Our research told us that the path to inner flourishing demands both steady practice and a comprehensive approach to training the mind, one focused on a range of different qualities, from mindful awareness to deep insight into the workings of the human mind. We immediately set out to map a path to flourishing that would be doable for a typical person in the modern world.
We were filled with questions: What do the world’s wisdom traditions tell us are the most important dimensions of flourishing? What does modern science have to say about these dimensions? Can these qualities be cultivated? If so, how? These questions guided us through long discussions and deep explorations of both meditative and scientific understandings of flourishing and how it can be cultivated.
Right away, we noticed many differences in the world’s wisdom traditions, but four dimensions of flourishing also emerged: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. We found numerous references to these four in the literature of diverse contemplative traditions, and we became even more excited once we connected the dots to modern science, including our own research. Strong empirical evidence across various disciplines—from cognitive and affective neuroscience to clinical psychology, well-being research, and positive psychology—suggested that awareness, connection, insight, and purpose are vital components of human flourishing. The world’s meditative traditions added the unique perspective that these four qualities are not simply dimensions of flourishing but also skills we can learn and practice.
Awareness: The Skill of Being Present
The first skill of flourishing is awareness.
“When you train your mind,” one of the Buddhist monks we studied explained, “the first thing you do is build awareness and train your attention. If your mind is distracted all the time, forget about cultivating connection and insight. It’s impossible. You have to start with awareness. It’s the foundation for everything.”
As we explored the topic of awareness more deeply, we discovered detailed pathways to train attention and strengthen awareness. Some forms of training focus on deep states of concentration. Others are geared toward effortless states of being, like the open awareness practice that the Tibetan teacher Mingyur Rinpoche told us about. And while there are traditional meditations to cultivate awareness, meditation is not the only way to practice this skill. There are also movement practices like mindful walking, tai chi, and yoga that can help people ground their attention in the present moment. There are even traditional contemplative practices that use household chores and other daily activities to practice the skill of awareness. Awareness can be trained.
Connection: The Art of Healthy Relationships
The second skill of flourishing is connection. Scientific research on well-being has long focused on positive social interactions and strong relationships as a core element of psychological well-being. Our research with meditators reinforced this understanding and also showed us that feelings of connection can be strengthened by cultivating inner qualities like appreciation, kindness, and compassion, and then gradually extending these qualities to more and more people and even other living creatures. One of our advanced meditators said, “Our practices help us to nurture a strong sense of connection with our friends and loved ones. We build on this by gradually extending our compassion to include many people and many other living creatures. Our goal is to expand our circle of connection until no one is left out.”
Learning to widen our circle to feel a strong sense of connection with people we might usually not care for is possible, but it doesn’t happen automatically. It takes training. Our genetic wiring has primed us to form groups and inner circles and to exclude others. For this reason, you have to nurture feelings of appreciation, kindness, and compassion for the people close to you and then gradually extend those feelings to others, even those with whom you might struggle. Eventually, everyone is included, and your sense of connection to the people you love and care for becomes even stronger.
As we reviewed research literature on positive social connections and surveyed a variety of wisdom traditions, we found many practices that strengthen our sense of connectedness. We started to see that although we don’t usually think of things like kindness and compassion as skills, they are. We can practice gratitude and consciously cultivate appreciation.
In the eighth century, the Buddhist sage Shantideva wrote: “Be a lamp for those who seek light, a bed for those who seek rest, and a servant for all those in need.”
Five centuries later, the poet Rumi, one of the most cherished masters of Islam’s Sufi tradition, expressed a similar sentiment: “Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
Rumi describes the path to flourishing as a process of deepening our love for ourselves, others, and the divine. Buddhism contains detailed instructions on generating caring emotions like love and compassion and then extending them until no living creature is left out. In the modern world, you’ll find practices like gratitude journaling in positive psychology and loving-kindness meditations in secular meditation training. Our research backs this up: connection is the second cornerstone of human flourishing.
Insight: Exploring the Nature of the Self
The third skill of flourishing is insight. Insight helps us see things clearly, from our relationships and our work to our reactions and emotions. It helps us see the forest from the trees and recognize when we’re getting stuck in dysfunctional ways of thinking or acting. It gives us a fresh perspective so we can let go of beliefs that aren’t serving us anymore and stay open to new possibilities. Insight is one of the most important keys to learning and growth.
We can develop insight through self-inquiry and self-exploration. For example, you might explore your reactions and emotional patterns with curiosity, or challenge yourself to see beyond your assumptions and expectations. At more advanced stages, you might examine your very sense of self and come to see that who and what you are is infinitely richer and more complex than you might otherwise believe.
Insight into your own mind and how it works naturally leads to wisdom. What it means to be wise varies across traditions, as do the paths to cultivating insight, but there is broad agreement that inquiring into the nature of the mind and gaining insight into the nature of reality is deeply transformative. In a classic of meditative literature, The Way of a Pilgrim, a book from the Russian Orthodox Christian tradition, the anonymous author wrote: “The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed, we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles.”
This passage mirrors countless teachings from different meditative and spiritual traditions on the nature of the self and its relationship to suffering. Some traditions hold that our culture, upbringing, and personal histories can leave us with a distorted sense of self. The rigid beliefs we hold about ourselves create unhealthy emotional habits and thought patterns, which, in turn, lead to chronic stress and more intense forms of suffering. Self-inquiry, contemplation, and reflection can produce insight into these unhealthy patterns, replacing distorted beliefs and interpretations with wisdom and self-discovery.
Purpose: Finding Your True North
The fourth and final skill of flourishing is purpose. When we looked closely at the advanced meditators in our lab, all of whom exhibited high levels of flourishing, they rarely spoke about the quality of their attention or even the great insights they’d developed through their practice. Instead, they spoke about their personal journeys as part of something much larger than their personal fulfillment. In most cases, their own well-being seemed to be an afterthought. They were focused on a much larger vision: the awakening of all beings.
The importance of having a guiding sense of purpose in life is nothing new. There are entire websites dedicated to inspiring quotes, like the following one from Helen Keller: “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
Not everyone agrees on what constitutes a worthy purpose, but there is broad consensus that focusing on a goal or aspiration beyond personal happiness is central to a rich and fulfilling life. When we spoke to people who seemed to have a clear sense of purpose in life, it became clear that purpose is a skill. They had trained themselves to feel a sense of direction in life. Take this piece of advice from His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “Every day, think as you wake up: Today I am fortunate to be alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.”
This is more than an empty platitude. The Dalai Lama is describing a practice. He spends hours every single day cultivating this altruistic mindset, and for those of us who don’t have hours to spare, there are things that even the busiest person can do to have more purpose and meaning in their lives.
Answering the questions in the Healthy Minds Index might get you thinking about your life a little differently. If nothing else, they’ll give you a sense of how we think about the four skills and try to measure them. To measure your current levels of the four skills, answer and score the following questions from the index.
Awareness
Rating options
1 = None of the time
2 = A little of the time
3 = Some of the time
4 = A lot of the time
5 = All of the time
___ 1. When I want to focus, it’s easy for me.
___ 2. In general, I’m able to focus when I’m reading.
___ 3. I can notice my thoughts as soon as I have them.
___ 4. When some of my thoughts lead to other thoughts, I realize it while it is happening.
Connection
Rating options questions 1–3
1 = None of the time
2 = A little of the time
3 = Some of the time
4 = A lot of the time
5 = All of the time
___ 1. I like all of the people that I see from day to day.
___ 2. I actively take time to appreciate things about the people I see from day to day.
___ 3. I believe that most people are doing the best they can.
Rating options questions 4–6
1 = Not at all
2 = A little bit
3 = Somewhat
4 = A lot
5 = To the highest degree
___ 4. I want all people to be happy, including people I don’t like.
___ 5. I care about the problems of people all over the world.
___ 6. When I make decisions involving other people, I consider their best interests.
Insight
Rating options
1 = None of the time
2 = A little of the time
3 = Some of the time
4 = Most of the time
5 = All of the time
___ 1. When I am interacting with someone, I reflect on how my feelings are causing me to treat them a certain way.
___ 2. When I have a thought, I reflect on whether that thought is making me feel better or worse.
___ 3. I can change how I feel about a situation by changing my thoughts about that situation.
Purpose
Rating options
1 = Not at all
2 = A little bit
3 = Somewhat
4 = A lot
5 = To the highest degree
___ 1. I have general life goals that make my daily activities worth doing
___ 2. I know what’s really important in my life.
___ 3. I have a life purpose that guides my day-to-day choices.
___ 4. I know what kind of life I want to lead.
Transforming Everything into Practice
Getting some data on the four dimensions of flourishing is all well and good, but it won’t do us much good if we never put the skills into practice. Imagine having a grand theory on tying your shoelaces or a perfect scientific framework for riding a bike—they would be pointless without practice.
The power of understanding the four skills and what the data say about your current state is that it can help you see where the real opportunities are, the way a good physical shows you where some exercise or a change in diet might do the most good. At some point, we need to put down the book and hop on the treadmill. We need to practice.
The first question most people ask after getting their scores on the Healthy Minds Index is “How can I improve?” The simple answer is that there are many ways to learn and practice these skills. If you take the time to survey the world’s wisdom traditions, you’ll find an abundance of methods and techniques, from solitary meditation practices to interpersonal dialogue and discussion. There are movement-based practices like yoga and tai chi and artistic traditions like calligraphy. Humans have invented seemingly endless forms of practice over the centuries.
Pretty much anything we do in life can be used as a practice to cultivate inner flourishing. In mapping the terrain of practice, we learned how Zen monks use sweeping and cleaning in the monastery to train attention and cultivate mindfulness and how some of the world’s most well-known athletes include similar practices in their training. What transforms mundane activities into practices for flourishing isn’t the activities themselves but rather the inner process that accompanies them. Simply sweeping a monastery won’t make you happy or content, but if you go about your work with the motivation to be of benefit to others and a clear intention to be present and aware as you sweep, it has the potential to be deeply transformative and beneficial. The same is true of everything we do in life. With the right attitude, anything can be transformed into practice.
Hopefully, this clarifies what practice is all about. We often hear things like “Running is my meditation,” or “Being in nature is my practice.” Are these activities really flourishing practices? Well. . . maybe. There’s no question that both physical exercise and being in nature support our ability to flourish, but are they practices in the same way as journaling and meditation?
Again, the answer lies in the inner experience that accompanies the activity. Just having a calm, clear mind while you go for your morning jog doesn’t magically transform it into meditation. What will make it a practice that supports your ability to flourish is a clear intention to train your mind while you are working out. While you go through the repetitive motions of jogging, for example, you could consciously choose to strengthen awareness by focusing on the sensations in your body, or you could cultivate appreciation by noticing positive things about the people and world around you. You could even generate insight by exploring all the beliefs and expectations you have about your body or purpose by reflecting on your commitment to physical health as part of a larger sense of purpose in your life. Any one of these strategies or all of them in combination will transform your exercise routine into a meditation, but simply doing your usual routine without giving any thought to training your mind will not, no matter how calm and serene your mind may be when you do it.
Formal and Informal Practice
Distinguishing between formal and informal practice is also important. Formal practice does not necessarily mean sitting still in a quiet space. Rather, formal practice occurs when you set aside time with the specific intention to practice. This could be a twenty-minute meditation right after you wake up, but it could also be a period when you sit down to journal or do yoga after work. It could even be some mindful housework. As long as you have a clear intention to spend a period of time doing some activity as part of your practice, it becomes part of your formal practice. In other words, sitting perfectly still is not the only way to do a formal practice. There are many forms of active practice you can do while you are on the go and engaged in other activities.
Informal practice is what happens during the rest of your day, in all the moments when you spontaneously apply your training to daily life. If you’re working on the skill of connection, for example, you might do a short gratitude reflection before you go to bed each night—that’s the formal part—but the next day, when you run into a coworker and spontaneously make a point of letting them know you appreciate their support, that’s an informal expression of your practice.
Or, say you are working on insight. You might set aside five minutes over your lunch break to reflect on how you respond to stressful situations. That would be a formal practice. When you get home that night and find yourself in a stressful conversation with a family member, you might suddenly remember your reflection and spontaneously apply your insight in the moment to see your reaction more clearly—that would be a moment of informal practice.
The bottom line is that there are many ways to learn and practice the skills that help us flourish and even more ways to apply those skills in our lives. Meditation is perhaps the most well-known and widely studied way to practice, but it isn’t the only way. The best practice, we often say, is the one you actually do. Our research shows that it only takes a few minutes a day—about 4.5 minutes—to derive real benefits, from relieving stress and anxiety to improving attention, social connections, and overall well-being. You can train your mind in just minutes a day.
Excerpted from Born to Flourish: How New Science and Ancient Wisdom Reveal a Simple Path to Thriving by Richard J. Davidson and Cortland Dahl. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted by permission of Avid Reader Press, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
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