Two Axes of Health

I’ve been listening to the book Languishing by Corey Keyes on Audible.

One concept that resonates with me is that doctors should not just focus on fixing or minimizing the bad stuff. They should also promote well-being. They should help us maximize the good stuff.

This works for physical and mental health. Here’s an example.

In your daily life, you’re somewhere on the scale between languishing and flourishing, between having low mental health and high mental health. This is independent of your mental illness state. You can be flourishing and still have depression.

So, it’s not enough to decrease the impact of any mental illness you may have. You also want to increase your state of mental health! Corey Keyes suggests the following five “vitamins” that help us to flourish.

1. Follow your curiosity to learn something new.
2. Build warm and trusting relationships.
3. Move closer to the sacred, the divine, and the infinite (through meditation or other spiritual practices).
4. Have and live your purpose.
5. Play. (Make time for activities where you enjoy the process, not the outcome.)

While mental health is his focus, I think we can add two more items related to physical health.

1. Eat a healthy diet of small portions, and avoid too much alcohol.
2. Exercise. (Get your heart rate up, and do some strength training.)

The cool thing is that this collection of habits is not too far off from some that I’ve been tracking this year. Here’s my list.

• Limit drinking alcohol.
• Exercise.
• Walk.
• Do fun project work.
• Write a blog post.
• Visit with friends or family.

While I don’t do each of these things every day, I do them often enough to feel pretty good most of the time.