The Kevin Miller Podcast

I feel we are at a time with a schizophrenic perspective of confidence. We would generally feel positive about a doctor who expresses confidence in their abilities before doing surgery on us, but if that same doctor was at a party and mentioned anything about their level of confidence in themselves we would likely feel some negativity. So do we want people to be confident, or not? And do we feel o...

From the restaurant menu that has 10 pages of entre options, to trying to pick out a new set of ear buds on Amazon, to telling kids they can be “anything they want.” The anxiety around our seemingly unlimited world continues to increase. Tactically I think we must become more discerning. But conceptually I think it helps to understand that too many options are unhelpful, and why. So when a new boo...

I find almost everyone has some physical boundaries that they feel fine with. But emotionally I still find the culture, and historically myself, fairly uncomfortable and unclear on what emotional boundaries look like and what the purpose really is. It took so long for me to have some understanding that emotional boundaries are not just selfish and not against someone else. My barometer is now, sim...

My focus here is not on being a hero in the fashion our culture uses the word, in regard to caretaking humanity and saving the world. A quick search for the hero’s journey says it is a universal story structure where a protagonist ventures out of their comfort zone, faces a major crisis, wins a victory, and returns home profoundly transformed, and in this I find a core of human desire. In author D...

I continue to find and place value in Emotional Intelligence. I spent much of my life misperceiving social intelligence as emotional intelligence. I felt I could read and cater to other’s emotions, but I was very ignorant and neglectful of my own emotions, which took a toll on myself, and others. In this episode I brought on an expert who cites that emotional intelligence as the single biggest pre...

I appreciate people who help us paradigm shifts. I have viewed life as progressing to the next goal. The next destination. Focused on what I can add to my achievements. And yet as I’ve gotten older and dealt with more things that have humbled and tempered me, I’ve started wondering if there is as much or more growth, not from adding, but subtracting. Not from learning new things, but unlearning ol...

My guest is Dandapani. He became an ordained Hindu monk under the guidance of one of Hinduism’s foremost spiritual leaders of our time. For 10 years he lived a life of serious personal discipline and training at his guru’s cloistered monastery in Hawaii. Here he learned to control his mind. He learned to focus. And he believes this is the key to finding one’s purpose. We would probably all agree t...

“Could we really reduce your conscious mind to a set of underlying processes that, when composed, create the feeling of you, the view of right now?” This is what my guest questions and proposes. David Sussillo is a world-renowned neuroscientist, an adjunct professor at Stanford University and has been a scientist at the Google Brain group and Meta Reality Labs. In his professional pursuits, David...

We have made anxiety a bad term. But anxiety is a normal response of the body to a worry or concern or perceived threat. Your anxiety in and of itself isn’t doing anything wrong. We just seem to be responding inappropriately. Britt Frank is a licensed neuropsychotherapist and trauma expert who is trained in IFS (Internal Family Systems) and SE (Somatic Experiencing). She is a speaker and an award-...

We are more sensitive than ever to our differences. Most people I know are really striving to be aware, kind, considerate, and inclusive. But is this sensitivity also increasing our cultural anxiety around the issue? My guest in this episode is social psychologist Claude M Steele, and he feels this is the case. Claude is the Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences, Emeritus, at Stanford Unive...

We are tired of performing. We want to be our authentic selves. We want to have boundaries. But I see and have experienced two challenges. You finally just let it all hang out and tell everyone how you really feel and let the chips of dissension fall where they will. Or, you just fold at the critical moment and feel it’s easier just to perform and appease people. Is there another option? Most of y...

Do I, intrinsically matter? Do you? Based on...what? There is almost a saturation of information and ideas on what purpose is and having purpose in your life. But if you dig down, I find purpose to primarily be a pursuit to...matter. Do we matter just because we exist? Many religions say so, but I generally find the religious scrambling to prove they matter in the same ways everyone else is. So do...

The concept of trauma has gotten more focus than ever, as of late, it seems. But I feel much of what gets labeled trauma is the pain of loss. Losses we don’t know how to, or maybe never will, reconcile. I don’t claim having trauma in my life, but I have loss that I don’t think I’ll ever get over. I don’t want to minimize trauma at all, but I feel even more people resonate with the concept of loss....

I don’t think we like to hear it, but there seems to be continual evidence that our culture is growing more risk averse, less willing to try new things, and as a result, becoming stagnant. Another data point on our reported, near all time low of subjective well-being. So I brought on an expert to discuss the issue. Ben Swire is an innovative thought leader on human connection and authentic living....

I believe much of what motivates our life perspective and choices is around protecting ourselves. It’s human nature. I’m not talking about self-absorption, but even amongst the most giving and serving and confident of people, I still experience a lot of motive and behavior around self-protection. I’m including myself in this as well. My guest today has a very unique perspective on this concept. My...

How do you view your sense of self? Do you feel more or less understanding of who you are? How about those around you, friends, family, and others? Do you sense them as feeling more or less stable regarding themselves and their place in the world? I think it’s worth considering, and I feel a continued shift toward insecurity in an of ourselves, culturally. I have kids from 13 to 30 years old, from...

First, I’m surely not saying that what you are or are not eating doesn’t matter. But after a decade of my own involvement in functional medicine, I see the biggest culprit for gut and digestion issues to be our minds more than anything else. I continue to meet people who are doing “all the right things,” eating clean, taking all the great supplements, exercising, getting good sleep, and they are s...

Most everyone knows the story of holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl who wrote the book, Man's Search For Meaning. In the book he shares his journey of finding meaning, purpose, and peace even as a prisoner in a concentration camp. A primary message he had for humanity was that regardless of circumstances, we have the freedom to choose our attitude in any situation. He feels this is what kept him ali...

The word “sensitive” has a lot of baggage. Much of it is negative. We are critical of people who we deem are not sensitive. Insensitive, we say. We are critical of people who we deem are too sensitive. Over sensitive, we say. If you look for the meaning of the word, you find this - Being sensitive means having a nervous system that processes information more deeply, resulting in acute physical, me...

You’ve likely seen movies that depict someone having an accident and getting amnesia, not being able to remember any, or aspects, of their past. Imagine waking today and you know everything about yourself in the present moment, and are even aware of what you do and your future. But you can’t remember any of the hurts and pains and disappointments of your past. Who and how would you be? This isn’t...

Out of the 1700 shows and hundreds of people I've had on my podcasts, people, often when they have me as a guest on their podcast, ask me what shows stood out. And my answer is citing shows where a message had a particularly valuable impact on my personal life. My first conversation with Arthur Brooks about the message in his book, Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose...

Not truths, but theories to consider in regards to yourself and your beliefs and ultimately how your beliefs are guiding your life for better and worse. My guest is Nir Eyal (Near A-yall). Nir consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and human potential. He previously taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is the author of the international bestseller...

I’m bringing back a conversation that forever changed some foundational beliefs I had on motivation. Dr Benjamin Hardy is a now famous Organizational Psychologist. He’s also now the author of multiple best selling books. I first had him on this podcast for his book, Willpower Doesn’t Work. Then again for his book, Personality Isn’t Permanent. I think he’s been on here four or five times now. But i...

More and more in psychology we are hearing about the “end-of-history illusion,” which is a psychological bias where we feel we’ve changed a lot from our past, but we think who we are now is…who we are. We don’t conceive of the almost fact that in five years from now we will look back and be amazed at how much we’ve changed from who we are right now. I want to embrace that and hold more lightly to...

Should you have lots of friends or not? Should you have just some really close ones? I think before this question should be an audit of how you view friends to begin with. What is the purpose of a friend? Is a friend a luxury or a necessity? What are the pros and cons? A few years ago a book came across my desk, titled The Life Council: 10 Friends Every Woman Needs. Just the focus on friends caugh...