Richard Davidson: This is the kind of evidence that leads us to title the book the way we did—that we literally are born to flourish.
Cortland Dahl: This isn’t like another self-improvement program. It’s really recognizing what’s already here, what we already have, and then building from there. And it’s just a totally different inner process when you view it that way.
Tami Simon: In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guests are Richard Davidson and Cortland Dahl, from the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They are the authors of the new book Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to Thriving.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Richard Davidson. He’s one of the most highly cited scientists in the world, known for his groundbreaking work studying emotion and the brain, and for what we can learn from long-term meditators and put into practical application in our lives. Cortland Dahl is a contemplative scientist who works closely with Richard at the Center for Healthy Minds. He’s a translator of Buddhist texts, author of A Meditator’s Guide to Buddhism, and co-founder and executive director of Tergar International, a global meditation community rooted in the teachings of Mingyur Rinpoche.
Friends, stay with us.
Richard, Cortland, welcome.
Richard Davidson: Thank you, Tami. Good to be here.
Cortland Dahl: Yeah, it’s great to be here with you both. Thank you for having us on.
Tami Simon: You’re known—and you refer to yourselves—as activist scientists. What does that mean? What’s your activism?
Richard Davidson: I can start. By “activist scientists,” we mean simply this: our data teaches us that wellbeing is a skill—that it actually can be nurtured. And if we believe our data, I feel that we have a moral obligation not simply to continue to do science in the way we’ve been doing it, but to really be activists and do everything we can to get these strategies into the world. Because I think most listeners would agree: our world is falling apart. It really needs these kinds of methods. We need to improve our collective flourishing, and the consequences of not doing so are apparent all around us. The conditions in the world at this point in time really demand that we take this activist step.
Cortland Dahl: I would just piggyback on that and say that one thing we both share—I’m sure you as well, Tami, and many people who are listening—is that we study this stuff scientifically and academically, but we’re also practitioners. These tools, these practices, these insights have completely changed our lives. We’ve heard from so many people in so many different walks of life who have really benefited from these practices. Not only is the scale of the mental health crisis at epidemic levels, with all the challenges Richard just alluded to, but we simply feel a moral responsibility to do everything we possibly can to be of service in this challenging time. The science bears that out, and the world’s wisdom traditions have millennia of accumulated knowledge and experience. We feel it’s our responsibility to be part of a much wider movement to get this into the world.
Tami Simon: In Born to Flourish, you offer a framework of four core skills. How did you arrive at that framework from the science?
Richard Davidson: Cort, you want to start?
Cortland Dahl: Yeah, I can kick this off. A lot of this came out very organically through many conversations we had together, with colleagues like Antoine Lutz and Christy Wilson-Mendenhall, and with contemplative experts—
Richard Davidson: Including the Dalai Lama.
Cortland Dahl: Yes—and perhaps foremost, the Dalai Lama. We were really looking for points of convergence: where different traditions and scientific research all agree and are pointing in the same direction—about not only the core dimensions of mental health and emotional balance, but specifically what can be trained, where we have some agency. With the four qualities we focus on—awareness, connection, insight, and purpose—there is virtually unanimous agreement, both in the scientific literature and in the world’s wisdom traditions, that these are vitally important for our ability to flourish, that they’re trainable, with clear biological mechanisms underlying their trainability. And getting guidance from luminaries like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who gave us really key insights at different points—this is basically where we should focus, where we should look first.
Tami Simon: Anything to add, Richard?
Richard Davidson: It’s important to note that among these four pillars, two of them are commonly found in many other frameworks for understanding wellbeing that have been developed in Western science: connection and purpose. But two are really novel—awareness and insight. Those are especially informed by our connection to the contemplative traditions. There is a lot of science underpinning each of these, clearly demonstrating its relationship to flourishing. But they’ve been ignored in modern research on wellbeing, in part because modern research has not taken into account the plasticity of wellbeing. It’s really focused on the correlates of wellbeing, with the assumption that whatever level of wellbeing is measured in a person, that’s essentially how they’ll be for the remainder of their life. Because of our deep connection to contemplative practice, that is not the view we hold. In fact, the scientific paper we published presenting these four pillars is titled “The Plasticity of Wellbeing”—and that is key to how we developed this framework.
Tami Simon: I wanted to ask you about the title of your new book, Born to Flourish. As you talk about the skills and the plasticity of wellbeing, it becomes apparent this is something we can learn, practice, and develop. Yet the title says Born—we’re born to flourish. Tell me about that.
Richard Davidson: What we’re pointing to is what we would now consider overwhelming scientific evidence showing that each of these components—awareness, connection, insight, and purpose—are part of the human repertoire. They are innate capacities. Every human being possesses the capacity for each of these qualities. The way we think about these capacities is similar to the way scientists think about language: we all come into the world with a capacity for language—we’re born to be linguistic creatures—but in order for language to be expressed, it needs to be cultivated. We need to be raised in a normal linguistic community. Similarly, the skills of flourishing need to be nurtured. In the book, for example, the evidence is greatest for the connection pillar—the data show that at six months of age, infants robustly prefer kind-hearted, generous, cooperative interactions over interactions that are selfish, aggressive, or narcissistic. You can measure that, and it’s been measured in hard-nosed research. And it’s not like 55% of infants prefer the prosocial alternative—it’s 100%, in key studies published in very high-profile scientific journals. This is the kind of evidence that leads us to title the book the way we did. We literally are born to flourish.
Cortland Dahl: And there’s something to think about from an experiential point of view. One of the things we talk a lot about in the book is this idea of focusing on what’s right. Normally, our minds are laser-focused on everything that’s wrong—with ourselves, with other people, with the world. But if you think about a normal day—say, commuting to work—what will you remember about that drive? Probably nothing, or if you do, it’ll be the one person who cut you off. What you won’t remember is the thousands of little moments of harmony—hundreds of people in huge, fast-moving vehicles navigating together in this incredible dance of social cooperation. That is far more common than what goes wrong. It’s a metaphor for our lives. When we orient to what’s right, it doesn’t mean ignoring what’s wrong—clearly things go wrong. But it gives us the inner resources to deal with those challenging things with a full tank, rather than feeling depleted and overwhelmed all the time. This isn’t like another self-improvement program. It’s really recognizing what’s already here, what we already have, and building from there. And it’s just a totally different inner process when you view it that way.
Tami Simon: We’re going to go into these four core skills in some detail, and I’m going to have you both share ways we can start learning this language. But before we do, I want to address the person who’s listening and saying, “Really? A simple path to thriving in these times?” When we see so much destruction and everything looks unlike flourishing around us—how do you address that?
Richard Davidson: The scientific evidence shows us that flourishing is best regarded as a skill, and that it’s easier than we think—in part because we’re born to flourish. These qualities are really at our fingertips. They just need to be activated. You don’t need to meditate in a formal way. You don’t need to be in a special environment or sit in a special posture. You can be doing this anywhere, anytime—or as I sometimes say, everywhere, all the time. When we first did these studies, Tami, we were actually distressed to find that people were only engaging in the practices on average about five minutes a day. We thought that wasn’t very much and were disappointed. But it turns out that if you do five minutes a day for 28 days consistently, you can show meaningful changes—not just in how you experience things, but in your behavior and in your biology. That really surprised us. It’s easier than we all thought.
Cortland Dahl: And it’s worth noting that flourishing does not equal happiness. When we’re facing a massive problem—whether it’s something going on in the world or just an ordinary daily stress—being happy or joyful is often not the healthy, adaptive response. That’s not what we mean by flourishing. It’s more: in any given situation, what are the ingredients present in our own minds that allow us to really feel like we’re at our best? Would we rather cultivate a quality of being present and aware, or succumb to being scattered and distracted? That’s an obvious answer. Similarly: being connected to people, having the capacity to support others and feel nurtured by others—again, obvious. It’s not that we’re going to be happy all the time. It’s really about what are the ingredients that help us focus on what we do have some control over, and engage the messiness of the world with inner resources rather than feeling depleted. The science is showing that this is not nearly as hard and insurmountable as it might seem.
Tami Simon: So just to clarify, Cort—I can be grieving and flourishing at the same time?
Cortland Dahl: Exactly. What would that look like in a moment of sadness? I lost my father a couple of years ago, very unexpectedly. He had a very central role in my life, and I didn’t have time to say goodbye and process it. But practicing this, I think what it did for me in that moment was—of course I touched into the sadness, I really felt that—and without feeling totally overwhelmed by it, it opened into a space of incredible gratitude. There was this sadness mixed with gratitude. Whereas I’ve had other times in life where I’ve just felt like I was drowning in grief. It’s not so binary—it’s not this or that. It’s really: how do we be in those situations? What is the balanced response? Not that we should be perfectly happy every moment. That’s not reality, nor would it even be healthy.
Tami Simon: And Richard, just to clarify something you said—you mentioned we don’t have to sit in a formal meditation practice every day, but five minutes of this engaged skill practice could be enough even without formal meditation. So for all the people out there who feel like meditation just isn’t for them—who prefer gardening—we might be okay?
Richard Davidson: Really, that’s true. And when we’re honest with ourselves, we recognize that however much we may aspire for this to change, the majority of the world’s population is not going to meditate. What can people do if they’re not formally meditating? We’re offering a formula—a prescription—that we know from hard-nosed randomized trials really can be effective. Our data show that if you elect to do these practices as active practices, piggybacking them onto other activities of daily living—like commuting, gardening, or doing the dishes—the efficacy is comparable. There is absolutely no statistical difference between the benefits that accrue whether you do them formally, as meditation, or combined with activities of daily living. Cort and I have both spent a lot of time on the cushion, and we still do. We believe in it because we’ve experienced the benefit. But for people who are just beginning, or who for whatever reason feel they don’t have time or the disposition for formal practice, there is incredible benefit available. It really has to do with intentionally using our mind during these periods, rather than allowing our mind to be pulled willy-nilly by the forces around us. Neuroplasticity happens wittingly or unwittingly. Most of the time it’s happening unwittingly—our minds are being pulled by forces over which we have no control and about which we’re only dimly aware. The invitation is that we can actually be more the director of our own mind. And by using our mind intentionally in that way, these benefits can arise.
Tami Simon: In Born to Flourish, you describe how we can work with each of these skills by piggybacking on everyday activities. What I thought we could do is introduce each one and have you each share an example of how you use this piggybacking on a daily activity. This is like the fun skill-sharing game. All right, let’s go. Awareness—what is it, and how do you do it?
Richard Davidson: Cort, you want to start?
Cortland Dahl: Yeah. Simply put, awareness is just tuning in to what’s going on within you and around you in any given moment. One of the things I do all the time—and I’m literally doing it right now as I’m talking—is keeping a light awareness of what’s going on in my body. I work at my desk in front of a computer all the time, mostly on Zoom meetings. Often what I do, as I’m doing this very moment, is just keeping a light background awareness of my bodily state—keeping my awareness rooted in my body. I can feel my feet on the floor right now as I’m talking. I can feel the movement of my breath in and out. That light awareness is hard to encapsulate for those who haven’t experienced it, but awareness has a healing power. It is so nourishing to simply hold your own body in awareness. I like to think of it as: if you have a child who’s having a temper tantrum and there’s a lot of energy there, if you try to control it, the kid is definitely not going to calm down. But if you can just hold space, there’s this magical alchemy of care and presence that is so healing. What I’m saying is we can do that for ourselves. We can hold that light awareness without stopping what we’re doing, and it has that same healing energy. I try to do it all the time—especially in Zoom meetings, where it’s so easy to get pulled into the energy. I find it profoundly helpful.
Tami Simon: Richard?
Richard Davidson: For awareness, I’m very similar to Cort. I’ve been practicing awareness right here—feeling my sit bones on the chair. There’s a kind of penumbra of awareness while still focused on the conversation. One of the cool things about awareness is that you can vary the aperture—it can range from really tight to very open and spacious. One of the simple ways to practice recognizing awareness is to tune into this background when awareness is open and spacious. I find myself doing that all the time. There are also moments during a day when we’re waiting in line—those interstitial, in-between moments—and those are really ripe opportunities for awareness, as well as other kinds of practices. But awareness is just so available and so easy to connect to.
Tami Simon: All right, we’re moving on to connection—the second skill for flourishing.
Richard Davidson: I’ll start there by saying this is one I also find myself doing all the time, and it’s so easy. One way to connect to connection is eating, which humans have to do several times a day. It’s a great opportunity to simply reflect on all the people it took to bring food to your plate. You can do this as you begin to eat. It doesn’t take any extra time. There’s a sense of appreciation that will often just naturally arise and color your experience—this sense of interdependence, recognizing how extraordinarily entwined we are with all of those around us. If I’m out eating with someone who would find it strange if I took a pause, I can just do it quietly in the background as I start eating. They don’t need to know that I’m doing it. It just colors the experience in a very positive way. Also, this kind of appreciation is so helpful before professional meetings—reflecting on the people you’re going to meet with. I do this every morning after I meditate. I go through my calendar and think of all the people I’m going to be meeting with. I did this with you this morning, Tami, knowing we would be seeing each other. It takes just a few seconds, but it just connects you. It’s heartwarming. And once you begin to do this on a regular basis, it’s amazing how readily available it is. One of the things we’ll get to, which is super important: another tagline of this book is that flourishing is contagious. The connection pillar is really important for that, because when you are connected to others, people will want to be with you because you’re flourishing.
Tami Simon: Before we move on—you say “flourishing is contagious” with such excitement, and I feel excited about it. But isn’t everything contagious? Aren’t our bad, toxic moods contagious? Isn’t everything contagious?
Richard Davidson: Good point. You’re absolutely right. I would say everything that’s salient is contagious—bad things can be just as salient as good things. And that’s why this is even more important. We’re all part of a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. Our minds are just being toxically influenced by all the gunk around us. It’s especially important in our modern times for us to intentionally orient toward these positive qualities.
Tami Simon: And it’s beautiful, thinking about connection as a skill we can learn. I just want to share that even from reading the book and deciding I’m going to put these four skills into action—with connection, it was so obvious. When my dogs want my attention and I’m in the midst of doing something, I could actually stop, because what I’m doing is really not that important—I’m usually doing something on my iPhone—and connect with them, look them straight in the eyes, and feel the response coming back. That’s just one simple example, let alone all of the different interactions we have with people, when we can actually make ourselves available to respond to the bids that are coming our way for love and attention. Cort, how do you do it?
Cortland Dahl: One of the simplest ways—something I do many times every day—is the skill of appreciation, which you can think of as simply noticing something positive. Every time I enter an interaction, or I’m picking up the phone to send a message, or walking into a room for a meeting, I try to be very intentional about starting with a recognition of something I like or admire or appreciate about that person. I find that it just completely shifts the dynamic. As we were talking, I was doing this with the two of you. I was looking at you, Tami, and thinking about how much I’ve benefited from all the work you’ve done in the world for decades—just thinking, what an amazing person, what she’s done in the world. And looking at Richard—how did I get connected with such an amazing person? How it has enriched my life in so many ways. I don’t even need to go through some long thought process. It’s just this instantaneous moment of gratitude and appreciation, and then I go back into the conversation. Nobody needs to know. And yet it will completely change and shift the tone of the interaction. And sometimes actually expressing that appreciation—it’s like a little gift you’re giving somebody. It feels so good to be on the receiving end. It’s so nourishing to be the one expressing it. You just imagine scattering little moments of appreciation throughout your day, and it’s profoundly helpful.
The last thing I would say is: what about all the people who are difficult? Someone you vehemently disagree with, or someone you feel is really destructive. Why would you ever want to practice appreciation in those situations? We have such incredibly polarized relationships with other groups. At some point, we need a kind of unilateral disarmament. If we need to try to come together and find common solutions, that’s not going to happen if we’re demonizing each other all the time. It has to start with: I’m going to try to see you as a human. I’m going to try to find something I can appreciate. And we can find some common ground from there. It creates room for actual conversation. And we can see the alternative everywhere right now—how it’s going for us as a species when we can’t do that. We clearly need a reset.
Tami Simon: Hanging out with you two is awesome. Thank you so much for sharing the love—I’m going to share it back. Cort, I want to ask you: a couple of times you’ve talked about this tendency of our minds to see what’s wrong, to be negative. Is that something you’ve worked a lot with in yourself?
Cortland Dahl: That’s fair. My whole journey started because of anxiety—and actually a severe phobia of public speaking. So doing something like this is just amazing to me, because I never would have guessed 30 or 35 years ago that this would happen. But that’s where it started. It was an intense negativity bias in my mind that triggered the whole path for me.
Tami Simon: And what’s it like for you now? Has there been an actual moving of the needle such that you see the world differently?
Cortland Dahl: I would say some things have shifted dramatically. Public speaking has shifted dramatically—there’s a before and after story. I have an Oura Ring that tracks biometrics, and when I’m public speaking now, my stress level drops to the lowest level. Not only does it not freak me out—somehow it’s even relaxing and grounding. I would never have believed that in 1993 when I first started practicing. And there are other situations where I very much do still have anxious thoughts. I’ve got a 20-year-old son, and my mind can be an anxious mess when it comes to parenting and what kids are going through today. But I think even there, where my mind can still easily get focused on the negative, the difference is twofold. One, I don’t feel like I get swept up in it the way I used to—where it consumes my mind and I take the stories as reality. I can somewhat see: oh, this is just that anxious thought pattern. The other thing is I’ve started to see something quite beautiful about anxiety that I never saw before: at its core, anxiety is actually a protective mechanism, and in a way it’s even love. It’s my own mind, body, brain, and nervous system trying to take care of something—in this case, trying to take care of my son. It doesn’t always manifest in a healthy way; clearly it can be toxic. But when you see that wholesome essence—that anxiety is actually love, it’s care, it’s protection—that somehow ripples through the whole system and I don’t experience it the same way. There are certainly moments where I do get hooked. But that wider perspective—coming back to seeing the wholesome qualities even in what might otherwise be viewed as toxic emotions—has totally changed the way I relate to my thoughts and emotions. In contrast to 30 years ago, when I was at war with the parts of myself I didn’t like—where I thought I wasn’t going to be happy until I got rid of the anxiety or the fear of public speaking—I just don’t see myself or my experience that way anymore.
Tami Simon: The third skill of flourishing—insight. I think this is the hardest one to succinctly communicate. But go for it, friends.
Richard Davidson: I’m happy to start. I think it is the hardest, and as I said earlier, it’s one of two not found in any other framework we know of in the West. Insight is really a curiosity-driven self-understanding—particularly of the way our narrative works, the narrative of ourselves. Human minds create this narrative. We have a set of beliefs and expectations of ourselves and our world. The world we perceive is literally filtered through these beliefs and expectations—that’s actually how the brain works. When we see things “out there,” we’re not actually seeing them directly. Our minds and brains are generating predictions of what’s out there based on our beliefs and expectations. There are people who hold a set of beliefs that are quite negative about themselves, with very low expectations—and we know from research that that is a prescription for depression. What research shows is that what’s really important for wellbeing initially is not so much changing the content of the narrative, but changing our relationship to this narrative—so that we can see the narrative for what it is: a set of thoughts, a set of beliefs and expectations. This gives us some distance, some leverage, and it loosens the identification we may have with this narrative. To make it concrete—we use phrases all the time in our common language like “I feel sad.” But what does that mean, exactly? Is all of me sad? Is there any little part of me that’s not sad? Where is the “I” in that sentence? When we begin to investigate and ask those kinds of questions, it loosens things up, and that is hugely beneficial.
Tami Simon: And how do you tie this skill to an everyday activity, Richard? How do you build in cultivating insight?
Richard Davidson: Insight is especially important around challenging situations—and, as I often say, the bumper sticker version: stuff happens. None of us can really be buffered from that. When we’re confronting a difficult situation, we can reflect on how it might look if we approached it with a different set of beliefs and expectations. Or we can think of someone we really admire, someone who inspires us—how might this person view this situation differently? This gives us some perspective, showing us that the way we’re perceiving it is not necessarily how everyone would perceive it, and there may be other ways of perceiving it that might help us navigate the challenge more beneficially. I do that sort of thing really all the time, and I find it incredibly helpful.
Tami Simon: Could you make that concrete by sharing a challenge that came up for you recently and how you called on insight?
Richard Davidson: Sure. A work-related challenge—someone was suggesting that I do something differently in a process we’re going through at our center, where I’m trying to be serious about succession planning.
Tami Simon: Let’s talk about what it’s gonna be like when you’re dead. Great conversation.
Richard Davidson: Exactly. So someone communicated that I do something differently than I was doing it. And initially I was feeling very resistant. I felt I really knew what I was doing and that the steps I was taking were reasonable. But then I stopped and recognized that this person has a completely different set of experiences than I do and is at a very different place in their career. Given where they’re coming from, the questions they were asking were actually totally reasonable. Rather than just ignoring this—which I was about to do—I felt it would really be helpful if I responded and really engaged in a constructive dialogue. I said, “I really appreciate what you’re bringing up. I can see why you’re asking these questions”—and then did a better job of explaining what I was doing. It helped me not get mini pissed off and instead turned it into a very warmhearted interaction that we both really appreciated.
Tami Simon: Very instructive. Thank you. Cort?
Cortland Dahl: One way to think about insight in a very ordinary way: it’s that same quality as when you have a good friend, partner, or loved one who really gets you. What do we mean by that? In some cases, they see us more clearly than we see ourselves. When we’re reactive, they can think, “Oh, this is the kind of situation where Cort gets triggered”—and because they see that clearly, they can help us see it more clearly, too.
In my own life, my wife Kasumi is one of the wisest and most insightful people I know. She’s from Japan, I grew up in the Midwest. Communication patterns are very different—in Japan, communication is often subtle, where you have to read between the lines, whereas in my family, it’s much more direct. There’s a repeated thing we have where Kasumi will be standing at the refrigerator and I’ll say, “Hey, do we have any milk?” What I mean is: I’m going to make tea in a few minutes and I’m wondering if we have milk in the fridge, to save myself from getting up. But in a Japanese communication context, that would be heard as “Why didn’t you get the milk?”—there would be a whole implied subtext. At the beginning, we’d have these moments where she’d have a whole set of assumptions about what was being said, and I’d have a completely different set of assumptions, and neither of us was conscious of them. The skill of insight gives us the capacity to step back and say, “Okay, what’s actually going on here?” Now we laugh about that stuff. We have the ability to bring our assumptions to the surface, and it’s actually kind of amusing how much this can trip us up. But we’re doing this all the time—making assumptions and judgments, usually unconsciously. At its core, insight is about getting curious. It’s being a student of your own mind, being curious about your reactions. In these little moments, it’s just profoundly helpful.
Tami Simon: I want to dig into this concept of insight because I think it’s so important—and I know it was the hardest of the four for me to really start practicing with confidence. Part of what you write about in Born to Flourish is that there are principles from analytical meditation within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that you’re bringing in to describe this core skill. What is discovered in analytical meditation that is really essential for insight?
Cortland Dahl: Well, one thing is this two-part dance that goes on internally—first, getting a little space where you can be with an experience versus being swept away by it. And then from that space, you can inquire, explore, examine. To use my anxiety as an example: the first thing was just to notice I was getting caught in a web of thoughts and feelings. “Oh, there it is—that loop of thoughts in my mind, that charged energy in my body.” Whereas prior to that, I would be completely lost in it. We have a technical term for that: experiential fusion—you become almost one with the mental and emotional reaction you’re having. So first you just need to have that space. But you can have that space and still believe the story is true. The next move is then getting curious: how is this particular thought pattern shaping my experience? With anxiety, what I first learned is that anxiety is like a magnet for negative information and has a repelling force for positive information. It creates almost a blind spot where you can’t consciously take in positive outcomes or possibilities, and the mind latches onto anything that feels negative, challenging, or threatening. The point is not to do away with that response—sometimes anxiety is a very healthy response. It’s really just to see that that’s what’s happening in your mind, and to see that it is shaping your experience in that way. That opens up a world of possibilities. You’re seeing clearly, rather than viewing reality through a lens you don’t realize you’re wearing.
Tami Simon: All right, let’s move to the fourth skill—purpose—and how we can build that into our everyday activities. One example from each of you.
Richard Davidson: Purpose, as we use it, is not so much about figuring out something grand to do with your life. It’s more: how can we find meaning and purpose in even the simple, pedestrian things we do on a daily basis? Can taking out the garbage be connected to our sense of purpose? Of course it could—it just requires a little reframing.
One of the rituals I do every day when I’m at home—I’ve talked about this before—is that I’m the one who scoops the cat litter. Most people would view it as a necessary but aversive task that just needs to be done. With a little reframing, and without any extra time, you can turn it into a really meaningful ritual. As I crouch down to scoop the litter, I just reflect on how this is beneficial to my dear 14-year-old Siamese cat, how it’s beneficial to my wife, how it’s beneficial to all the people who come into this room. I honestly enjoy it. And it literally takes zero extra seconds. It connects me to a purpose that is larger than myself.
Cortland Dahl: I do similar things all the time. And to Richard’s point, this is more about shifting our perspective on the life we already lead than thinking we need some fantasy life where we’re suddenly volunteering constantly or doing whatever we link with purpose.
One thing I did right before we started—actually, before we hit record, Tami, you said, “Let’s just take a moment to ground ourselves.” I did something I do many times each day, and especially before meetings: I just pause and think, May I be of service in this meeting. May the people I interact with, may the work that we do together, may this ripple out in the world and be of benefit to others. As Richard said, you can do that with anything. It doesn’t have to be something that on the surface seems very positive. It could be something neutral, or even really difficult: I’m stuck with this stressful thing. But may whatever happens through this challenging situation somehow be of benefit to others. May I learn and grow from this. Especially with the challenging things—when you link them with that sense of purpose, whatever values and guiding motivations you have that nourish you, it just shifts your perspective in a way that makes even difficulty feel connected to something that matters.
Richard Davidson: And if I can just add one quick thing: having a strong sense of purpose is the single most important psychological predictor of longevity among people who are 70 years and older.
Tami Simon: And you write that purpose acts like a psychological immune system—strengthening us in times of stress, helping us recover from adversity. How does it do that?
Richard Davidson: The most honest answer is: we don’t know exactly. We do know that it does that—there’s really good hard-nosed data showing it. As for the specific mechanisms, we don’t know yet. There are certainly educated guesses we could make about how having a strong sense of purpose engages brain circuits that modulate the time course of our reactivity to a stressful event. But there’s still a lot to be discovered.
Cortland Dahl: From a psychological point of view, although we need to do more research, one of the things that’s almost certainly going on is what scientists call cognitive reappraisal. In a difficult situation, we often focus on things out of our control and tend toward a negatively valenced interpretation of what’s happening. Linking things to purpose automatically puts us back in the driver’s seat—instead of feeling overwhelmed or powerless, we’re focused on the things over which we have some agency: our own internal responses. It changes the whole belief system surrounding a given event. For example: I was viewing my anxiety as this curse I would’ve done anything to get rid of. I started to see, “Okay, this is difficult, but I’m learning so much about myself by having to deal with this.” And now, looking back on it, I see that anxiety is one of the greatest gifts I’ve had in my life. When I do things like this interview, or when I’m teaching meditation, I almost always talk about anxiety. And every time, somebody comes up to me afterward and says, “I’m struggling with anxiety—it means so much to know that you struggled with that too. I feel hope.” I wouldn’t be able to connect with others in that way had I not struggled in that way. It just changes the whole web of interpretations and beliefs we have about ourselves and the world when we link things to our values and a sense of purpose.
Tami Simon: I started off by asking you both about being activist scientists, and I’ve also heard you describe this science of flourishing as a science of hope. What gives you hope as you publish this scientific—I would almost call it a manifesto? Five minutes a day can create neuroplasticity and change you in so many ways. What’s the hope that has you both so inspired?
Richard Davidson: You’re naming something so important, Tami. This is a hopeful message. The fact that we can change with modest engagement—and that hard-nosed science is really showing this—is genuinely hopeful. The way I think about this is like a public health issue. When humans first evolved, none of us were brushing our teeth. And somehow, I bet every listener here brushes their teeth for a few minutes a day. This is not part of our genome—we’ve learned to do this. If we can learn to brush our teeth, we can learn to nourish our mind and nourish our heart. If we spent even a shorter time doing that—as we do brushing our teeth—nourishing our mind, this world would be a different place. This gives me a lot of hope, and a lot of fire in my belly to do everything we can to bring this to different sectors of the world, particularly those that really need it.
Cortland Dahl: I agree. And I think there’s just a hunger for goodness, a hunger to see the goodness in the world. The problems are obvious—we all know them, and we don’t need to be reminded. And yet there’s such a hunger for things that reflect back to us the best about our nature. Recently, there was this peace march where monks were just walking throughout America, and it was amazing—people coming out just wanting to see them, wanting to be around them. They weren’t even really talking much. They were somehow a mirror: It isn’t all hopeless. There’s something good in us that we can mirror back to each other. You can just see the hunger out there. The fact that it is easier than people think—and that there are these currents, the work that you’re doing, Tami, that so many are doing, that people are taking time out of their day to tune into things like this—there are just so many things we can easily forget about when the news is flooded with everything that seems to be going wrong. We can overlook all the beauty and richness, and the moments of connection that are right in front of us.
Tami Simon: Cortland Dahl, Richard Davidson—authors of the new book Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to Thriving. Flourishing is contagious. Thanks for being such positive contagions here on Insights at the Edge.
Thank you for listening. I’d also like to invite you to join us on Sounds True One, where you can enjoy early, ad-free access to episodes of Insights at the Edge. Sounds True One is our premium membership platform, built around live classes and online events, award-winning specials, intimate learning experiences, and Q&A sessions with the world’s leading wisdom teachers. You can get your first month free at join.soundstrue.com.
