Good morning!

I hope you’re enjoying the long weekend (if you’re in the US) and the unofficial start of summer.

It’s about four weeks until the summer solstice. I am loving the longer days. How about you?

Here’s what I have for you today:

• One big thing. If you are free of mental illness, does that mean you are mentally healthy and thriving? My cactus and Corey Keyes provide answers.

• You have to check this out. Guessing what percentage of Americans are left handed and insane AI videos. Insane. 🤯

• Tools and tech. Mixing your own ambient soundscape. Surf plus fireplace? 🎵

Are you ready to jump in? 🦘

1️⃣ ONE BIG THING

Cactus wisdom for midlife.

In 2020, I bought a four-foot Peruvian apple cactus cutting.

I potted it, gave it a dose of water, and waited to see what would happen.

I didn’t have to wait long. Cereus repandus is one of the fastest-growing cacti out there. Last year, mine grew over four feet in six months. In the best conditions, they can reach 50 feet in height.

In 2021, buoyed by my seemingly green (but oft-scratched) cactus thumb, I bought a saguaro cactus.

The saguaro is the OG cactus. It’s got its own emoji 🌵 and its own national park. If you've seen them in Arizona or Sonora, you know they can be huge. A fully mature saguaro can reach 40 feet and hold 1,000-1,500 gallons of water, weighing over 12,000 pounds. The tallest saguaro ever measured was 78 feet tall.

Unlike the Peruvian apple cactus, the saguaro isn't in any hurry to grow. It can take a new saguaro eight years to grow just 1-2 inches. They take 70 years to get to six feet tall.

My best guess is that my saguaro is 15-20 years old. It’s about 14 inches high now.

Late last year, I began to worry about my patient yet prickly friend. Its fleshy exterior color began to lighten slightly. It wasn't growing at all, and it certainly never flowered.

This is where it may be worth noting that I live in Atlanta. My saguaro is a long way from home. Besides a profusion of cacti, my front porch shares little in common with Tucson.

But if cacti have a common character trait, it's resilience. They evolved to thrive in the world's harshest conditions—where no other plants would grow.

This raised an interesting question:

Was my saguaro sick? Or was it simply not flourishing?

Is “not sick” the same as “healthy”?

In last week’s letter, I talked about the field of positive psychology, comparing its focus on helping people move “north of neutral” to the efforts of Dr. Peter Attia and his Medicine 3.0 framework.

While traditional psychology and medicine are based on a disease model (helping people overcome mental or physical illnesses and return to a neutral, not-sick state), positive psychology and Attia’s Medicine 3.0 help people move from “not sick” to flourishing.

As I describe this, you might imagine a spectrum with illness on one side, neutral in the middle, and flourishing on the other side.

In fact, on the mental health side, one of the most commonly used measures of subjective well-being uses a ladder analogy to represent a spectrum from hopeless to prospering. The Cantril Scale is used as the basis for Gallup’s World Happiness Report, which asks people:

On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?

And also:

Which step of the ladder do you think you will stand about five years from now?

Since 2005, Gallup has collected over 2.5 million responses to these questions in every country in the world, and its interactive maps of this data are fun to explore.

At the same time, research has documented significant flaws in this one-dimensional, ladder-based framework for assessing well-being.

From one axis to two.

What if a single-axis spectrum is not the best way to think about mental illness and health?

If you are free of mental illness, does that mean you are mentally healthy and thriving?

For example, could you show no signs of mental illness and still report low levels of well-being? Or, could you be living with mental illness (such as depression or anxiety) and yet still be flourishing in life overall?

In the early 2000s, Emory University’s Corey Keyes wanted to find out.

He started looking more closely at data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study done over several decades by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (This fantastic resource currently has the worrying note: “This repository is under review for potential modification in compliance with Administration directives.”)

Keyes' research (here is the full PDF) examined data from over 3,000 adults aged 25 to 74.

His core research question: Are adults who remain free of mental illness annually and over a lifetime mentally healthy and productive? Or, said another way, does the presence or absence of mental illness accurately predict an individual's mental well-being?

Analyzing the data led Keyes to a key revelation: The more accurate way to think about this is by separating the idea of mental illness from mental health.

Keyes’ two-continua model.

Instead of a single line from illness to health, Keyes plotted two axes: one for mental illness (think diagnosis, symptoms, clinical stuff) and another for positive mental health (your sense of well-being, meaning, connection).

“The two continua model holds that mental illness and mental health are related but distinct dimensions,” Keyes explained.

In the process, he introduced a new language for the mental health continuum:

• Languishing—apathy, a sense of restlessness or feeling unsettled or an overall lack of interest in life or the things that typically bring you joy.

• Flourishing— a state where individuals combine a high level of subjective well-being with an optimal level of psychological and social functioning.

Here is what Keyes two continua model looks like:

Looking at the MIDUS data, Keyes discovered people can have a diagnosed mental illness and still experience moments of flourishing—purpose, joy, and real connection.

Or you can be free of any clinical diagnosis and still find yourself languishing, just drifting, disengaged from things that once mattered.

This idea really resonates with me. How about you?

I have been fortunate in my life to be mostly free of mental illness. But that doesn't mean I have always felt I was fully thriving. I've sensed that I could experience positive emotions more frequently (and more durably) with the right type of actions and work. That I could find a deeper engagement in life, with more meaning and purpose.

I imagine I would fit into the middle-of-the-road group Keyes called “moderately mentally healthy”… not languishing, not flourishing.

Here is the percentage of people Keyes found in the MIDUS data:

To me, this perfectly captures what we could call the “default mode” of life.

If you are sick, you get help. You get treatment. Professionals tell you about the nature of your illness and give you research-backed ways to get better. You have to put in effort. It is not a guarantee of success. But there is an entire ecosystem of support.

If you are not sick but just “moderately mentally healthy,” there is no real impetus for action. It is so easy to get stuck here.

I want flowers.

Passing through midlife, I also realized two big things:

• Time is not infinite.

• I want to make the most of my finite time.

I do not want to be “moderately mentally healthy” in the time I have left.

Luckily, I don’t feel this is a source of anxiety or panic. It doesn’t feel like an aggressive new life goal. I don’t plan to institute an obsessive new morning routine to squeeze more from life.

It's simply a realization that I want to learn ways to move toward flourishing on Keyes' continuum. Luckily, these tools exist. This has been the research focus in the field of positive psychology over the last 30 years.

I am still zeroing in on what exactly this Second Act Creator project is about.

But ultimately, it is my project to uncover and implement proven approaches to flourishing in life. I believe this means flourishing physically, mentally, and socially (I am leaving the financial side to others). I am convinced that physical and mental health are intertwined in their contributions to flourishing.

So I will explore both in these letters to you.

Have you also had similar thoughts as you’ve passed into midlife?

Does this Keyes two continua model help reframe the mental health side of this for you, as it did for me?

I can look out at my prickly saguaro for inspiration.

On a cactus continuum, it is surely moderately cactusy healthy. It got a bit too much water for a while, but it’s back to normal now. But a fully mature saguaro, a flourishing saguaro, will create a dazzling bouquet of flowers when it is flourishing.

The English word “flourish” comes from the Latin florere, “to bloom, blossom, flower,” and from the Latin flos, “a flower.”

To contrast the term with a plant's lack of full development, "flourish" came to indicate vigorous growth or development.

Happy Memorial Day.

See you next Sunday,

Kevin

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