Grieving the Future You Imagined with Dr. Maya Shankar

If you're feeling daunted by it and you think I can't possibly get through this change, don't forget that the person enduring. It will be different from the person you are right now. There is going to be a new version of Rady on the other side of change, who is different in ways that are likely to be extraordinary.

So I'm really really happy we get to have this conversation, I'm glad too.

that kind of love and attention and care. And so it's so rare that I have an encounter with someone who makes me feel the way that you did within seconds of meeting.

also hold those qualities. And I've really noticed that in people, even watching we're talking about my grandma, even watching my grandma do that with people, it's like the energy is always a reciprocal thing, like you can really fill the blog when it's.

before you've even sat in front of me. But I would love to go back to how you went from trying to be a professional violinist, which, by the way, is incredible. It's one of my favorite instruments. I also paid to when I was younger, not to the degree you did till I was maybe like twelve or thirteen, but you went from being a violinist to now being a cognitive scientist. So give me the rundown of.

But when my mom opened the case, I felt something magical, and I wonder, actually rothy if it was in part because I was so close with my grandmother. Whenever we would visit her during our summer vacations to India, we were just attached at the hip. So I would sleep next to her on the linoleum floor with our sorry cloths folded up with pillows. And when she would go into the pooja room, the prayer room, I would sit next to her and just try to emulate her rocking motions.

And I would stand next to her in the kitchen when she was cooking delicious meals. So I was obsessed with my grandmother, and I wonder if my little kid brain thought this is a way of bridging some of the distance that exists between me and her because we're thousands and thousands of miles apart. And so I asked my mom very quickly for a pint sized violin of my own, and I immediately fell in love. So this was at age six, and then at nine, I auditioned

for the Juilliard School of Music in New York. That began a very intense period where I would wake up at four thirty in the morning every Saturday, catch a train to go to New York from Connecticut. I would have ten hours of classes, come home at night. But I never ever complained about it. I was never frustrated by it because I felt like I had found my

true passion. And when I was in high school, For those who follow classical music, they'll know the renowned violinist Itzac Pearlman invited me to be his private student.

not much else happens. And as someone who had to go through that at the age of fifteen, what were some of the things that you noticed in yourself? How did it affect you as you grew up then? And then how did you end up in the work that you do now?

how formative it was for us, until we lose that thing. Right, and the violin had almost become an ex of my body at this point, right, I mean, to this day, Robbie, my right shoulder is slightly elevated compared to my left because of all the hours I started doing this, like my body literally grew around the instrument, and so without it, I wasn't sure anymore who I was and who I

could be. And you realize too, that your identity is, in my case as a musician, is entangled with so many other parts of your self confidence, in your well being. So one thing that I faced a lot as a kid was I was bullied a lot at school. So I was one of a few brown kids in a predominantly Caucasian community, and the girls in my neighborhood were

particularly cruel. So I was a very insecure child. I cried a lot because I was just so I have a very sensitive interior and so when they said really mean things, I internalized it and I took it as evidence that I was broken in some way. And music and that musical world was a place. It was a refuge for me, actually because unlike my hometown, Juilliard was an international school, so there were students who had come from all over the world who were studying here, and

the color of my skin was irrelevant. I mean, I just I felt so accepted and like I really belonged in that community. And so that was also entangled with my identity. So it's like, oh, wow, I've lost this other pillar of my life. And so I think that was the first indication to me. And you know, now I study change, but that one of the reasons why change can be so challenging to navigate is because it does threaten our self identity. Yeah, it makes us question

who we are at this really fundamental level. And I don't think I was prepared for that.

you've already achieved it. So how does someone go from having that information where Okay, if this is what I want, it's all I should think about, It's everything I should become to then also being detached from this idea of if something changes, I have to be okay with it, Like, how can someone navigate that?

fellow peers who are also in that spaces. Right, Oh, you're an athlete too. Oh great, we have a point of connection. So that's wonderful. What's a wonderful aspect of attaching ourselves seting regularly to a role. We also feel meaning and purpose when we wake up every day. If I'm a musician, I know what my hours are going to be devoted to on any given day. It helps stave off some of the existential inks that I might otherwise feel. So that's another benefit of having a really clear,

strong identity. The challenge, though, is that when life makes other plans and it threatens the role or label that you've so for so long attached yourself to, you can then feel very destabilized. So one insight I've had only in recent years, I wish I had had this insight as a fifteen year old is to identify yourself not simply by what you do, but by why you do those things. So when I ask myself, well, Maya, what

did you love about playing the violin? I realized that at its core, what drew me to it as a six year old and a nine year old and a twelve year old was that it was a vehicle for emotionally connecting with people. I was able to generate feelings within myself that I never felt before through music and to share that with my fellow musicians. Or if I was on stage playing in front of an audience, there might be someone in the audience that was feeling something

for the first time that they never felt before. If I was successful in my role as a musician and so forging that kind of emotional intimacy was so special. So if identify as someone who just thrives on emotional connection, then the question becomes through what other outlets can I express this part of myself? So when life throws me that curveball and I can't do the thing that I'm doing right now, can I find other means of expressing

this core part of myself? And I love this insight because it's a source of stability when we're in the midst of change, right It was a reminder to me just because I lost the violin didn't mean that I lost what led me to love it in the first place. That part of me was still so fully intact, It was still robust, It could still serve as a compass guiding me towards my next steps. That reason, I would urge everyone who's listening or watching to ask themselves, what

is my why? What is the thing that makes me tick. Maybe it is giving back to your community, Maybe it is caring for others, Maybe it's learning something new. Maybe it's finding ways for creative expression to unfold in your life. Whatever your why is, and be non judgmental about it. Is just the thing that lights you up, that like made you excited as a kid. Make that a part of your identity, because it will be a north star when you have to figure out what comes next.

the job they do. We never ask them who do you want to be when you grow up? And when you realize what your mission is, what your purpose is in life, right, and this is obviously work that you and Jay are doing every day, then you actually feel connections across domains, across disciplines that make you feel so much more connected to all these people that you meet in your life. And because of my background, I'm so

focused actually on what unites us, right. We all have a shared psychology, We all often have a common set of goals, which is to be kind, to one another, to meaningfully contribute to our communities and to the people that we love, to engage in appropriate amounts of self compassion, because we often reserve so little compassion for ourselves and so much for others, And so when we have these kinds of goals, we realize, oh my gosh, we're actually so much less isolated than we think. We have so

much more in common with one another. And what you're making me realize in this moment for the first time, which is why, by the way, I'm loving this conversation you're giving me all these new thoughts, is maybe if we were to be clear about what our whys were, we would start to feel so much more unity with the people in our lives, even if they are doing wildly different things, even if their stories look so different

on their surface than ours do. We would realize that there's actually so many points of connection.

the grades for it. The first thing I thought about was when I know, I want to do something to do with children like that was always something I wanted to do, whether it was a pediatric doctor or whatever. The next thing I decided to do, I needed to be with children. I didn't know why I wanted that or but it was a really deep feeling that I had. And so then my mum recommended that I go and do nutrition, and I was like, Okay, well, if I

do nutrition, I want to be a children's nutritionists. And I realized a big part of that was because I, as a child struggled so much with my weight and it was something that has definitely shaped a lot of who I am, and going into something like that was now that I realized something where I could help people in a way that I struggled. And then I did six years of training to be this clinical dietitian in a hospital. I worked there for less than a month. I got married, Jay got a job in New York.

I moved to New York. I couldn't do any of that anymore, and at that point, I felt like my whole identity that I had built because one was an identity of being someone who worked in a hospital that I absolutely loved and I wanted to be that person. I've been trying to be that person for such a long time. And then there was also this idea or finally I think, I know what I want to do and I'm doing it, and then I go somewhere where I can't do any of that. I was on a

spouse visa. I couldn't work there, I couldn't do any of it, and.

think this. It's it's a very outwardly thing versus if you have a thread that can be threaded through no matter what job you do, no matter what role you play, then you actually realize that that deep desire can be put into place, like you said, in so many different ways. It can be on an online platform, it can be a one to one thing that you're doing for someone.

It can be in the house that you live in with your own children, with your own partner, and you can feel justice fulfilled if that intention is coming from.

about forging deep emotional connection. And so I want to share one quick story with you, which is I heard from someone who he had listened to my ted talk and heard about this why versus what distinction? So he was a Harvard trained human rights lawyer, such a successful dude, Rhodes scholar, etc. And then he got plagued by long COVID and he became more or less incapacitated, right, incredible amounts of brain fog, unable to perform his daily duties, had to take a step back from all the legal

work he was doing. And then he asked himself, well, what's my why? And he said, well, at the end of the day, I like advocating for underrepresented communities. That's why I'm a human rights lawyer. He said, but I can't do that now. And then he said, but maya guess what I figured out. I can actually still achieve that why by being an advocate for the long COVID community. So now he is all over Scott, Shout out to Scott.

He's representing people that neither rights to be acknowledged. He is making sure that he's a spokesperson for everyone who's struggling with the aftermath of a COVID infection. And I'm so proud of him for discovering that there was still some means by which he could express this fundamental part of who he is, despite the severe constraints and limitations he faces.

And I think sometimes that's where the issue lies. Where something negative that we perceive as negative happens in our life and we think that it is a downfall. We think that we can't go anywhere from it. But what if the thing that you're perceiving as negative is exactly what we're supposed to happen for you to fulfill the dream that you have. How do you help people shift their mindset around change and the perception that we have of things that are good or bad.

the reality is much more complex. So we in general, and this is what the research in cognitive science shows, are very bad at predicting how we are going to feel about future events. So we're bad aspective forecasters, and we're bad for a bunch of reasons. But one of the reasons why we get this wrong, why, for example, when you first moved to New York you thought, oh

my god, all my dreams are over. This is the end for me, is because we forget that we too will be altered by the experiences we're going through, that we too are constantly changing. So there's a bias known as the end of history illusion, which says that we fully acknowledge we've changed considerably in the past. So if you showed me footage of ten year old maya twenty year old Maya, first of all, I would cringe, and sightly I'd be like, oh my god, I am such

a different person today. Not even I can't even relate to that young person. But if you were to ask me, Robbie, well, how much do you think you're going to change moving forward? I would be like, oh, no, girl, I'm done changing. What you see is what you get. Yeah, this is the finished product. Researchers say it's like a watershed moment in which we falsely believe that the person we are right now in this moment is the version of us that's here to stay right, that we're going to be

for the rest of our lives. But of course we are going to keep changing, and when we have a really big event that happens in our life, positive or negative, it is going to accelerate those internal changes. Being thrust into a new reality and facing the new demands and stresses of that environment will unlock new capabilities, new perspectives, new values, ways of being in the world that we simply never saw coming. And I think there's a lot

of optimism in that message. And that's what is the most helpful reframe, which is at the beginning of a change, if you're feeling daunted by it and you think I can't possibly get through this change, don't forget that the person enduring it will be different from the person you are right. Now, there's another version. There's a reason my

book is called The Other Side of Change. There is going to be a new version of Rathi on the other side of change, a new version of Maya on the other side of change, who is different in ways that are likely to be extraordinary, right and will help you overcome and actually explore new possibilities in the aftermath of change that you never saw.

off on top of them. But al those things are unlocking all these weapons or these superpowers that they're able to collect with them to use when the time is right. And I was like, that is exactly how I'm now imagining change to be for a person. When you said unlock, I was like, that's such a positive way of putting it. It's saying that even though it may seem really difficult and it's there feels like there's a lot of resistance.

There is something being unlocked in you. There is actly a new, different part of you that you would not have been able to access had you not done this correct. That's really fun to think about. Scary, but also how incredible that that that can happen.

feel stable in is no longer available to us. And what's so interesting about the word apocalypse is that it actually comes from the Greek word apocalypsis, which means revelation.

And so that's really instructive because what it's saying is, yes, change can upend us, but It can also reveal really valuable things to us about our views of the world, things that we might want to question or challenge because maybe they're holding us back in some way, aspects of ourselves that were previously hidden from view that are now surfacing for the first time. On a personal level, you know, we talked about my formative experience with change as a kid.

I'm dealing with an adult version of this, which is I've for so long assumed that I would become a mom one day. It's probably the earliest identity I ever associated myself with. And in part I'm sure that was because of cultural influences. Right, I really believe I absorbed subliminal messages saying like you're worth as a woman comes from eventually having children, Right, that is why you're valuable.

And I also felt an inherent desire to become a mom, and I, like you, I love kids, and so for so long I have just assumed that one day I would become a mom. And over the last seven plus years, my husband and I have had a really challenging journey.

We've had to navigate many obstacles, many disappointments, many heartbreaks, and I remember on the night of the second miscarriage, when we found out that our surrogate had miscarried and that we lost identical twin girls, I really did feel totally empty, like my life went from color to grayscale in a second. And I think that is in part

because of exactly what we're talking about. And I couldn't quite understand why I was feeling like a broken version of myself again until I realized that I had, through all of these messages over the course of my life, felt like I no longer had self worth in some fundamental way unless I achieved this goal of mine. And I'm sure that I was carrying that subconsciously for so long.

But it's only when change strikes and you're forced to confront those beliefs that you're carrying, that the beliefs are making you feel the way that you do about yourself and about the world, that you're really given the opportunity to re examine them anew and to start asking yourself provocative questions like well, why do I believe that my self worth has to come from this place? Why do I think that I can't live a full life if I'm not a mother, I'm an aunt to six nieces

and nephews. I found all these beautiful ways in my life to give back. I mean this hearkens back to the conversation about my why I just love. I just

love loving. I mean, that's kind of my thing. So I can find ways to love in so many other domains, but for me, it has served as this really valuable point of reflection in My husband and I have had so many conversations where he's like, Maya, we need to unpack this, like why is so much of your self worth tied up in this identity and then slowly peeling back the layers and being like, well, growing up, I heard my Indian aunties and uncles talking about parenthood in

this way or that way, and so I just think that it serves as a wonderful moment when change can where we take a step back and we reevaluate all of these beliefs that we assumed were sacred, immutable truths about the world that actually are worthy of re examination, because in daily life, we're not waking up every day thinking what beliefs should I revisit today?

I went through or many mistakes that I made. I want them to learn from my experiences so that and from the experiences of the people I interview, so that they don't repeat the same mistakes and they're armed with the knowledge and the toolkit. So the best advice comes from research by economists and psychologists that show you should

think about your beliefs as hypotheses that should be tested. Okay, So one thing that's important for people to know is that all of us form what's called the narrative identity over time. That is a story we tell ourselves about who we are and about how our lives are unfolding, and our brains really value you consistency in this narrative. We don't like for there to be holes. So you can think of the narrative identity as this tapestry. If I take one belief and I start to jiggle that tapestry,

everything kind of gets distorted me. Right, So there's a high cost to actually re engaging with our beliefs and new but it's such a critical part of the growth process, right, And so to overcome this. What you want to do is interrogate your beliefs. Like you as a scientist, you ask yourself, how exactly did I arrive at this belief How did I get from point A to point B

in my thinking? Would I have different beliefs if I had grown up in a different family, or had grown up in a different country, or in a different religious environment, or a different spiritual environment, or a different political environment. Right, you can also ask yourself in theory, what evidence would convince me to change my mind? And I love this one because it presupposes that you ought to be convinced in the base of new evidence.

your own beliefs? And what's so interesting is one of the women Ingrid that I interviewed for the Other Side of Change, she grew up feeling profound shame around her family's heritage, her family's Colombian heritage and the indigenous practices that they engage with and she wouldn't share any of her family's stories with her boyfriend or any of her American friends. She was just very sheepish about it. And then she gets amnesia because she has a biking accident,

and she loses all of her memories. And there's something so fascinating about the ways that her memory and the order in which her memories return, Her memories of her family's story and that rich heritage resurfaces and gets restored

before her memory of her shame gets restored. Okay, so she first gets these stories coming back into her brain is flooded with all of these rich like all the rich folklore and the amazing water blessings and the tarot cards and what have you, and she is just filled with feelings of awe and reverence and wonder and she's like, I love these stories. Why have I never shared them with anyone? I need to tell everyone I know about them.

And then only a few weeks later does the memory that she felt shame about them return, But it's too late. She's already made up her mind about that family heritage and love. I tried to choose by the way stories that were so exceptional in their nature, but wants to have a universal lesson that's buried within them. I love that it shows that there is such fragility in our belief systems. When Ingrid asked herself, why did I have

so much shame around her family? It turns out that when she was a kid, her mom had cautioned her about sharing these stories publicly because she was worried that Ingrid might face discrimination or some backlash, or maybe even violence from people who didn't understand. But young Ingrid's mind interpreted that message as a sign and well, if I'm being told I can't talk about this, that probably means there's something wrong with this. And so it was a

simple misunderstanding, right. And we forget sometimes that our belief systems are influenced by who the messenger was, what the emotional state was that we were in when we even receive those messages. Messages we receive in childhood are bound up with our sense of love and belonging. They're especially hard for us to challenge in these moments. But if we again take that critical lens and we ask ourselves, well, would these beliefs hold up with the people that I

trust in my life? Right? Would they hold up given what I know about science and about what the facts say, then we get into that more curious mindset that unlocks changes in our belief system and in that process you might realize, oh, wow, these beliefs were really holding me back before. Now I can flourish. And just to add a PostScript to that, Ingrid went on to write a whole memoir about her family's culture and their history, and

it was a Pulitzer Price finalist. So turns out her stories were globally embraced and I'm so proud of her for that kind of internal evolution. And again, that's the power of change. It can free you from chains that you had needlessly put on yourself in times past.

to stop trying? Like, how do I know that I'm not supposed to based on my vision of myself as as part of my identity? How do I not how do I know that this is not something I should keep trying with until when? And so I would love to get your perspective on that and to how someone can really help the family members going through it, but also anything that they can do for themselves.

on an individual level. And I felt so heard. First of all, thank you for doing that episode. I felt so heard listening to you talk so thoughtfully about this topic and to make space for people who are in many different moments in their journey.

Asian woman, I have to do this episode. I have to represent people who are in my shoes who don't feel licensed to talk about this topic. And I need to do it soon, because well, one, I'm going to change my mind if we wait too long. But two, I don't want to have a polished story to tell.

I want people to hear me in my rawest, most vulnerable state, because that is the gift that all my guests have given me on the show, and I feel like I owe my listeners as well, you know, so I want to share a little bit more depth that's okay around my journey to motherhood because it's a bit more complicated. So I did not want to write the last chapter of this book, and I forced myself to. So every chapter in the other side of Change is

focused on someone else. The last chapter is memoir, and I was like, Maya, you have to turn the mirror on yourself and you need to figure out this change you're processing in real time and how you're going through it. So, in addition to the fertility struggles that I alluded to when I was seventeen years old, so when I was a college student, I spiraled into a really unhealthy rumination around my future kids suffering. We don't choose the things

that we get fixated on. But I had read about some hate crimes and I'd watched a documentary, and for whatever reason, and I think it's because becoming a mother was my biggest goal, my brain connected these dots, which was, oh my god, I'm seeing this child suffer. I want to be a mother one day. Oh my goodness, could

I ever tolerate my child's suffering to this degree? And it killed me to imagine someone that I love hurting in that way, and it made me feel incapacitated because there was this tension within me, which is, on the one hand, I love children so much and I'm so desirous of becoming a parent, and on the other hand, I feel things so deeply and I have such a hyper empathy towards children to see them in pain might

literally destroy me. And it threatened my big dream and I didn't know how to work my way out of it.

And it's not one of those worries that just goes away with time, because my brain, because it was spiraling, was conjuring up every way that a child can suffer, right, And it was so you know, I think as a little kid, you just have dream fantasy worlds of your future family where you're in with the white picket fence and the and the two kids that are super well adjusted and they have great friends, and they confide in me, and they may challenges and as their mother, I'm able

to solve every problem for them. And it was just reckoning with the fact that the world can be indiscriminately cruel and I did not know if I had the right constitution to deal with that. And for the first time, Robbie. And it's such a joy, by the way, to be able to talk about this part of my story, because

I haven't been able to in talking about this book. Really, I had to reckon with the fact that this thing I wanted so much might not be compatible with my well being, and I never thought about it that way before. I knew women who didn't want kids, and I definitely didn't fall into that category. I fell into a different category, which was I desperately wanted kids, but did not know if I had the right constitution for motherhood, the right

emotional constitution for motherhood. And we don't talk about that enough, that disconn or that mismatch. We're told in society, follow your dreams, overcome your fears. And there has been a point in my adult life where have I made a lot of progress on this rumination and these anxieties. Yes I have my husband, who's a relentless optimist, has helped me, you know, change my orientation and focus on the positives, like all the ways that our children could experience joy,

not just suffering. But obviously I still have that seed within my brain and it's a work in progress, but I am finally coming to terms because right now I don't have children. We've put the whole process on pause. We you know, we have embryos and a freezer. We've talked about adoption, we've talked about other ways to start a family, but we are on like a hiatus right now.

And there is a feeling of peace descending on me, which is, maybe it's okay if in life the things I want the most I don't actually do because they wouldn't promote my well being. What an interesting for me revelatory concept because I had never given myself license to make that choice for myself.

so maybe it's okay. So I don't have global advice for when people should stop trying, But I can only share my own personal story, which is I never thought I would stop trying, and I have now come to a point in my life where we decided, officially we're stopping trying. Today I feel contentment. I feel contentment in my heart, and I feel full as a person, and I feel that I can live a happy, rich life in which I have meaningful connections with adults and children alike.

And never I never thought that I could get to this place. If you had asked me on the night of the second miscarriage, like maya, will you ever feel whole if you don't achieve this goal? Will you ever feel there's anything that redempted that will come from this? Will you become a better person on the other side of change? Like I would have been like no, no, no,

I could not see that for myself. And that's the personal evolution that this book is very personal for me because I experienced in an unexpected internal evolution writing it and benefiting from the wisdom of the people I spent years with in conversation with, and saw myself become a better version of myself on the other side of change. I just did not expect that. RADI there's a freedom in that. There's a freedom in releasing yourself from the pressures that you have imposed on your life.

and now we make the decision. Or some people get to where you have and they think, okay, well I've tried enough for it to really wear me down.

the pause. But then during the pause, I felt like I experienced some degree of enlightenment, which is, oh, there's actually other reasons to press pause on this. And that's not to say again that there isn't profound grief. It's just the recognition that there are so many beautiful ways

that a person can live their life. And I had been met with lots of condescending, disparaging comments like maya, you'll never know real love or like true love, or you'll never know the joy and happiness of being a parent. Maybe that's true. But what I can tell you is that I love my husban been more than I can imagine loving a person.

than my least happy kid. And so to love so blindly and so unconditionally is also scary for me as a person, given that I again do feel things so deeply. And I know many of your listeners in particular because you attract mpaths. I think my show does too. They will resonate, They will resonate with that which is like your heart really does leave your body.

are a mother through that journey. And so first off, you are the person that is fully liable for this child like you, they don't exist without you, yes, and then as they get older, you know, I think about my mum. I think she really struggles with this idea of taking that away from our relationship and we've really created such a great friendship now, but there's still elements of this which comes out as control for me and my sister. But this element of I still know best

for you. Of course, I should be the person that you get my opinion. I should be the one that you know. If I tell you something, it's it's because I know better. And obviously it all comes from a place of love. But I have seen that course so much issues When mothers or parents are unable to see

the change of their child becoming an adult. They will always be their child, but their child does become an adult, and this shift that can happen, and often it makes the relationship more and more distant instead of being becoming closer and closer, which if you think about it, as we get older, we become closer and closer to understanding

our parents because we're becoming what they were. But because the adult or the parent doesn't seem to be able to disconnect themselves from I used to be the person that gave you life, and now you don't need me in the same way anymore. It's a really hard shift to make, yes, And so I don't know, I don't know whether it's even a place for you to give advice on or or if you have any thoughts on it. But it is an identity shift that I see many struggle with and ruining relationships because of Oh.

and this is absolutely heartbreaking. And so for anyone who's listening who's struggling with their parents being like this, send them the episode because I think it's this mother actually reckoning with that loss and realizing I have to take a step back now. As an Indian American, I was like, no one in my culture will relate to you, Kelly. So it's really nice to hear you say these things. But I send it to my parents and I'm sure

they're just like, what is this? I know, but it was at least eye opening.

to not be like that, you know, totally. It's like this ideal version of who I think I'm going to be, But really I will probably end up like my mom.

happens in their life and as we get older. Obviously it's a natural part of life, but it's obviously the hardest thing that anyone has to deal with. Yeah, And so I guess my question is around future change. Yeah, and how do people you know, that's one of the biggest changes that a lot of us have to go through, is the idea of people who've been in our life, our whole life, not being there any longer.

spend more time with them because time is limited. Absolutely, But how do you navigate this idea of future change that is literally impossible to change, It's impossible to avoid, but is the hardest thing to have to think about day and day out.

I think I had this moment maybe five or six years ago where I was like, oh my god, this is the age and I was seeing this within my parents and my aunts and uncles and my parents' friends, all these health issues emerge, and so much loss and

so much grief. I think one instinct that I have had in these moments, which is not healthy, is to almost preemptively start to detach myself from the people that I love most because I'm so afraid of losing them, and it can lead to an avoidant attachment style, honestly right. And it is actually reminding me of one of the stories in the book. This woman Tara. She actually lost her beloved father, who is a veteran of the Vietnam War, to suicide when she was a teenager, and she loved

her dad. Tara's dad was her best friend, her role model, her confidant, and to see someone who was the life of the party and were so joyful and so full of life, and his life because of you know, profound PTSD following a war led her just shut off to everyone. In fact, she vowed to herself as a teenager, I will never love anyone again deeply because the pain of being hurt is just too unbearable, right, I'd rather just not put myself in a position again where I can

get hurt. She said. She felt like her heart had been cut up into like a million pieces, and she literally went to the library and looked up whether it was possible to die of a broken heart, like that's how painful it was. And it was actually through another unexpected life change that Tara for the first time realized that that kind of distance was untenable for someone like her, that her nature was to love fiercely and to love deeply, and that she was going to have to start taking

baby steps towards facilitating a more secure attachment style. And by the way, the research shows it's quite a positive message that we are not destined to have the attachment styles that we form in childhood. So I think there's a popular narrative that if we've experienced that kind of trauma in childhood, it is our destiny to have an

avoidant or an insecure attachment style and adulthood. And while there is a weak correlation between childhood experiences an adult attachment style, each of us can actually take very concrete, deliberate steps that move us towards more secure attachment. So Tara, with such profound bravery, starts engaging in these small stats baby steps. Every time she gets scared, she just backs

off a little bit, tries again the next day. It's all incremental progress, right, There's no silver bullet in this space. And over time she built one of the most robust, secure communities of love that I have ever witnessed in my life. Her life is brimming with love and humanity. She has a sisterhood when it comes to her friendships. She has such loving relationships in her life. And I have been so moved by that example because she has every reason to resist that, to continue to let fear rule.

And there's a quote at the end of the book where she says, am I going to keep allowing myself to be open to others but with the risk that it might all hurt me so much? One day? And she said, you know, for as long as it's possible. I'm going to keep trying. And I find that so inspirational, because, like you, it's just so easy to be filled with so much grief. We almost want to get ahead of

our grief. And Tara is a wonderful reminder to me that if we're very intentional with the way that we love others, actually we can do the reverse, which is to foster the deepest, most intimate connections. And that's what's going to fill us with the least amount of regret when we lose the people we love, because we would know that we had given it our all.

us family with her every single day. Everyone got to spend you know, family members who didn't have a good relationship with her suddenly over those months created this beautiful relationship with her, one that they never even thought was possible, but they found you know, family members who had a broken relationship with her had suddenly found themselves absolutely obsessed with her and loved her and wanted to be of

service to her in every moment. And then I have had a wonderful relationship with her and I got to spend every single moment by her side. Yeah, and I'm kind of good. It was so beautiful, yeah, yeah, And it was such a lovely way to have that connection with her at the end where no one had regrets. Every single person felt like they had this fulfilled version

of their relationship that they needed with her. And I was thinking, wow, that preparation and all of us having the like, what a blessing it was to have that preparation, My gosh.

blocking things off. It's so funny. When my grandma went into hospital, the first thing I said was, I don't want to call her for a couple of days because I don't want her to see me upset, or like, I don't want to see her right now. And so I did everything that I could in the background, like helping with logistics, but I did not want to talk to her. Yeah, And then when my dad went in hospital, I was like, I don't want to talk to dad.

Don't want me when when you're with him, don't call me because I need a couple of days to just like think about it and to not feel that upset and to become a bit more logical. And I realized that our natural instinct is to block off us. It's like I don't want to be too close to them right now because it's too painful. But I think it also gives you time to like think about it and really prepare and really think about how you feel about

the situation. And I think those conversations at our age are really really important to allow yourself to one have the connections that you want right now, but also to prepare yourself so that when those moments do come, you are able to deal with it with love and not feeling blocked off. Yeah, it's like, now that I've deal with these blocked off phases, I'm like, hopefully when it comes to that time, I will have more open heart because my body and my mind have been through that

process already. But if we don't do that, and we and we literally ignore it for our whole life, when it happens, it can completely destroy you and destroy your maybe you'd regret so much more how you reacted in that moment or how you dealt with that situation.

humanity thrive. And I think that's what when I'm on my deathbed, I'm going to think the most about did I make people feel loved and heard and understood by me? And what you're expressing in the way that you care for your grandmother at the end of her life, that you just did exactly that, like you, Yeah, it's so beautiful.

out who they are, what they love? Like any pieces of advice that you have for people who feel really lost in their life at the moment, whether their identity has been crushed or whether they don't know who they are.

And that can give you a really nice indicator of what the things are that you love. The other thing that people can do, especially if they're going through change, is to do what's called the self affrict exercise. This is where you just take five minutes and you write down all the identities that you value in your life that bring your life meeting, however big or small. So this could be as simple as I joined a pickleball club. That's one of my identity pickleball player. Okay, it could

be oh, I organized the big sale for our local PTA. Okay, I'm a PTA person, I'm a parent, I'm a caregiver, I'm the coach of the little league team, I am part of a dance class, or I do you know? For me, it's like I do zoom workout sessions with my trainer. Okay, I'm gonna write that down. I'm one of Ma's students, you know, and you write down all

of these. And you can also if you are going through something that's making you feel very disoriented, right you've just lost your job, or you're having trouble, for example, in your relationship, what you can do is focus on those aspects of who you are that are not threatened by the change you're going through. So, for example, if you're in a if you've just lost your job, you might focus on the fact that you really value your

role in your community. If you are in a tough spot in your relationship, you might focus on the fact you really value your spiritual life. Right, I love that I meditate every day or I do yoga. By the way, I don't do these things. Yeah, you're all hypothetical. I wish I could tell you and Jay, but I, you know, a daily meditator, but I'm not. And so what this does is, first of all, it allows people to see

their identities more expansively. So let me share the personal story of I used to be like I don't know, so after the violin is in particular, I was like, I don't have an identity. What's my identity? And I remember taking a walk with a friend in twenty twenty, this is right before the pandemic, and I was like, I have no passions, Like what do I even love

to do? And he's like, Maya, you love people. And I was like, that's not an identity and he's like, take it from someone who doesn't love people yet and he's not endlessly curious about people. And that really got me thinking we can sometimes take the things that define us for granted because we forget that other people don't have those strengths.

rich and multi faceted it is. And then once you've got all of those identities now on the piece of paper, you can say, well, which ones do I want to lean into more? Right? Oh, well, it's kind of clear I could see connective tissue between these three. I really do love being a part of my community. Okay, maybe I can actually volunteer for the upcoming New Year's party or the whatever Valentine's Day, whatever it is. And so it just it gives you a little bit more food for thought.

nought and you lost everything. But you need to remember that all of the skills that you honed, all of your talents, all of the knowledge you accrued, all of your life experiences and the wisdom that you gained as a result of those experiences are still fully there and are still fully intact and will service you in whatever

you do next. So when it came to my life as a violinist, like, yes, none of the technical skills of playing the violin were particularly helpful for me, but all the softer skills I built, like grit, discipline, discipline, oh my gosh, so much discipline, routine, responding well to failure, you know, like I was criticized all the time for every little micro note that I got wrong, and so was I built thicker skin over my fear of performance

and being on stage. Those have all been so helpful to me in my role as a cognitive scientist, as a podcaster, as a writer. Like these are all useful general skills. So when you're at an inflection point, ask yourself,

who else can this person be? This person who has had these broad, wonderfully rich life experiences, Like imagine that you are an employer who's looking at your own CB, but don't just include the jobs you've had, include the trips that you've taken and the vantage points you've gained from traveling the world or the experiences you've had caring for an elderly member of your family, or babysitting the kids next door, Like, these are all things that you

still have with you that will aid you as you go next. It's not like a it's not like there's a blank slate and you just have to work from nothing.

like uncertainty. So one of my favorite research studies shows that we're more stressed when we're told we have a fifty percent chance of getting an electric shock than when we're told we have a one hundred percent chance, which is it's so wild, right, We would rather be sure rabi that a negative thing is going to happen than to have to grapple with any uncertainty. But I feel this deeply right. I want to know how my story ends. I want to have a firm grip of the steering wheel.

And so many of us fall prey to what's called the illusion of control, which basically just means we grossly overestimate the degree to which we dictate how our lives turn out. I mean, so much of like Buddhist philosophy is all about, you know, creating that distance and that

detachment so that we aren't so anchored on outcomes. But our brains naturally want to make us feel like we are in control and that we are in the driver's seat, definitely, And so mental time travel is one way of helping to tame those negative mental spirals that often emerge in the face of uncertainty. And so let's say you're navigating a breakup. It's not like, well again, if you're like most people, you're not just like Okay, now that relationship

has ended, you've gone to the next one. Folks, you're sitting there ruminating what did I do wrong? Why did they stop loving me? Why did I stop loving them? Could I have been better? Why did I say that? Oh my god, that was so embarrassing. I should never have said that I'm never going to be able to date again, and if I do date, I'm never going to find anyone like them. Should I not have ended

the relation? We can go crazy in these spirals, right, Or if you are a people pleaser like I am, you have a benign but awkward interaction with a coworker and suddenly at three in the morning, you wake up and you're like, oh my god, I was so embarrassing. Yeah, what did I say?

advantage when it comes to taming these mental spirals. So we can travel back in time to remind ourselves of moments where we were very resilient in the face of adversity. Right when we're feeling really weak and like the moments unprecedented, we can be like, well, you know, five years ago,

I went through this really hard thing. I'm hoping one day I look back and I remember, well, remember in your late thirties when you're navigating all this fertility stuff, or actually not even late thirties, Remember in your thirties when you're navigating all this fertility stuff, you know you were able to overcome that. And so we can do that. We can also look back in time to remember moments where we were fixated on something and it turned out not to be a concern for us many years later.

We can also move forward in time to remind ourselves that the current moment and our current preoccupations are transient. So you can ask yourself at three in the morning, how am I going to feel about this five hours from now, five days from now, five years from now, fifteen years from now. Chances are the awkward interaction with the coworker is going to be less meaningful and less significant to you. Five years from now, you might not

even have them as a coworker. Okay, unless you're in business with your husband like you've been read your teap business and then actually, yeah, I used to give you a different strategy for that one.

degree of closure. The other thing that you can do when you are in the throes of those really icky, annoying, maddening mental spirals is to coach yourself like you would a friend. So oftentimes when we take a first person view on our problems, we don't give ourselves any self compassion. We brate, we are filled with regret, and because of all the heightened emotions, we can't see our situation clearly.

But if you pretend that you are just a third party observing the situation, you will be able to poke holes in your narrative, be able to point out, hey, maya, maybe you're not really seeing this exactly as you should. And then most importantly, you will be able to extend yourself the compassion you need to actually move forward in a productive way, because if you don't give your self compassion, you don't think, oh, I wasn't great in that situation.

You think I am bad and there's no redemption in I am bad. But you would never say that to a friend. You would never tell your friend, well, there's no redemption for you, you're bad. You would say you just acted out of character in that moment. And so there's a lot of research showing that again, treating yourself like someone that you're coaching, and even using this like very

small tweak and framing. So rather than talking yourself in the first person like I need to get a grip, you instead use a third person maya, you need to get a grip. That can also forge really helpful emotional distance between you and your problems.

better about the unfamiliar. Could you give me a little bit more around the science around that and how people can push themselves out of this Even if they're in a cycle of something that's terrible, it feels comfortable and it feels certain, so they stay in it. How can someone get themselves up it, whether it's a relationship or whether it's a job. And we'll be above.

don't know what's coming up next. I like to know how the story is.

It's just gray space, it's ambiguity. One of the women that I write about in my book, which who I think gives us a very good solution, is named Florence, and she found out decades into her marriage that her husband had been having an affair with another woman, and she was, of course totally gutted, totally heartbroken. She had thought he was her soulmate and he had not felt

the same. So it's just a crushing blow. And her instinct, because she's a science journalist, is to do exactly what I would want to do in that situation and maybe you would want to do, which is to figure it out, to crack the code on her heartbreak right, to get all the clear answers. So she goes on this solo canoe trip and she's like, Okay, I'm going to figure this out, and we trick our brain into believing that if we can just figure out, if we just understand it, then I can get over it.

this kind of betrayal again. If I can just figure out what I did wrong and make amends for it then I'll never make mistakes again. It's just not true, and it's a false sense of closure and clarity. So Florence ends this solo canoe trip in a far worse place than she started. She's spiraling, She vacillates between thinking it's all her husband's fault and it's all her fault, and she's just going between two you know, extremes on the pendulum. Sorry, and she's just swinging between two extremes.

And she actually only finds that safety in lack of clarity in community with others. So she stumbles upon a museum, which I believe it or not, is a real thing called the Museum of Broken Relationships.

to her, and in that moment. She says, just the recognition that something that felt so singular and so idiosyncratic was actually universal was a comfort in its own right. And I think, to your question of certainty feels safe, Well, we're never going to get the certainty we want, so we have to find safety elsewhere. And Florence says that by connecting with others who had been through a similar experience to her and feeling close to them, she was able to open herself up to the lessons that they

could teach her. And one thing I want to share on top of that is, again, this is my vantage point as a cognitive scientist who believes in the unity of humanity. We don't just have to seek out people whose stories look like ours. So one of the reasons that I wrote The Other Side of Change is because I felt like these conversations that I was having with people revealed that there were so much that united people's stories that didn't look at all the same on their surface.

So the young man who received a stage four cancer diagnosis and then the woman who found out after her husband's passing that he had cheated on her were both grappling with a feeling of betrayal right, and they would never have sought one another out right. In our society, we're told, oh, you've just lost a job. Oh, I have a friend who lost a job, Let me connect you with them. Oh, you've just ended a relationship. Okay.

In the bookstore, there's a section for people who are navigating the end of a relationship, and we're taught to seek out people who have endured exactly the same type

of change that we're going through. And my argument is that because of our shared psychology, because we're all grappling with the same stuff of change, and by that I mean bristling at the world's unfairness, grieving the futures that we once thought were available to us, worrying about what our self identity can be now that we've lost a person who actually really defined us, being concerned about our past because now a secret's been revealed to us and

it changes our understanding of our family. Whatever it is. The problem statements are the same, so you can easily expect that the solution set's going to be the same too. And so the joy of writing this book is that even though the people who I interviewed have stories that don't look like the stories I've been through that. I found that I had so much in common with them and that the strategies they used to overcome their change were relevant to my own life.

can rich in our lives, if that's a word. Yeah, that can make our lives so much richer just by having a different perspective, just by having a different story that we can't relate to but we can learn from. And I think that's what we have to differentiate between you me and we have to relate to it or you might but you definitely can learn something from it. And there's always something you can pull that can be relative to your life.

can only communicate with the world or your winnings. And I mean her Olivia's story is so unbelievable, and she has an astonishing recovery. But what was so interesting about our story rally and what was so unexpected about it? Because I'm always interested in what's happening in here. I am care I care less about the external beats of a person's narrative and more about what's shifting within their brains.

Her story is actually one about a recovering people pleaser, someone who learns from this experience how beholden they were to other opinions of her, and then she loses the ability to curate a version of herself that she feels will be palatable to others because she literally cannot control her body and she cannot even speak to her boyfriend and her boyfriend's family, or impress them in the ways that she hoped to impress them, and through that process

establishes a kind of self love in her twenties that I look at with such admiration and envy, because if only we could all achieve that level of self assuredness and love. And so who would have thought that I would feel so close to Olivia because we shared this thing in common that I wouldn't even have known had I just heard about the elements of her stroke and her physical recovery.

society that is getting more and more open. We're more accepting, We're more like, Yeah, you know, if you look at the timeline and what history has shown, we seem like as a human race, we're getting more progressive and being

more open minded. But at the same time, it also feels like the world's becoming a lot more judgmental, And when I think about judgment in my own life, I always notice that I'm more judgment It correlates with the less happy I am, the more judgmental I am of other people, the less content I am in The moments where I'm feeling more insecure and the moments where I'm feeling unhappy about my own circumstance is when I will have a lot more to say and a lot more

to think about somebody else. I would love your perspective on that, And why judging people gives us this feeling of superiority like it gives us hurting other people, or judging other people makes us feel better about ourselves. How of the two relations and how do we separate that relationship to not being not being connected? Because your pain doesn't shouldn't make me feel any better?

because we're not like that person over there. Right. But I will tell you one thing, which is having been a cognitive scientist for decades has been the greatest empathy builder of my life. Because when you understand the root causes for why people believe certain things, why they believe that things they believe, why they've come to have the attitudes and the orientation to the world that they've come to have, you will naturally dislike them less.

to feel that way. But if you chose that you actually didn't want to feel that way, and you wanted to give the person benefit of doubt, which is what it usually is. Yeah, you probably will end up liking them, but a part of you doesn't want to. Yeah, a part of you doesn't want to believe it.

of within their lives. And so for me, when I think about the origin story of belief systems, it just takes the temperature down because, of course, like everyone else, I'll be watching TV and I'm like, how could this

person say this vile stuff? It's disgusting. I still have that same visceral reaction, and then I try to remind myself, like You can vehemently disagree with what they're saying, and you can think that what they're saying is so so harmful and you should do everything you can to advocate against that, but there probably is humanity deep within them.

It actually changes our brains. So research shows that when we witness someone defy our understanding of what humans are capable of, it actually cracks open our own imagination about what we are capable of, which is especially helpful when we're in the throes of change and we don't know what the other side looks like. And I had an

experience of moral elevation back in twenty fifteen. I remember after the horrific shooting at Mother Emmanuel Church, the daughter of one of the victims extended forgiveness publicly to the racist killer inside the courtroom, and Robbie I was stunned by this. Okay, I mean I was working at the time.

I was working in the Obama White House, and I was in this policy sphere, and I just remember my colleagues and I because I think President Obama had gone to the church and we were all just stunned by this. And what do Collier taught me, which was the daughter, was that humans have a capacity a depth of forgiveness

that I did not think was possible. And the beauty of moral elevation is that it's not even like I was looking to forgive anyone in particular, but that impact transcends domain, because it led me to ask myself, how kind am I capable of being to others? How much empathy can I show to others? How much resolve can I show? How much conviction, how much resilience? And it just makes you hopeful about what humans can do. And so I would urge everyone who's listening to this moral

beauty is all around you. It's at the coffee shop in the morning when you witness someone being super nice to the barista. It's when you're walking down the street and you see someone hold an elderly person's hand and gently, with no rush at all, walk them across the street. It's when you pass by the playground and you see a little kid defend their friend from bullying. It's just all around us.

so nice. And because the world can feel so divisive, and because we feel so disconnected from one one another, inviting moments of moral beauty into your life every day will remind you that actually there are good There are good humans everywhere, and we think about these people in groups as like masses, but on an individual level, there's so much humanity to be inspired by.