5 Things Missing From Your Life: Why Successful Dentists Still Aren’t Happy with Corey Keyes

Successful, functioning, but secretly miserable? There's a name for what you're feeling, and it isn't burnout.

In this episode, Dr. Corey Keyes, sociologist and author of Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down, breaks down what's really happening when life looks good on paper but you feel “off.”

He calls it "languishing" — and you'll learn how to tell if this is you, the five things that can pull you out of it, and where to start once you know.

Topics discussed:

• The difference between burnout and languishing
• Why so many people are languishing
• Diagnostic criteria for languishing
• What older adults can teach us about relationships
• The five vitamins of flourishing
• Active vs. passive leisure (and the cost)
• The 14-question self check-in

Grab Dr. Corey Keyes’ book:

https://www.amazon.com/Languishing-Alive-Again-World-Wears/dp/0593444620

This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com

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Transcript

When Success Still Feels Empty

Paul Etchison 0:01

You know what I think is weird? A lot of dentists, they're just walking around and thinking something is wrong with them because they're just not excited about their jobs anymore. You built the practice, you hit your income goals, you've got the family, the house, the career, and everybody around you says that you're successful and you should be happy. But deep down, things just kind of feel flat, not horrible, not catastrophic, not deep depression, not burnout. You're still functioning, you're still seeing patients and you're still showing up, but you're just tired in a way that sleep could never fix. You might feel disconnected from the things that you used to care about. And even when things they look so good from the outside, something internally just feels slightly off. And I think a lot of dentists really experience this and immediately assume it means burnout or maybe they're going through depression or that they're doing something wrong. They're not grateful, they're not having the right mindset. But what if there's actually another explanation? Today I am joined by Dr. Corey Keyes. He is a sociologist, professor, researcher, and author of the incredible book, Languishing, How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down. And this conversation honestly moved me in a really good way. We talk about how languishing, it's not depression, it's different. And why so many high-achieving people feel emotionally disconnected even when life looks successful? And what actually creates that sense of fulfillment, connection, meaning? How do we achieve what Dr. Keyes calls flourishing, which is more than just being happy, it is being truly fulfilled. So this is one of those episodes that is gonna make you stop and really think about your life in a different way, make you rethink what you're doing in your practice and if you are living the best life possible. And if not, how to start doing that? I know you're gonna get a lot out of this episode. Now, you are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast, the show for dentists who want more than just production and collections. This is where we talk about building a practice and a life that gives you more freedom, more clarity, better systems, stronger leadership, and a whole lot less unnecessary stress. I am your host, Dr. Paul Etchison. I'm a practicing dentist, a multi-doctor practice owner, two-time author, and dental coach. And my goal is to help dentists create practices that are more profitable, more sustainable, and actually enjoyable to run. All right, let's dive into this interview. I'm so excited today that I have an author and a sociologist professor, a deep researcher, very bright man who's got a lot of cool ideas. And I read his book, and I said, you know what? I'm just gonna reach out to this person and see if they would come on my podcast because I really liked the book. And he agreed to it. Uh, Dr. Corey Keys, I'm so thankful that you're here.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

Of course, and thank you for having me, Paul. It's always uh an opportunity to connect with people who care about these sorts of things. So I'm interested in hearing how it resonated with you.

Languishing Versus Depression

Paul Etchison 3:04

Yeah, you know, I'll tell you, and I don't want to give away everything in the book, but we're gonna talk about it. Is one of the things that I see in dentistry, and I'm sure this is in a lot of professions, that everything kind of took a turn after the pandemic. There's a lot of talk of mental health, there's a lot of talk of depression, a lot of people talking about suicide, but then there's there's this whole other part, which I think really resonates with your ideas, and which is this is why I think it resonated with me, is that there's a whole other people saying, like, you know what? I'm not necessarily super depressed, I'm not necessarily suicidal, but I can't say that I feel really well either. I'm not striving. And I think this is what your book speaks to. So, my first thing I'd love if you would explain for our listeners is this almost dual continuum model that you mentioned in your book, that it's been a long time that mental health has always just been the absence of mental illness. And you challenge that idea. Talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 4:01

Yes, and you could apply this as as well to physical health, Paul, but my my work focused on mental health and illness. And so you notice right away I use those terms and they mean different things, but in the field of psychiatry and clinical psychology, when they say the word mental health, usually they're talking about mental disorders and mental health problems. And yeah, for and it's still the case, sadly, that mental illnesses for obvious reasons get priority. And we assume that people are doing well or well enough if they're free of mental disorder. And I never believed that. As a child growing up, I experienced some things that suggested to me that just because you're problem-free doesn't mean you're doing well. That's only half the battle. And so, lo and behold, I not only created a measure that could look at the presence and absence of good mental health, but after doing that, I found out it was true. The absence of mental illness does not mean that everyone's mentally healthy. There's that in-between category that I call languishing. Languishing isn't depression, it's not burnout, it's not any mental disorder. It's the absence of both. It's the absence of mental illness and it's the absence of good mental health. So a lot of people spend a lot of time in that in-between category. They're not mentally ill, they're not mentally healthy. But here's the kicker: if you spend too much time languishing, it's a gateway and a risk factor for developing mental disorders as well as other problems that's that are going to go along with your languishing. And so if you don't treat and deal with languishing before it creates other problems, right? That's what's happening right now. Things are going to get worse.

Paul Etchison 5:48

So it's almost like if I hear this a lot in dentistry, is that we as dentists sometimes feel isolated to complain about our woes to our non-dental friends because it's always like, what are you complaining about? What is your problem? Like you've got it so good. Look at all this you and and obviously by a lot of relative standards, yes, a high income and we don't work as many hours as a lot of other professions. But are you saying, like, nonetheless, if somebody is not necessarily feeling good, it is worthy of addressing?

SPEAKER_03 6:18

Yes. And I interviewed a few people, and it's true that people can be doing well by all the external standards. And yes, they will talk about a lack of purpose in life, a sense that their life has no direction and meaning, a sense that they're not contributing anything of worth and value to the world. And the list will go on. And what they're talking about are some of the ingredients that go into languishing. They're successful economically, they've hit the pinnacle of the career, but something is missing. And that something isn't just a complaint. We kind of punt it down the uh field, thinking, oh, you've got it so well. What do you have to complain about? But here's the thing: when you fit the criteria, and we can talk about this diagnostic criteria that I've developed, when you fit the criteria for languishing, it doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor, black or white, any race of any culture, uh, risk for suicide goes up. It's not just depression that's driving suicide, it's languishing as well. Risk of suicide goes up, risk of quitting medical school, and we've seen that in medical students in their fifth year. If they're languishing, they have a high intention to quit before they even got started. And yet they put all that work in to get that far. So there's all kinds of problems associated with that we should not dismiss because we wait too long, we become too reactive as society, waiting for big problems to develop before we even try to deal with them. And then we can't deal with them. So we would be much better off focusing on what we say we want, which is mental health, what I call flourishing, and dealing with things before they get far too complicated, dealing with languishing before it develops into suicide, depression, and a variety of other problems.

The Garden Soil Of Life

Paul Etchison 8:16

It reminds me of an analogy I like to use a lot is about a gardener. There are two gardeners, and and one gardener is just pulling the weeds. His whole whole MO is just, I'm just gonna keep pulling weeds and get this great garden. Whereas the other gardener says, I'm gonna plant exactly what I want here. Do you think that we're just not spending enough time being intentional about creating an amazing life with meaning and purpose? Or is this languishing something that just happens to us and we've got to climb out of it?

SPEAKER_03 8:44

Let's start with that last part because yes, it languishing has been around and for a very long time. It's part of the human experience. It goes way back prior to the 12th century, and I read just a little bit about this in the book. It used to be considered by a different name, the eighth deadly sin. So anytime I'm doing research, and before I move forward, I look far back to see if there's any historical equivalence. And I was amazed to read that these descriptions of what was called asedia, which was essentially languishing. And so it's been with us. That doesn't mean it should be considered normal. Depression has been with us for thousands of years as well. So it's part of the human experience. But here, I want to take your analogy of the gardener and use that to say why languishing is far more common than it should be. I think we live our lives like we don't have to tend to the soil. We could just plant, plant, plant every year. And what we're expecting is better, more genetically modified plants that can live in the worst, harshest soil climates because we don't want to take care of the soil. That takes work, long-term planning. But it really isn't all that hard when you think about it. Before chemicals came along, farmers had these ways of regenerating the soil. If you're going to use the soil, you have to regenerate it and you have to tend to the soil. You will always have weeds. But when the soil is taken care of, the plants are far more healthy even when there's weeds around it. They're stronger, more resilient, and they can withstand changes and challenges. So I think we need to think like that. We're missing something when we don't tend to the soil that is the basis of our life that creates meaning and all the things that go into flourishing.

Measuring Flourishing With 14 Signs

Paul Etchison 10:42

I love that analogy. Now, I'd love to talk about your five vitamins of flourishing, but before we go there, let's talk about your diagnostic criteria for languishing.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

So the first three questions I ask are Have you felt happy, satisfied, or interested in life almost every day or every day for the last two weeks or more? To be mentally healthy, you only have to have one out of those three feeling good things, every day or almost every day. Then you have to have six out of the remaining 11 signs of functioning well, six of which are psychological. Did you like most parts of your personality? That's self-acceptance. Did you have warm, trusting relationships? That's interpersonal connection. Were you being challenged to grow and become a better person? That's called personal growth. Autonomy is did you feel confident to think and express your own ideas and opinions? That's four out of the six psychological. And then there's five social well-being. Did you feel that the things you get to do on a daily basis matter to the world, contribute to something to the world? Did you feel that you are you belonged and had a community where you had a sense of belonging and warmth and comfort? Could you make sense of what's going on in the world around you? That's called coherence. So that's three out of the five social well-being. And you just need six out of any of the 11. It doesn't matter what combination. But feeling good isn't enough. It has to be combined with, well, my life has purpose. I'm confident. I'm accepting. I'm contributing. I have a sense of belonging.

Why Connection Feels Hard Now

Paul Etchison 12:16

What do you think about like the way that the culture and just society has changed? Possibly, I think, since COVID, but I think it's technological as well. And we see it in dentistry in the amount of people that are wanting to have online scheduling. They don't want to pick up a phone and speak to a human. And I see this in my my two teenage daughters as well. I would wonder if you could talk about just the changes in society and how that contributes to, I guess our, I think it what I think is our lack of connection and lack of community.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

Yeah. Well, Paul, I'm guilty of what your daughters do as well. I'll give you a reason, and I'm not trying to deny the importance of connection, but here's what I think we want to be careful of. When people do some of that online stuff, what they're trying to do is I don't want to spend a lot of time in the superficial realm of connection where I can't really spend any time getting going deep. So why even bother there? Because when you're trying to do an appointment, you're not going to get involved in any kind of conversational elements that reflect a meaningful connection.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

True.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

Because it's it's very transactional. And the person out in your office who has to do that, it's very transactional for him or her because they got other things to do, right? But when you get to the office and you get a chance to connect and it's face to face, there are opportunities for the deep meaningful work that really does feel good. So I think what is missing is one is the speed of life in the digital social media age is it encourages us to be too quick. But that's not the way social connection works. It's messy, it's deliberate, it's time consuming. But the other thing is, and I write about this in the chapter on connecting, is we're not practicing the social skills that are necessary. We're social creatures, Paul. But that doesn't mean we're good at interacting with each other unless we really work at it. And one thing my affiliation with a lot of Buddhist friends and monks have taught me everything is a learned skill. And if you don't practice it and meditate on it and think about it and do it a lot, you will not get better and better at it. That's what we're missing. It things are too quick. We're very transactional. We take that transactional part and extend it to the moments that we actually do have opportunities to connect. And we just don't practice enough the skill. And so we don't feel good at it. We feel awkward. And by the way, the data show this of all the qualities that go into flourishing and languishing, social well-being is the lowest in every culture we've ever studied it. It's in dead last place. People have higher levels of psychological well-being and higher levels of emotional well-being. Social well-being is the lowest in almost every study I've ever seen. Now that's odd, isn't it, for a social creature to have a very difficult time achieving social well-being. It almost seems like people are very isolated.

Paul Etchison 15:18

It brings me to another thing I wanted to ask you about, too, is that you mentioned in your book how isolation is a big part of depression, but not necessarily a prerequisite. It's more about that loneliness. Or talk about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

I do think that it's more of this sense of being dislocated and disconnected, not in tune and in with other people. That's where I think the sense that I'm alone in this world, real that sense of loneliness comes from, because people don't have to have a lot of frequent contact to feel in tune with others. And there's this research that I review in my book about with age, people get happier and are more likely to flourish up to a certain age, despite the fact that they have less and less frequent contact with other people. And you know what the trick is? Is social contact goes down because we get more and more picky about who we spend time with. We prune, like again, the gardener, we prune out relationships that aren't emotionally satisfying, that aren't meaningful and aren't close. So we stop spending time and suffering with people that I would call suffering fools and who are what we would call um emotional vampires. And we only spend the time that we do with whom we have really, really close, emotionally satisfying contact. So you don't have to have a lot of frequent contact to have really emotionally satisfying contact. And older adults teach us that. And so that was one of the points I was trying to make. We talk about trying to solve the loneliness problem as if we just need more friends and spend more time in connection. That's too simplistic. And I think our Surgeon General does us disservice when he talks about it's it's just that we don't have enough people in our lives. No, we have enough people in our lives. We just don't have time to prioritize the ones that really matter that make our life really meaningful.

Paul Etchison 17:26

Almost like we're not going deep enough with these people that matter.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Yeah, the people that really mattered, we don't get enough time with them, and they don't get enough time with us. But only with age do we actually start to realize I only have so much time left. And then you get really motivated to cut out the chaff and only spend time with people that are loving, caring, and where there's mutuality there.

Five Vitamins That Build Flourishing

Paul Etchison 17:53

So let's talk about you've got these five vitamins of flourishing. And I'd love if we could speak on these because I really, when I was reading your book, I was thinking about certain periods in my life as we were going through these five vitamins, and I'm just like, yes. Like that was when things felt really good when I was really leaning into that. And when things kind of went towards like a lower point in my life, I was missing elements of this. So I I love you could talk about that.

SPEAKER_03 18:21

Let's take the first one. It sounds so obvious, doesn't it? Keep learning something new. Now, what do we mean by that? It sounds so obvious, and yet, if that's true, why aren't our kids flourishing at levels that are astronomical compared to any other stage? And yet the data show just the opposite. Our teenagers and our youth and our college students are languishing at higher rates than adults out there in the work world. Now, why is that? Because they're learning something new every day. Because they have to.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 18:54

Right? They have to. And if you ask them, are you learning something new that you alone wanted to learn? That's what we're talking about. When when you become an adult, you have a lot more freedom and autonomy to go out there and do that. And I think we could encourage our young people to do more of that too, to take one thing that only you want to learn and put that in your day. Of course, there is the courses you have to take. And I know why you're taking those, but because here's the thing human beings are just this, they light up when they see themselves making progress and growing. Again, back to the gardener stuff, right? We're just like everything else on this plant. We are planted here, so to speak. And like everything else, we're planted here to grow. Now, we don't photosynthesize the sun. Yes, we knew we do need vitamin D, but our equivalent is learning and growing. Learning is our form of photosynthesis, it's how people see themselves making progress. And you get to choose, right? That's the important point. If you're an adult out there learning something new, but it's all about because you want to improve something in your job, you're not going to necessarily feel as much of the benefit that if you choose something that has no instrumental value except that you alone care about it. It has nothing to do with your career. It has nothing to do with your GPA. It has nothing to do with anything else, but you just enjoy it and want to see yourself grow. And this explains why people play instruments throughout their life, even though they're not going to perform in front of people or create bands or make money. They just love it because they want to see themselves make progress.

Paul Etchison 20:42

Yeah, it reminds me, I was just having this discussion with my daughter the other day, and she said, talking about how much she hates school. She is a freshman in high school. And I said, I love school. She's like, What is the love about school? I said, you get to learn something every day. And she grabs her book and she holds it up. And I go, Let me see what we're talking about here. It was AP geography. And she was learning about townships and county lines and boundaries. And I said, Well, maybe, maybe not that. But as I have always been a lifelong learner, and I remember back in the day when there used to be bookstores, and there's still Barnes and Nobles here and there, I guess. But my mom used to take me to the bookstore and we'll buy books. And I originally I want to go buy like, you know, fiction, novels, and stuff. And this is probably sixth, seventh grade. And she goes, Well, why don't you check out like the over here, the nonfiction? Like one of the cool things is like anything you want to know about, someone's already written a book on it. And I remember grabbing some nonfiction titles and just being drawn into the idea of just somebody has gone really deep on an is something you want to know about. And this is pre internet days. You know, this is when you had to actually like, you know, you had a question, you had to write somebody a letter. But it's like I'm trying to instill that into my daughters, into this learning. And I think in dentistry, we can very much be lifelong learners. We're learning new skills, we're learning new procedures. And I think in my personal professional journey. It has been a lot about learning about connection and leadership as a dental practice owner. What's the second? What's the next vitamin?

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Well, you mentioned connection, and that is one of the priorities. Again, it gets back to something we were we were just talking about earlier. It's spent a lot of time trying to talk about what a friend versus a friendship means or and it's about the quality, right? And again, that sounds so obvious, but we mix up quantity and quality so so easily. And we hear so much out there that we are we're missing in terms of quantity. So people talk about adding a lot of people, and then they talk about I don't have time for that. But it's prioritizing some of the quality that the older adults have taught me about really spending time with people that you feel really close to, prioritizing time and making those that time for each other.

Paul Etchison 22:56

Is there a number of meaningful relationships that someone needs to have in their life to flourish?

SPEAKER_03 23:03

No, not that I know of. And again, being adopted by my grandparents and being raised in a retirement community, it was very clear to me it's not about number. It's about the time that they spend. There's just something being around older people. This doesn't happen just because of age. It happens, and the studies have shown that when people meet, have to confront endings in their life, right? Suddenly they start having more enjoyable, rewarding social exchanges and contact. That suggests that the opportunity is always there if we seek them out and prioritize them. It's always about if you don't have someone where there's closeness, then yes, you're going to have to go out there and develop that. But you don't, I don't think it takes more than one. I would be that simplistic in I don't have a lot of friends, and I never did as a young man, but I with the few that I had, we were besties. We had buddies, but boy, I was always a best friend to somebody, and then I always had a best friend.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

That was really important to me. And I worked on that.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:14

And it's it's gotten harder. I don't know about you, Paul, but as we get older and males, it's harder. You need that takes time to develop besties.

Paul Etchison 24:24

It very much is. And I think that's a a big struggle for a lot of people. I mean, it's hard to make friends nowadays. And I I've actually seen groups, and I don't know if you mentioned this in your book, and this is where I heard about there's groups for male friends. With dating. And I don't know how many guys are going to get on there and be like, this is how I'm going to make a friend, but it's like it's fulfilling a need. That's why I bring it up, is that they're definitely a need for. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:49

And other groups that I've come across, they have a purpose for getting together around a topic, often to support each other around mental health challenges. That's where you find this kind of friendship deepening because those kinds of groups that meet for a purpose engender vulnerability. And when you start to see another man talking about his sadness or feeling weak or emotional, you start to see who you could connect with in your own emotional life.

Paul Etchison 25:24

So we talked about learning, we talked about having connection relationships. Those are two of them. We've still got three more. Let's talk about help contribution.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

Yeah, helping others, helping other people. Now, I do spend some time talking in that chapter about purpose in life, but I have a love-hate relationship with that concept because let's face it, I don't think you have to find your purpose in order to get involved in a cause. It's something you really care about. But the point of helping others is really you're trying taking yourself out of your own concerns and placing a little bit of your value in helping someone else deal with their problems or their suffering or their unhappiness. It's amazing. The research literature shows how happy people feel when they're helping other people with problems. Now, there's that's just an amazing thing because I think that's where a lot of feeling of contribution comes from when you reach out because somebody else needs your help or they've asked you for help. So that's always an opportunity. Some people get involved in formal volunteering. Some people use a bit of their career and up, say in medicine to devote a couple hours each month to helping people who don't have access, right? But it's a wonderful world out there. There's lots of people who need our help. And there's something about when we are useful to somebody else's needs and concerns and suffering, we light up.

Paul Etchison 26:56

Absolutely. Now we talk about help. We've got the last two spirituality and play. Let's talk about spirituality.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Yeah. The way I tried to bring that chapter down to earth, because you can really quickly get in the ether of like, what do you mean by religion and spirituality? What do you mean by transcendence? Oh my God. I don't like that either.

Paul Etchison 27:19

Well, I guess the big question a lot of people would hear initially is like, does this require a deity?

SPEAKER_03 27:23

No. Again, the Buddhists make it very clear. They don't have a monotheistic approach to religion or spirituality. And yet, what are they? They are developing themselves along lines of this is a concern of ethics and morality. It's not just morality, it's about what's right or wrong and how to live a life that's more good than bad. And that takes rehearsal. And that's one way I've reviewed, I think about religion and spirituality. Because when you practice those rituals, you're doing the same thing that a kid who has a piano recital is doing as she or he gets ready to go out there on the stage, right? Now, when you get out there on the stage, Paul, do you feel nervous and a little offy? Yeah, everyone will. And if you're not practiced and rehearsed, you're going to make mistakes. So, what religion and spirituality do is help you rehearse when things get tough or you get triggered or PO'd or angry or resentful. How can the better part of your angels be activated? Right? Because that's really what religion and spirituality is all about. Developing yourself so that you can respond, not react. And we're very reactive if we don't rehearse.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:46

We're very reactive. We get emotional, we get pissed off, we get angry, and what do we do? We discharge. And then we go home and we beat ourselves up if we have a conscience, and we say, Why did I make things worse? I could have showed kindness rather than so that's one way I think of religion and spirituality. They encourage practices, but there's also another part that's very good for us is, and I don't hear people talk about this enough. Life is full of mystery. When you really look around you, there are things that are mysterious to me that I'm like, oh wow. Like the northern lights. I'm like, as a kid growing up in northern Wisconsin near the upper peninsula in Michigan, I would see parts of it, not the same as my friends in Canada, way up there. But honest to God, I'm like, what is that? And I was drawn into something that was really like I felt part of the world. I felt like I was drawn into this place that's very vast, mysterious, but not in a scary way. I felt connected.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

This is that transcendence.

SPEAKER_03 29:55

Yeah. When you're transcending yourself, you lose a sense of yourself. It's kind of like a rocket escaping gravity. You stop thinking about yourself and you become part of something vast, big, and beautiful and mysterious. And you need more mystery. I think we need to encourage it because that's the root of curiosity and an appreciation for things that you don't understand yet. We need to get comfortable with that. And we need to encourage our kids to feel comfortable because I don't know everything. And that makes me want to know more.

SPEAKER_00 30:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:30

Right? That's the beautiful thing that religion and spirituality, when it works, makes me, oh, I want to know more about this mysterious place that I'm a part of, but that is just how does this work?

Paul Etchison 30:42

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:43

How does this work?

Paul Etchison 30:44

I've always been super interested in just, I read this one book called The Physics of God. And it was just a lot of big physical principles, but like the thing that I took out of it is that there is a lot that we do not see. There is a lot of stuff that is, and then maybe 300, 400, 500 years from now, we'll look back and be like, how did they not know that? They'll look back at us and say that. But I think that's that's what I see as that spirituality. That's that there's something else out there and that we're all part of something. I love the way that you worded it. I'd like your words better than mine. But okay, so we're through, we're through for it. Let's talk about the fifth one, play.

SPEAKER_03 31:20

And yes, play. Play more. But if play isn't your thing, as an adult, I talk a lot in the chapter about leisure, right? And I did not know this literature before I embarked on this book, but there's a an important distinction between passive and active leisure. And if you want to flourish, you need to watch the passivity in your life. When you think you're kicking back and enjoying life, but it's all couch potato stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. But if that's your only way of so as an adult having fun, it's not necessarily good for you. The active stuff requires us to make plans and go out and execute things, right? The passive stuff says you just turn it on and it's like it comes to you. Now, again, it's fair, but people who engage in active leisure, hike, bike, I mean, all those kinds of things where you have to get out there and actually be physically active as well. But here's the amazing thing: reading is an active form of leisure. Because to really get engaged in reading, you're using this thing called imagination that we lost. We left it behind when we were kids, because kids, when they play, are using imagination. And we never lose that spark. We just think it's kind of weird as we become an adult, like believing in Santa Claus, right? Oh, I can't do that anymore. But you can believe in fiction stories, can't you? And get immersed in them. My wife does, and I'm like, I can't read fiction, Paul. I love nonfiction, and I bring it to the beach. Me too. But I get lost in it too.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

I get like, oh my God, that's an amazing finding. So all kinds of opportunities for active leisure as an adult.

Paul Etchison 33:14

What's interesting is anecdotally, I've noticed this in my life with my kids, is that it's very easy to let's watch a movie. It's very easy. Let's watch a movie. That's a great example. Versus let's go ride bikes, let's go throw a ball. But going to ride bikes and throwing a ball takes a lot more energy to get there into I gotta, you know, I mean, throwing a ball. I know people are listening saying, oh, come on, how hard is it to go outside and throw a ball? But it's more energy. But throwing go to bikes, I gotta put air in the tires, I gotta get the bikes down, we gotta go. But that is always, I've always noticed that has been a much more fulfilling activity for me to do with my kids or my wife than watch a movie, which for me, and I think that's what speaks, that's what was speaking to me when I was reading this part of your book is the passive versus active leisure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:58

Yeah. That's the thing. Here's that's what makes all these vitamins challenging. It's a great place to end this sort of discussion because you have to be very deliberate about wanting these things because there's so much about our life that would make the default, right? The movies, the easier thing, so much more. It sounds better. But then you you end up coming to the end of the week and you think, ugh, I'm feeling blah. And yeah, it takes more effort for some of these things.

Stop Hitting Snooze On Languishing

SPEAKER_03 34:32

But here's the thing: the way I think about languishing is it's an existential alarm clock. It's just like what we do every night. We put turn on the alarm clock with greatest intention. When we hear it, we're not gonna hit snooze, but we're gonna actually get up and do something that we planned on doing, right? But we do hit snooze. There's nothing wrong with you doing that sometimes. But this is the problem of modern life. When we're languishing, we keep hitting snooze. Oh, I'll deal with that later. I'll deal with that later. And before you know it, you're not doing any of these vitamins anymore. Life has you, is has control over you. You are not in control of life. So don't hit the the snooze button when you're feeling languishing because it won't get better. You can't punt it down the road, it will get worse. Yeah.

Paul Etchison 35:19

That's an absolutely, I love ending on that part because I think that is such a powerful statement, is that we're all sitting here and we're all we've got this. We've got the opportunity to flourish. We all have it, but life gets busy and we forget about the things that matter and the things that are important. And slowly, before we know it, we are languishing. Before we go, Corey, if there was one thing a dentist is listening, a lot of us have gotten to the point where we've reached certain, I mean, professional, we've checked things off in our professional life. We've maybe checked things off in our personal life, such as started families, we've acquired the things that society says we are supposed to. But if somebody listening is saying, you know what, I do have a good career, I got a good family, but I'm just not feeling all that into everything. What's like one thing they could do this week that could start them on the path towards flourishing?

SPEAKER_03 36:10

Yeah. Well, even without buying the book where you have the laundry list of the 14 questions, is to familiarize yourself with those questions that go into measuring languishing and flourishing. Because I think very few people sort of think of their life as that. I would love to make that a checklist, a real checklist, not the kind where I want to check things off. I want to check those things into my life. So look at that list and think of your, well, where am I, if at all, am I getting these things in my daily life? Some people might be getting some of those things at work, but maybe not at home. Vice versa. And then you can get more deliberate about saying, well, if I want to become more accepting of other myself, here are some things I should work on. If I want to develop more confidence to think and express my ideas and opinions, maybe this is something I could be doing at work and I'm not, I don't feel this because I'm holding back. What am I holding back? Why? So it gives you an opportunity just to look at the laundry list of those 14 items that measure flourishing and languishing to begin to think: okay, I don't have some of these things. Why? And where could I be getting them? How could I prioritize at least one this month? So pick one this month or next month and say, here, I'm gonna try to shape my life around bringing more of this quality in my life so that I feel it, remember, almost every day. You don't have to have it every day, but almost every day.

Paul Etchison 37:44

I love that. Well, Dr. Corey Key is the author of Languishing, How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down. Thank you so much for uh taking time out of your day to come on this podcast. I mean, this was fascinating to me. I know this has been fascinating to listeners. And I thank you for putting together this. This is a work of art. This is a really special book. And it's just that's coming from someone, Corey, who reads a lot of books. And I would say this was one of my favorite reads, and I easily one of my top fives that I would recommend to people reading. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and spending time with us today.

SPEAKER_03 38:15

Thank you for having you, Paul, and for saying that about my book. I appreciate it.

Closing Recap And Resources

Paul Etchison 38:20

Now, when you really zoom out, this is what's going on. A lot of us, we've spent years trying to solve the exhaustion by becoming more productive. We need to just utilize our time better. We need to manage our time better. And we tell ourselves we need a better schedule, more efficiency. Maybe we just need another vacation. Maybe we need a new goal to follow. But this conversation that we just listened to reminds us that fulfillment, it is a completely different thing. And it comes from being intentional, and we can obtain it by doing the things that bring us to flourishing and bring us to fulfillment. So, what did we learn? You can be successful and still feel disconnected. You can be functioning and still be languishing. And honestly, I think a lot of dentists need to hear that. So here's what I want you to remember from this episode. First of all, flourishing, it is not the absence of burnout or depression. There is a huge difference between not feeling terrible and actually feeling alive. Secondly, the things that create a meaningful life are usually the things that we slowly just stop prioritizing when life gets busy, when the practice starts to take over, when we focus on our practices too much and we stop focusing on the things that bring us to the fulfillment, the connection, the play, learning, purpose, helping other people. Those things matter so much more than we think. And third, languishing, it is not a character flaw. It's not a weakness, it's a signal to you that something important in your life needs attention. And the good news is that is fixable. So you do not need to completely blow up your life to feel better. Sometimes you just need to start intentionally putting the right things back into it. So if you got value from this episode, would you do me a favor and leave a five-star review? It really helps more dentists discover the podcast and keeps these conversations reaching more people who honestly need them. And if you're sitting there, you're realizing that your practice feels heavier than it should be, or that success somehow still feels stressful, head over to dentalpracticeheroes.com/slash strategy and schedule a free strategy call with me. It's not a sales pitch. We'll just have a conversation about where you are, what's working in your practice, what's not, and what your next steps could look like. So thanks again for listening, and we will talk to you next time.