SIMPLE
Yesterday’s Brain, Today’s World, and the Forgotten Science of Living Well
Your brain evolved for a village of 150 people. It’s now navigating eight billion. The gap between the ancient hardware we’re running and the modern world we’ve built is why self-help keeps failing you. It’s not that the tools don’t work. It’s that the brain can’t use them until it first feels safe enough to try.
SIMPLE: Yesterday’s Brain, Today’s World, and the Forgotten Science of Living Well is my science-backed, road-tested guide to giving your brain the conditions it was designed for and finally making sustainable wellbeing possible.
Your brain evolved for a village of 150 people. It’s now navigating eight billion.
The gap between the ancient hardware we’re running and the modern world we’ve built is why self-help keeps failing you. It’s not that the tools don’t work. It’s that the brain can’t use them until it first feels safe enough to try.
SIMPLE: Yesterday’s Brain, Today’s World, and the Forgotten Science of Living Well is my science-backed, road-tested guide to giving your brain the conditions it was designed for and finally making sustainable wellbeing possible.
SIMPLE Sneak Peak
Plant an orchid in concrete and it won’t grow. It wasn’t built for that.
The same thing happened to us.
Our world changed faster than our brains could keep up, so the place we live now is one we were never built for. That gap between our biology and our environment is driving a lot of today’s struggles with mental and physical wellbeing.
We’re all trying to bloom in a world built for concrete.
The way to live well isn’t more willpower. It’s building an inner greenhouse, one that gives the brain the conditions it evolved to expect.
Each part of SIMPLE (an acronym I use for memorability) targets a brain system responding to the noise of modern life as if it were a threat to our survival. The SIMPLE strategy is like a pair of prescription glasses: it brings today’s world back into yesterday’s focus. We can give the brain what it needs to thrive. We just need the right ingredients.
Where to begin?
Start at the roots, the brain’s salience network, through a loving secure base and openness to serendipity.
Strengthen the branches, the brain’s default mode network, through interdependent connection and empathic compassion.
Reach the flower, the brain’s central executive network, through meaningful roles and pleasure at the beginning.
Click on each to see how.
What they’re saying about SIMPLE
“We have been told that wellness is something we can optimize and cold plunge our way toward. Dr. Durante offers a far more hopeful truth: that much of what we need has been wired into us for hundreds of thousands of years. Smart, generous, and beautifully written, SIMPLE helps us understand why modern life can leave us feeling so unwell and points us towards a more human path back to connection, mattering, and joy.”
Jennifer Breheny Wallace, New York Times bestselling author of Mattering