Passion Struck with John R. Miles
How to Thrive in 2026: The Power of Dunbar’s Number | EP 711 w/ John R. Miles
02 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Coming up next on Passion Struck, we are hunter-gatherers with smartphones. That's not just a clever line. It's the root of so much of the anxiety, burnout, division, and quiet exhaustion so many of us feel heading into 2026. We're small group animals, evolved for tribes of under 150 people, yet we're trying to live in a world of 8 billion. The result? a profound mismatch.
Your brain isn't failing you when you feel overwhelmed by the news, polarized by politics, or drained by an endless social feed. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do, treating anyone outside your natural circle as other, a potential threat, not your tribe. Today, in this first solo episode of 2026, we're not adding one more goal or habit to chase global connection.
We're doing the exact opposite. We're going to reset your world to the size your brain can actually handle so you can finally thrive in 2026. Stay with me because shrinking your world might be the key to growing your impact, your peace, and your meaning. Welcome to Passion Struck.
Chapter 2: How does Dunbar's number relate to our social connections?
I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming.
Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact... is choosing to live like you matter. Hey friends, welcome back to episode 711 of Passion Struck. I can't believe it's already January 2nd, 2026.
The tree is down, the inbox is already full, and the world is pushing those familiar new year, new you cliches. But over the past five weeks, we've taken a much different path. We call this the season of becoming, because before the resolutions come the revelations. We started by remembering how to choose ourselves again,
reclaiming our worth after seasons of dimming our own light we saw courage not as some rare trait but as a daily micro choice anyone can make with brent gleason and henner pryor showing us the discipline and the signs of discomfort we discovered how deeply we matter to the people who matter most
Chapter 3: Why is it important to focus on a tribe of 150?
That belonging isn't something we wait for, but something we co-create alongside Joshua Green, Rick Hansen, Holly Raisin, Boris McGuire, and Mark Murphy's wisdom on growing the moral circle, tribal adventure, and cultures of true connection. We tap back into play, improvisation, creativity, and flow, proof that reinvention doesn't have to feel heavy.
through Susan Grau and Ann Libera's beautiful reminders of intuition, healing, and spontaneity. And this week, David Nurse helped us step into the identity that's been waiting for us. While Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs reminded us that even inside constraints we never asked for, biology, timing, grief, and limits, we still get to author our own story.
For me, the real gift has been watching your messages come in. You told me about the conversations you finally had, the habits you quietly released, the risks you took, the moments you chose yourself again. Those revelations were lived together these past weeks. The quiet choices, the small acts of courage, the moments we reclaimed our own light, they've added up to something unmistakable.
You, a clearer, braver, more intentional you." And now, as we stand here on January 2nd, the question that's been pressing on me is this.
Chapter 4: What are the consequences of living in a world of 8 billion?
How do we protect that clearer, braver you in a world that's constantly pulling us outward into noise, comparison, and a crowd of 8 billion? That's exactly what we're going to explore today. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.
So here's the reset I've been living and the one that's going to define my 2026. I call it the Dunbar reset. In the 1990s, a British anthropologist named Robin Dunbar noticed something fascinating. He saw a clear pattern across primate species. The larger the neocortex, the part of the brain that handles complex social thinking, the larger the typical group size.
When he ran the numbers for humans, he landed on a number that's haunted me ever since. 150. That's it. 150 is your biological ceiling. The maximum number of stable, meaningful relationships your neocortex has. can truly manage at one time.
It's the limit for what Dunbar calls social grooming, the mental and emotional work of tracking who people are, what they need, who they're connected to, and whether they're trustworthy. Beyond 150, we physically can't keep up. The connections don't just get thinner, they break. They turn into acquaintances, contacts, avatars, not real kin. But here's where it gets dangerous.
Chapter 5: How can we identify and nurture our true tribe?
Paul Ehrlich, the legendary biologist, recently wrote a sobering reflection on what he calls humanity's group size problem. He says we are fundamentally small group animals, evolved for bands of 100 to 200, now trying to survive in a world of 8 billion. And when groups grow too large, something predictable and ugly happens. We stop seeing individuals with full stories, full lives.
We start seeing categories. Our brains take the shortcut. If someone isn't in our intimate circle, they become the other. That's exactly the biological seed of the stereotypes, the tribalism, the political vitriol, the religious divides. all the myth-making that turns complex humans into caricatures. We aren't being cruel on purpose. We're being maladaptive.
We're trying to use a brain built for gathering around a campfire to process a planet connected by satellites. Now, look at your life right now. It's January 2026. Every algorithm you touch is engineered to keep you engaged with groups of millions, maybe hundreds of millions.
It serves your outrage from strangers you'll never meet, comparisons with lives you'll never live, opinions from people who don't know your name. The digital world is pushing you toward a tribe of a billion. Your biology, though, is quietly screaming for a tribe of 150.
That friction, that group size mismatch is the silent engine driving so much of the burnout, the anxiety, the exhaustion so many of us feel. It's why you can scroll for an hour and feel more drained than if you'd run five miles. It's why the world's problems feel crushing even when your own life is objectively okay. It's what Henry David Thoreau meant by living in quiet desperation.
Because you're emotionally overleveraged. You're trying to carry the weight of a global village on a skeleton built for a small band of hunter-gatherers. I want you to hear this clearly. The anxiety you feel when you look at the world isn't a character flaw. It's not because you're not empathetic enough, or informed enough, or resilient enough. It's biology meeting technology.
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Chapter 6: What practical steps can we take to implement the Dunbar Reset?
Ehrlich warns that if we don't recognize this predicament, we're headed towards a ghastly future of deeper division and despair. But there is a way out. We can't rewire our neocortex, but we can rewire our social world. We can choose to shrink the map so we can finally find our way home. But to find that way home, we have to challenge a modern myth.
The idea that bigger is always better for the soul. That's the Dunbar Reset, and it starts now. But accepting the science isn't enough. It forces us to confront a question most of us have been taught to avoid. So if we can accept the science of the 150, if we accept that our brains are physically hitting a ceiling, it leads us to a radical, almost heretical conclusion for 2026.
What if the most ethical thing you can do this year is to be less global? For years, we have been told that to be a good person, a responsible citizen, means carrying the weight of the entire world in our pockets. We're supposed to have an opinion on every conflict, a stance on every policy, awareness of every tragedy across 8 billion people. But pause and look at the results.
Is the world more peaceful because of it? Or are we just more exhausted, more polarized, more paralyzed? When you try to care equally about everyone, you end up with the emotional bandwidth to truly care for no one. By trying to be global, we've spread ourselves so thin that we've lost our real agency. And I'm arguing that in 2026,
The greatest act of social responsibility is to relocalize, to shrink your focus to the scale where your actions, your empathy, your energy actually moves the needle. And this brings us to the hardest question in Paul Ehrlich's text. He asks, is there an optimal level of diversity for a given society? That's uncomfortable. It's heavy. But here's the counterintuitive truth.
Diversity is a biological strength in small groups, but it becomes a trigger for conflict in massive ones. In a group of 150, your actual tribe, diversity is an asset. You have the person who knows the plants. the person who reads the weather, the storyteller, the healer. You know their names. You know their kids. You see their flaws and their gifts up close.
In a small group, intimacy overrides the other. You don't see a label.
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Chapter 7: How can localism enhance our social responsibility?
You see Mark. You see Sarah. But once you scale to millions, intimacy disappears. Our brains can no longer hold the individual stories of the faces on our screens. So we fall back on those maladaptive shortcuts Ehrlich warned about. We stop seeing humans and start seeing political opponents, foreigners,
demographics, to truly value diversity, to live it, not just post about it, we have to return to a scale where we can actually see the human behind the category. You cannot truly love a demographic. You can only truly love a neighbor. The human predicament is that we've built a global society our biology doesn't know how to inhabit.
We're trying to navigate a sea of billions with a compass calibrated for a few hundred. So as you think about your intentions for this year, I want you to ask yourself a different question. What is my optimal scale? If you want to change the world in 2026, stop trying to reach the masses. The masses don't exist. They're just millions of small groups who've lost their way.
Your real power is to build one high functioning, high intimacy, micro society. Because as Ehrlich says, the first task is to get a portion of society to understand the situation. And understanding doesn't start in a football stadium. It starts at the campfire. That's where the Dunbar Reset becomes revolutionary, and we'll get practical next.
But before we do, before we turn those ideas into action, I want to acknowledge something that always surfaces right about here. The science lands. The biology feels true. But when you start thinking about actually shrinking your world, auditing your connections, pruning the noise, choosing depth over breadth, it stirs things up. There's discomfort. There's guilt.
There's the fear of missing out or seeming cold or losing some part of yourself. And every week I hear from listeners who say things like, I get the world is too big, but how do I let go of certain people or feeds without feeling like it's becoming smaller or harder? How do I protect my energy without closing my heart? That's why we create free companion workbooks for episodes just like this one.
They're quiet, no pressure tools designed to help you move from insight to live change. Gentle reflection questions to map your circles with compassion. not cold calculation. Private practice is to release distant noise without guilt or drama. Grumps to notice how much clearer and calmer you feel when the outer layers quiet down.
Small challenges to invest deeply in your true tribe so the space you create fills with real connection. Because the Dunbar Reset isn't automatic. It's not a one-time decision. It's a series of kind, intentional choices we practice. One boundary, one unfollow, one deeper conversation at a time.
You can download this week's free episode and all the others directly from the post that accompanies every episode. Just head to theignitedlife.net and join the community. It's completely free. Now, a quick break from our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who make the show possible. You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Welcome back.
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Chapter 8: What final reflections should we consider for 2026?
It's something you can begin this weekend. So how do we actually live this? How do we stop being maladaptive in 2026? It starts with a social audit. If your brain only has 150 slots for real nuanced human beings, who is currently squatting in your mental village? Is it a toxic influencer whose outrage you've unconsciously adopted? Is it a distant acquaintance from a job you left five years ago?
This weekend, I want you to sit down with a piece of paper or your notes app and be brutally honest. Map your actual circles, your inner five, your 15, your 50, and your full 150. If someone doesn't belong in that 150 anymore, you have to move them from connection to ghost. This is something I also talk about in my book, Passion Struck,
When I talk about doing a mosquito audit, getting those bloodsuckers, those invisible suffocators, those pain in the asses out of your group of 150. Because when you prune the outer noise, mute the feeds, unfollow the accounts, step back from the digital groups that drain your battery without ever nourishing your soul, you start realizing this isn't about being mean.
It's about biological survival. You're clearing the land so something real can actually grow. Once you've cleared the noise, the next move is to protect the inner rings. We've all done it backwards. We give our best energy to the global audience and hand the leftovers to our inner five. I want you to flip the script in 2026.
Make the walks, the 30-minute calls, the dinners with your five and your 15 non-negotiable. Put them on the calendar first, before the content, before the hustle, before the scroll. And if you do this audit and realize your circles feel thin, that's okay. That's actually the beginning of health. Don't go chasing followers. Intentionally fill the gaps.
Invest in one real-world community, a local club, a faith group, a hobby meetup, a small mastermind, where you can slowly move people from strangers to inner circles. Intimacy almost always requires physical presence. Step three, turn localism into your activism. We have been trained to shout into the void about global crises we can't fix.
Paul Ehrlich says our biggest barrier is the sheer size of the groups we're trying to manage. So in 2026, stop despairing over problems measured in billions. Pick one problem you can actually solve for 150 people or fewer. Start a neighborhood garden instead of posting about food insecurity. Organize a small mastermind instead of lamenting the economy. Start a compassion circle.
Coach a youth team. Lead a book club. When you solve a real problem at tribe scale, you aren't just helping. you're creating a sustainable social system that matches our species. It works, it lasts, and it ripples farther than any viral rant ever could. And then finally, for the leaders listening, anti-scale your business. Look at W.L. Gorin Associates, the makers of Gore-Tex.
They discovered decades ago that once a facility exceeds about 150 people, we starts turning into they. Trust erodes. Bureaucracy creeps in. Their radical solution? Every time a plant hits that limit, they build a new one. They keep the tribe intact. Ask yourself, how can I break my company, my team, my projects into units of 150 or fewer? How can I lead a tribe instead of a workforce?
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