You Were Born to Flourish. Here's the Science That Proves It. | Dr. Richard Davidson & Dr. Cortland Dahl – EP 803

What if flourishing isn't something you achieve, but something you were born with? Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl reveal the neuroscience behind awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, and explain why these four trainable skills can help anyone build a more resilient, meaningful life.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, what if your biggest problem isn't that you're not doing enough, but that you've spent too long proving that you are enough? You can be successful, needed, and surrounded by people and still feel completely unseen. That's the problem I explore in my new book, The Mattering Effect. I show you how we become hyper-visible for what we produce, while quietly becoming invisible to ourselves, and introduce the matter framework to help you reclaim meaning, autonomy, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity. Stop auditioning for your worth, start living from it. The Mattering Effect is available for preorder now at matteringeffect.com. Today on Passion Struck, pioneering neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson reveals why we've been thinking about flourishing all wrong.

• 0:44John R. Miles?

  Then he shares the extraordinary mission, His Holiness the Dalai Lama entrusted to him. Take a listen.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  He has given me a very direct assignment. And my assignment from him is this. He has asked me to please take the practices from his tradition, study them using tools of modern neuroscience, modify them in ways that allow a wider range of people to practice them. This really, I take to be my assignment for the remainder of my time on the planet.

• 1:24John R. Miles?

  Hey, it's your friend John, and welcome to Passion Struck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a longtime listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today. Maybe you've built the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough. If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me. Let's get into it.

• 2:06John R. Miles?

  Welcome back to episode 803 of Passion Struck. Whether this is your first time or your 800th, I am so glad you're here. We are in our new series, The Adaptive Brain, exploring how our minds learn, heal, and ultimately shape the lives we live. Last episode, Dr. Daniel Amen reminded us that our brains are constantly changing. But that left me thinking about an even bigger question. Changing toward what? So many of us spend our lives trying to improve ourselves. We chase the next goal, the next habit, the next version, who we think we're supposed to become. But what if flourishing isn't about becoming someone new? What if it's about uncovering what's already there? That's exactly what today's guests explore.

• 2:50John R. Miles?

  Joining me are Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl, two pioneers exploring one of the most important questions in neuroscience. What allows human beings to truly flourish? Richard has spent more than 40 years studying the brain and is widely recognized for transforming our understanding of well-being, resilience, and neuroplasticity. Cortland brings a unique perspective, both as a neuroscientist and longtime contemplative practitioner, translating decades of research into practices anyone can apply. Together, they're the authors of Born to Flourish, where they argue that awareness, connection, insight, and purpose aren't traits reserved for extraordinary people.

• 3:33John R. Miles?

  They're capacities every one of us already possess. What stayed with me after this conversation was surprisingly simple. Our culture spends a lot of time asking, "What's wrong with me?" Richard and Cortland ask a different question. What's right with us that we've forgotten? That shifts everything. So let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:11John R. Miles?

  I'm absolutely thrilled today to welcome Richie Davidson and Cort Dahl to Passion Struck. How are you gentlemen today?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Very well, thanks for having us.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Great, yeah, doing very well.

• 4:22John R. Miles?

  Cort, I'm gonna open this up with you. I'm interested in how did the two of you first meet? And at what point did you realize your two different backgrounds, Richie from decades of neuroscience and you from deep contemplative practice, could produce something neither of you could have written alone?

• 4:41Speaker 02

  It's a great story. We met, I believe, in maybe 2008, somewhere around there. And it was at a conference in Zurich, Switzerland, that was hosted by an organization called the Mind and Life Institute, which Richie has played a pivotal role in and is part of hosting dialogues between scientists and meditators and contemplatives. And I was there with a Tibetan Lama named Mingyur Rinpoche, who I think you've had on your podcast. I'd been living in Asia, living in Tibetan refugee settlements for many years at that point, almost a decade. And Richie, of course, was really in the middle of just doing some of the most important early work on the scientific study of meditation. And we had a lot of mutual contacts.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  We knew many people in common, so we were in the same circles. And it was just one of those meetings where we just had a very clear and obvious connection. And I still remember Richie saying, "Well, I was thinking about going back to academic work and doing a PhD." And Richie, I still remember very vividly saying, "Well, why don't you come to UW-Madison?" And at that point, UW-Madison didn't have a very robust Buddhist studies program, which is what I was very immersed in at the time. And I thought, "Why would I go to Madison?" With all due respect. But I ended up going and visiting, and it just became clear we had some important work to do. And just our personal relationship was just such a wonderful connection.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Certainly for me, that was just obvious that we needed to find a way to deepen that connection and see what would happen.

• 6:17John R. Miles?

  Richie, I understand you've had a very long relationship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. And it's interesting to me, the people I've had on this show who have met him, whether it's Gretchen Rubin, Susan Cain, Dan Harris, David Vago, all tell me that during their meetings with him, he gives them all a mission for them to partake in for the benefit of society. And I was wondering, did he ever give you a similar mission?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yes, very much. Thank you for asking about it. I first met the Dalai Lama in 1992, and he's played a very pivotal role in my life. When he was traveling around the world before COVID, I was typically seeing him three or four times a year. More recently, I see him once or twice a year. And he has given me a very direct assignment. And my assignment from him is this. He has asked me to please take the practices from his tradition, study them using tools of modern neuroscience,

• 7:27Speaker 01

  modify them in ways that allow a wider range of people to practice them. And if our scientific findings show that they are valuable, to disseminate them widely. I take to be my assignment for the remainder of my time on the planet. It's really why I'm here, why we do the work we're doing. And it has fueled the relationship and work that Cort and I have done together. And it's been a huge inspiration and blessing to have that be my life's purpose.

• 8:09John R. Miles?

  Man, I love that. And Cort, did you receive a similar message?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama till many years, certainly after Richie did. In fact, it was through the connection with Richie that I first met him. But I had been, actually, I started, my interest in this whole area began in the early 1990s. And I would say it didn't, it wasn't sparked by my interactions with him, although he certainly has been a great inspiration. I think for me, and I think this is, I'm sure Richie would say the same. I started meditating. I got interested in these, kind of the science of the mind and scientific research in this area. And my own personal interest all coincided in the early 90s. And I was just struggling at the time.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  And the practices I learned, the ideas that I was exposed to so radically changed my life that I knew back then, in the early 90s, that this was gonna be what my life would be about. And I didn't know what form or shape that would take, but I had a sense of confidence and certainty and inspiration that, okay, this is what I'm on the planet to do. I have no idea what the implications are in terms of a career path, but this is something the world needs. It's helped me, and I want to help share that and make sure everybody knows these ideas and practices are available.

• 9:34John R. Miles?

  Thank you for sharing that. Richie, a lot of my own personal work has been around the science of mattering. And one thing that I've really looked at closely is the mattering instinct that we all have the second that we're born. And so when I saw the title of your book, the first word that jumped off the page to me was the word born in Born to Flourish, because I think it makes a very different claim than most books that I've seen in this space. Most begin with what's broken about us, but yours begins with what has always been whole,

• 10:13John R. Miles?

  which to me resonated with this idea of the mattering instinct. Was born, the word born, the most important word in the title for you guys?

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not sure it was the most important, but it was certainly chosen very intentionally. It was chosen because of the recognition that our capacity to flourish and the key ingredients that humans have that enable them to cultivate the skills of flourishing are inborn. This is part of who we are as human beings. And this is not just an assertion. This is not just a belief, but it's a fact. There is robust scientific evidence that supports this, which we review

• 11:04Speaker 01

  in our book. I think this is really super important, because when we meditate, for example, meditate on qualities like kindness or compassion, we're not trying to create something from nothing, but rather you can genuinely think of it as recognizing our true nature, because this is our nature. It is our nature to be kind. It is our nature to be pro-social, to be cooperative. That is our nature. And that is how we are born. And the data really show that. And yes,

• 11:44Speaker 01

  we can learn lots of negative things that can get in the way, but our core nature is one of what we might call basic goodness. The title Born to Flourish was really chosen very intentionally to reflect that.

• 12:03John R. Miles?

  Richie, thank you so much for sharing that. And Court, it's interesting to me, you don't open the book with neuroscience or meditation. You begin with someone walking through the woods, suddenly noticing sunlight through the trees, and a brief moment, everything becomes quiet. Why start with such an ordinary moment?

• 12:21Speaker 02

  It really goes back to what Richie was just talking about, which is that we often, when we think about happiness, or flourishing, or any of these things, we can think of the peak experiences of life, like the big moments where it's obvious that we're happy and things are going well. And we wanted to make the point that flourishing is much more than happiness. It certainly includes happiness, but it can include very ordinary moments where we just feel like we're at our best in a normal daily routine, or even actually stressful moments. It could be a difficult moment, but somehow it brings out the best in us. And we wanted to capture the key ingredients that are not there only when things are just perfect, and it's one of these great experiences, but the kinds of things that we can carry with us

• 13:05Speaker 02

  through all of life's ups and downs. So that was really one of the key points. And we really wanted to drive that home from the beginning, that this is just real life, just how can we get in touch with these qualities that help us in these daily situations?

• 13:18John R. Miles?

  It made me really think of the work of Dacher Keltner and what he calls moral beauty, and that it's oftentimes we experience awe or flourishing the most when we're in service of others, or doing something ordinary, not in the great grand orders that we expect, like seeing the Grand Canyon, or looking at a masterpiece. So it really resonated with me.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 13:43John R. Miles?

  Richie, I recently spoke with John Kabat-Zinn, and something he said has stayed with me, which is awareness isn't something we acquire. It's something we learn to inhabit, because it's always been ours. Your book seems to make a remarkably similar claim about flourishing. Are you arguing that flourishing isn't something we create, but something we uncover?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Basically, that is what we're arguing, because the key constituents of flourishing are part of our nature. And what flourishing is about is cultivating these qualities that each of us is born with, that we're given. And the way we think about it is very much the way scientists think about language. Every human being is born with the capacity for language, but in order for that capacity to be expressed, it needs to be nurtured. And the key ingredients of flourishing are very similar. We all have them, but they require

• 14:43Speaker 01

  nurturing for us to really express them fully. And so that is a lot of what our book is about. And related to something Court was just describing, another important principle of this is that it's easier than we think, because it is part of who we are. That enables us to really tap into this actually quite easily. We don't have to fight with our minds to do it. We can do it in a very organic, natural way.

• 15:20John R. Miles?

  I want to explore that more in depth. But first, Court, I want to ask you about orphanages. I have a book coming out later this year called The Mattering Effect. And in it, ironically, I profile Oksana Masters, the Paralympian, who spent the earliest years of her life in a Ukrainian orphanage before she was adopted. And as I was reading your discussion on the Romanian orphan studies, I couldn't help thinking about her, because while the settings were different, they reveal the same fundamental truth. Early deprivation doesn't just affect a child's circumstances. It shapes their developing brain and their sense of safety, connection, and self. How should we think about the relationship between early adversity,

• 16:04John R. Miles?

  neuroplasticity, and that capability for humans to recover from that?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  This is a very rich area to explore and discuss. And Richie certainly has a lot, will have a lot to say on this as well. But I think there's two points. One is that there are really important influences, and there are windows of development, certainly when we're very young, when we're infants, in the very early years of our development, and then later in our teenage years as well. The brain and our nervous system is always changing throughout our life. But there are windows in which there's, you could say, a kind of a heightened rate of change and plasticity, you might say. So these are really important times, and there are many influences that will shape what happens in those periods. And the fact that we are social creatures by nature, and our brains and nervous systems

• 16:55Speaker 02

  are wired for this sense of connection, what happens in our relationships, whether they're nurturing stable environments and relationships, or they're very unstable, or not nurturing, or not supportive, that can have a profound effect. The thing to note, though, is that does not necessarily dictate how things are going to turn out. It certainly will influence the trajectory of our lives. But there is capacity for change throughout our life. So even if you have a lot of adversity early on, that almost certainly will affect the rest of your life. And yet, there are things we can do throughout our lives that can shift that, can continue to shift that in a more positive direction. I'm a textbook case for

• 17:36Speaker 02

  plasticity. I had incredible social anxiety. I had a phobia of public speaking. I would have been in a complete emotional tailspin right now if this had been when I was 18 or 19. And now I feel zero nervousness, like it's just completely different. So even those tendencies and predispositions we have, that doesn't mean we're locked in, that's so to speak. But it certainly plays an important part in our life and shapes, to a large degree, what happens.

• 18:06John R. Miles?

  Richie, would you like to add anything?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Sometimes people will say that early deprivation, for example, in Romanian orphanages, or other horrific early life experiences scar a person for life. And our research, as well as the research of many others, indeed does indicate that there are changes that are produced in the brain, changes both in the functioning of the brain, as well as in brain structure. But, and this is an important but, the extent to which those changes are permanent, or enduring, or unmodifiable, is absolutely unknown. And there are sometimes,

• 18:53Speaker 01

  some people have a knee jerk reaction in assuming that those kind of early adverse experiences will necessarily impair a person for life. And when science, it's very difficult to prove the null hypothesis, that change cannot happen. And whenever someone says that, I will ask them, really, what's the evidence for that? And indeed, there have been studies, including some things that we've collaborated on, where if interventions are very intensive interventions, change can indeed happen. And so I think that it's

• 19:34Speaker 01

  very important for us not to prematurely dismiss the possibility of change occurring, even in the face of horrific adversity.

• 19:46John R. Miles?

  We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Dr. Richie Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl. As you're listening today, I'd like you to think about one simple question. What if flourishing isn't something you have to earn? Richie and Cortland reminded us that flourishing isn't reserved for life's biggest achievements. It's cultivated in the ordinary moments, the choices we make, and the relationships we nurture, and the way we show up for ourselves and for one another. This idea resonates deeply with something I've been researching for my upcoming book, The Mattering Effect, coming this October. In it, I explore what I call "the great erasure," the quiet way modern life can make us feel invisible, valued more for what we produce than who we are.

• 20:29John R. Miles?

  But the good news is the opposite is also true. Small moments of genuine connection, recognition, and compassion remind us that we matter. In those moments, the power to create ripples that extend far beyond what we can see. If you'd like to continue exploring these ideas, every episode in our Adaptive Brain series includes a companion workbook inside The Ignited Life on Substack, designed to help you turn these conversations into daily practices. You'll find links to both in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for today's sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 21:18John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Dr. Richardson and Dr. Dahl. I think that is so true, and it reminds me of a discussion I had with Mingor Rinpoche, Cort, who I know you work with very closely. And he was talking to me about how he was experiencing childhood panic attacks, and that those panic attacks became one of his greatest teachers. And I understand, reading the book, that you end up not only interviewing Mingor Rinpoche, but also studying him and doing scans. How did someone like him and his early childhood experiences reshape your understanding,

• 22:03John R. Miles?

  not only of the human brain, but of flourishing?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  I certainly could speak to this, but really, this was Richie's work. Mingor Rinpoche was a subject of some of the earliest research. So maybe Richie, I'm happy to share as well, but this is the early stories of how this whole field of research got started. So maybe Richie, if you want to speak to that, I'm happy to.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  I'm happy to say a few words. Mingor Rinpoche was the second long-term practitioner we had in our center. The first one was Mathieu Ricard, who is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and actually has a PhD in molecular biology, molecular genetics, a very unusual man, and helped to be a bridge between the realm of contemplative practice and science. And Mingor Rinpoche was the second long-term practitioner we had in our center. And he came to our center in 2002. And he's been to our center many times and has extremely generously offered his time.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  And he's probably been in an MRI scanner more than any Buddhist monk on the planet. And we've learned an enormous amount from him. First of all, it's just important to appreciate that being in an MRI scanner is not the typical place you would go to meditate. And in order to be able to meditate in such an environment, it helps to have a lot of experience. Mingor Rinpoche has an enormous amount of experience. It's humbling to recognize how much lifetime experience he's had. At the time that he first came to see us, he had, we estimated approximately 62,000 hours of lifetime practice.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  You can go do the arithmetic at home, but that's a very big number. And he was able to go into the scanner and to meditate in these unusual circumstances. And we saw very early on that his brain was different than the brains of people who were of his age and gender that were not meditating. And that was the first clue that there was really a there. And one of the first things we did is we recorded the electrical activity of his brain. And we saw these gamma oscillations, which are very high amplitude oscillations,

• 24:34Speaker 01

  that typically, in a brain like my brain, would occur maybe for a quarter of a second or a half a second periodically when there was an insight or a just a momentary sort of glimpse of a different way of being. And with Mingor Rinpoche, it just went on for minutes, tens of minutes, really. If we kept the EEG recording on, it would probably go on for hours. And this is indeed his baseline state, and that was one of the powerful discoveries. So it wasn't just that these oscillations were elevated during meditation. That did occur.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  But when we compared his baseline state, when he was not formally meditating, to the baseline state of age and gender match controls, there was a prevalence of these unusual oscillations that were really remarkable. They had never been seen before in the human brain in this way. And this publication came out in a very, very prestigious scientific journal in 2004. And if you look at the publications on the neuroscience of meditation, you'll see an inflection point around 2005. And this body of work, I think, played an important role in showing the hard-nosed neuroscience community

• 26:03Speaker 01

  that there was really something incredibly interesting and unusual and real, so to speak, that was happening with these long-term meditators.

• 26:15John R. Miles?

  First thing, Richie, having done many MRIs, I cannot imagine meditating in one because of all the noise and distractions that occur. But second thing I wanted to ask you is, when you started to first place long-term meditators into these brain scanners, were you hoping to prove that meta-awareness was a thing? Or were you simply curious enough to follow wherever the data led?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  It was both. We certainly had a conviction. I was a meditator before I did scientific research on this. And from my own experience, I had the conviction that these kinds of practices were extremely valuable. That was really my motivation for wanting to do research in this area. And I was criticized for that early on. There was an article in the New York Times that was about the Dalai Lama giving a talk at the Society for Neuroscience. And they mentioned some of our work in that article. And they said in that New York Times article that Davidson has admitted in public that he himself is a meditator. Therefore, he's biased.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  And it would be like if you asked a cardiologist who studies the effects of exercise on the heart, "Do you exercise?" Most cardiologists who study the effects of exercise on the heart do exercise, and they're biased too, in some sense. But that's, we have all kinds of checks and balances in scientific research that help address that. So in any case, I had a lot of fun with that. But the fact is that Mingor Rinpoche and other long-term practitioners like him showed these really important differences in their brains.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  And this was the early sign that when we cultivate these skills of flourishing, our brain changes. And the conjecture is that these changes in the brain enable the qualities that are associated with flourishing to be enduring. They are responsible for the enduring, what we call, trait effects. And you mentioned Dacher Keltner's work earlier on, and Dacher is a very close friend. I love Dacher. And I also think that the work on awe, for example, sometimes gives us the impression that awe is something that is reserved for special times,

• 28:56Speaker 01

  when we are seeing a beautiful sunset or when we are out in nature. And what our work is showing is that actually, it can be present everywhere, all the time. Doesn't depend on any external circumstance.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  And that's really a key.

• 29:19John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I find that really fascinating. Court, I'm going to turn this to you. You were just talking about that this work led into your studies of flourishing. And through this work, you discovered that there were four capacities around flourishing, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. Why these four? What convinced you to that they weren't simply helpful ideas, but the fundamental architecture of flourishing?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Well, we really looked at points of convergence where there were parallels, points of connection, and agreement across different traditions and scientific research. So even within research, we're looking at cognitive neuroscience, affective neuroscience, social neuroscience, clinical psychology, the study of well-being, positive psychology, and then the world's contemplative traditions. If you look across the world's meditative traditions, and you can really find evidence across all of these different traditions that, for example, awareness, the capacity to be fully tuned into what's happening within you and around you in any given moment, is a cornerstone of our ability to flourish.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  So you find that in meditative traditions, you can find that in modern and contemporary mindfulness research and so on. So awareness was one of those key ingredients. Similarly, connection, insight, which in more classical terms you might think of as wisdom, and purpose, that all four of these are both common elements across many of the world's traditions. You find a lot of evidence in scientific empirical research. And we wanted to find those points of connection. So of course, the ability to flourish and our experience of flourishing is very complex. So we don't claim that this is the be all and end all, and there's nothing other than these four elements. But I think what we can say is that there's a tremendous amount of evidence

• 31:17Speaker 02

  that not only are awareness, connection, insight, and purpose core elements of our ability to flourish, but also that they are skills, we can train them, we can learn them, and they are innate capacities, as Richie shared earlier. These are capacities that we are born with, and the training is really the capacity to tune into them, to see their presence in one's life, and then to nurture that, to stay connected to these qualities, so they become more of our baseline over time. So that's the summary of it. But really, it was just finding, connecting the dots across many different traditions.

• 31:57John R. Miles?

  And Richie, I wanted to ask, throughout my research, I've argued that one of the deepest human needs is not simply to belong, but to know that our existence has significance to someone else. And as I was reading the chapter on connection, I kept wondering whether what you're really describing isn't just social connection, but the felt experience of mattering. Does the science support that distinction?

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Definitely. I think that that's a really important insight. And the data show, for example, that it's not necessarily about the number of friends that you have, or the range of your social network, but it's really a felt sense of being seen and being connected to others that is so vitally important. And we also know, and one of the other really key insights that we share in the book is that

• 33:00Speaker 01

  when one person is flourishing, she or he affects others in a very organic way. And so we often say that flourishing is contagious. And we actually have really good evidence for that now, that if you're around people that are flourishing, it brings out the best in you. And that occurs through very organic, implicit methods that don't require explicitly teaching a person, but just by their demeanor, by their presence, you can palpably feel better, feel different.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  And certainly, those of us who've been fortunate to be in the presence of people like the Dalai Lama and Mingyur Rinpoche have that sense that when we're in the presence of these kinds of people, it noticeably impacts our own level of flourishing and is really beneficial.

• 34:03John R. Miles?

  I love that definition because it really goes into the ripple effect of behind the whole concept.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 34:10John R. Miles?

  That's really amazing. I did want to ask you about the chapter on insight because I think it challenged one of our cultural assumptions, that understanding ourselves is about endlessly analyzing our stories, but it's also recognizing that many of our stories aren't fixed truths. How does your research explain that shift? And I'm not sure if this is better for Richie or for Court to answer.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Court should take the first crack at it.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm happy to start this off. So it's a really important distinction that in many ways, you could think about insight as the capacity to see all of the influences on your experience in the present moment, and in particular, your sense of self. So the way you see yourself, the way you see the world. And we tend to have thoughts, kind of narratives, stories running through our minds. Of course, we have emotional reactions, and these are all shaping how we experience things. But oftentimes, we just see them as reality. You could take something as simple as you wake up and maybe you forget to have your cup of coffee in the morning, or you didn't get a good night's sleep, and then you go about your day, you go to work,

• 35:23Speaker 02

  and you're just a little irritable. And it kind of seems like the world is just a little more annoying that day, objectively. It has nothing to do with the fact that you didn't have your coffee, or you didn't get enough sleep. It just objectively seems as though people are actually annoying that at that point. So insight in a situation like that, it could be as simple as just noticing, oh, here's this circumstance from my life, it's causing me to overly focus on the negative, and it's making it more difficult for me to see positive things about people and situations. And it's not necessarily true or real, it's just a perception that is shaped by these influences. So that's a relatively mundane example, but you can go back to your family upbringing,

• 36:07Speaker 02

  even things about our biology, the stories we've told ourselves our whole lives, and just beginning to disentangle all of these influences from the perception to see that the way we experience things is in many ways a construction. And that becomes incredibly, a very inspiring inner exploration. I think Richie mentioned the findings with gamma oscillations, and the ability of people like Mingyur Rinpoche to generate insight and to sustain that over time. And this is exactly what we're talking about. It's like these moments where you might have an epiphany in your life, and usually it's just a flash, and you might remember it years later, but we can't sustain it. And usually, we don't know how to get back to it.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  This is the skill and the art of learning to generate those kinds of insights, and then to immerse ourselves in them so we can carry them with us into all the difficult moments and everything else in our lives. So Richie, I don't know if you want to comment on the research and some of what we're doing in terms of the science, but it's a really fascinating, it's kind of a blind spot actually in research, which is one of the reasons why we wanted to focus on it.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Just to say that there really is very little serious empirical research on insight, and yet it is such a key pillar. And it's important to point out that two of the pillars in our four pillars are commonly found in almost every other conceptual framework for understanding well-being. And those two pillars are connection and purpose. The awareness and the insight pillars are really unique, and they're not found in any other framework that we know of for understanding well-being. And this is a unique contribution from our connection to the contemplative traditions,

• 38:00Speaker 01

  which really highlight the importance of these for human flourishing.

• 38:05John R. Miles?

  I have an interesting question for the two of you. If you were beginning your careers today, I have kids who are 22 and 28. In a world that's shaped by AI, social media, and unprecedented distraction, what would each of you study first that perhaps wasn't even on your radar decades ago?

• 38:25Speaker 01

  I'm still at my core, I'm very much a science nerd, and there are still so many fundamental things in science that we don't understand. And one of the things that I often talk about these days is that for the last 100 years, neuroscience, or what predated neuroscience, was focused on how the brain gives rise to experience, to our awareness, to consciousness. And I think that if we're really honest with ourselves,

• 39:06Speaker 01

  most scientists would say that we really haven't made much progress in the last 100 years in understanding that. It's really still a fundamental mystery. And it suggests that there may be really very different ways of thinking about this. Maybe the brain is more like an antenna, and that's a wild and very unorthodox and not a very commonly subscribed to view. But yet, there are beginning today to be some serious scientists that are thinking about it. And the brain emits and receives photons. That can actually be measured now for the first time.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  So this just is beginning to open up a whole new way of thinking about how the brain might interact with other energetic influences in our environment that we really know very little about. And I think this has the possibility of radically changing our fundamental views of mind and matter.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I think for me, one thing that we're beginning to study and is very much on our radar now, and if I could go back, I probably would emphasize even more, is on the practical side of everything we're talking about, this idea of scattering short, brief moments that help us to flourish throughout our daily life. So even as we've been having this discussion, there's just been little moments, I'm sure Richie, you've had many, for example, a moment of awareness, where I can just bring awareness into my body and feel my breath, even for a moment. And it's just a grounding moment, it's like a little inner reset. And you can do that countless times throughout your day. You don't have to stop what you're doing.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  It's just a little inner pause, and it has an effect. So if you do that once, it'll feel good for a moment. But the power is in slowly, over time, making that your baseline. Or another thing I practiced even in the course of our discussion, is just a little moment of appreciation, where it's just noticing something positive. So it could be like John, okay, here's this guy we just met, he's chosen of all the things he could have talked about and done with his life, and he's devoted his life to having these important, meaningful conversations that are inspiring people. And many people probably have had moments of inspiration because of that. So it just takes a moment, but when you do that consciously and intentionally,

• 41:40Speaker 02

  and you scatter those moments throughout your life, it's amazing, the effect that can have. So from a scientific perspective, there's a lot of juicy, interesting questions. And I think for me, it's a lot about how you can take these ancient practices and teachings that you find in all of the world's traditions, but really make them accessible for people. So it's not like you're gonna move to a monastery or a cave in the Himalayas. You can do this wherever you are and whatever you're doing. And the world just so desperately needs more of this and less of the division and less of the confusion. To me, that's really exciting. It's certainly something I think is energizing to both of us now, and has a lot of potential, both for society and scientifically also.

• 42:22John R. Miles?

  I love that. And we'll end on the micro-moments are where we should focus our attention. Richie, in court, where are the best places people can go to to learn more about each of your work?

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Well, of course, you mentioned our book, Born to Flourish, which just came out. The ideas in the book, if you want a kind of a step-by-step training to actually practice and learn this, we have the Healthy Minds Program app, which is freely available. It's powered by donations. There's no paywall or anything like that. That is available in both the major app stores. A lot of the research you of course can find in Center for Healthy Minds. And an organization and community we're both involved with is also TIRGAR, which is the community of Mignor Rinpoche for kind of a more traditional training and meditation. So there's a bunch of things, but those are a few points of connection. But Richie, any that you want to add?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  That's great. And all of our scientific papers are freely available on our Center for Healthy Minds website.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  I should also mention, we have a new Substack and podcast of our own called Dharma Lab, where we have a lot of these same discussions. And that you can find via Substack or the podcast is available on all the normal channels. So that's another one where we have a lot of kind of deep discussions about these things.

• 43:44John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you so much, both of you, for joining. It was such an honor to have you on Passion Struck.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having us. We appreciate it.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, John. Really appreciate it.

• 43:55John R. Miles?

  Well, I hope today's conversation left you with a renewed sense of possibility. One of the ideas that stayed with me is that flourishing isn't something reserved for extraordinary people or extraordinary moments. It's something we cultivate every day, through awareness, through connection, through insight, through purpose. And perhaps, most importantly, through the small choices, we make that gradually become the life we live. If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway. Share it with me on LinkedIn or Instagram. And if you know someone who could benefit from this episode, send it their way. You never know when one conversation might become the beginning of someone else's flourishing.

• 44:37John R. Miles?

  And if you haven't already, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. Because next week is episode 804. We're continuing our series on the adaptive brain with social psychologist Dr. Jay Van Bavel, co-author of The Power of Us. In this conversation, we'll explore one of the most important questions of our time. If flourishing begins with us, how do the groups we belong to shape the people we become? We'll dive into the neuroscience of identity, why our brains are wired for belonging, how social groups influence our beliefs and behaviors in ways that we rarely recognize, and what it takes to build communities that bring out the very best in us,

• 45:18John R. Miles?

  rather than deep division. Because while today's conversation reminds us that we're born with the capacity to flourish, Jay challenges us to consider something equally important. Who we become is also shaped by who we become with. I think you're gonna love this conversation.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  I think it's harder to build trust across groups. I'm starting to study it more and more. I think trust is also one of those linchpin, basic things. We're dealing with a trust, a loss of trust in institutions, a loss of social trust in our neighbors. And countries that don't have trust lack resilience. When a crisis happens, people don't support one another. And so, social trust and trust in institutions are two of the most fundamental things for a flourishing society. So now we're talking, going from an individual to a society. If you don't have trusting institutions, societies fall apart.

• 46:09John R. Miles?

  Until then, remember that flourishing isn't a destination. It's something we cultivate, one moment, one relationship, and one intentional choice at a time. As always, stay curious, stay intentional, and stay passion struck.