Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Gregory Walton on Why Big Changes Start With Small Acts | EP 593
Thu, 3 Apr 2025
What if the secret to lasting transformation isn’t bold, sweeping moves—but quiet, intentional actions?In this thought-provoking episode, John R. Miles interviews Stanford University psychologist Dr. Gregory Walton, whose groundbreaking research has reshaped how we understand belonging, mindset, and behavior change. Walton’s new book, Ordinary Magic, reveals how small, psychologically wise interventions can catalyze extraordinary change in schools, relationships, and society.Greg shares the personal stories that inspired his research—from traveling through global poverty as a teen to being falsely arrested as an adult. These formative experiences drive his mission: to help people feel seen, valued, and capable of growth.Full Shownotes here: https://passionstruck.com/gregory-walton-big-changes-start-with-small-acts/Key Takeaways:Small acts can spark exponential impactBelonging isn’t a luxury—it’s foundationalEveryone needs one person who believes in them irrationallyEmpathy and psychological safety create the conditions for growthBelief, when grounded in unconditional regard, can rewrite someone’s storyHelping without humility can do more harm than goodStart with trust—and build from thereConnect with Dr. Gregory Walton: https://psychology.stanford.edu/people/greg-waltonSponsors:Factor Meals: http://factormeals.com/factormeals50off and use code “FACTOR MEALS 50 OFF”Rosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.”Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.”Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit.Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSIONNext on Passion Struck:In the next episode of Passion Struck, John sits down with Anne Marie Anderson, an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster, sports journalist, and leadership expert. Anne Marie has spent years breaking barriers in sports media, navigating high-stakes environments, and coaching top athletes and executives on leadership, resilience, and communication. In our conversation, we'll dive into the mental frameworks of high performers, the art of storytelling, and how to build confidence in any field.For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals.Join the Passion Struck Community!Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help you grow. Learn more and sign up here.Speaking Engagements & WorkshopsAre you looking to inspire your team, organization, or audience to take intentional action in their lives and careers? I’m available for keynote speaking, workshops, and leadership training on topics such as intentional living, resilience, leadership, and personal growth. Let’s work together to create transformational change. Learn more at johnrmiles.com/speaking.Episode Starter PacksWith over 500 episodes, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. We’ve curated Episode Starter Packs based on key themes like leadership, mental health, and personal growth, making it easier for you to dive into the topics you care about. Check them out at passionstruck.com/starterpacks.Catch More of Passion Struck:My solo episode on Why Mattering at Work Is the New Metric Leaders Must TrackCatch My Episode with Coach Matt Doherty on How You Rebound From Life’s Toughest MomentsWatch my interview with Jessica Kriegel on How to Build an Intentional WorkplaceCan’t miss my episode withJacob Morgan on the Vital Power of Leading With VulnerabilityListen to my interview with Ivo Brughmans on How to Navigate the Paradoxes of LeadershipCheck My solo episode on Why We All Crave To Matter: Exploring The Power Of Mattering.If you liked the show, please leave us a review—it only takes a moment and helps us reach more people! Don’t forget to include your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally.How to Connect with John:Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMilesFollow him on Instagram at @John_R_MilesSubscribe to our main YouTube Channel and to our YouTube Clips ChannelFor more insights and resources, visit John’s websiteWant to explore where you stand on the path to becoming Passion Struck? Take our 20-question quiz on Passionstruck.com and find out today!
Chapter 1: What is Passion Struck about and who is John R. Miles?
If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck. Hey, PassionStruck fam, welcome to episode 593.
Whether you're a longtime listener or joining us for the first time, I am so deeply grateful that you're here. You've tuned into a movement dedicated to unlocking your potential, living with intention, and making what truly matters, matter most. Before we dive in, let's take a moment to reflect on an incredible conversation from earlier this week.
I sat down with organizational psychologist and bestselling author, Tasha Yurek, to explore her groundbreaking new book, Shatterproof. We dug into what it means to be truly self-aware and how resilience isn't about being unbreakable. It's about learning how to rise stronger. If you missed this episode, I highly recommend going back to check it out. Now, let me ask you this.
What if big changes don't require big actions, but instead small, intentional steps? How can the belief of one person transform your life's trajectory? And what would happen if you appreciated every relationship, every interaction from a place of trust, empathy, and genuine understanding? Today, we're diving deep into these transformative questions with Dr. Gregg Walton.
Greg's journey into human connection and belonging began when he was a teenager, and it was profoundly shaped by witnessing global poverty firsthand and a life-changing experience of being falsely arrested. His curiosity drove him into groundbreaking research, exploring how small shifts in our mindset can radically alter our life outcomes.
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Chapter 2: Who is Dr. Gregory Walton and what inspired his research?
Greg is a professor of psychology at Stanford University and the author of Ordinary Magic, the science of how we can achieve big changes with small acts. His work has been celebrated by the Next Big Idea Club and acclaimed worldwide for its transformative insights on belonging, trust, and intentional change.
In today's episode, Greg and I explore how belief and belonging can shift the course of a child's life. While small acts often have the biggest emotional ripple, taught to cultivate intentional empathy and psychological safety and what it truly means to matter to yourself and to others.
This episode is a call to action to live with intention, to lead with empathy, and to create meaningful impact in the most ordinary moments. If you're looking to go deeper, check out our episode starter packs at Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs.
With over 590 episodes now, we've curated playlists on themes like emotional resilience, intentional living, alternative health, and personal transformation. And don't forget to subscribe to my Live Intentionally newsletter at passionstruck.com for exclusive insights, challenges, actionable strategies, and behind-the-scenes content.
Now, let's dive into this powerful conversation with the extraordinary Dr. Gregg Walton. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to create an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so honored and thrilled today to welcome Dr. Gregg Walton to PassionStruck. Welcome, Gregg. How are you today?
I'm good. Thank you so much for having me.
Well, I first wanted to say congratulations on your new book, Ordinary Magic, the science of how we can achieve big changes with small acts, which has already been named a next big idea club must read. Congratulations.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
I'll tell you, my book came out last year. And for me, when it also became mentioned on the Next Big Idea Club, that to me was almost a bigger recognition than any bestseller list could possibly have done for the book.
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Chapter 3: How did global poverty influence Dr. Walton's perspective on life?
persistence of inequality in American life, we would go to sixth grade classrooms and lead role-playing exercises with students about how identities worked, for example. And in the course of that, at that same time, I read this early piece in the Atlantic Monthly that my now colleague, Cloud Steele, wrote about what's called stereotype threat and what
Claude did was he looked at racial inequality in test performance. And he showed that in standard kinds of conditions, when you present a test as evaluative of people's ability, you saw white students do better than Black students. And in math context, you saw men do better than women.
But what was amazing to me, but like literally blew my mind, was that he then looked at the exact same test scores, but he changed how he represented the test. He presented the test to people just as a puzzle exercise, a verbal puzzle solving trial, and suddenly black students' scores soared. And in math, when you did similar things with math, women's performance scored. At the time in the 90s,
It seemed like there was nothing so fixed and hardwired and built in as test performance. It seemed like a true barometer of someone's educational opportunities and the abilities that they had. And yet here was this social psychologist just changing the representation of the task and suddenly people's performances were jumping all over the place.
I was like fascinated and I was tantalized and I wanted to understand more.
Thank you so much for sharing that. And one of the other interesting things I saw by studying your background is you had the opportunity that a lot of people don't get to have when they're young to travel to remote places. You happen to go to a place in Indonesia. How did experiencing global poverty firsthand, I think you were 13 or 14 at the time, shape your own sense of purpose?
That was just before that. My mother was doing research in Indonesia on the island of Java. And so in the summer before eighth grade and the summer before ninth grade, we took these two very extended family trips to Indonesia. And on the second one, my parents were more ambitious, and they took us to some very remote areas. They took us to the island of Sulawesi.
And then we flew from little town to little town and then bus to other towns. And we then were in central Sulawesi and we contracted with a local Canadian missionary who had a small plane, a little prop plane. And he flew us to this very remote village called Rompi. And in Rompi, We plan to hike and explore and meet the local people. It's a place where there is a dirt runway.
There were people watching, came to watch the plane land. There was no restaurant, no hotel. So there was a small wooden shack at the airport, and we contracted with a local woman to bring us meals. And the woman, my mother asked her a standard question in Indonesia, which is, how many children do you have? And she said that she had four children.
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Chapter 4: What was Dr. Walton's experience of being falsely arrested?
having an experience like that, especially at that kind of age, at the age of 13 or 14, when you're just a young adolescent becoming aware of the world, it really put my problems in context. Like the drama of middle school and high school was no longer that dramatic. There were big problems in this world. And it also helped me think about what it would mean to help, what it would mean to support.
What does it mean for a person with more to give to a person with less? And how do you facilitate other people in their becoming, in their agency, rather than get in the way? I had this image of, oh, people could just cut this person a check. You could just give this person money. And
They might need the money and the money might be valuable, but it would sap the local agency, it would sap their dignity and respect to build their communities the way that they were trying to build their communities. That help often has to be given in ways that are hidden and invisible and supportive rather than that take over.
Thank you so much for sharing that. Some of what you were talking about reminded me of the late Emil Bruneau's work on humanization and dehumanization and how we see the other side. Also reminded me of some of the work that Kirk Gray has done.
Well, one thing I wanted to touch on is I understand that at one point, you guys had a really impactful experience of being falsely arrested at your family's cabin. And I wanted to ask, Can you take us back to that moment and what it taught you about trust, power and vulnerability?
This is a complex story and it really is a story within a story. So my grandparents, my great grandparents, in fact, homesteaded in Eastern Arizona in the early part of the 20th century. And my grandmother has a, she grew up in part in this area outside of Show Low, Arizona.
And as they had this big old ranch, and then when the ranch was sold, they saved part of it for a small cabin that my grandmother and my grandmother built starting in the 1930s. They hand built this cabin, this adobe cabin in the mountains there.
And then many years later, it became a sort of family place, a place that we always go, a place that's always been built and there are new projects all the time.
many years later i took my now wife lisa to the cabin for the first time on a memorial day weekend and we had a lovely day we hiked around we explored the local mountains and the canyons and the gullies we looked for arrowheads and pottery shards and then we went to sleep this is a cabin with no electricity no running water it's on about 45 acres of land so it's very remote
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Chapter 5: Why do belonging, capability, and identity matter in personal growth?
If you haven't done something wrong, you certainly don't want to be falsely accused. And if you have done something wrong, then that may need to get raised. There may need to be a repair for that. But you also want to be treated with grace and as a person who can improve.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Craig. And I want to jump now to your book. And I must say, it was a really intriguing read for me. And I loved the stories you told and how you immersed it with science along with the narrative. Well done on how you wrote it. But as I was reading it, you really emphasized three foundational questions throughout. Do I belong? Can I do it? Who am I?
Why do these questions matter so deeply to our ability to flourish?
So if you think about who is it like most fundamentally that you want to become, what is it that you're going to want to do? Those questions are central to that. So you think about a school setting, like school is for the purpose of helping a person develop and become something new that they aren't yet.
where you think about a work setting, a work setting is for the purpose of being able to execute on a mission, ideally to create a good or a service or a product that's going to be meaningful and important for other people in their lives. So to be able to belong within those settings is to be able to work towards the most fundamental goals that we have.
Nested within that question is the question of, can I do this? If there's a particular difficult task that you're facing, a skill that you haven't learned yet, like for me, learning how external microphones work, as we talked about earlier. then that could become a barrier. It could become a barrier to your ability to actually realize the dreams that you have for yourself.
And then in the end, a lot of that's about identity. And identity is a very complicated, multifaceted thing. It's not just up to you. It's also how other people are seeing you, whether other people are going to see you and treat you in ways that allow you to become that kind of person that you want to become. Or are they going to pigeonhole you or put you in a box or constrain you in some fashion?
So those questions get to kind of the deepest aspirations I think that we have for our lives, for who we want to be and the good that we want to do and the communities that we want to be part of and the impacts that we want to have on others.
So one of the interviews I did last year was with an author named Jennifer Wallace, and she wrote this great book on mattering where she was really looking at the achievement culture that is so rampant today with children. And one of the things I remember her talking to me about was that a child's sense of mattering really comes from their parents who they look up to and interact with.
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Chapter 6: How can unconditional belief transform a child's life?
There's sort of two things that I really appreciate about that in particular, about that quote. One is at least one adult, like having at least one adult, just one can make an enormous difference. And the second part is.
The word irrational, it's particularly powerful when the young person is not there yet, when they're struggling, maybe they're getting into conflicts, they don't understand the math yet, they're having difficulty, and there's no basis yet for that faith that older person, that mentor can provide, but they can see in that person that potential.
And then showing that young person that potential, they give them a kind of North Star to work towards. That's at the heart of lots and lots of research, lots of field experimental research, including our work with lifting the bar and many other settings.
So, Greg, I wanted to ask you a few questions probing mattering and Earlier this week, I got to interview Gordon Flett, who I'm not sure if you're familiar with, but he wrote the book, The Psychology of Mattering. And he and I were having this discussion around why so many people today feel so unseen and how do we become more intentional about genuinely seeing others in everyday life?
And we started talking about this concept of reciprocity, that if you want to feel seen, there's a need for you also to make other people feel seen. And oftentimes that loop is broken. And I wanted to see if this is something that you've run across in your own research.
I think there's a lot of complexity here. There's a lot of reasons why people don't feel seen. One, you can certainly talk about the way that social media has changed how people see each other. Social media is all about representations of self that go into a space and seeing other people's representations of self.
That's a very foreign and different thing than what people have experienced in our communities and relationships over millennia. It's a very different way to interact socially. I also think that a really important ingredient in this is stereotypes because what a stereotype is literally a kind of pre-definition of a person. It pre-defines who somebody is based on some category membership.
And that pre-definition might be, it might be positive, but it might also be negative. Either way, it's probably simplifying and kind of pigeonholing.
And when people are interacting across lines that are defined by stereotypes, then it's very important that you create spaces, sometimes very intentionally, so that people have the ability in their interactions to have really honest, direct communications that say, here's who I am, here's what I'm working toward, here's how I had to be seen, and here's how we can interact well within this context.
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Chapter 7: What role have mentors played in Dr. Walton's life?
and the alternatives people again received the same aid but she represented it specifically in terms of the agency of the people who are receiving that aid we're giving you this aid so you can work towards your goals we're giving you this aid so you can work toward and support your community's goals And with that, people felt far better upon receiving the aid.
They were more confident in their ability to succeed in their major goals in life. They felt less stigmatized. And they were more likely, when they were given the choice to watch videos that were fun, silly videos like soccer highlights or little comedy sketches, or to watch videos that were showing
teaching business skills relevant in the local informal economy, like how to calculate profit, how to invest in a business. People who received the agency-focused representations were more likely to watch those second kind of business development videos.
So often when we give aid, we are implicitly or explicitly saying to people, we're giving you this because you're pathetic and you need the money. And that's a double-edged sword.
Like people may need the money, people may be desperate, but that undermines their agency at a time when they really need that strength and agency to work upward and contend with the challenges that life has presented them. So the lesson from that work is about giving aid explicitly in terms of the agency and the strength of the people who are receiving it and their ability to execute on that.
It's really about Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
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