Languishing

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What Languishing Looks Like

Paul was in seventh grade when the trouble started or at least when the phone calls to his parents from the principal really started to pick up. He and his classmates had all entered middle school the year before, but only for a few hours a day every other week, per the new pandemic restrictions in his district. They d missed all sorts of milestones graduation from their elementary school, a summer of fun in between, and an orientation in person at their new school because of the pandemic raging around them. Most of Paul s classmates had never even set foot inside the main building before September rolled around.

Any chance of making new friends from the other local elementary schools had slipped away within the first few weeks of sixth grade. If students were learning in person, they were all masked up and leaving before lunchtime; if they were on Zoom, not a single kid kept their camera on the whole day. They d never even seen their new teachers smile in real life their faces had been hidden by masks. It felt hopeless and impossible to connect with new people and make a fresh start.

By the time seventh grade rolled around, Paul and his friends, most of whom were left over from his elementary school days, had started making trouble. Small trouble, at first: horsing around in the hallway, speaking out of turn in class, sort of normal seventh-grade stuff, or so his parents thought. But then things started ticking upward. Various destructive TikTok trends were taking off in schools all around the country paper towel dispensers were getting ripped off walls, horsing around in the hallways turned into full-body tackles, and bathrooms were getting trashed on a regular basis. Paul kept getting caught for petty vandalism, low-level violence couched as fun. His grades were slipping. Nothing dramatic, such as regularly ditching school, was happening, but his grades had been A s and B s, and now there were a whole lot of C

Corey Keyes

With his pioneering research, Corey Keyes put languishing on the map. In this powerful book, he brings it to life. Get ready to rethink your understanding of mental health, update your views on happiness, and come closer to realizing your potential. Adam Grant, author of Hidden Potential

With compassion, clarity, and raw honesty, Keyes explains the languishing-to-flourishing continuum, and how to break out of the ruts that keep us demoralized and worn down, improve our daily functioning, and find a deeply rooted sense of well-being. If you feel like you re running on empty, this book is for you. Angela Duckworth, author of Grit

Languishing combines decades of Keyes s own scientific research with powerful personal stories to offer an antidote to the feelings of emptiness and nihilism that plague modern humans. Love. Learn. Work. Pray. Play. Five ingredients that have the potential to transform a life. This book will change the way you think about pain and pleasure, our innate psychological needs and the behaviors that throw us off balance, and the path to holistic well-being in an overstimulating, overwhelming world. Anna Lembke, MD, author of Dopamine Nation

In this timely book, Corey Keyes equips us with the tools needed to reignite our passion for life, work, and relationships in a world that often leaves us feeling adrift. Embrace this book s wisdom and let it be the catalyst for your transformation toward a life well lived. Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global

Corey Keyes is the leading researcher studying flourishing and languishing. In this conceptually rich and deeply personal book, Keyes helps us to see that most people are languishing to some degree because we live in a society almost perfectly designed to interfere with some of our deepest needs. His sociological insights are profound. His recommendations will help individuals and societies to flourish.