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Every morning, after Richard J. Davidson meditates, he opens his calendar and sets an intention for each meeting. He brings each person into his mind and heart, expresses gratitude for their work in the world, and considers how he can best support them. I was inspired to try this practice. I reflected on the people that I planned to see that day and chose one thing that Id like to thank them for. I was surprised that a simple “thank you” caused them to visibly light up. Davidson was right: It not only transformed our conversation, but the entire nature of my day. This is an example of microdosing well-being and its impact on ourselves and others. Its also the heart of Davidsons mission: Well-being doesnt need to be left up to chance. It is a skill that we can train. Richard Davidson in the lab, 1990 [Photo: David Nevala] When humans first evolved, none of us were brushing our teeth, he shares. Now, pretty much everyone on the planet brushes their teeth. Its not part of our genome. We’ve learned to do this because we consider it important for our physical hygiene. If we spend even as short of time as we do brushing our teeth nourishing our mind, our findings and the findings of other scientists show that this world would be a different place, he adds. Most people would consider their mind more important than their teeth. Yet, we don’t treat our mind with the same respect. As a world renowned neuroscientist, Davidson has devoted five decades to studying human flourishing. He is the founder and director of The Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he conducts groundbreaking research on emotions and the brain, as well as meditation and contemplative practices. Through the Centers nonprofit, Healthy Minds Innovations, they translate their findings into evidence-based practices for individuals and organizations to cultivate well-being. In our conversation, he explains why our relationship to ourselves, each other, and the world are the product of the stories that we tell ourselves. He explains how to change your relationship to your thoughts, manage the activation of your stress response, and create structural changes in the wiring of your brain in as little as 20 hours. David Richardson [Photo: David Nevala] This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You shared that: our brains are constantly being shaped, wittingly or unwittingly. Most of the time, we are unaware of the forces around us that are shaping our brains and have very little control of those forces. The one thing that we do have control over is our own mind. Explain that last line, because we often dont think that we have control over our minds. Every human being is born with the capacity to control her or his mind. The fact that many people feel that they don’t have control over their mind is simply a symptom of the degradation in well-being that we are seeing in the world today. But, we know with absolute scientific certainty that we can harness our innate capacity and control our mind. Whats amazing is that it doesn’t take that much to get a taste of this capacity. You don’t have to sit in any special posture or travel to the Himalayas. You can do this anywhere, anytime. Its not just my opinion. Its the results of years of scientific research. When it comes to neuroplasticity, what is the neurological impact when we commit to well-being practices? What we know from existing scientific research is that when we commit to well-being practices, the brain changes in at least two basic ways: One is what we call functional changes, which are changes in the patterns of activation of different networks in the brain. The second is structural changes, where there’s literally changes in the wiring of the brain. We can see functional changes in the brain after just a few hours of practice. We can see structural changes after as little as 20 hours of practice. When you think about learning a new sport, language, or instrument, those complex skills require quite a bit of practice. It doesn’t take much with well-being, because humans are born to flourish. We have all these capabilities within us. You highlighted research findings that clearly suggest that people who are willing to question their own beliefs, and understand that their beliefs are not fixed, are less likely to be diagnosed with mental health disorders and more likely to respond positively to treatment. Explain this and how we can practice it. This is one of the core dimensions of our framework for understanding well-being. We call it Insight. Its the idea that every human being has a narrative that they tell about themselves. What’s really important for well-being is not so much to change the narrative, but to change our relationship to this narrative. So, being able to see the narrative as a constellation of beliefs, thoughts, and expectations that is not permanent. These thoughts can change. Theyre not all of who we are. Take pain as an example. We might say: I’m in pain. Does that mean all of me is in pain? Is there any part of me that’s not in pain? Who is the I when we say: “I am in pain?” Another strategy is, for a difficult situation at work or at home, we can ask ourselves: What might it be like for someone who has a different set of beliefs and expectations to be in the same situation? How might they perceive it? These are simple strategies to loosen the grip that the narative that we carry may have and to help us appreciate that we are not our thoughts. On the Healthy Minds Program app, an instructor explained that he shifted from using meditation to try to destroy his anxiety to learning to accept and befriend his inner demons. How can we learn to befriend ourselves? This is part of our DNA in terms of how we introduce these practices. Weve found, through the science weve done, that it is much more effective not to fight with your mind. There are some people who think: I’m going to meditate and get relaxed. I’m going to try to stop my distracting thoughts. It further increases their stress and agitation. Instead of having that approach, its much simpler to acknowledge that were human. We do have these distracting, sometimes upsetting, thoughts. So, rather than pushing them away, simply acknowledging them. We often use the analogy of the weather and the sky. You can have foreboding clouds. They will eventually go away. It doesn’t change the nature of the sky. The same is true with our thoughts and emotions. From the perspective that we are suggesting, our minds are pure in the same way that the sky is. But, there are all these clouds that come in. If we are able to look at them, as clouds in this waythey arise, change, and go away eventuallyit helps us to loosen the grip that they have. Another analogy is that instead of being in this turbulent river, we can step onto the shore, and watch the river go by; And, even appreciate its beauty, even if it’s turbulent. In The Dalai Lamas Guide to Happiness, Roshi Joan Halifax said that self-criticism only strengthens the self-hatred and self directed aggression. The thing that is going to transform it is not meanness, its love. What does self-compassion look like in action? Self-compassion is a way to think about love. Its accepting who we are with all of our imperfections, not pushing against it. To give a personal example, I’ve been meditating daily for 50 years. There are times when my morning practice will still be filled with distraction. I don’t get up from my meditation having a lot of self criticism about it. One of my teachers has this line that I love: The road to Lhasa goes up and down. What he meant is: The bad meditations are just as good as the good meditations. There are times when we can learn a lot from the distracting periods. Making friends with our mind or our anxiety is the most effective strategy in transforming them. Expectations are a common source of distress. How can we practice acceptance in situations where we hoped for a different outcome? Expectation is another kind of thought. We’ve done work in the laboratory where we’ve shown that we can create an expectation that a person will get a painful stimulus. In people that haven’t trained their mind, just the expectation that they’re about to get zapped with painful heat is enough to activate the pain circuits in the brain, even though there’s no painful stimulus. Theyve just heard a tone, which denotes that they’re going to get this painful stimulus. It turns out, in people who’ve done certain kinds of meditation practices, when we give them this expectation cue, nothing happens in the pain circuits in the brain. We can learn to let go of these expectations. Certain expectations are important for navigating everyday life. But, when we have an expectation, and it doesn’t come to fruition, we are less activated by the failure of that expectation to come to reality. Its a learnable skill. Stress is toxic because it causes your brain to tell your body to prepare for immediate action. How can we decrease the propensity of activating our fight or flight response? This is a huge and important issue. To give context, we have this chunk of real estate in the front of our brain called the prefrontal cortex. It affords us the opportunity to do something that other species can’t do very much, which is what we call mental time travel. We can anticipate the future and reflect on the past; That confers a lot of advantage to humans. But, it also gets us into trouble, because we can imagine future threats. Theyre simply imagined, but they hijack the machinery of our threat response and activate our biological systems as if they were a real threat. But, all that’s happened is we’ve had a thought or an emotion. The invitation, if you will, is: How can we harness the capacity of the prefrontal cortex and use it to our advantage? We can learn to harness this gift and control our mind in a way that would decrease the likelihood of us triggering these threat responses in contexts where theyre not necessary. We may feel calm after coming out of meditation. Still, it requires practice to maintain that calmness throughout the day. Youve shared that your next frontier of work is around microdosing. What are a few practices we can try? Weve talked about the microdosing of well-being. Research shows that one of the easiest ways to do this is if we pair these micro-practices or micro-supports around activities that we do every day. One of the things that most humans do every day is eat. If we spend even 30 seconds before we eat intentionally reflecting on all of the people that it took for us to have a meal and feeling the appreciation in our mind and heart, that’s an example of a micro-practice. You could do this a few times a day. It takes virtually no extra time. Some of us travel a fair amount. Walking through airports, for me, has transformed from something that many people consider stressful to this wonderful opportunity where you can look at people and just in your mind, you can wish people: May you be happy. That makes you happy, too. When you think about this, even for people who are living in objectively challenging circumstances, there are always going to be opportunities for this kind of microdosing. We just need to find what resonates with us and makes sense for our lives. Then, stick to it and really try to do it on a daily basis. Your team shares an invitation to improve our relationships: When we change the stories that we tell about people, our relationships with those people change. How do the stories we tell about others influence the quality of our relationships? What are a few ways we can shift them? This is part of our natural tendency to deploy narratives in how we operate, about ourselves as well as other people. I find myself having this issue all the time. There are often people who I’m scheduled to meet and I construct this image in my mind of who they are. We all do that. Most of us have had the experience, at least occasionally, of being surprised when we meet a person that we learn things about them that are inconsistent with the story that we’ve told about who they might be. It’s not that we should try to suppress the narrative, because that’s not going to work. But, having an appreciation that this is a story that we’re telling, it may not be accurate. There may be other stories that are more veridical. We use dreams as an important analogy. All of us dream every night. If we remember our dreams, we know that we have emotions in response to the dream events. But, we recognize that it’s a dream. Its all constructed in our mind. It turns out that the way that we see the world is no different than the way that the mind processes dreams; Neuroscience teaches us that. We don’t actually see the world. When we interact with the world, what we’re seeing is our construction of the world. When we’e interacting with another person, we’re interacting with our construction of the other person. It’s not to say that there’s not someone there. But, we’re responding not to the physical elements that are there, but to our conceptual construction that weve made of who they are. When we recognize that, it helps to diffuse the grip that these narratives have and allows for much more spaciousness. You often express that there is an important distinction between happiness and wellbeing. Why is that distinction essential? If we lose a loved one, we’re sad; The sadness is real and healthy. It would be weird and kind of pathological to be happy in response to loss. Its not about being happy all the time. Yet, if we have a loss and we’re sad, if we have high levels of well-being, we have this sense that everything is going to be fundamentally okay. There’s a kind of fundamental okay-ness. Thats what well-being is about. Its not about being happy. It’s about knowing that it’s okay. For example, I’ve seen the Dalai Lama with this huge range of emotion. After someone described Tibetans in a Chinese prison being tortured, he was visibly crying. But, the next moment, he noticed something funny and started laughing. Theres this emotional fluidity. If a tragedy happens and you are sad, it’s having the ability to bounce back. You don’t stay stuck in the sadness for long periods of time. You have an appropriate response. But, at some point, it is no longer appropriate and you can have other emotions. Fluidity is one of the key markers of a person who is flourishing. What is your hope for the world today? The world is experiencing the devastating consequences of the failure to cultivate well-being; Many of the difficulties we’re having in the worldincluding the devastating consequences of polarization and greedall of these problems are, at least in part, stemming from the same fundamental cause. My aspiration for the world today is that we can embrace the possibility that well-being can be learned, and that its not difficult. I feel like my role on the planet is to harness my platform as a scientist to help promote this idea and provide tools that can enable a large swath of the population to get engaged in this way. I think the very future of humanity depends on it.
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E-Commerce
Spotify just opened up a new stream of revenue for podcasters. That is, if theyre uploading video. What was once an audio-first medium, podcasting is now increasingly filmed and produced. That started on YouTube, which is now racking up one billion podcast viewers a month. While Spotify has hosted podcasts for a decade now, the company is suddenly racing to stay competitive, rolling out new features and monetization tools. That includes their Partner Program, which allows podcasters to earn money directly from the streams of premium subscribers, so long as theyre using a video aspect. We decided to focus on video because that’s where we see a lot of audiences and creators trending, says Jordan Newman, Spotifys senior director of content partnerships. We felt like it was something that we really wanted to encourage and incentivize our platform. To find out how podcasters feel about the apps video push, Fast Company spoke with creators on both sides of the aislethose who have embraced video, and those who have stayed audio-only. The cost-benefit analysis of video podcasting For many podcasters, the shift to video is a financial and logistical leap. Producing a high-quality video podcast requires more than just a microphoneit demands cameras, lighting, editing software, and often a dedicated set. That investment pays off for some, but for others, it adds a new layer of complexity to an already time-consuming medium. Chris Williamson knows this trade-off well. As the host of Modern Wisdom, one of Spotifys most popular self-improvement podcasts, hes built a reputation not just for insightful conversations with guests like Andrew Huberman and Steven Bartlett but also for stunning visual production. Yet Modern Wisdom wasnt always a cinematic experience. In its early days, the show was audio-only, with a basic equalizer graphic on YouTube. Fifty episodes in, Williamson started recording his Skype interviews. A hundred episodes later, he upgraded to professional-quality video. Now, he rents what he estimates is a quarter of a million dollars-worth of camera equipment for each shoot. So far, its paid off handsomely. Thanks to his polished, production-heavy style, advertisers flock to Modern Wisdom, and Spotifys expansion into video has further boosted his revenue. Once his full back catalog is uploaded, Williamson expects to earn as muchif not morefrom Spotify as he does from YouTube. I think we’ve kind of gained a reputation in the world of cinematography and production and making a very beautiful podcast, and that makes me feel good, Williamson says. It’s not just something that is legitimate in terms of its content, but also in terms of its delivery and its packaging. While most podcasters dont operate on Williamsons scale, video remains for all a big investment. Among the seven podcasters interviewed for this piece, nearly all cited increased costsboth financial and labor-relatedas a major consideration. For independent creators, these costs fall directly on their shoulders. For those backed by major podcast networks, the burden is often shared. Diallo Riddle and Blake LUXXURY Robin, co-hosts of the music podcast One Song, were caught off guard when their network, Hartbeat, insisted on a video format. (Riddle jokes that, if he had known, he would have demanded they pay for hair and makeup.) But they have come to see the move as a fortuitous one. By now, recording both has become the default, Robin says. Part of what podcasting is as a medium, Ive only learned as weve done it, is that parasocial relationship. Getting to know the people, I think it helps when you see them. The audio/video balancing act The biggest challenge? Making a show work seamlessly for both audiences. Some podcasts are visually stunning but incoherent in audio form; others treat video as an afterthought. The result is a growing divide in audience experiences. The hosts of Petty Crimes, which is also produced by Hartbeat, have been thinking about this drop-off in experience. Griff Stark-Ennis films in Los Angeles, where hes surrounded by cameras, making it easy to play into the visual aspect and sometimes forget the audio. Ceara Jane OSullivan, who records simultaneously in New York, positions herself as a check on that impulse. When we are reviewing episodes back, I always listen to the transcript audio-only, OSullivan says. You have to present your audio episode and present your video episode as if that is the assumed and correct audience. You never want anyone to feel like they’re being shorted or ignored in either medium. No matter the issuesscaling costs, getting camera-ready, or remembering the audio listenerall of these podcasters were happy with their video ventures. Theyve all seen the audience widening that video has allowed them, something that Spotifys Newman emphasized. Shows with video are growing faster than audio shows right now, he says. What becomes of the audio-only podcasters? Podcasting started as an audio-only mediumand many creators are sticking to that. In 2023, 32% of podcasters said they had no plans to record video, per the IndiePod Census. These creators are barred from that premium revenue stream on Spotify, though they still can earn money from ads. But video isnt the be all end all; after all, only 30% of audiences are actively watching their podcasts, per Cumulus Media. And some podcasters have other priorities. Video adds a layer of technical complication, says Perry Romanowski, co-host of The Beauty Brains. When I want to do a show, my partner and I hop on a zoom call and we record locally on both of our machines. Neither of us has to take showers and get gussied up. It’s just a lot easier. Others film some video, but dont upload it to Spotify. Gibson Johns films the interviews for his show Gabbing With Gib and uploads them to YouTube. But, to fashion these interviews into a podcast form, he records audio-only introductions and uploads the audio alone to Spotify. Im solid for now, he says. As far as I’m aware, there’s not a way on Spotify to upload a portion of your episode as a video. Still, Johns is happy with Spotifys creator experience; he earns the bulk of his money through their advertising. While Romanowski earns his money through Patreon, hes content with Spotify, too. Neither havent felt the encroachment of video hurting their business. Podcasters now are at an inflection point. They must choose: To film or not to film. That choice isnt just about preferenceits about costs, and adapting to an industry radically reformed by video.
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E-Commerce
When I was 35, a ruptured brain aneurysm nearly killed me. My husband and I had just moved to a new city, bought our first house, adopted a dog, and I had recently started my own business. Life was running at 100 miles an hour and I thought this is what hustling was supposed to feel like. Living my best life, right? Until I collapsed, unconscious, on my bathroom floor. I miraculously survived. Recovery wasn’t always easy due to my new cognitive deficits. However, the experience taught me about the power of empathy to heal and how clarity and decisive action especially when the stakes are high can be the most compassionate things someone can do to alleviate stress, confusion, and anxiety. From staff supporting my husband in those crucial first hours to my care team treating me as a personcalling me by name and letting me choose my meals for six weeksI felt seen, heard, and valued. Their kindness eased my stress and made a difficult time less isolating. According to a 2024 Businessolver State of Workplace Empathy Study, 37% of CEOs still believe empathy has no place in the workplace. This same study shows a marked increase in perceptions of workplaces being toxic. Clearly, we have a workplace conundrum that needs addressing. Engagement is down and mental health issues are up. Experts now cite loneliness as a health epidemic. It begs the question: Should empathy ever be put aside at work, or should we be doubling down on it? When we define empathy too narrowly, we overlook its power to build resilient, high-performing teams and boost engagement, collaboration, and innovation. Empathy means seeing, understanding, and, when appropriate, feeling anothers perspectivethen using that insight to act with compassion. Its a way to gather information, understand context, and take the next right step together. With this definition, it is safe to say that unless you are being physically or psychologically hurt, there are almost no circumstances where we should be putting empathy aside at work. Empathy at work includes practicing clarity, transparency, and decisiveness. Going back to my story Above all, I credit my surgeon and care team for practicing the often overlooked aspects of empathy: decisiveness, transparency, and clarity. Can you imagine if my surgeon stalled on a decision to give my family a chance to research, analyze, or familiarize themselves with what was going on? He shared the information, clearly explained the risks and upsides, and patiently answered their questions, but he made a firm decision to move forward because he kept his eye on the ultimate goal: Saving my life. This kind of decisive action was exactly what my disoriented and overwhelmed husband needed at that moment. It was truly empathetic. Harvard Business School professor highlights the importance of decisive action when he writes, A comprehensive study of compassion in the Clinical Psychology Review defines it as recognizing suffering, understanding it, and feeling empathy for the suffererbut also tolerating the uncomfortable feelings they and the suffering person are experiencing, and, crucially, acting to alleviate the suffering. Here are some ways that empathetic leaders can show up with greater decisiveness. Revisit your goal and purpose — often Leaders can often get caught up in the drama surrounding important decisions and lose sight of the goal. Create a way to clearly kick yourself in the pants as you make a decision: make your goal physically visible using a sticky note or by including it at the top of every discussion agenda. Read the mission out loud when you kick off meetings to reorient everyone to true north. Here are some tactics to try: Bake in goal-review processes: You can add goal statements to tracking paperwork, insist on reviewing the purpose at every major goalpost, or ask stakeholders to consider the overall goal any time they request a change or addition. Make goal-centricity a group endeavor: Ask your team members or colleagues to be accountability partners in remaining goal-focused. They can remind you, Which option aligns with the larger purpose? whenever they see you waffling. Practice transparency Theres no need to make all decisions in a secretive way and unveil them only when they are fully baked. Learn to be clearer quicker, and if possible, talk openly about the choices youre making and have made. Dont be afraid to say, I dont know, but lets find out together. A study published in the Journal of Communication Management reveals how transparent communication significantly influences employees’ trust in their organizations. Here are some tactics to try: Share your failures: Being human with your teams means theyll feel comfortable doing the same, which builds empathy in both directions. It also will slowly erode any anxiety you have about making bad or wrong decisions. Process with trusted colleagues: By allowing yourself to process with team members or other leaders verbally, you can reveal your thought processes and limiting factors. Solicit and synthesize input Practice soliciting input from others, but be clear that once a decision is made, naysayers will be asked to disagree but commit. At a certain point, weve all got to move forward together and still be committed to the mission. Focus on impact: While general feedback is important, if you want to be decisive by implementing input quickly, you need specifics. You can practice asking the feedback-giver to recommend one thing you could do that would make a difference to them Express enthusiasm for feedback: Ideally, soliciting input should be constant, not sporadic. Verbally reward and encourage feedback regularly. Start small: You can try a low-risk experiment, like asking everyone to vote for the location of the next off-site, department lunch. Leverage all that input to quickly make a call yourself, and practice communicating your decision back. Set a deadline In an article for Fast Company, psychotherapist Amy Morin recommends getting in the habit of setting deadlines for decisions that trip you up. If its a small decisionsay, picking a spot for a business lunchgive yourself a few hours. If its weightiera big investment or strategic pivotthink more in terms of days or weeks. Here are some tactics to try: Leverage tech: It may sound simple, but just putting a reminder in your phone or calendar can help you stay on track to make decisions in a timely manner. Schedule a decision review block each day: Consider setting aside thirty minutes or so each day to review and mull upcoming choices. This is also a good forcing mechanism for leaders who are overwhelmed by choices. Empathy isn’t just about listening and understandingit’s about acting decisively, transparently, and with clarity when it matters most so no ne is left anxious and scared in the dark. Leaders who embrace these qualities foster trust, reduce anxiety, and inspire collaboration, even during challenging times.
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E-Commerce
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