Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to Thriving
Richard J. Davidson, PhD, and Cortland Dahl, PhD
This is a book that I sought out after listening to an inspiring episode of 10% Happier with the book’s authors, Richard Davidson, and Cortland Dahl. Davidson and Dahl have written this book as a follow up, or accompaniment, to a free app they created called Healthy Minds. The Healthy Minds app walks users through the 4 skills of flourishing, and this blog post will distill the main points accompanied by a couple of activities to engage each skill.
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What is Flourishing?
Richard Davidson and Cortland Dahl define flourishing as “the ability to see the forest from the trees and to remain buoyant, uplifted, and moving forward even during times of turbulence”. They see flourishing as a skill that can be developed through engaging one’s awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. Flourishing is not the same as being happy, flourishing is being steady and remaining in a state of relative calm despite the circumstances.
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The 4 Skills: Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose
“Flourishing comes about when:
We are fully present and aware
We experience positive connections with the people in our lives and with the natural environment in which we reside
We have insight into our thoughts and emotions, and
We feel that our lives have meaning and purpose.
And all of this can happen amid difficulty and stress”
~~ Skill #1 ~~
Awareness is recognizing what is happening around us, and awareness in the context of flourishing is the ability to be in touch with our experience of awareness. If you are thinking “what the heck does that mean?” I will do my best to explain…
Awareness is a heightened attentiveness to the present moment. This attentiveness goes beyond simple recognition of what is happening, and it integrates our 5 senses to the present. Dahl and Richardson encourage readers to take responsibility for where our awareness goes, and to practice directing and redirecting our attention to where we want it to be. When we take an active role in choosing where our awareness goes, we can have influence over how we experience our lives. Awareness is effortful and intentional, and can be developed like any other skill.
Practices to help develop the skill of awareness:
A Taste of Awareness: take a moment to get comfortable wherever you are, and bring awareness to your breath.
Sight: look around your environment to notice the small details that you might normally look past - look at the unique parts of patterns, look for individual fibres in cloth, look for the forgotten dusty corners.
Feel: notice what you physically feel - you may feel your breath coming in and out of your nostrils, you may notice your clothes on your skin, or the temperature in the environment.
Hear: bring awareness to your sense of sound - you may listen for cars, a pet moving around, or your digestive system gurgling, and if you are in silence, simply notice what silence sounds like.
Smell: take a long inhale through your nose and bring awareness to your sense of smell. If you don’t smell anything in the air, notice what it is to be in an absence of smell, or bring your skin or clothes up to your nose to try to recognize smell in those areas.
Taste: bring attention to your tongue and anything you may sense as taste, you may only be able to taste your saliva, and in that case - what does your saliva taste like in this moment?
Listening With Mindful Awareness: set an intention to give full awareness in an interaction with someone.
Decide on an amount of time that you will practice being in full awareness with someone.
Treat your awareness/attention as a gift that you are giving to the other person.
You will still respond and talk as you normally would in this interaction, however, you will be adding on another layer of noticing when your attention starts to drift away or gets caught up in preparing a response or rehearsing a story.
Notice how engaging in the skill of awareness in interactions with others will begin to affect your relationships.
~~ Skill #2 ~~
Connection is “an inner sense of care and kinship that leads to supportive interactions and caring relationships with others.” Dahl and Richardson note how connection is a felt experience that we can cultivate and practice by turning our skill of awareness toward appreciation, kindness, and compassion. By directing awareness toward appreciation, kindness, and compassion in both major and mundane moments we can develop the skill of connection.
Dahl and Richardson’s explain that connection is cultivated from an internal state despite what is happening in the external environment. Even if we are alone we can think about what we appreciate about another person and the feeling of connection will naturally bubble up.
When we begin to work the skill of connection, we may notice natural openings for connecting with others. This may present as eye-contact and a smile to someone across the bus aisle, holding the door open for the next person, or a genuine “how are you?” to your barista. When we start taking action on these opportunities for connection we will feel differently in our day-to-day… but don’t just take my word for it, try it out and see what happens!
Practices to help develop the skill of connection:
A Taste of Connection: Take some deep breaths and get comfortably seated as you will be still for the next few minutes.
Once you feel relatively grounded, think of someone that has been supportive in your life. How has their presence enriched your life? What do you appreciate the most about this person?
Now, think of the ways that you have helped or supported this same person. How did you express your appreciation, kindness, or compassion for them? How have you enriched this person’s life?
The last step is to think about how you can cultivate greater connection moving forward. What is something small or large that you can intentionally do to develop a deeper sense of connection as you move through your days and weeks?
Warm Memories: Next time you have a meal or a meetup with a friend (or two or three) share some of your warmest memories of connection with them. These memories may even be memories that the people you are with were part of. Ask the others what some of their warmest memories are and, together, explore what about those memories makes them so meaningful to you, and how that meaning still affects you today.
~~ Skill #3 ~~
Insight is “the capacity to see how our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs shape the way we see the world.” When we strengthen the skill of insight, it invites us to take a different perspective and to see the situation or the emotion for what it truly is. Insight is something that happens automatically for us, and most of the time, these moments of insight are accurate. For example, when we predict that water will come from the faucet when we turn on the tap, that is a moment of insight.
Insight is directly linked to our inner narrative through how we make meaning and assumptions from our experiences, emotions, and environments. And as most of us know, meaning making can be both a gift, and a curse! Insight can either be used as a way of seeing our situation with a kind clear lens, or it can be used to see our world through a cynical grey cloud. We strengthen the skill of insight by investigating our thoughts through asking what emotions the thought evokes, what associations are coming up, and noticing what predictions we automatically make. When we strengthen the skill of insight, we can see our situations for what they truly are.
Practices to help develop the skill of insight:
A Taste of Insight: Take some deep breaths and find a comfortable position to settle into.
Once you feel grounded enough, set an intention for this practice of insight to have a positive impact on your world, and the world around you.
Recall a light to medium stressful situation from your current life that you believe could use a new perspective.
While holding this stressful situation in your mind, investigate, without judgement, what beliefs, assumptions, or expectations you have about the situation.
Next up, take a moment to reflect on what a wise friend or mentor might say about the situation, and what they might see that you aren’t seeing.
Take note of any insights that came from this practice.
What Leads to Growth and Insight: Gather a pen and paper (not a phone or computer) and find a place where you can write in peace for about 10 - 15 minutes.
Take a few moments to reflect on some of the periods of growth in your life.
What was going on in your life that supported your growth at that time? What thoughts, perspectives, or internal dialogue helped this period of growth?
How can you apply some of these supports, external or internal, into your current life? What could be supportive of your growth today?
~~ Skill#4 ~~
The final skill of flourishing is Purpose. Purpose is a “clarity about our deeper aspirations and guiding principles and the ability to apply them in daily life.” Dahl and Richardson explain that purpose does not need to be anything heavy and heady, rather purpose can be light and playful and found in our everyday routines. Purpose is a call to meaning in our actions, for example, when I am doing the dishes with purpose I am able to recognize that this is an act of care for my home and my family. When we can find purpose in everyday life, we can infuse meaning into seemingly menial tasks which can have incredible protective factors on both our mental and emotional health.
Practices to help develop the skill of purpose:
Reframe a Current Challenge: Get your pen and paper, and find a comfortable place where you can be at peace for about 15 minutes.
Take some time to get grounded with your body and your breath.
Bring to mind a difficult situation you are dealing with and write down any thoughts, feelings, memories, or expectations that come up with it.
Once you have written all of the experiences that come up with this difficult situation, shift your focus to how you might handle this same situation when you are at your very best. How would you, at your very best, act in this difficult situation? How might you see this difficult situation?
Let’s go a little deeper and consider what is guiding you when you are at your very best? Is there a principle, ethic, or belief that is guiding you? Write it out.
Think into the future on how you might handle this difficult situation moving forward. Is there anywhere that you can infuse a bit more purpose to your approach?
100th Birthday Party: For this exercise you will need a loved one who is open to having a reflective conversation.
Take some time to imagine what your 100th birthday party might be like.
Consider what you might want people to say about you as they look back and reflect on the impact you have had on their lives.
How does this clarify some of your guiding principles for how you would like to be living your life?
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If these flourishing practices all seem wonderful, but you are overwhelmed with considering how to create a habit of them, please refer to my other blog post: Atomic Habits by James Clear.
***this blog post was written by me and my fallible human brain, please forgive any typos or awkward grammar!
