The Neuroscience of Flourishing: Four Practices for Turning Stress and Anxiety Into Clarity and Calm | Richard Davidson and Cortland Dahl

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Neuroscience of Flourishing: Four Practices for Turning Stress and Anxiety Into Clarity and Calm"

10% Happier with Dan Harris
Guests: Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl
Release Date: March 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

Dan Harris sits down with Dr. Richard Davidson, pioneering neuroscientist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Dr. Cortland Dahl, meditation teacher, author, and scientist. Together, they discuss insights from their new book, Born to Flourish, which introduces a science-backed, practical framework for human flourishing. The conversation ranges from the misconception that happiness and flourishing are the same, to neuroscience’s view of mental well-being as a set of trainable skills, and to micro-practices anyone can integrate into daily life. The discussion also deeply explores the four key pillars of flourishing—Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose—providing guidance on integrating wellbeing skills amidst daily stressors, and highlights the interplay between neuroscience, mindfulness, and everyday personal development.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Flourishing Versus Happiness

• Flourishing is broader than happiness. It’s not about being happy all the time, but about “being fundamentally okay” no matter the circumstances ([07:35]).
• Dr. Davidson emphasizes that flourishing is “when a person is fully present, is connected to the people and the place around them, has insight into their thoughts and beliefs and expectations, and has a strong sense of purpose.” ([06:39])
• Flourishing is “nuanced okayedness,” not denial of challenges but a resilient baseline ([08:23]).
• Dr. Dahl adds: It means “being at your best across a range of contexts”—focus at work, empathy with friends, awe in nature. These states aren’t about positive versus negative, but what’s adaptive in context ([09:52]).

“It would be... bizarre, even maladaptive, for someone to be happy in response to the loss of a loved one. The Dalai Lama isn't happy all the time, but I would say he's fundamentally okay all the time.”
— Richard Davidson ([08:59])

2. The Healthy Minds Framework: Four Pillars of Flourishing

Awareness

• Presence, focus, and shifting from “doing” to “being” ([16:59]).
• Practices: Short, informal “micro-practices” like noticing the breath or the space between breaths can be powerful and accessible even for meditation newbies ([20:37-23:31]).
• Neuroscientific backing: “Five minutes a day over the course of one month is sufficient to produce measurable changes... in our experience, in our behavior and in our biology.”
  — Richard Davidson ([23:37])

Connection

• Feeling connected to others is a core human need, crucial for well-being ([34:31]).
• Simple daily practices: Taking a moment to “appreciate the people I’m meeting with” at the start of each day ([35:00]); engaging in pleasant micro-interactions with strangers can create real, cumulative benefits ([37:09]).
• Loneliness is a significant risk factor for mortality, “greater than smoking 15 cigarettes a day” ([35:00]).

Insight

• Developing self-awareness and “de-reifying” thoughts (seeing thoughts as mental habits, not truths) ([38:25]).
• Micro-practice: “What would my wisest friend say?” invites perspective-taking, which loosens the constriction of negative beliefs ([43:27]).
• In advanced practice, insight can become a stable trait, characterized by enduring moments of “aha” or clarity ([39:49]).

Purpose

• Relates to finding meaning in even the most mundane activities, not necessarily grand life missions ([48:04]).
• Rituals like pausing before daily tasks to connect to the intention of being of service ([50:15]).
• Strong sense of purpose predicts longevity and resilience—it is “the single most important psychological factor in predicting longevity” among people over 65 ([52:18]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the universality of difficulty:
  “You have a bodyguard you need sometimes, but the bodyguard is accompanying us when we just want to go to sleep...”
  — Cortland Dahl on anxiety ([12:00])

• Micro-practice demonstration:
  “[Tune] into your breath... notice what happens very naturally and spontaneously on the exhalation... Just easing into being.”
  — Guided by Cortland Dahl ([20:37–23:31])

• Why informal practice matters:
  “You don’t need to put your butt on the cushion... the benefits are as strong if you do these practices actively as you’re going about your daily life or as formal meditation.”
  — Richard Davidson ([26:08])

• On burnout for change-makers:
  “The kinds of practices that we're talking about... are really important in giving people a kind of resilience and vitality that is going to be necessary to be effective in the work that they do.”
  — Richard Davidson ([66:56])

• On flourishing’s contagiousness:
  “When we cultivate these skills of flourishing, we not only are benefiting ourselves, but we're benefiting all of those that we touch because they actually benefit from being around us.”
  — Richard Davidson ([67:55])

Memorable Timestamps

• [07:35] — The elevator pitch: “Everything is fundamentally okay.”
• [13:45] — The Dalai Lama, anger, and emotional flexibility.
• [20:37–23:31] — Cortland Dahl guides a “micro-practice.”
• [25:44] — Linking breath awareness and real-life resilience.
• [33:58–34:31] — The four questions/pillars (“Am I present?... Am I purposeful?”).
• [35:00] — Loneliness as a public health crisis.
• [38:25] — “De-reifying” our thoughts.
• [43:27] — The “wise friend” exercise for immediate insight.
• [48:04] — Reframing the mundane: finding purpose in daily routine.
• [52:18] — Purpose and resilience: the science-backed benefits.
• [55:44] — Neuroplasticity and meditation’s impact on brain and gene expression.
• [63:24] — Flourishing in a world with daily adversity and upsetting news.

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Integrating the Practices: Micro-Practices & Life Applications

• Awareness: Throughout your day, pause and notice your breath, especially between activities ([21:02]).
• Connection: Before meetings or daily encounters, send a silent moment of appreciation or wish well to those you’ll meet ([35:00]).
• Insight: In moments of stress or emotional reactivity, ask “What would my wisest friend do/say?” ([43:27]).
• Purpose: Reframe chores (“reframing the mundane”)—link them to your values of service or kindness ([48:04]).

Science & Accessibility

• Small, frequent doses of practice yield effects (“Five minutes a day can initiate measurable change” [23:37]), and can be woven into everyday routines.
• Both functional and structural brain changes can be achieved with limited investment, but require some ongoing practice to sustain ([55:44]).
• Epigenetics: Meditation, like other powerful experiences, can affect gene expression, further supporting the case for intentional well-being practices ([58:21]).

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Addressing Common Concerns

Q: How can I flourish amid terrible news or challenging events?
A: Flourishing doesn’t mean being happy. It means presence, clarity, connection, and responding wisely, even to suffering and outrage ([63:24–66:56]).

Q: What if I don’t have time for formal meditation?
A: Micro-practices—short, intentioned pauses—can be as impactful as longer, formal meditation, especially for beginners ([26:08], [30:21]).

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Concluding Insights

• Flourishing is not a self-improvement treadmill: “We’re trying to get in touch with the parts of ourselves that were never broken... a mindset shift” ([09:52]).
• “These four things—awareness, connection, insight, purpose—are not things we need to develop that we don't have. This is actually who we are.” — Cortland Dahl ([68:41])
• Flourishing is contagious—your well-being impacts those around you ([67:55]).

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Resources & Links Mentioned

• Book: Born to Flourish (Davidson & Dahl) ([70:29])
• App: Healthy Minds Program (now Humin) — free to use ([70:29])
• Community: Tergar and the Joy of Living program ([71:08])
• Podcast: Dharma Lab (Dahl & Davidson) ([71:08])

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For more, including guided practices and science updates, see the show notes and links provided by Dan Harris at danharris.com and the 10% Happier app community.

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This summary reflects the heart of the conversation, practical takeaways, accessible tools for all listeners, and the science of why it matters.

Transcript

[Dan Harris]

Foreign.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

This is the 10% Happier podcast.

[Dan Harris]

I'm Dan Harris.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Hey. Hey.

[Dan Harris]

How we doing?

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

So today we're going to talk about some quick and simple practices from neuroscience and Buddhism designed to rewire your brain, change your genes, transform the annoying little tasks you have to do every day, and boost your overall okayness quotient. I've got two guests today. My guests are Richard Davidson, Ph.D. everybody calls him Richie.

[Dan Harris]

In my view, Richie is truly a historic figure. He's the neuroscientist who pioneered the research into what meditation does to your brain.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

He's a professor of psychology and psychiatry

[Dan Harris]

at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he also founded an incredible center called the center for Healthy Minds.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Richie has a new book called Born to Flourish, which he co authored with my other guest Today, Cortland Dahl, PhD, who is a scientist, author, translator, and meditation teacher.

[Dan Harris]

In this conversation, we talk about what

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

it really means to flourish. How difficult emotions such as anxiety, fear,

[Dan Harris]

or grief can actually coexist with well being.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Why flourishing is a trainable set of skills, not a personality trait or a self improvement project. We get an introduction to the Healthy Minds framework and its four pillars, awareness,

[Dan Harris]

connection, insight, and purpose. We talk about why short, informal micro

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

practices, free range meditation, as I sometimes call it, can actually, according to the data, be just as effective as formal meditation. And we talk about how to cultivate

[Dan Harris]

purpose, which is a really important contributor to overall mental health.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Real quick, before we dive in, I just want to put in a plug for my new app, 10%.

[Dan Harris]

With Dan Harris. We've built a really awesome community of people who believe that taking care of your own mind is essential if you want to do good things in the world. I think about it as an upward spiral. You train your mind, which makes you happier and less reactive and, and then that improves your relationships with the people around you.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

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[Dan Harris]

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[Dan Harris]

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[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

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[Dan Harris]

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[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

all right, we'll get started with Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl right after this. This episode is sponsored by Better Help March includes International Women's Day, a moment to celebrate women's strength and progress while also recognizing how much they carry every day. Between caring for others and managing unseen responsibilities, their emotional well being can easily be overlooked. One tool that can be incredibly powerful for women and for everybody is therapy. Shout out to my wife, a big believer in therapy, both individually and for everybody she knows, and it's also something we do as a couple. My wife as a scientist is aware of the evidence for therapy and definitely

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[Dan Harris]

Richie Davidson, Cortland Dahl, welcome back to the show. Well, in Richie's case. Welcome back.

[Cortland Dahl]

Wonderful to be here.

[Richard Davidson]

Thanks for having us.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Dan.

[Dan Harris]

Pleasure. Well, Richie, let me start with you. What is flourishing? That seems to be a central concept in this new book. What do you mean by flourishing?

[Richard Davidson]

Well, what we mean by flourishing is when a person is fully present, is connected to the people and the place around them, has insight into their thoughts and beliefs and expectations, and understands how they are shaping their perception of the world and has a strong sense of purpose.

[Dan Harris]

Okay, so you just named four things that I want to talk a lot about in the course of this interview, and they really are part of your Healthy Minds framework. That is the entirety of the framework. But I'm going to press you not in an attempt to be obnoxious, although that's definitely in my wheelhouse, but just to make it really concrete for people. If you were on the elevator with somebody and had a couple seconds to explain or to inquire as to whether somebody is flourishing, how would you make it simple?

[Richard Davidson]

That everything is fundamentally okay, that anything can come down the pike and it's really going to be okay.

[Dan Harris]

So interesting you say that because I have not had many meditative breakthroughs in my life. A few, you know, big or big to me, moments on meditation retreats. And the common denominator among the maybe three times where I've had notable moments in my meditation practice, the common denominator is a feeling of everything's okay.

[Richard Davidson]

That's great.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

It's counterintuitive because we look at the

[Dan Harris]

world, we look at the news, we look at the problems in our own lives, and fundamental okayness can feel either delusional or dangerous. And yet somehow actually, it's kind of the Truth.

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah, exactly. I think it's kind of a radical stance, if you will, and it's not denying all of the adversity and challenges. And it's also not saying that you're going to be happy all the time, but that you'll be okay. It's really quite different than that. So it's a nuanced kind of okayedness, if you will.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Yeah.

[Dan Harris]

And it seems important to you, and I'm basing this on our past conversations, to not get happiness and flourishing confused.

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah, definitely. So, you know, it would be. If someone lost a loved one, particularly if they lost them unexpectedly, a natural response would be grief. And that would be very appropriate. It would really be bizarre, even maladaptive in some sense, for someone to be happy in response to that. And, you know, Dan, you and I have both seen the Dalai Lama on a number of occasions, and he's not happy all the time, but I would say he's fundamentally okay all the time.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

He strikes me as somebody who is

[Dan Harris]

responding appropriately and spontaneously to what's happening at any given moment.

[Richard Davidson]

Exactly.

[Dan Harris]

Court, sorry to neglect you in these opening moments. Anything to add on this notion of flourishing? What are we missing?

[Cortland Dahl]

Well, I think in very ordinary language, you can just simply think of it as being at your best across a range of contexts. And I think that's the key thing we're hitting on here, is that when you're at work, it looks like focus, it looks like creativity. When you're hanging out with friends, especially if somebody's suffering, it looks like empathy and care. If you're at a peak moment of life, you know, when your child is being born or you're graduating, then of course, it might be joy or elation or awe out in nature. I think that's one of the things that Richie and I talk about a lot we touch upon in the book is getting away from the idea of positive and negative emotions, positive and negative experiences, and just thinking about everything as contextual. Everything is healthy, unhealthy, adaptive, maladaptive, really, just based on the. Where you are, who you're with, what you're doing. And that's a key feature. The other thing that we've already talked about is viewing this not from the point of view of, like, some massive self improvement program where we're endlessly trying to fix ourselves, fix our relationships, fix the world, but actually we're trying to get in touch with the parts of ourselves that were never broken and that actually it's easier to do that than we think. But a lot of it is kind of a mindset shift. It's just getting out of the problem solution mentality into like, okay, what's already going on here? And that just goes back to this idea of being fundamentally okay, which sounds totally unrealistic when you first hear it. But there's something quite important and powerful about it. From the point of view of mental health and flourishing.

[Dan Harris]

You don't want to talk about positive or negative emotions and that I think I can get behind that, but I want to make sure I understand it. So how can you be fundamentally okay? As Richie said, the Dalai Lama is when you're experiencing, let's say, a difficult emotion. We won't label it good or bad, but a difficult emotion like fear or grief.

[Cortland Dahl]

Rich and I just had a great conversation yesterday about anxiety. And I struggled a lot with anxiety. In fact, what got me started on the path of meditation, very similar to your story, Daniel. When I was a college student back in the early 90s, I had a genuine phobia of public speaking to the degree that I fainted on stage in front of my entire high school. That is a true story in front of all my friends. Not only that, my mom leapt onto stage to take care of me. It was perhaps the most uncool thing that could ever happen to a teenage boy. So, anyways, I was very anxious. So I know a lot about anxiety. And you might think that there's nothing redeeming about anxiety when you're experiencing. It's just toxic. It feels horrible. It has such negative repercussions for one's life. But from another point of view, what's really going on with anxiety is it's a protective mechanism. And in certain circumstances, it's exactly what you need. You need to sort of mentally rehearse a threatening situation so that when you're in that situation, you'll respond appropriately. The problem is our biology just switches the anxiety reaction on, perhaps abundantly, way more than it needs to. You know, it's like we have this big bodyguard that we need sometimes, but the bodyguard is accompanying us when we just want to go to sleep or when we just want to have a relaxing moment. Still, that protective mechanism is kicking into gear. Actually, it's a very wholesome thing. And in certain contexts, it's exactly the right thing. It's just that that switch is being flipped way more than it needs to be. So a lot of it is, again, just switching the view on it.

[Dan Harris]

Well, I can totally get down with the switching the view, as you say, on anxiety. It is as Our mutual friend Jack Kornfield says it is the organism trying to protect itself. And so I like that. And I'd just be curious to go a click deeper on what it would look like to execute on the simultaneity of anxiety and fundamental okayness.

[Cortland Dahl]

That's a great question. I'm sure, Richie, you have a lot to say on this too. I think a lot of it is just the switching, how we relate to it. And the four strategies that Richie mentioned are four different ways we can do it. But Richie, I'd be curious to hear what you would say about that.

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah, I mean, I think that when we express anxiety in the presence of fundamental okayedness, or for that matter, other difficult emotions, there are certain characteristics that are associated with them. And I would say one of the hallmark features is that the emotions, they're not sticky, they're context appropriate. Even an emotion like anger, you know, I've seen the Dalai Lama be angry, but the next moment, just like that, he starts laughing at something funny. And there's a kind of fluidity, a flexibility, and not a perseveration. And so when difficult emotions occur in the context of a fundamental okay ness, they don't stick. They're serving a function in the context, but then they go away. It's like clouds in the sky.

[Dan Harris]

Richie, I'm going to ask a self centered question abusing my privilege as the host of the show, but I'm doing this hopefully in the service of the listener because I'm trying to understand it. So I think of myself as largely okay.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

And yet there are moments, especially with

[Dan Harris]

anxiety, where I lose it. I lose the fundamental okayness. You know, I'm in the city today, in New York City. Instead of recording this from my home, I'm having to take a lot of elevators today. And it's making me nervous. And mostly I can just be with the anxiety and it's not a big deal. But you know, I've had a few moments of like not wanting to get on the elevator just by way of an example. So can we think about fundamental okayness as a spectrum where I feel like I have a much higher level of fundamental okayness than I did, say 15 years ago, but it's not perpetual. Am I hunting in the right direction with this line of questioning?

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it is definitely on a continuum and this is really what can change as we train our mind and cultivate these qualities of flourishing. And all of us are on a continuum. And so I think it's only the kind of really rare examples like the Dalai Lama, who may be sort of displaying this kind of fundamental okayedness continuously. But I see those people as an inspiring example of what may be possible. But for the rest of us, we're on a continuum. I think that that's absolutely normative.

[Cortland Dahl]

And even from the point of view of just a snapshot, an experience, or even a day, like you were saying, Dan, we're moving back and forth between different experiences. You can think of almost three stops along the way of inner experience. When it comes to relating to anxiety or really any difficult experience. The first one, which we all know well, is we're just lost in it. If we're angry, we are the anger. If we're anxious, we are the anxiety. Our field of perception is narrowed to the degree that the anxiety, or any emotion, it just colors the whole field of conscious experience. It's just coloring everything.

[Richard Davidson]

And just to interject, we've used a term that we call experiential fusion to describe what Cord is saying.

[Cortland Dahl]

I like that term exactly. It's just like you become one with it. And this is most of what's happening in our lives until we start meditating. And then there's this magical shift which basic mindfulness practices are brilliant at helping us navigate, which is we uncouple. That fusion kind of gets teased apart and usually is what it starts as. You could just be aware of the experience. Like, for me, as an anxious college student, I was doing this practice all the time. I would bring my awareness into my body and just notice, what does anxiety actually feel like? And just rest, like, with curiosity, with openness. That's an inner revolution. Just that alone. There's something else that deepens from there, which is we start to shift into the field of awareness itself. So it's not so much what we are aware of, but into this just open space of being itself. And that probably sounds hopelessly abstract and esoteric if you haven't practiced this. But it's a profound shift. In a word, it's the shift from doing to being. And in that space of being, there's all sorts of things that we discover about ourselves that we're blind to when we're contracted into the emotional reaction. And that's, I think, the true fundamental okay, ness is in that space where we see, oh, there's this part of me that's available in any moment that I can drop into and grow familiar with. And there's no problem. Like everything else seems inconsequential from the point of view of that Space of being. Again, it's abstract, but it's incredibly powerful as a practice.

[Dan Harris]

Well, how accessible is that, though? Because I started this conversation by saying I've had three moments in my 16 year meditation career, which I know compared to you guys is nothing, but it's non trivial for your average person. I've had three moments, usually on day six or seven of a meditation retreat, where I've really dropped into that sense of fundamental okayness. So this abstract, abstruse experience that you're describing, Court, how accessible is that to our average listener?

[Cortland Dahl]

I think it's much more accessible than we often think. And there are simply different traditions and different forms of practice and training that tend to focus on different things. So there are some. The ones that Richie and I are most deeply trained in really focus a lot on effortless presence. And so you get a pretty heavy dose of that. The quality of being. How do you access that? How do you get in touch with that? How do you grow familiar with it so you don't lose touch with it? You actually get that on day one. I mean, you've had Mingyu Rinpoche on the podcast. He teaches that. That's like literally the first thing he teaches. And it's always paired with other things because it's hard to stay with that. There's other practices where you don't get to that until much more advanced stages. But you get other things that are different than that. Like, you get deep insight into just that workings of the mind, the causes and conditions that shape experience. So all the traditions have their own beauty and their own secret sauce. But for the ones that focus on that, I would say you can actually get in touch with that pretty easily. And it just kind of depends on what you're working with in terms of practice. But our mantra, I'm sure we'll hear it out of Richie's mouth a few times in this is that it's easier than you think and that the science really backs that up. Actually, it's pretty small doses will get you there pretty quick. It's just sustaining. It is the real practice.

[Dan Harris]

So you mentioned Mingyur Rinpoche, who's an eminent Tibetan Buddhist teacher. He's been on the show several times. I will drop some links to his appearances in the show notes if anybody wants to check him out. But he's not here. So Court or Rich, whoever wants to do it, you said it's easier than you think. And it's, you know, you do it on day one. Can you just describe to the listener so that they don't have to take your word for it. They can check it out in their own minds.

[Cortland Dahl]

Well, should we do it? Let's do it. Let me just guide a super brief kind of micro practice, as we like to say. And just as a little taste of this. So just, you know, for us and for anybody who's listening, tune into your breath. You don't even have to change your posture. Just imagine you're going about your day, you just notice your breath. Most of us have probably done mindful breathing. So just feel the breath, maybe breathe a little deeper, really feel it coming in and out.

[Dan Harris]

And this is safe to do while driving, just to say. Cause many people are driving.

[Cortland Dahl]

Absolutely. The thing that this is not a concentrated practice. So keep an open, spacious awareness. You're still tuned into your environment. You're just breathing. It's not a lot of efforting in the mind. You're just noticing what's going on and you're including your breathing in that, right? You're just noticing that perhaps a little deeper than normal. So as you do this, start to notice what happens very naturally and spontaneously on the exhalation. What you'll feel is just a little subtle opening, a subtle relaxation, just like a little loosening that happens naturally every time you exhale. It especially happens when you start noticing that. So just feel that this is just easing into being. And next notice how at the end of each exhalation, there's just a little gap, a little pause before you breathe in again. It's just a little natural rest stop between each cycle of breathing. And what you can do is just imagine yourself. You're just kind of relaxing into that space and just resting there just for a few seconds. You're not holding your breath. It's not anything that's super intense. And what you'll see is that it's the most ordinary thing in the world. There's no special state of mind that is happening or needs to happen. It's just a little taste of being very ordinary in a sense. But you can learn to tap into that. And you just rest with that. And then slowly, as you grow more familiar with that, that quality of openness, this effortless presence, you can just stay with that even when the next breath happens. So just try that for a moment. You just relax with the out breath. You rest there and almost imagine that next in breath is just happening within that space. There's no effort required. You're not even really meditating in any kind of effortful way. So there's A million ways to do this. It's just getting used to what it feels like to be. And you can do this a hundred times throughout your day and you have a little hundred mini retreats throughout your day. Eventually this becomes like a home. And that's the fundamental okayness, because your home is now the open space of awareness that's always there for you. And then anything else that happens is. It's just on the surface.

[Dan Harris]

Richie, I've been picking on Court for a while. Anything you want to jump in and add?

[Richard Davidson]

Well, I think that the slogan, which we're using a lot these days, it's easier than you think, is not just a kind of ideological claim, but it's actually based on a whole lot of evidence. And so we've done a number of serious randomized controlled trials, the kind of gold standard of clinical research over the last few years, showing that five minutes a day of practice like this is sufficient to produce measurable changes in our experience, in our behavior and in our biology. And it's kind of remarkable. Five minutes a day over the course of one month. Now, this is not to claim that these changes are going to be enduring. If we stop practicing. Our aspiration, of course, is that when people taste this, they will be motivated to keep doing this. And it's like brushing your teeth. You don't brush your teeth for a month and then stop. This is going to be a lifelong practice. But the data really show that it doesn't take much to get these circuits in our mind and our brain going. And we think it's because we're born to flourish. This is part of who we are as humans. We're actually predisposed to rest in this kind of way. This is our nature. And when we meditate, we're not doing anything sort of weird with our mind. What we're doing is we are getting in touch with our fundamental nature, becoming more familiar with it.

[Dan Harris]

My 11 year old son I think, would argue, pound the table and argue that you can brush your teeth for a month and stop. But having said that, draw a link, if you will, Richie, between the exercise that Court and thank you, Court, for guided us through and handling our everyday vexations.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Yes, I noticed.

[Dan Harris]

Oh yeah, it's. I felt calm and awake and aware when he directed me to notice that space between the breaths, the in breath and the out breath, and then to subsequently stay with the next in breath. Draw the link for those who might not understand it between that experience and doing life better.

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah, so eventually one of the things we talk about in our book are things that happen every day in life to virtually all of us. So for example, humans eat. We need to eat to live. So eating is a regular part of most people's lives. We can use these activities of daily living as reminders to do these. We call them micro supports or micro practices that you can sprinkle throughout your daily life. And we actually have evidence to show that you don't need to put your butt on the cushion or a chair and formally meditate. The data show that at least at the beginning stages, the benefits are as strong if you do these practices actively as you're going about your daily life, or if you do them formally as sitting meditation practices, doesn't matter. So you can use these activities of daily living as reminders. As we use this fancy term that comes from neuroscience, which is a zeitgeber. A zeitgeber is something that occurs with biological rhythms on a regular daily basis. And there are social zeitgebers. So eating is a social zeitgeber. We do that every day. Brushing your teeth is a zeitgeber. And so we can piggyback these activities on daily living. You brought up the kind of challenges that we experience in our daily lives. Eventually the challenges themselves become triggers as reminders. So rather than the challenges being times when you lose it, when you are getting hijacked by your anxiety or whatever it is, eventually as you practice more and more, the anxiety itself can become a reminder. That's when you can have this just infuse all of your everyday life.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Coming up, Richie Davidson and Cortland Dahl talk about the four ingredients that predict

[Dan Harris]

whether you'll be at your best in any situation.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

You ever get that dip of energy

[Dan Harris]

in the mid afternoon and it just feels like you're just trying to cut through soupy fog in order to get

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

your best brain to work.

[Dan Harris]

I don't know about you, but I deal with this all the time.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Which brings me to one of our sponsors today, Spark. This is a product that gives you energy and mental sharpness without trade offs. Spark Energy plus Focus is your go to pre workout ritual. When you need reliable energy to power through a lift, run, ride or class, you can mix it, sip it and get dialed in ready to go. It has 0 grams of sugar and essential vitamins and amino acids from for mental focus. I have to be candid and say that I can't use Spark personally because I can't have any caffeine.

[Dan Harris]

But one of the most effective and awesome members of my team in my

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

company my little company Taylor uses Spark and says it is awesome. Get steady controlled pre workout energy with 0 grams of sugar 120 milligrams of caffeine for alertness and concentration delivering sustained energy. Amino acids and taurine help balance the the caffeine without jitters or crashes. Also bold great tasting flavors. You will look forward to drinking Spark Energy Plus Focus is offering 30% off and free shipping. Go to drinkspark.com and use the code Happier at checkout. That's [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Dan Harris]

I just want to push on that again and cord, I'll go back to you. I want to acknowledge I love the fact that we can do these free range instead of a formal meditation practice. I think that's liberating for a lot of people to hear, especially people who feel time starved or who just don't want to fold themselves into the lotus position or whatever it is. So that's great. So I don't mean to brush past that and I will come back to it. But just on the question of the mechanism here, Court, for all of us who went through your exercise, how does doing that help me with fighting with my son over brushing his teeth or fighting with my boss over giving me more work than I can handle, et cetera, et cetera?

[Cortland Dahl]

This is really the central question. So you know, going back to this idea of the really what are the central ingredients? You could say, what are the main factors that lead us to flourish in some circumstances and to be overwhelmed, knocked off balance, not at our best in other circumstances? And you can almost look at this as like four questions. And I think this gets at what you're pointing to, Dan. So in any circumstance, say you're with your family and there's a stressful situation, or you're at work and you're having a tough day, you really could imagine any circumstance and just say, am I going to be at my best in this situation if I am aware and fully present, or if I'm just unfocused and distracted? Obvious answer. Second question Am I going to be at my best in this situation if I feel connected, if I feel like I'm there for other people and I feel like they are there for me, or am I going to be at my best if I'm feeling alienated or isolated? Obvious question. That's the second factor that we refer to as connection. The third one is insight. Am I going to feel better? Am I going to be my best? Why perform better if I really understand the dynamics of the situation, especially the dynamics of my own mind in the moment. If for example, I can see clearly what emotions and thoughts are playing through my mind and I can see how they're shaping and influencing my perception, again, better or worse. And lastly, purpose. Am I going to feel more on my game if I really feel like I'm connected to my North Star in my life? I have clear values, I feel like I'm living them, I'm conscious of them, I'm connected to them. Or would I do better if I feel that it's meaningless and I don't have those? These are just obvious questions. I think what's missing to people is it's not. We just feel like we're doing well in some circumstances and we're not in others. But the ingredients aren't so clear and it's even less clear. How would we actually practice so that each of those things happen? So that I'm more aware, I'm more connected, I'm more insightful and wise, I'm more purposeful and I feel things are meaningful. These are skills, there's brain mechanisms, there's biology behind it. It's easier than you think. I think it's just the roadmap isn't so clear. So what we practiced to just boil it down to a fine point, that was one of maybe the most fundamental skill in the awareness category. And I think what I would personally put my money on is the most bang for your buck in terms of an awareness skill that can just radically change your inner experience. Specifically because these days we have no being in our lives. We are doing 247 and we're constantly force feeding our mind information. And I'd say that's a more vital, it's always been a vital skill. But learning how to be and to find our value and worth as human beings in this quality of being I think is just a vital skill in the 21st century. So this is equally applicable in all these situations. It's just the roadmap. Nobody ever gave us the map just

[Dan Harris]

to restate the map for folks. And we've said this a few times but I just want people to have their bearings here. The Healthy Minds Framework, the spine of your new book. It consists of these four pillars. The first is Awareness, which really we've talked about and you taught us how to train very quickly. And again, it's not a one and done. It's a. A move we want to integrate into our lives, to wake up and be right here, right now. The second is connection, the third is insight or self knowledge, and the fourth is purpose.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Let's talk a little bit about how

[Dan Harris]

we train these others with connection. We all know this is something I talk about a lot on the show. We evolved as social animals, and yet we've somehow created a world that militates against connection at pretty much every turn. And I don't think it's a coincidence that we have unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, and loneliness, I think largely as a result. So how do we operationalize connection and take it beyond sort of bland exhortation?

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah, I'm happy to jump in. Connection again, we would say, is easier than you think. Let me actually just back up and first say that in 2023, we had a really visionary Attorney General of the United States who issued a health advisory, the first time a public health official ever issued a health advisory of that sort in our country, on the epidemic of loneliness and social isolation. And in that report, Vivek Murthy showed evidence that loneliness is actually a greater risk factor for mortality than is smoking 15 cigarettes a day. So loneliness and social isolation is not just a subjective quality of the mind, but it also affects our biology in ways that seriously affect our health. So that's one element important to keep in mind with respect to cultivating this. One of the easiest things to do and something I do every single day. I have this little practice I do after I meditate where I on work days. And it takes me about not more than a minute, maybe a minute and a half. I'll go through my calendar. I did this this morning. And you're in my mind and heart, Daniel. I just go through my calendar and see what I'm going to be doing that day and just appreciate the people I'm meeting with, really a simple little practice. Think of something positive about them and we are predisposed to feel a connection. It doesn't take much. We just need to be intentional about how we use our minds. And so it's readily available. And it's remarkable. We've shown in neuroscientific research that after just a few hours of doing this practice, over the course of a few weeks, our brains change. We can see measurable changes in our brain.

[Dan Harris]

I'll add another practice. I don't know what you think of this research, but I found it compelling. I don't have as critical a lens as you do, Richie, but Barb Fredrickson's research into micro interactions, the power, the massive power of, apparently massive power of just having pleasant passing interactions with the barista, somebody in an elevator, your co workers you may not be especially close with. Hey, how you doing? Eye contact. Keep it moving. This can really ladder up and scale up to apparently quite significant benefits and happiness. Do you. Do you agree with the direction I'm going in here?

[Richard Davidson]

Totally, absolutely. I think that's important work and I think there's an important truth to that.

[Dan Harris]

So we're marching through the four. I'm calling them pillars, or aspects of the framework you lay out in the book. The first, again, is awareness. The second is connection. We've talked about how to practice both of those in ways that don't require you to reinvent your life and your schedule. The third, and we've talked about this

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

a little bit, but I think it's

[Dan Harris]

worth going a little bit deeper here, is insight. And I think this can be a tough one for people to grok. You use a word that's not going to help, but it's interesting and you can unpack it in ways that will be helpful. The word de reifying, Court. What is that?

[Cortland Dahl]

So de reification, you could say, is the second part of a inner movement, an inner process in which you first simply become aware of your own thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so forth. You just know you're having them versus you're fused with them, as we discussed before. That's the first thing. But you can be aware of a thought pattern and still believe it. And this is a very important point. I had a lot of this, again, going back to my own anxiety, where I was learning to step back and feel what I was feeling, to notice the inner narratives. But part of me still believes it. It's like, okay, I know I'm having this thought, but it's kind of true. That's kind of how I felt at the time. De reification is seeing that thoughts are nothing more than mental habits, and they are not necessarily true or real. In fact, they are oftentimes deep distorted, sometimes wildly distorted. You know, any anxious thought, by definition, is going to be a magnet for negative information and it will repel positive information. So insight is a lot of just knowing that the de reifying, it's like the de rigidifying, if that's a word. I don't even know if that's a word. But Loosening up the mind, right? The things that are locked and stocked, you know, old habits just seem so entrenched. This is a way to loosen that up and to see that the mind is much more fluid than it often seems.

[Dan Harris]

There's a reference in your book, Richie, in this part of the book, on the aha moment. What do you mean by that?

[Richard Davidson]

Well, the aha moment is a moment of insight that many people have experienced, even in sort of pedestrian sorts of ways. So if you're doing a crossword puzzle and you suddenly recognize the word that fits in a certain context, there's a little bit of an aha moment. You know, you got it. It just occurs to you just like that. And when there is that aha moment, research shows there's a burst of a certain brain rhythm that can be measured with eeg, with electrodes on the scalp surface, non invasively. That burst is a burst of gamma oscillations. These are very fast frequency waves. They typically last less than a second. You know, they correspond to the sort of timing of an aha moment. It could be like a quarter of a second. And what we see in long term meditators who do a lot of this inside practice is that they show these gamma oscillations that last a long time. They're really enduring. I mean, this is a little bit hard to imagine. And what we're talking about now is really long term practitioners, people like Mingyur Rinpoche were participants as subjects in this research. They're showing continuous activity like this. It's as if their phenomenological world is a continuous aha experience. A number of years ago, I wrote a book with Dan Goleman called Altered Traits. It's a play on altered states. And the idea is that as we train our mind, these qualities that once were short lived become much more enduring. For very long term meditators, this quality of insight becomes really enduring.

[Cortland Dahl]

There's a great analogy for this in the tradition, which is a candle flame with a glass enclosure around it. And this also speaks to how the four factors of awareness, connection, insight and purpose work together. So in this analogy, awareness is like the glass enclosure. So you can imagine a moment in life. We've all had these where you have a sudden epiphany. Something clicks into place about your life that you see that you didn't see the moment before. And it feels like your life is totally different. Like you've just now seen something that's going to change your life forever. And sometimes it does, but oftentimes what happens is, although it feels like your life has changed indelibly, the next day, the next week, the next month, it's just a memory. It's not embedded for some reason. And that reason is because awareness is unstable. Our attention, we're distracted. There's a million influences on our mind. And so that epiphany, that deep insight is lost. So awareness practices give us that inner stability where we can nurture those moments. But we also need the flame itself, which is insight. This is classically what we would think of as wisdom. We need to see clearly the dynamics of our inner experience, the dynamics of our lives, and we need to be able to embody that. So we act skillfully in a way that supports our own and hopefully others ability to thrive and flourish. So we need that, but we kind of need all of these. It's like not enough just to have awareness or just to have insight. Any one of these, you actually need all four of these. And they're all skills that are mutually supportive and reinforcing.

[Dan Harris]

So insight. The fundamental promise of the book is that there are micro practices that can help us develop all four of the skills that are at the core of the book. What are some of the ways that we can, throughout the course of our day, develop insight?

[Cortland Dahl]

Richie, I'd love to hear kind of your go to practices. One that I find super helpful, super easy to do is the wise friend kind of analogy. So in any situation, especially things that are challenging, difficult, stressful, I just stop and ask myself, what would my wisest friend? I mean, for me, I've known Mingyu Rinoche for many years. He's one of my guiding teachers. So oftentimes we'll think of him. I'll just kind of imagine what would Rinpoche say about this? And that does something very interesting. The answer doesn't obviously come from me, Rinpoche. What it does is it shifts me from that. Getting locked into my own perception of the situation. It immediately unlocks that and it unlocks the feeling that whatever story I'm telling myself, which usually we're always telling ourselves stories about whatever the situations are, it just loosens that up and suddenly I'm looking at it from a different vantage point. So it's not that I'm tapping into some other form of wisdom. It's not like obviously I have some direct channel, Domingo Beche I am tapping into my own wisdom and insight in that moment. I'm just getting a fresh perspective and a wise perspective on whatever that situation might be. It's so it's really just that asking the question and then coming back to whatever's going on from that new vantage point. So simple just takes a moment to do and it's kind of game changing in the way it loosens up the old habitual patterns that most of us are carrying with us into these difficult situations.

[Richard Davidson]

And in that kind of little exercise or practice, we don't need to have necessarily a Mingyur Rinpoche in our lives. It could be just imagine this from another person's perspective just to loosen the grip that your perspective has and appreciate that there are other perspectives that would see this situation differently.

[Cortland Dahl]

Yeah, it's like the shift itself is the important thing. Not so much that is just an example, but it's so easy. There's so many ways you could do it. It's quite remarkable and how easy and simple this is.

[Dan Harris]

Joseph Goldstein often says, don't side with yourself.

[Richard Davidson]

That's a good one.

[Cortland Dahl]

That's great.

[Richard Davidson]

I love that.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Coming up, Richie and Cort talk about

[Dan Harris]

the importance and how to of cultivating

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

purpose and how small consistent practices can change your brain and even influence the

[Dan Harris]

expression of your genesis.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. You ever get that dip of energy

[Dan Harris]

in the mid afternoon and it just feels like you're just trying to cut through soupy fog in order to get

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

your brain to work.

[Dan Harris]

I don't know about you but I

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

deal with this all the time. Which brings me to one of our sponsors today, Spark. This is a product that gives you energy and mental sharpness without trade offs. Spark Energy plus Focus is your go to pre workout ritual when you need need reliable energy to power through a lift, run, ride or class. You can mix it, sip it and get dialed in ready to go. It has 0 grams of sugar and essential vitamins and amino acids for mental focus. I have to be candid and say that I can't use Spark personally because I can't have any caffeine.

[Dan Harris]

But one of the most effective and awesome members of my team in my

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

company, my little company Taylor uses Spark and says it is awesome. Get steady controlled pre workout energy with 0 grams of sugar. 120 milligrams of caffeine for alertness and concentration delivering sustained energy amino acids and taurine Help balance the caffeine without jitters or crashes. Also, bold, great tasting flavors you will look forward to drinking. Spark Energy plus Focus is offering 30% off and free shipping. Go to drinkspark.com and use the code Happier at checkout. That's [e-mail].

[Dan Harris]

So again, we're walking through the four pillars of the healthy minds framework and then talking about how we can integrate micro practices into our life that help us train these skills. Again, they are awareness, connection, insight, and let's talk about purpose. How are we defining and understanding purpose? Let's start there, Richie, what do you say?

[Richard Davidson]

So purpose, the way we use it, it's not so much about finding something grand and really more purposeful to do with your life, like some big life shift. Rather, how can we find meaning and purpose in our daily activities without changing any of the external features of our lives? Now, it could be that there are times when we may want to change those external features, and that's important. But it's also possible to nurture purpose in the context of our daily lives by connecting meaning and purpose even to the most pedestrian activities of daily living. So I'll give you an example from my own life. And this may sound really corny, but I do this every day. I'm home, so as long as I'm not traveling, I do this every day. We have a cat at home and there's a litter box. The litter box is in the corner of big living room, and I am the one that scoops the litter every night. And I do it as a practice. I really do. And as I kneel down to go to the litter box, I just reflect on how this is helpful to my wife because I'm the one that's dealing with this. For people that come into the living room, they don't have to smell the cat litter. For the wonderful Siamese cat, who's now 14 years old, this is a benefit to her life. It's just a way to have this connect to being of benefit to others. And it's so simple, so simple. And I do something similar when I take out the garbage. These are things that we do every day, and often people regard them as chores. Yeah, gotta do this. And it's a kind of grind that people feel they have to do. But it's so easy to connect these simple activities to altruistic motive. And that changes everything.

[Cortland Dahl]

So if you look at the active ingredients, just to interject for a second, there's two things in what you've just said, Richie, that I think are like the key ingredients. One is there's a sense of clarity about the motivations and values that are most nourishing. Like in this case, being of service, kindness. You could see a bunch of things kind of wrapped into that, that one experience. So the inner clarity is one and then the other is embodiment. Like it's not just you have a nice warm fuzzy thought in your mind, it's linking that to something you're doing. So you're thinking, I'm now going to put this value, this guiding aspiration or motivation, whatever it might be. I'm going to live that in this moment, in this activity. And this too can just be a simple practice. You do like something, Richie, because we are often recording things and doing things together, we have a little ritual, just to give another example, where we pause before we hit record. We do just like a one minute motivation reset. And Richie, you can speak to what's going on in your mind. I know. In my mind, I'm simply thinking that may, whatever comes of this conversation we're about to have, in fact, I did it before we hit record here with you, Dan. May whatever comes of this, may this really do some good in the world. May this reach somebody who really needs it. May this provide some clarity or some inspiration for somebody who really could use a little boost in their lives. May this just do good in the world. May whatever is happening here, may it somehow be of benefit and be of service. So again, just takes a moment. It doesn't have to be something grand or positive. Like you said, Richie, you can be washing the dishes or taking out the garbage or the most mundane things. You can link anything to a value that's nourishing to you.

[Richard Davidson]

Eventually, everything, really. Mingyur Rinpoche has been teaching this introductory course anywhere, anytime. Meditation and a friendly amendment is everywhere all the time.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, and in the book, I think you call it reframing the mundane, which I love. Richie, say a little bit about the science here. From a biological standpoint, purpose isn't just a nice to have.

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah. So there's a lot of science of particular kinds and also a lack of science in other ways. So there's a lot of research on naturally occurring variations among people in their quote, level of purpose in life that is assessed typically through a simple questionnaire and its relationship to many other factors. One of the factors that it's been related to is health. And so among people 65 years and older, having a strong sense of purpose in life is the single most important psychological factor in predicting Longevity, and that's after carefully controlling for other factors. People who have a stronger sense of purpose live longer. And so clearly this gets under the skin and affects our biology. The other thing we found is that purpose is an enormous contributor to resilience. And resilience here is defined in a very specific way in a neuroscientific context. And the way we define it is simply the rapidity with which you recover from adversity. If you recover quickly from adversity, you're said to be more resilient. And people who have a stronger sense of purpose in their brain, they recover more quickly from adversity. So it's really directly affecting brain circuits that are critically involved in our response to adversity and in what we might think of as emotion regulation.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

And just to be clear, I think

[Dan Harris]

you explained this before, but I want to make sure I've got it.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

I think you're saying that we don't

[Dan Harris]

need to have a clear rallying cry slogan of a purpose that's tattooed on our chests. It really can be, no, I'm just going to try to reframe the mundane all day long.

[Richard Davidson]

Exactly. And I should say that some of this is still uncharted in terms of scientific research, just to be clear and appropriately cautious and humble about it. What is clear is the research that shows that people who have a stronger sense of purpose do better on lots of different things, including living longer, showing more resilience, and so forth. There's been virtually no research on cultivating this sense of purpose, and these little practices are really meant to do that. And so there's still a lot to be discovered about how these kinds of micro interventions may impact our experience and our biology and change our sense of purpose.

[Dan Harris]

Got it. Well, speaking of the science, you've referenced this a couple times that rewiring the brain is a thing we can do, and it doesn't take a ton of time. Can you just say a little bit more about the types of changes we can see to our brain and what kind of investment is required for said changes? And then maybe also, while you're at it, Richie, talk a little bit about how we can not only change our brains, but also our genes.

[Richard Davidson]

Sure. So when we talk about changing our brain, in this general category of neuroplasticity, there are many different kinds of neuroplasticity. And so we can get really nerdy about exactly what specific parameter of plasticity we're referring to. But broadly speaking, there are two big buckets, one we might call functional changes in the brain. Brain. The other we might call structural changes in the brain. Structural changes are anatomical changes. They're changes in the actual anatomy. Areas may grow larger or smaller, connections may become larger or smaller. Whereas functional changes are changes in the activity patterns of the brain. Changes in activity patterns of the brain can occur really quickly. The kind of practice that Court led us through. I guarantee that if we had people hooked up to the right equipment, you would see changes in their brain just like that, functional changes. But that doesn't mean that those changes will endure. The structural changes we think are changes that occur that are the carlet, if you will, of the more enduring changes that we see. But the structural changes are easier to produce than we think as well. And I should just give some context, not from meditation. There have been studies of people who are learning to juggle, and after a 90 minute class in juggling, the wiring of your brain changes just after 90 minutes. We have new data now not yet published, that shows that less than 150 total minutes over the course of a month of practicing these four pillars produces structural changes in the brain. So that's not very much. But again, it doesn't mean these structural changes are really dynamic. They can revert back. It doesn't mean they're going to persist. You know, it's like weight or weight loss. It could be very variable. And so it is our strong intuition that in order for these changes to endure, we need to keep practicing.

[Dan Harris]

Yeah, and Richie or Court, whoever wants to take it, what about changing our genes? In this case, it's G, E, N E, not J, E a N. Let

[Richard Davidson]

me say just a little bit about that. And then, and Court can add whatever he might say. There are two aspects to our genes, broadly speaking, that are relevant here. One is the sequence of base pairs that constitutes our DNA for the most part. For most people, that's not going to change. No matter how much meditation we do. Radiation exposure and spending a lot of time on airplanes can change that. But for the most part it's not going to change. But what will change is our epigenetics. And epigenetics is the science of how our genes are regulated. And you can think of genes having little volume controls that go from low to high, and that's very dynamic. And those volume controls can be modulated and they can be modulated by meditation and other kinds of experience. And so there's good evidence now to show that even over the course of a single day of intensive practice in an experienced meditator, six to seven hours of practice is enough to produce a measurable change in gene expression.

[Cortland Dahl]

One thing to piggyback on what Richie's sharing here. If you bring these two principles of neuroplasticity and the insights from epigenetics together, what this is showing is just the dynamics of our inner experience and of our lives. It's much more malleable than previously we understood scientifically. But that kind of cuts both ways. We are living in a world right now that is engineered to produce distraction, emotional imbalance, and social division. And so if we're not intentional about what we are surrounding ourselves with and what we are filling our minds with, that epigenetic capacity and neuroplastic capacity is just a recipe for the epidemic levels of distraction and mental health concerns that we see. We're living through a grand experiment that we can see the results of this. So it just invites the importance of really taking charge of this so we can see that actually we all have a role to play, and none of us can afford, individually or collectively, to just be passive about this. Maybe one very specific point to mention is just the information diet. If you think about information being like food to our minds and brains in the way that physical food is for our body and physical health, you would think immediately about how much you're eating and the quality of the food you eat and think about how much information we ingest. It's insane compared to 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago. We are consuming information at a rate that's just totally unprecedented, and that would be questionable in any circumstance. But the quality, the second question is the quality, is that healthy? Is the food healthy? Is it unhealthy? We can just look. I mean, most of the information we're consuming is making us more distracted, more anxious, feeling, more us. Them kind of feelings in society. We really need to get a handle on this and work on these inner skills so we can just be intentional about what's happening in our minds and brains and with our nervous systems, because we can just see what happens when we don't. We're just living through a collective experiment of what happens when we're not intentional.

[Richard Davidson]

And so just to say one other thing about what Court just said to make this clear, Neuroplasticity and epigenetics are neutral with respect to. To its impact on our mind, brain, and body. If we are exposed to all this toxic information that Cord is referring to, it will harness our neuroplasticity and epigenetics to produce the catastrophes that we're experiencing right now. And so we can harness these same mechanisms of neuroplasticity and epigenetics in a virtuous way to cultivate wholesome qualities of the mind that will help to counteract this.

[Dan Harris]

Well said. This is really one major area I'd like to touch on before I let you both go. We've touched on this a little bit, but I want to hit it head on because it's a question I get all the time. I have live meditation and Q and A sessions that I do for my app community once a week. And almost every time I get the question X event just happened in the news. What good is meditation? Or what's the. They don't use this word, but in the context of your book, I'll put it in. I'll use this word. How can I flourish in a world where X just happened? Trump did or said this or whatever. Yeah. So how do you respond to that question when you feel it?

[Richard Davidson]

Court, do you want to go first and then I can go?

[Cortland Dahl]

Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, I'm living my. A current version of this because I'm from Minnesota. I grew up in Minneapolis, and it's a place I love dearly. And, man, I was just watching some stuff last night that was heartbreaking. Honestly, I'm even emotional just thinking about it now. The community I grew up in is almost unrecognizable, kind of what's going on. And so if you take a situation like that, like, here's a very real situation in a community I love, I'm very emotionally invested in this. And a question is sort of, what does flourishing look like at a time like this? So to go back to one point that Richie made, that is super important. Flourishing doesn't mean happy. Clearly seeing what's going on in this case, in my own community, where I'm from, where I grew up, being happy is not the response to that. Right. I want the magical alchemy of wisdom and compassion to be driving me. Right. I can see rage. I can see frustration. I can feel powerlessness. I can see how any of those things would be totally understandable. It feels so overwhelming. I feel so disconnected. What could I possibly do in this? And I'm so disheartened by what's happening. That's not helpful. Like, I'm not going to be at my best if I'm just overwhelmed or hopeless. So it's. How do I get in touch with this part of myself where I'm just simply seeing the dynamic more clearly? It's not the narrowing of perception when our conscious experience is totally hijacked by anxiety or fear or anything else. And yet it's infused with care. This again goes back to really nurturing the care and connection and nurturing the awareness. It's the combination of all of these things together that when something like this happens, it gives us the space to step back not from some cold clinical gaze, but from a place of deep care to just say, okay, what's going on here? What can I do? I'm not going to single handedly fix this situation. I know it feels terrible just to kind of drown in hopelessness and so what can I do? Right? And then again, you can take simple steps, even just little things in my immediate orbit, like, okay, I'm not even in Minnesota right now, I don't live there currently, I live in Madison. So at least in my next interactions I want to just send some kindness out into the world, some understanding, and maybe even people who I disagree with, like, okay, I don't condone a lot of the stuff that's happening, I vehemently disagree with it, but I do want to understand it so I can engage with people who I disagree with. It's just unthinkable to me how people have the opinions they do and they probably look at me and feel the exact same way. And so there needs to be some unilateral disarmament here, an attempt to just actually talk and understand. And that doesn't come from hopelessness and being overwhelmed by the emotions. So it goes back to those four questions and the four qualities we've been talking about. These are precisely the superpowers that give us the ability to navigate these situations well and to be at our best, the more challenging situations are. And we're never going to be perfect, but what we can do is view them as opportunities to practice and to learn and grow. So, you know, somebody like Viktor Frankl, who wrote A Man's Search for Meaning, a victim of the Holocaust, is just, you know, a great example of even the worst possible things that can happen to us as human beings. Obviously we wouldn't wish them upon anybody, but they can be sources of learning and growth and self discovery and coming together in ways. But we need to be intentional about it. It all comes down to practice.

[Richard Davidson]

You know, I just add one other little thing, and that is that particularly for those who are on the front lines of social change and social activists who are trying to produce system change that is so sorely needed in many parts of our country and the world, burnout is so prevalent. And the kinds of practices that we're talking about are really important in giving people a kind of resilience and vitality that is going to be necessary to be effective in the work that they do.

[Dan Harris]

Yes. And the way you're describing these practices, it's not some massive project to add to your to do list that will further stress you out. These are things you can integrate into the course of your day. Before I let you go, two questions I always ask at the end. Is there anything either or both of

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

you were hoping we would get to

[Dan Harris]

that we haven't yet gotten to?

[Richard Davidson]

There is one other thing and I can just very briefly introduce it. And in addition to the conviction that it's easier than you think, there's another slogan, if you will, that is at the heart of some of what we write about in our book Born to Flourish. And that is that flourishing is contagious. And there's a lot of really good hard nosed scientific evidence for this. And so when we cultivate these skills of flourishing, we not only are benefiting ourselves, but we're benefiting all of those that we touch because they actually benefit from being around us.

[Cortland Dahl]

I would add to that another kind of key insight that drives our work and message that we want to get out into the world is that these factors, these four things we've talked about, awareness, connection, insight, purpose, these are not things we need to develop that we don't have. This is actually who we are. A moments of awareness, moments of connection, moments of insight and purpose. This is actually here all the time. And it's actually the fact that these things are so omnipresent that makes them hard to see. In the sense that we notice what's different, we notice what's out of the ordinary. It's much more difficult to notice the stuff that's always present. And so it just goes like we all have the raw ingredients to flourish. It's getting in touch with what we have rather than again, some never ending self help project, self improvement paradigm. And I think that's super important. It's right here in every moment. It's right here.

[Dan Harris]

I think and talk about what I'm about to say a lot. So many listeners will have heard me say this before and I'm sure my staff has a drinking game every time I say this. But my understanding is the Tibetan word for enlightenment translates roughly into clearing away and bringing forth. So we're just clearing away a lot of the clutter that naturally occurs in a human brain and mind. And also that is injected into us by this incredibly dysfunctional modern environment that we've somehow built clear that away. And what comes forth are these innate factors or qualities that you're both describing in your new book. Awareness, Connection, Insight, Purpose. Okay, so the second question I always ask at the end is, can you please plug everything? Rich, I'll start with you mentioned the book, but also your center in Madison, your app. Just give us everything, please.

[Richard Davidson]

Yeah, so the book is called Born to Flourish. It's coming out March 24th. It can be pre ordered now. It has rich descriptions of all of this. Our app is called the Healthy Minds Program and it is freely available and it was created by our affiliated nonprofit, which used to be called Healthy Minds Innovations and has just been rebranded and is now called Humin H U M I N. And so please, if you're interested, check it out and let us know what you think. And Court, please.

[Cortland Dahl]

Yeah, in addition to those things, we've mentioned the name Mingy Rinpoche many times. Both Richie and I are quite involved with Tergar, which is a meditation community with lots of amazing programs, especially the Joy of Living, which is one of the trainings that both Richie and I have done many times over. And a recent venture, actually somewhat inspired by you, Dan, and your work is a substack and podcast called Dharma Lab, where it's just a space for us to kind of geek out and have the kind of conversations that we have behind the scenes and just to share those conversations with others. It was very much inspired by us going for walks and just catching up about the things we're most excited about. And we thought, well, why not have some of these conversations in public? That's another one that's available on substack. And the podcast is of course available in all the different channels listeners.

[Dan Harris]

I will post links for every single one of those in the show. Notes Court and Richie. Congratulations on your new book. Thanks for all the work you do in the world and thanks for coming on the show.

[Richard Davidson]

Thank you, Dan. And thank you for all the work that you do to bring these teachings out to so many people.

[Cortland Dahl]

Yeah, absolutely. Real joy to join you both.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Big thanks to Richie and Cort. We did, in the course of that discussion, talk about Mingyu Rinpoche.

[Dan Harris]

And I have dropped links to a couple of episodes that I did with mingyur if you want to check them out.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Don't forget to check out my new app, 10% with Dan Harris.

[Dan Harris]

We've got an awesome and growing community over there.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Lots of great meditation teachers, lots of live events.

[Dan Harris]

Opportunities to connect with other people who

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

take this weird meditation thing seriously.

[Dan Harris]

You should come check it out.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Danharris.com There's a free 14 day trial. Finally. Thank you so much to everybody who

[Dan Harris]

works so hard to make this show. And they really do work hard.

[Dan Harris (co-host or producer voice)]

Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our Managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our Senior producer, DJ Kashmir is our Executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses. Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.