Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Hosted by Passion Struck with John R. Miles
About this Show
You built the life you were supposed to want. So why doesn't it feel like enough? Passion Struck is the #1 Health and Fitness podcast — and it exists to answer exactly that question. I'm John R. Miles — Navy veteran, former Fortune 50 executive, bestselling author — and I built this show because I lived the "successful but empty" version of life myself, and I wanted to find a better way. Each week, I sit down with the world's top voices in neuroscience, psychology, medicine, and elite performance — including Angela Duckworth, Susan Cain, Robert Waldinger, Daniel Amen, and Ryan Holiday — to unpack what the research tells us about purpose, connection, and resilience, and how to apply it to your own life. Fridays, I share what I'm learning directly, in solo episodes built around the same ideas. New interviews every Tuesday and Thursday. Solo episodes every Friday.
Latest Episodes
3 Questions to Stop Letting Other People Define Your Worth | John R. Miles - EP 837
What happens when the next achievement matters more than the one you just reached?Even after The Mattering Effect landed on the USA Today bestseller list, John caught himself immediately checking where it might rank on the NYT bestseller list. That instinct revealed how deeply conditioned even th...
Why You Keep Doubting Yourself and How to Rebuild Your Confidence | Heather Monahan - EP 836
What happens when you spend years proving yourself, only to find that the people around you make you question your worth?Heather Monahan knows firsthand how that experience can change you. After rising to the C-suite as a chief revenue officer, she was unexpectedly fired from the company where sh...
Why Your Workplace Turns Colleagues Into Competitors | Dr. Nir Halevy – EP 835
Why do some teams bring out the best in people while others turn colleagues into competitors? The answer may lie in the way we structure power, status, and success.On this episode of Passion Struck, I sit down with Dr. Nir Halevy, a Stanford professor who studies social influence, power, and huma...
Why Success Can Leave You Feeling Like You Don't Matter | John R. Miles & Linda Hurtado – EP 834
What happens when you achieve the life you thought you wanted, only to realize you no longer feel connected to it?For John R. Miles, that question became impossible to ignore. After years of executive success, demanding workweeks, and responsibilities that kept growing, a simple question from his...
Stop Being So Hard on Yourself. It’s Not Helping You | Dr. Kristin Neff - EP 833
What if the voice you use to motivate yourself is the very voice keeping you stuck?You push harder after a mistake. You judge yourself for falling short. You tell yourself that if you were more disciplined, more successful, or simply better, you would finally feel worthy. But what if being hard o...
Why You Keep Repeating the Same Patterns | Terri Cole – EP 832
What if the behaviors that made you successful are the same ones keeping you from feeling fulfilled?You learned to be dependable. You became the overachiever, the caretaker, the person who never asks for help. People praised your strength, relied on your generosity, and rewarded your ability to g...
How Your Beliefs Shape Your Happiness, Success, and Future | Shawn Achor – EP 831
What if the beliefs you hold about yourself, your future, and the world around you are shaping what happens next more than you realize?Shawn Achor, bestselling author and one of the leading voices in positive psychology, joins John R. Miles to explore the science behind The Power of Beliefs. Draw...
You Can Be Successful and Still Feel Like You Don't Matter | Mick Hunt & John R. Miles – EP 830
What if you can be successful, needed, productive, and admired, and still feel like you don't matter?That's the paradox at the heart of John R. Miles' new book, The Mattering Effect.In this special conversation, originally recorded for Mick Hunt's Mick Unplugged, Mick sits down with John to explo...
Do You Matter? The Question Behind Burnout, Loneliness, and Disconnection | John R. Miles - EP 829
What if the biggest problem in your life isn't what's wrong with you—but what's happening to you?Burnout. Loneliness. Disconnection. Exhaustion. The feeling that you're constantly working, producing, improving, and performing, yet somehow becoming less visible to yourself. What if these aren't se...
You’re Not Failing to Adapt. You’re Being Erased. | John R. Miles - EP 828
What if the way you’ve been taught to adapt is actually making you lose yourself?For weeks, The Adaptive Human has explored what it takes to navigate a world that keeps changing.Angela Duckworth showed us that our environments shape who we become. Martin Seligman showed us the power of agency. Da...
You’re Not Stuck. You’re Swimming in the Wrong Direction | Alec Litowitz - EP 827
What if you're working harder and harder—but you're still moving in the wrong direction?Alec Litowitz learned this lesson during a mountain bike race in the Pyrenees, when hesitating before a blind downhill jump nearly sent him over the handlebars.Years later, that same lesson became a framework ...
Your Kids Don’t Need More Achievement. They Need More Freedom | Dr. Peter Gray - EP 826
What if the things we think are helping our children succeed are actually making it harder for them to become independent?Dr. Peter Gray has spent decades studying childhood, play, education, and human development. In his new book, Restoring Childhood, he argues that childhood has a fundamental b...
Why What Matters Most Is Almost Never the Loudest | John R. Miles - EP 825
Why What Matters Most Is Rarely the LoudestWhat if the things getting the most attention in your life aren't actually the things that matter most?We live in a world that rewards visibility. The viral headline. The impressive title. The dramatic turnaround. The big announcement. The person who cre...
The One Question You’re Avoiding Could Change Your Life | Scott Simon & Gregory Stock – EP 824
What if the question you’re avoiding is the one you most need to answer?We often think courage means doing something difficult or frightening. But Scott Simon says the place people struggle most isn't physical courage—it’s having the courage to ask and answer hard questions.In this episode, Scott...
The Psychology Behind Why Smart People Make Terrible Decisions | Alex Edmans – EP 823
You're smart. You're informed. So why do you still make terrible decisions?We like to believe that intelligence and information protect us from bad decisions. They don't.Professor Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance at London Business School and Fellow of the British Academy, returns to Passion Str...