John R. Miles

And I wanted to follow that up with, you've worked with parents, leaders, high achievers, many who feel constantly drained.

What do you think is common as you look at all the people you work with in the way that they misuse their energy?

Is there one common thing?

Is it multiple common things?

I think what you were just talking about is a great segue to where I wanted to go next, which is

doing a little bit of a deep dive on understanding what fuels you versus what fools you.

And you outlined six universal yearnings, and you were just talking about a few of these, connection, purpose, competence, meaning, orientation, and feeling deeply.

Out of those, which one do you think is missing the most for so many of us today?

I couldn't agree with you more.

That's why I've been doing so much work over the past years.

on the mattering and the belonging deficit that I think is so rampant today in society.

So thank you for sharing that.

And I also think it's a good opportunity to bring up Rick Hansen again, because I know one of the things that he is really working on similar to the circle that you described is compassion circles.

And just trying to get people to sit around, especially in the polarizing world that we live in, and to see how compassion is such a strength for us to use and not to avoid.

So just to give them another plug.

What you were just describing really brings me back to Charles Duhigg's most recent work and his book, Super Communicators, but even more so to Alison Woodbrook's research and her latest book.

And she describes it as when we're talking to someone, what we're really doing is looking at a mirror of ourselves and what we're

Going back to your whole thing on connection, so many of us aren't connecting and investing in the ways that we used to with others.

And when we don't do that, we start losing that connection that we see with other people because we get in such superficial types of conversations instead of really the deep listening that I think drove connection for millennia that seems to be disappearing more and more from our lives.

Just like you said, when you see yourself in that mirror, you see all those different stages in another person that yourself feel as well.