Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down
Corey Keyes, the Emory sociologist whose research framed languishing as a distinct mental state, expands two decades of work into a book for general readers. He defines languishing as a sense of stagnation and emptiness that sits between mental illness and full flourishing, and shows how widespread it has become across age groups and cultures. Drawing on his longitudinal studies, Keyes lays out five vitamins of flourishing, including learning, connection, purpose, transcendence, and play, that research links to recovery from this gray zone. He weaves in his own experiences with depression and loss, and looks at how schools, workplaces, and families either feed languishing or pull people out of it. The book offers a clinical concept and a practical map at the same time.
What you might want to know about Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The sociologist who coined the term languishing offers a guide to recognizing the in-between state and moving toward genuine flourishing.
Yes. Grant provided a Penguin Random House blurb for the book and has credited Corey Keyes's research as the basis for his own widely read New York Times essay on languishing, calling the book the definitive guide to the concept.
It blends both. Keyes draws on his personal experience with depression and loss, but the spine of the book is the research he developed over two decades of studying mental health.
Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down was written by Corey Keyes, published in 2024 by Crown.
Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Languishing: How to Feel Alive Again in a World That Wears Us Down is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
