00:48:16.244 --> 00:48:23.565
And that's what I loved about what you're talking, you were very honest, put into a, an immersed into a very communals situ.
00:48:23.715 --> 00:48:24.914
It's overwhelming.
00:48:26.655 --> 00:48:27.135
Why?
00:48:27.135 --> 00:48:34.275
Because I think we're social creatures, but we also need, some of us as introverts, need more time alone.
00:48:34.275 --> 00:48:38.894
But even normal extroverts need solitude and time to reflect.
00:48:39.554 --> 00:48:50.804
And so I think we're, we're, we're overblowing this social nature of ourselves to the point where the data and my, and the studies that use my measure, show it very clear.
00:48:50.804 --> 00:48:52.514
It doesn't matter where you are in the world.
00:48:52.934 --> 00:48:55.454
It's hard to have a sense of coherence.
00:48:55.454 --> 00:48:58.065
It's hard to, to have a sense of belonging.
00:48:58.065 --> 00:49:04.094
It's hard to have a sense that you're making any contributions to the world and society and your community.
00:49:04.664 --> 00:49:15.675
It's hard to be accepting of other people, and it's hard to feel that you belong to a society that's growing and becoming better and that you might be part of that.
00:49:16.724 --> 00:49:24.554
It's hard work, so we may be social, but social is not easy.
00:49:24.974 --> 00:49:29.414
It's easier to do the psychological and emotional stuff because that's all about me and I.
00:49:29.835 --> 00:49:31.155
The we and, yes.
00:49:31.514 --> 00:49:32.355
Oh.
00:49:34.230 --> 00:49:39.719
It's hard work, but like so is having a consistent gym routine.
00:49:40.019 --> 00:49:56.039
But we know if we wanna have the fitness, uh, if we wanna have the strength, if, you know, it doesn't have to be at the gym, but, you know, moving our bodies can sometimes feel like hard work, but we can see visibly the positive impact.
00:49:56.280 --> 00:50:01.050
So helping people to understand that these other parts can also be hard.
00:50:01.110 --> 00:50:01.559
Yes.
00:50:01.590 --> 00:50:03.420
And it can feel like work sometimes.
00:50:03.420 --> 00:50:03.900
Yes.
00:50:04.469 --> 00:50:15.420
But that rumination that you can have will possibly disappear because you won't even think about if you are lonely or disconnected anymore.
00:50:15.420 --> 00:50:28.349
It won't even be part of your consciousness because you understand your social needs and you design your life in a way that can satisfy those specific needs.
00:50:28.355 --> 00:50:28.574
Mm-hmm.
00:50:29.565 --> 00:50:29.855
Yeah.
00:50:31.409 --> 00:50:53.340
Some friends and I were recently talking about, um, spiritual fitness and I love the word fitness and yes, the idea that somehow you have to work at being spiritual and you have to have certain prerequisites developed in the same way if you were to, um, mountaineer and climb Everest.
00:50:53.340 --> 00:50:59.250
You can't just go out there and just buy the equipment and think you're ever gonna get anywhere.
00:50:59.250 --> 00:51:07.679
You have to prepare yourself so that you have the ability, the stamina, the strength, the skills.
00:51:08.519 --> 00:51:10.409
What about social fitness?
00:51:11.789 --> 00:51:30.269
I suspect we're missing something when we don't realize that human beings need some stamina and, and, and skills and, and ability and a and in a, a circumstance as well that that is conducive to using those skills.
00:51:31.155 --> 00:51:34.155
In a way that serves others and themselves.
00:51:36.135 --> 00:51:41.474
One of the, one of the things that came up during my interviews was on fear.
00:51:41.985 --> 00:52:06.525
And of the leaders that I spoke to, um, the ones that felt very socially healthy or even socially wealthy, they were part of established groups and part of like different social groups, maybe sports clubs or whatever, but those that weren't really expressed a fear of joining a group of people that they didn't know.
00:52:07.275 --> 00:52:10.574
And I found, I found this quite interesting.
00:52:10.625 --> 00:52:10.684
Wow.
00:52:10.684 --> 00:52:21.875
Because I, I think that the old, the old adage, nothing ventured, nothing gained is, is very important there because it will be hit and miss, but you will, you have to go out and explore.
00:52:22.445 --> 00:52:34.534
I'm just thinking and, and in, in an admission of my own life, um, one blessing of accepting the fact that I'm an alcoholic is that I, I, and I had to confront that.
00:52:35.074 --> 00:52:37.954
Um, I have this amazing.
00:52:38.735 --> 00:52:40.985
Daily fellowship.
00:52:41.525 --> 00:52:45.275
That has been a, a blessing in that regard.
00:52:45.335 --> 00:53:01.414
Some of my deepest friendships now come from the fact that, uh, there are people that we have been in this, this setting where we share all these things, very personal things, and, and now we, we do things separately.
00:53:01.414 --> 00:53:15.244
We'll have coffee every Thursday, me and my buddies, and we will talk about these books, these amazing books and just, but that was a blessing in disguise.
00:53:15.304 --> 00:53:15.724
Yeah.
00:53:16.025 --> 00:53:16.894
Was that true?
00:53:17.195 --> 00:53:18.784
Alcoholic and Alcoholics Anonymous.
00:53:19.025 --> 00:53:20.224
I hear really
00:53:20.224 --> 00:53:23.914
incredible things from others who have been through that journey.
00:53:23.914 --> 00:53:26.074
Like it is almost a rite of passage.
00:53:26.929 --> 00:53:27.679
Oh yeah.
00:53:27.679 --> 00:53:38.630
I'm just, I just picked up a book, um, seeking Wisdom by Julia Cameron, who is about, writes about spirituality and creativity as being inex in inextricably linked.
00:53:39.679 --> 00:53:44.239
Her whole journey started when she had to confront her alcoholism.
00:53:46.039 --> 00:53:47.269
It's a remarkable thing.
00:53:47.269 --> 00:53:52.190
Not every, it's not the, the pla birthplace for everyone for these connections.
00:53:52.699 --> 00:53:56.840
So that's not the way some approach it, but I thought, what an amazing thing.
00:53:56.840 --> 00:54:02.000
There are some people here when they talk, they share such interesting things.
00:54:02.000 --> 00:54:04.099
I want to go, I'm gonna seek them out.
00:54:04.130 --> 00:54:09.500
And there are people who will come up to me after I, I've shared things and we'll start talking.
00:54:10.250 --> 00:54:11.989
But I had to share something.
00:54:11.989 --> 00:54:14.510
I had to have a reason for being in that setting.
00:54:15.079 --> 00:54:17.389
We had to be on the same plane.
00:54:18.170 --> 00:54:20.750
The kind of equality Yes.
00:54:21.170 --> 00:54:21.949
That we Right.
00:54:22.010 --> 00:54:24.860
And we had to be facing our fears.
00:54:25.355 --> 00:54:27.574
We had to face our vulnerabilities.
00:54:27.574 --> 00:54:38.105
We had to face the things that reduced us to things that we didn't ever wanted and imagined we we would become.
00:54:38.735 --> 00:54:42.065
And yet out of that was the birthplace of deep connection.
00:54:42.815 --> 00:54:43.204
Hmm.
00:54:43.625 --> 00:54:46.144
There's this book called Spirituality of Imperfection.
00:54:46.175 --> 00:54:55.594
It's written by people who have had to confront that, but that kind of fellowship there is the birthplace of some of the best connections I have right now.
00:54:57.184 --> 00:55:02.074
And you say in your book, for real intimacy to form it has to be a two-way street.
00:55:02.179 --> 00:55:02.400
Mm.
00:55:03.755 --> 00:55:06.844
It must have a mutual sense of equality.
00:55:07.144 --> 00:55:07.534
Yeah.
00:55:07.655 --> 00:55:08.405
I see you.
00:55:08.405 --> 00:55:09.244
You belong here.
00:55:09.244 --> 00:55:10.264
We are the same.
00:55:11.105 --> 00:55:11.255
Yeah.
00:55:11.255 --> 00:55:11.945
And I write about
00:55:11.945 --> 00:55:17.164
this professor who did that when I was a college student, and he was a professor.
00:55:17.375 --> 00:55:21.659
And yet the way he treated me, I was equal.
00:55:23.150 --> 00:55:24.980
We respected our positions.
00:55:24.980 --> 00:55:29.420
We didn't have to operate out of them though entirely.
00:55:29.900 --> 00:55:46.400
That's why we connected and stayed connected throughout our lives because he saw me in him and I saw myself in him and vice versa, despite huge status differences.
00:55:46.405 --> 00:55:46.465
Mm-hmm.
00:55:48.679 --> 00:55:50.389
And every day we can do that.
00:55:51.260 --> 00:55:59.630
We need to stop operating as out of our positions in society as if, uh, that's the only person you are.
00:56:00.289 --> 00:56:09.170
Because a boss can treat a, an employee as equal in, in caring and, and because that's the mo, uh, as easily as anyone else.
00:56:09.769 --> 00:56:14.420
But you won't be able to if all you do is operate out of being a boss.
00:56:15.170 --> 00:56:15.679
Mm.
00:56:16.519 --> 00:56:29.960
Well, I must say, inviting you on my podcast and you saying yes, it felt like a huge stretch for me, so I'm absolutely blown away and honored that you took your time and your beautiful dog has hung out with us as well.
00:56:32.059 --> 00:56:39.559
Is there anything that we haven't covered today, Corey, that's really present for you and that you feel that you would like to share today?
00:56:44.599 --> 00:57:06.320
I think in the, the spirit of the idea that what I shared about that, this couple of things that I think we're hearing too much about social disconnection is in terms of, uh, the amount matters and reclaiming connection is about having more, no, I think it's, we need to have more conversations about.
00:57:07.190 --> 00:57:16.579
What's the substrate, what's, what's really there underneath connection that really makes some connection so beautiful and meaningful and other connection.
00:57:17.150 --> 00:57:17.869
Vapid.
00:57:18.469 --> 00:57:18.769
Hmm.
00:57:18.920 --> 00:57:23.480
The other is that I think we use the word we're social.
00:57:23.480 --> 00:57:24.949
Our social nature.
00:57:25.010 --> 00:57:30.679
As if it, as if that's the epitome of what we should be good at.
00:57:31.130 --> 00:57:32.989
And I think it's just the opposite.
00:57:33.050 --> 00:57:38.329
I think we got need to be kinder and both to ourselves and to others.
00:57:39.260 --> 00:57:42.440
'cause social connection's really messy.
00:57:43.159 --> 00:57:44.539
It can be very messy.
00:57:44.539 --> 00:57:47.389
Just look at your own loving love relationships.
00:57:49.849 --> 00:57:58.130
I have a wonderful marriage, but my God, it's like there are times when it's just bonkers and let's be honest with each other.
00:57:58.159 --> 00:58:00.829
It sometimes doesn't make sense and that.
00:58:03.905 --> 00:58:14.315
We recognize when we're, when there's rupture and disconnection and we attend to it, and that's what's beautiful about relationships that matter.
00:58:14.315 --> 00:58:28.235
They're hard, but you, they won't get better if you don't attend to the fact that a lot of school social connection has rupture and disconnection and it's there because that's what makes it meaningful.
00:58:28.565 --> 00:58:40.775
Working at it, repairing, saying, I'm sorry, having trust despite the fact that sometimes someone did something that made you feel like, oh, that I wish you had done that.
00:58:42.394 --> 00:58:52.414
And doing genuine apologies, not just like, I'm sorry, here's what I learned and I, I will, I understand this matters to you and I'm gonna be more careful about that because I care about you.
00:58:55.414 --> 00:58:56.315
So it's messy.
00:58:56.315 --> 00:58:57.005
We're social.
00:58:57.005 --> 00:58:57.664
Yes.
00:58:57.784 --> 00:58:59.550
But that doesn't mean we're really good at it.
00:58:59.554 --> 00:59:01.445
It is a skill and it takes work.
00:59:01.445 --> 00:59:13.775
And no, even the best relationships, my marriage, which oh my God, it's the best thing and, and it, besides my nana and papa that ever happened to me is I messy, messy affair.
00:59:13.775 --> 00:59:14.974
That's so beautiful.
00:59:14.974 --> 00:59:18.155
In the end, it's like finger painting when I was a kid.
00:59:19.864 --> 00:59:21.905
It's a fun, beautiful, messy thing.
00:59:21.905 --> 00:59:23.704
Just go in it and have fun.
00:59:25.295 --> 00:59:32.164
Cory Keys, it has been such a great honor and privilege to have you here with me in this moment in time.
00:59:32.164 --> 00:59:33.965
So thank you so much.
00:59:33.965 --> 00:59:46.175
And I'm so excited to, uh, to be able to talk about your work, um, with a little bit more integrity that I, uh, I really know what you are doing and what and why.
00:59:46.175 --> 00:59:50.914
So yeah, thank you so much for this time and for sharing some of your insights.
00:59:51.309 --> 00:59:53.135
It's, it's been a pleasure.
00:59:53.135 --> 00:59:54.755
And, and thank you for having me