We are leaving the US tonight having raced back to LA through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The people we saw, the lessons we learned, and the stories we have to tell are bursting from us. The reason for the frenetic race back to the West Coast was the World Congress on Positive Psychology in LA, hosted by our university, Claremont Graduate University. At a dinner attended by the foremost expert on passion (Prof. Vallerand), the living legend on Flow and peak experience (Prof. Csikszentmihalyi), and the guru on positive emotions (Prof. Fredrickson), we were asked to stand up and articulate the reason for this research trip, and what we have learned so far. The world’s leading thinkers listened to stories we have so far collected from people who, for the most part, would never expect their stories to “matter”. But they do. Oh how they do. The Congress highlighted to us, once again, the need to step out of the lab and speak to people in their own place and in their own time – and to listen, observe, and understand their experiences, not through the language of academia, but in their own words. And so it is that we now head to London, with our hearts full and our eyes open.