How to Thrive in 2026: The Power of Dunbar’s Number | EP 711 w/ John R. Miles

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. Of all, 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. 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 change makers,

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 Euclashese.

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 science of discomfort.

We discovered how deeply we matter to the people who matter most.

That belonging isn't something we wait for, but something we co-create.

Alongside Joshua Green, Rick Hanson, Ollie Raisin, Boris McGuire,

and Mark Murphy's Wisdom,

ungrowing 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 Grouw and Ann Libber'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 clear, braver, more intentional you.

And now, as we stand here on January 2nd,

the question that's been pressing on me is this.

How do we protect that clearer,

braver you in a world that's constantly pulling us outward

into noise, comparison, and a crowd of eight billion?

That's exactly what we're going to explore today.

Thank you for choosing PassionStruct 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 hunted me ever since.

150.

That's it.

150 is your biological ceiling.

The maximum number of stable, meaningful relationships,

your neocortex can truly manage at one time.

It's the limit for what Dunbar calls social grimming.

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.

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 mal-adaptive.

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-sized 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 trained 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 over leveraged.

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,

or look 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

a radical 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 eight 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 Erlich'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, 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

Erlich 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 Erlich says,

the first task is to get a portion of society

to understand this situation.

An 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 death over breath, 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 is an 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 the IgnitedLife.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.

Hey, friends, there's something about March

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clearing out what I didn't need

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It's one of those upgrades you feel immediately.

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Welcome back.

Now, let's get practical.

Because the good news is this isn't just theory.

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 PassionStruck

when I talk about doing a mosquito audit,

getting those blood suckers,

those invisible suffocators, those pain in the asses,

out of your group of 150.

Because when you prune the outer noise,

mute the feeds and follow 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 Erlich 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 WL Gore and Associates, the makers of GoreTex.

They discovered decades ago

that once a facility exceeds about 150 people,

we starts turning into they.

Truster roads, 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 in the units of 150 or fewer.

How can I lead a tribe instead of a workforce?

Urlux said, the very least we should do is try.

Nothing is more impractical than marching blindly

into a ghastly future because we refused

to acknowledge our own biology.

So this year, don't try to be a global titan.

Be a tribal anchor.

Build your 150.

Protect it.

Lead it.

Live in it.

Because when we fix our groups, we fix our lives.

And if this idea of the Dumbar Reset shrinking your world

to grow your peace resonates with you,

I'd love for you to help me bring this message

to someone else's campfire.

First, share this episode with one person

in your real 150.

Someone who needs to hear

that their exhaustion isn't personal failure.

Second, if you haven't already,

leave a quick rating or review

on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Those reviews are how new people find us

and join this community.

And third, I have something very special coming

for families in your tribe.

On February 24th, 2026,

my new children's book, You Matter Luma launches.

A story about seeing and being seen.

Written to help kids.

And the adults reading to them,

remember they matter exactly as they are.

You can pre-order it now at Barnes & Noble

where you matterluma.com.

Every pre-order helps get this message

into more small hands and hearts.

Thank you, truly.

Now, let's close with one final reflection

in a quiet vow.

We covered a lot today.

We've looked straight at the science of Dunbar's number

and the sobering warning from Paul Urleck

that trying to live in groups of billions

is quite simply maladaptive.

It's breaking us.

But the remedy isn't a new app.

It isn't a bigger network or a louder voice.

It's a return.

2026 isn't about the billion.

It's about the 150.

This year, your goal isn't to be known by the world.

It's to be deeply known by your tribe

and to deeply know them in return.

Let's make 2026 the year that we finally come home

to our biological roots.

Let's choose the campfire over the stadium.

And so here we are, the start of something new.

Before the world asks you to be anything else,

before the demands of a new year start pulling at your sleeve,

we have this one small window

to choose what travels with us.

Today, you don't have to release everything.

You only have to do one thing.

Name one piece of large group weight you've carried long enough.

Maybe it's the outrage over things you cannot change.

Maybe it's the exhaustion of trying to be seen

by people who don't truly know you.

Maybe it's the quiet ache of caring a world

that was never yours to hold alone.

Thank that weight for what it once protected.

Thank it for the alertness it gave you.

The empathy it tried to grow.

The connection it reached for.

And then with the same kindness you'd give a child

who's finally ready to put down a heavy toy,

give it permission to rest.

This isn't a resolution.

This is a vow.

I vow to be gentle with what I released today.

I vow to honor the space it leaves behind.

And I vow to fill that space

with the faces and names of my true 150.

Thank you for walking this season with me.

And as we move from this quiet realization

into the action of a new year,

I have a very special conversation coming your way.

Next Tuesday, I'm sitting down with Stephen Post.

Author of Pure Unlimited Love.

It's the perfect kickoff to our new series,

The Meaning Makers.

Stephen and I are going to explore the biology

and the soul of altruism.

What happens to us when we move beyond the self

and into the deep, unlimited love

that actually sustains a community?

If today was about the size of your tribe,

Friday is about the spirit that holds that tribe together.

It's a conversation that will change how you see your neighbor

and how you see yourself.

You won't want to miss it.

Freedom means a lot to me,

but more in terms of honoring the spirit of freedom,

which means a positive version of the golden rule,

which means much more to me than the negative version.

Do not do unto others,

which it would not happen to you.

Well, I can get home tonight,

and if I haven't kicked anybody in the shin,

I can probably feel okay about myself,

hopefully not.

But if I've used my moral imagination

and I've asked myself,

how can I contribute meaningfully and positively

to the lives around me,

then I've fulfilled the golden rule.

Until then, you've been passion struck.

Choose gentleness over force,

choose space over weight,

and live like the life you're becoming,

and finally feel it.