Don’t drift into your retirement. Design it.

Join us in the next Design Your New Life in Retirement group program starting April 26.

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Today's Building Block: Wellness

What will your life in retirement really be like? Will you flourish or languish? Our guest today is Corey Keyes, a renowned expert and author of the groundbreaking book Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down. Corey explains what languishing is and the five essential "vitamins" for flourishing, derived from extensive research, offering practical strategies to improve well-being.

Corey Keyes joins us from North Carolina.

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Bio







Corey Keyes is professor emeritus of Sociology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA where he held the Winship Distinguished Research Professorship. He was a member of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Aging. He has been called on to participate in several U.S. National Academies of Science initiatives – “The Future of Human Healthspan” and improving national statistics to measure recovery from mental illness. His research introduced the concepts of social well-being, flourishing, languishing, the two continua model of mental health and illness, and his work is being used to prevent mental illness via the promotion of positive (flourishing) mental health. He has been selected to give several honorary lectureships, including the Dorosin Memorial Lecture for the National College Health Association, The Chesley Lecture on Aging at Minnesota State University, and the Anita Spenser Lectureship in Clinical Behavioral Sciences at McMaster University.

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For More on Corey Keyes

Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down










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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Mindful Body – Ellen Langer

The Self-Healing Mind – Gregory Scott Brown, M.D.

Chatter & Your Inner Voice – Ethan Kross

The Power of Fun – Catherine Price




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Wise Quotes






On Flourishing and Languishing

"....the good news is that flourishing is at its peak during what most of us would consider the first decade of retirement. So roughly between 60 to 74, it is at its peak and before you retire and throughout your adult working phase, it starts out pretty low in early to late twenties, but it's steadily increases and increases so that as you get settled into your career and become senior and established, you tend to on average leave your career on a high note. You're flourishing, but it gets better. And that's the point I want to make, that it's the first decade at least of retirement. People are doing really well on average. It's the problems that come with if we live long enough. And by that I mean roughly past the age of 75 plus and more and more of us are. We see a downturn in flourishing and an increase in languishing towards the end of life."

On Activities That Promote Flourishing

"... five of the activities stood out among people who were flourishing, who they did more of the following. They engaged in more forms of helping behavior. It might be volunteering, helping people, or even living your purpose. Go out there and help someone or help something in the world and make it better. The second vitamin, that flourishers did more of was that they connected, prioritizing warm, trusting relationships. Relationships where they had a sense of belonging, where they were part of a community and relationships where they mattered. And by that I meant they were needed. And in my measurement of flourishing, the sense of contributing worth and value to the world is baked into flourishing. So the second thing they did more of was connect around warmth, trust, belonging, and mattering. The third was they were very active in learning something new and prioritizing personal growth.