How to rebuild yourself after a major life change (cognitive scientist Maya Shankar)

Maya Shankar 0:00 If you were to show me footage of 10-year-old Maya or 20-year-old Maya, oh my God, I'm cringing just thinking about it, I will think, "Okay, I'm not even the same person anymore. I'm gonna forge as much psychological distance as I can [laughs] between me today and that old version of myself." But then interestingly enough, if you were to ask me, "Well, how much do you think you're gonna change in the future?" I would say, "Oh no, Jeff, I'm, I'm done changing. Like, what you see is what you get. This is the finished product." The phenomenon you're describing is called the end of history illusion, and it basically says that we fully acknowledge that we've changed considerably in the past, and it's this funny quirk in our brains where we believe that the present moment reflects who we are gonna be for the rest of our lives.

Jeff Berman 0:43 This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, cognitive scientist Maya Shankar. She's the author of a brilliant new book, The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans. Maya, welcome to Masters of Scale.

Maya Shankar 1:07 Thanks so much for having

Maya Shankar 1:08 me, Jeff.

Jeff Berman 1:08 Uh, I, we were talking on, on the way in. Um, I devoured your book. Um, so excited we get to be in conversation about it. I mean, I gave your book a hug when I finished reading it. Um, so I just want to start by saying thank you.

Maya Shankar 1:22 Oh my gosh, that is... You have no idea, uh, what it means to me to hear that, and it was a three-and-a-half year effort.

Jeff Berman 1:30 What's so, um, compelling in part about the book is the extent to which you are doing justice to these stories of humans who have, um, not just lived through, but endured, I mean, really profound and difficult change. And, um, but you're, you're pairing those compelling stories with social science, with behavioral science, with, with real data and insights behind it. Um, and then you're making it actionable for us as people who are enduring change or managing change in our organizations. Um, and so I think, I think, just think so many people are gonna get so much out of this, both personally and professionally. Um, but before we get to the book, Maya, y- you went through a pretty massive change early in your life. Um, will you share the story of, of, of where you started and, and, and how things shifted for you?

Maya Shankar 2:22 Yeah. I was an aspiring concert violinist as a kid.

Jeff Berman 2:26 As, as we all are.

Maya Shankar 2:27 [laughs] I don't know what led me to love it as much as I did early on. It might be that my grandmother, who grew up in both India and in Burma, she played the violin just as a hobby as a little kid, and I was so close to my grandmother. But I so quickly fell in love with the violin and when I was nine, I started studying at Juilliard. When I was a teenager, the renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman invited me to be his private violin student. And so to say that I was single-mindedly focused on becoming a violinist would be an understatement, right? My whole childhood was devoted to the violin, and everything was going according to plan until this one morning when I overstretched my pinky finger on a single note-

Jeff Berman 3:11 Hmm

Maya Shankar 3:11 ... and I heard a popping sound. And afterwards, after much resistance on my part and playing through pain and surgeries and alternative treatments and everything under the sun, doctors eventually told me that it was a career-ending injury.

Jeff Berman 3:26 How old were you?

Maya Shankar 3:27 I was 15.

Jeff Berman 3:27 And you're effectively given this, like, death sentence for this dream of yours.

Maya Shankar 3:33 I love that you use that phrase because there was something that felt so curious about my grief, which was, yes, I longed for the violin, but it didn't feel like I just lost the instrument. It felt like I had lost myself.

Jeff Berman 3:46 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 3:46 It felt like I had lost who Maya was in this really profound way. And I imagine a lot of people listening can relate to this. Sometimes we don't know how much something has come to define us until we lose that thing. And it's taken me decades to try to figure out how it is that we can construct our identities in ways that make them more resilient to change. And the lesson I've learned, that I'd love to share, is it can be... It can help... You can future-proof yourself and your identity by defining yourself not simply by what you do, but by why you do that thing. So when I ask myself, "Well, what did I love about the violin?" At its core, at the root, if you stripped away all the superficial features of actually playing an instrument, human connection was at the core. That's what made me love it, right? And importantly, just because I lost the violin didn't mean that I lost what led me to love it in the first place. When life took the violin away from me, my passion for it, my desire for emotional connection was still very much intact. And it provided me, in many ways, with a softer landing to know that that part was still intact.

Jeff Berman 5:05 And, and I think for a, a, a lot of the, the stories that we hear about people who have, um, and I, I use this word not in a critical way, just in an observational way, almost a mono- monomaniacal focus because-

Maya Shankar 5:17 Oh, totally

Jeff Berman 5:17 ... you, you have to, right? When you're-

Maya Shankar 5:18 100%

Jeff Berman 5:19 ... playing at that level, that they-

Maya Shankar 5:20 Blinders. [laughs]

Jeff Berman 5:21 Right. That, that they then pivot into something else that they're singularly focused on. Was that an impulse of yours?

Maya Shankar 5:28 I didn't think at the time there could be a replacement.

Jeff Berman 5:31 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 5:32 And I think many of us probably experience that. When you really are in something like that, laser-focused, blinders on from the time you're six, you don't even have a full understanding of what the world has to offer. And it was actually my dad who helped unlock my next step for me.

Jeff Berman 5:51 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 5:51 So he gave me really good advice the summer before my freshman year of college. He said, "Maya, you- Have been wearing these blinders for about a decade. Your job this summer is to enter exploration mode.

Jeff Berman 6:07 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 6:08 I want you to read as much as you can possibly read. I want you to watch as much as you can possibly watch. I want you to talk to people from all walks of life. Just figure out what people are doing and what kinds of things they can do. Um, but importantly, do this whole thing without an end goal in mind because the minute you try to figure out, like, okay, what's my major gonna be, you're gonna pre- prematurely limit yourself, right? And it was during that period of exploration that I stumbled upon the first book I ever read about the science of the human mind.

Jeff Berman 6:35 Hmm. What was that book?

Maya Shankar 6:36 It was a called, it was called The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker.

Jeff Berman 6:39 Mm-hmm.

Maya Shankar 6:40 And he details the marvelous, awe-inspiring cognitive machinery that's operating behind the scenes that gives rise to our ability to both produce and comprehend language. I just remember thinking, oh, my gosh, if this is what's behind language, what's behind complex decision-making, what's behind people falling in love, what's behind, um, the, the mentality behind the risks we take or perseverance, I mean, it just totally lit up my imagination about the mind.

Jeff Berman 7:09 As you talk about follow your curiosity and this incredibly sage advice your, your dad gave you, um, one of the concepts you talk about in the book is this concept of the future self.

Maya Shankar 7:20 Yes.

Jeff Berman 7:21 And, you know, this, this idea that, you know, w- we are someone, we are, we are who we are today, and we underestimate the extent to which we will change over time.

Maya Shankar 7:30 Yes. So the phenomenon you're describing is called the end of history illusion, and it basically says that we fully acknowledge that we've changed considerably in the past. So if you were to show me footage of 10-year-old Maya or 20-year-old Maya, oh, my God, I'm cringing just thinking about it, I will think, okay, I'm not even the same person anymore. I'm gonna forge as much psychological distance as I can between me today and that old version of myself. But then interestingly enough, if you were to ask me, well, how much do you think you're gonna change in the future, I would say, "Oh, no, Jeff, I'm, I'm done changing. Like, what you see is what you get. This is the finished product." And it's this funny quirk in our brains where we believe that the present moment reflects who we are gonna be for the rest of our lives.

Jeff Berman 8:14 Right.

Maya Shankar 8:14 We forget that we are constantly changing, and for that reason, it's actually very important for us to be curious about ourselves as we're navigating a big change. In fact, that, what you've just said is probably one of the theses of my book, which is that when the, when, when big changes happen to us, they also inspire lasting change within us.

Jeff Berman 8:39 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 8:40 And by and large, the people that I've interviewed over the years for The Other Side of Change, but also for my podcast, they haven't been happy necessarily that the change happened to them. I mean, who's gonna will illness into their lives or the end of a relationship? But they've been very grateful for the person they became on the other side of change.

Jeff Berman 9:00 Yeah.

Maya Shankar 9:01 They feel like better versions of themselves that would not have, uh, been unlocked had it not been for the change they're going through. But in order to witness those changes and appreciate them, you have to almost audit yourself over time. You want to ask yourself as you're moving through change, are my values changing?

Jeff Berman 9:21 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 9:22 What beliefs should I revisit that might be holding me back? How can I adopt new perspectives so that I can see my situation differently?

Jeff Berman 9:30 So you fall in love with cognitive science.

Maya Shankar 9:32 Yes.

Jeff Berman 9:32 Um, you become a cognitive scientist, and, um, I, I can imagine any number of directions one would go with that. Um, somehow you end up in the Obama White House?

Maya Shankar 9:44 [laughs] So I remember calling my undergrad advisor who got me, who was my mentor during, you know, my years as a college student and really helped foster my love of the field, and I said, "Hey there. Thanks so much for investing in me. I'm actually jumping ship now. Really sorry. I'm gonna try to become a general management consultant."

Jeff Berman 10:02 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 10:02 And she, she's like, "Okay, Maya, wait. Wait, wait, hold your, slow your roll, okay? Before you do that, I just need to share a story with you." She said, "I just heard a professor from Harvard Law School, Cass Sunstein, who previously worked in the Obama White House, talk about a story in which they used insights from our field, from the field of behavioral science, cognitive science, to improve people's lives." So long story short, the government offers a school lunch program for low-income kids. But despite the fact it was offered to millions of children, millions of kids were still going hungry every day at school. And in order to try to understand why parents weren't signing up their kids, they did a behavioral audit of the program, and they discovered at least two psychological barriers that stood in the way of enrollment. The first was that there was a big stigma associated with signing up your kid for a public benefits program, and then there was also the fact that there was a massive paperwork burden when it came to filling out the form. And so what the government did is they leveraged a very elegant insight from behavioral economics, the default option. So they changed the school lunch program from an opt-in program to an opt-out program. So now every kid's automatically enrolled, and parents only have to take an affirmative step if they want to actively un-enroll their kid from the school lunch program.

Jeff Berman 11:21 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 11:21 As a result, 12 and a half million kids were now eating lunch at school every day who previously weren't. So you can imagine my reaction. Oh, my God, that is what I want to be doing. I want to be translating insights from our field into improvements in people's lives through public policy. And so I email Cass Sunstein, and I'm like, it was a totally cold email. I'm like, "Hey, I don't know you, and I've published nothing of significance as an academic. Oh, and by the way, I have no public policy experience, but I'm really interested in the intersection of behavioral science and policy." And I remember I was so insecure, Jeff, I even wrote in the email, "I know I'm not cool enough for the likes of Obama." I felt the need to say that 'cause it felt so preposterous that I was sending this email. I said, "So if you have any ideas for state or local governments that might be interested in my skill set, I would love to hear from you." And Cass, being the gem of a human that he is, kindness of strangers Writes back within five minutes of receiving my email saying, "Here's a contact. Here's, here's an email for the president's science advisor-

Jeff Berman 12:27 Hmm

Maya Shankar 12:27 ... for Obama's science advisor. Send him an email and let him know that I sent you along."

Jeff Berman 12:32 So Cass gives you an email address.

Maya Shankar 12:34 Yes.

Jeff Berman 12:34 You email the person. They respond, and within two days, you're-

Maya Shankar 12:38 I'm at this advisor's house interviewing with him, and I'm doing two things which feel, again, so audacious. I'm pitching him on creating a new position in the Obama White House, namely a dedicated role for a behavioral scientist. And then I'm saying, "Oh, BT dubs, if you could also hire me into that role, that would be great."

Jeff Berman 12:58 So what was the role that they created for you?

Maya Shankar 13:02 The role was very open-ended. It was simply, you know, senior policy advisor for the social and behavioral sciences. But I've been taught a very valuable lesson by my boss, who said to me, "You have to build things to last in government." He had had the experience of working for Clinton for eight years.

Jeff Berman 13:22 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 13:22 And then Bush got elected, and he said it was akin to having built an elaborate sandcastle at the beach for eight years, and then one wave came and just s- you know, s- destroyed the whole apparatus.

Jeff Berman 13:33 Mm-hmm.

Maya Shankar 13:33 And so he urged me to actually try and institutionalize this effort so that it could persist well beyond my tenure. And so I built this social and behavioral sciences team. I baked it into a very bipartisan part of government, where, which I knew could withstand leadership changes-

Jeff Berman 13:53 Hmm

Maya Shankar 13:53 ... and be used to just drive more effectiveness and efficiency across government. And a lot of, like you said, a lot of these were common sense reform, right? Things that are, that both Republicans and Democrats can get behind. They didn't have a m- mandate, and I didn't have a budget, so I had to build an organic coalition of the willing, if you will-

Jeff Berman 14:12 Mm-hmm

Maya Shankar 14:12 ... to try to get everyone on board, and I had a very grassroots approach. I just knocked on every door in government. I said, "Are you willing to work with me?" I also engaged at all levels of government. So I think if you come in and you're, like, a really big deal, right, you might not engage with the folks that I engage with coming in as not a really big deal, right?

Jeff Berman 14:30 Mm-hmm.

Maya Shankar 14:30 So I talked to civil servants and political appointees alike. I talked to people, again, at all levels of government. And by the way, it's often the most junior people that are the most, uh, that are the most acquainted with the program and the ins and outs of it, and, um, they're the ones who have the decades-long knowledge and wisdom. And so one of our early pilots was with the Department of Veterans Affairs. They offer a employment and educational benefit to help veterans transition to civilian life after having been in the military for some time, and as you can imagine, it's often fraught with a lot of psychological challenges. And so this helps, you know, generate their next step. But similar to the school lunch program, not enough vets were signing up. And we ended up changing just one word in the email message. Instead of telling veterans that they were eligible for the program, we simply reminded them that they had earned it-

Jeff Berman 15:22 Hmm

Maya Shankar 15:22 ... through their years of service. And this led to a nine percent increase in access to the benefit. And it leverages a principle known as the endowment effect, which says that we value things more when we either own them or feel that we've earned them, in this case. And so that's the kind of work that our team did, right? And as we did more and more, and we built more of these proof of concept efforts, we were able to work on thornier, more challenging projects.

Jeff Berman 15:49 I'm imagining thousands of people listening or watching our conversation who work at places like Google, where you are-

Maya Shankar 15:58 Mm-hmm

Jeff Berman 15:58 ... or other big companies where they work and going, you know, gosh, how do you do that in a big, you know, e- even the most forward-leaning companies in the world, but at th- the scale are, are, they're sclerotic. They're slow-moving.

Maya Shankar 16:13 Oh my gosh.

Jeff Berman 16:13 It's difficult. You, you were, you were truly an entrepreneur in, like, the biggest company in the country.

Maya Shankar 16:20 [laughs] And the most dysfunctional and the one with the most red tape-

Jeff Berman 16:24 Well, you-

Maya Shankar 16:24 ... and the slowest-moving

Jeff Berman 16:25 ... right.

Maya Shankar 16:25 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 16:25 What, what did you learn from that experience that folks who are at big companies or even mid-sized companies and are struggling to, to be entrepreneurial in environments that are inherently not, um, that, that can help them be better at their jobs w- where they are today?

Maya Shankar 16:43 Yeah, my boss, um, called each of his teammates policy entrepreneurs from day one. He wanted us to have that innovative mindset within a very rigid system, and when we saw barriers to actually try to figure out creative workarounds. I have a few answers to your question. I think in part, actually, I benefited from some naiveté.

Jeff Berman 17:03 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 17:04 I had never worked in government before. I was not disenchanted. And so when I ran up against barriers, I was like, "Okay, we'll find another way forward." And I don't know if I would meet those challenges with the same resolve today. The other thing was the importance of aligning incentives. So when I would talk to my government agency colleagues, I knew that there was actually very little incentive for them to partner with me because what's the benefit of taking a risk? I mean, they work with me. Maybe it's revealed that their program's not working as effectively as they thought it did.

Jeff Berman 17:35 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 17:35 They might get in trouble with their boss. And so what I had to do was approach the conversation in a way where I made it clear that I was actually gonna be helping them achieve their goal more effectively and efficiently. So I'd ask them, "Okay, you work in the Department of Education. What are, what are your goals for this year? As a behavioral scientist, I'm going to help you get to that goal using tools that represent our best understanding of human behavior." Now you've framed what you're doing as actually complementary to their efforts-

Jeff Berman 18:05 Hmm

Maya Shankar 18:05 ... rather than sitting as, like, a tangential thing or, like, um, something that might be at odds with their thing, right? And so in every conversation, I try to first do my research and understand what are the goals they already have in mind, and how can the tools that I have in my toolkit help them get there faster-

Jeff Berman 18:23 Hmm

Maya Shankar 18:23 ... and with more ease? And that's when we We're able to unlock some of these collaborations

Jeff Berman 18:32 Maya took the skills she'd learned working at the White House to Silicon Valley. She's now a senior director of behavioral economics at Google. She's also the host of an award-winning podcast called A Slight Change of Plans. Both her podcast and new book focus on telling extraordinary stories of people navigating change.

Maya Shankar 18:53 Stuff that we're grappling with is very similar. Like, we're often bristling about the unfairness of the world. We're grieving our futures that we once thought were on offer, and they no longer are, and we're nostalgic for the past, or we're questioning some aspect of the past because maybe a secret's been revealed, and we don't know who we can trust anymore, and we're worried about what it would mean to rebuild our self-identity. Like, if the problem statement's the same for those of us going through change, then probably the solution set's gonna be the same, too.

Jeff Berman 19:22 Mm.

Maya Shankar 19:23 And so the episodes that I've conducted for the show and then all the new interviews that I conducted for The Other Side of Change reveal this in spades, which is that the cancer patient and the woman who finds out that her husband has had an affair, they both are grappling with a feeling of betrayal.

Jeff Berman 19:43 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 19:43 They're both having to deal with that same psychological state. And it's been heartening for me in a time of disconnection and feeling like often that we don't have enough in common, that we actually have so much more in common than we thought. I wanted to give people a compa-companion. I wanted to give people a companion that they could have in tow with them, whether they're in the throes of a change, whether they're processing a past change, or whether they're anxious about a future change, so that they could actually have the tools and science-based techniques they need to get to the other side of change intact and, and full and with greater wisdom and self-awareness than they otherwise would have

Maya Shankar 20:30 had.

Jeff Berman 20:30 And I, and I think people will come back to that appendix frequently. And so let's give them a little bit of a preview if we can. Um, uh, I wanna just take us through a handful of scenarios that folks may be dealing with. Um-

Maya Shankar 20:43 Sure

Jeff Berman 20:43 ... uh, the first and kinda most obvious is we're dealing with historic layoffs right now. When someone wakes up the day after a layoff, what the, what should they do?

Maya Shankar 20:51 First of all, I mean, it's a, such a deeply painful thing, and so I think giving yourself the compassion that you deserve for that moment is critical. We reserve, it seems, so much compassion for others and so little for ourself. If you're anything like me anyway, you do that. So I think acknowledging that that, that's a very painful loss, and it can really hit at self-esteem and identity and in lots of ways. The second thing I would say is just because you lost your job doesn't mean that you lost all of the skills and the knowledge and the talents you honed and the wisdom that you accrued as a result of all the experiences that you've had. And we can sometimes forget that as we're trying to figure out what the next venture is or what the next step looks like. You feel like you've lost everything when you lose your job. But actually, so much of what you've built because of what you've done is going to service you in wonderful ways moving forward. Look at your own CV, look at your bio, and don't just look at those bullet points. Think about the places you've traveled to, the people who have provided you with wisdom, the vantage points you've collected because of the myriad experiences you've had. Like, that is who you are. That is the rich, multifaceted person you are, and that person is capable of so much.

Jeff Berman 22:14 Um,

Jeff Berman 22:15 i- in this moment where someone has just been laid off, um, where they are treating it, as we discussed earlier, as a moment to really take the blinders off and explore-

Maya Shankar 22:25 Yeah

Jeff Berman 22:25 ... um, if they want to think about making a massive career change, not trading Ford for Chevy, but, but really going in a, in a whole other direction, um, w- how should someone begin approaching that process?

Maya Shankar 22:41 That's a great question. Um, one of the things I talk about and I write about in The Other Side of Change is around how we can realize the possible selves that we envision for us, and I tap into the science of motivation-

Jeff Berman 22:59 Hmm

Maya Shankar 22:59 ... in this space. The biggest thing that I would recommend is to not let perfect be the enemy of good and to start really small. The difference between writing zero minutes a day and one minute a day is that in one world, you're noth- you're not anything. Sorry, you're not something, you're anything. Okay, sorry. The difference between writing zero minutes a day and writing one minute a day is that in the one-minute world, you're a writer.

Jeff Berman 23:26 Mm-hmm.

Maya Shankar 23:27 And when you prime that identity, it's self-reinforcing. It leads to a virtuous cycle. And so I'm thinking about one of the people that I interviewed, Dwayne, who was sentenced to nine years in prison after a carjacking he committed when he was 16, and through a series of events, he actually decides to become a poet in prison, and he just commits to writing poems every single day. That's how he gets started, and soon, it starts to add up. And all of a sudden, he's written a thousand poems by the end of the year. And then he gets his first poem published while he's in prison, and then he goes on to become a Yale Law School graduate and MacArthur Genius fellow and, um, today is writing some of the most stirring poetry I've ever read. But he started so small.

Jeff Berman 24:17 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 24:18 Another woman I talk about, Christine, she'd always had so much passion for cooking, and she developed an autoimmune condition in which she knew for sure she was gonna end up blind.

Jeff Berman 24:28 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 24:30 She assumed all my dreams of becoming a cook are over, but then she started small. As her vision was rapidly deteriorating, and then she became permanently blind, she made small goals like, "Today, or this week, or this month, I'm gonna learn how to cut an orange. I'm gonna learn how to scramble an egg." And we know from research that taking a really big daunting goal, like finding a new job and becoming employed again, or let's say you're trying to write a book, these are very overwhelming and intimidating when seen in the aggregate. But if you break it into a bunch of mini milestones, a bunch of mini steps, like, today I'm just gonna work on the top half of my CV, tomorrow I'm gonna work on, um, reaching out to three possible contacts within my community who might be able to facilitate my next step, there are research studies showing that that accelerates people's transition back to work.

Jeff Berman 25:23 Mm-hmm.

Maya Shankar 25:24 Um, and we also know that breaking the big goal into smaller goals, um, helps us avoid what's known as the middle problem.

Jeff Berman 25:30 Mm.

Maya Shankar 25:30 So turns out our motivation over the course of goal pursuit is not stable.

Jeff Berman 25:37 It's not linear.

Maya Shankar 25:38 It's not linear.

Jeff Berman 25:38 Yeah.

Maya Shankar 25:39 Um, we get a huge boost in motivation at the beginning, and then we get a huge boost in motivation at the end, but there's this middle period where there's an adir, there's a drop in motivation because you're kind of in no man's land. It's like a little painful. You just wanna jump ship. And when you break a year-long goal, which would have a middle period of a couple months, into a week-long goal, where the middle period is only a couple days, then that continuous stretch of middle period is much shorter, and you're less likely to fall off the wagon.

Jeff Berman 26:14 Yeah.

Maya Shankar 26:14 The other thing is to be aware of how our brains form memories. So this is seminal work by Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize laureate, who learned that when we reflect back on how positive or negative an experience is, we don't give every moment in time equal weight. So we tend to give more weight to the end of the experience and to the peak of the experience, whether positive or negative. Hence why it's called the peak-end rule. What this means functionally is that we can shape the end of our experiences to be slightly more enjoyable so that we just remember them more fondly and are more likely to return to the activity at hand.

Jeff Berman 26:52 Mm.

Maya Shankar 26:52 So let's say you have a really tough workout. Do a enjoyable breathing or stretching session at the end, but tack it on to that session so it feels like it's part of the workout. You might look back on it more favorably. If you're write- you're writing the hardest parts of the book first, maybe at the end you just outline or put bullets down for the next paragraph, and those small little tweaks can actually help you, um, increase your likelihood of returning to the goal.

Jeff Berman 27:18 The last chapter of Maya's book tells the story of the biggest changes she has faced in recent years. It is an incredibly vulnerable story of the loss of multiple surrogate pregnancies. Um, I, I, I wanna close, Maya, by asking you about two practices you talk about in the book.

Maya Shankar 27:36 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 27:36 One that's quite personal after, um, the miscarriages, um, which is, um, I think it was your husband who suggested that you, um, uh, name five things that you're grateful for, um, uh, which is a, a, a Hoffman Institute practice, which, which, um, we can have a whole other conversation about. Um, and then, and then also the concept of, of awe.

Maya Shankar 27:59 Mm.

Jeff Berman 27:59 Um, could you, could you just share a little bit about both of those as practices-

Maya Shankar 28:03 Yes

Jeff Berman 28:03 ... to navigate through, through grief and change?

Maya Shankar 28:06 So as you said, on the night of the second miscarriage when we found out about the twins, um, my husband came into the room, and he's a software engineer, so he unknowingly engaged me in what's called a self-affirmation exercise. So what's a self-affirmation exercise? You just take five or 10 minutes and you write down all the identities, all the things you really value in your life that give your life great meaning, but that importantly are not threatened by the change you're going through. So for example, if you're having, if you're in a rough patch in your work life, you might emphasize your spiritual life. If you're having a rough go at it in your relationship, you might emphasize that you, um, are so grateful for your friendships or for the community and the PTA that you're part of. So Jimmy comes into our, our bedroom and I'm, like, under the covers feeling very sorry for myself, and he's like, "Mai," Mai is his pet name for me. He's like, "Mai, just, let's just name a couple things we're grateful for." And I was like, "Hell no." [laughs] "Okay? I do not want to do this right now. You take your toxic positivity nonsense and, like, go into the corner. You do the gratitude exercise." Um, but I was not having it. It was such a jarring day, Jeff. Like, we had seen healthy heartbeats earlier in the day, and then we found out this devastating news, so I just felt like it was a roller coaster of emotions, and it did not feel appropriate for us to be expressing gratitude. But I looked at Jimmy, and he was, like, sweetly smiling, and it just felt like it was coming from such an earnest place. I was like, "Fine, I'm gonna do this, and at a minimum, I'm just gonna get this guy off my case," right? So I start to rattle off a couple things. I'm like, "Well, I'm really grateful that I get to be an aunt to my six nieces and nephews. I love my Zoom workouts with my trainer, Matt." Like, we get to gossip about The Bachelor and Love Is Blind and all these other crappy reality TV shows we watch. Um, I love that I get to host A Slight Change of Plans.

Jeff Berman 29:56 Mm.

Maya Shankar 29:56 Like, what a joy to get to connect with people all over the world, um, who are willing to open themselves up to me in this really profound way, and we can make this a beautiful show together. Um, and this list just flowed out of me. I had so many things that I was grateful for, and I swear something magical happened in that moment. I had been so single-mindedly focused on achieving my goal of becoming a parent that I had completely lost perspective of how otherwise rich and multidimensional my life was and my identity was.

Jeff Berman 30:32 Yeah.

Maya Shankar 30:33 So much so that I felt like in that moment with that blow, I had lost everything, right? That's when I felt my most unmoored, as we talked about earlier. And so as a result of doing this affirmation exercise, did I go to bed cheery? Of course not. I was super, super sad. But did I go to bed feeling slightly more whole and intact? Absolutely.

Jeff Berman 30:58 Yeah.

Maya Shankar 30:58 And so I would recommend to anyone listening, it doesn't matter if you're even in the throes of a change, write down an affirmation list of things that matter to you and add to it as you live your life.

Jeff Berman 31:09 And I'll, I'll share that, um, the Hoffman practice, which I just love, there's a slight spin on it, which is, um, three things you're grateful for. So, you know, it could be your partner, it could be your job, whatever it might be that's, that's giving you meaning. Um, but then it's three things you appreciate about yourself.

Maya Shankar 31:25 Oh, I love that. Self-compassion. [laughs]

Jeff Berman 31:26 And for high achieving people, it's really hard. I think there's something to pairing those two, um, th- those two components that, that, um, to your point, it's not like it's all gonna be roses and joy and cheer and laughter.

Maya Shankar 31:39 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 31:39 Um, but it's, it's deeply grounding in a moment where you might feel terribly unmoored.

Maya Shankar 31:45 Exactly. No, I completely agree. The other thing you asked about was awe.

Jeff Berman 31:49 Yeah.

Maya Shankar 31:50 And what awe does is... Well, first let's, let- first of all, let's define awe. So my dear friend Dacher Keltner, who's a professor at Berkeley, defines awe as the feeling of being in the presence of something that is vast, that transcends our understanding of the world.

Jeff Berman 32:08 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 32:10 And we know from neuroscience studies that when we feel awe, it dampens neural activity in regions of the brain that are associated with self-immersion. So functionally what it does is it allows us to step outside of ourselves, outside of our individual wants and needs and anxieties, and to remember that we are part of a collective. We are part of a community of humans that are all trying to do this together. And I think when we think about awe conventionally, we think about things like art and music and nature, but my favorite kind of awe that does not get enough attention, Jeff, is moral beauty.

Jeff Berman 32:46 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 32:47 Psychologists talk about a concept called moral elevation. Moral elevation is that warm, fuzzy feeling we get in our chests when we witness someone else's moral beauty. So it could be their kindness or their courage or their self-sacrifice, or they're willing to forgive, or their resilience in the face of hardship. Whatever amazing character str- trait it is, that can inspire moral beauty within our, ourselves. And what's amazing about the experience of moral elevation is that it doesn't just feel good, it actually changes our brains. When we witness people behaving in ways that defy our understanding of what humans are capable of, that changes our own understanding of what we're capable of.

Jeff Berman 33:34 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 33:34 It cracks open our imagination about what we're capable of. And for example, when you've just lost your job, you're probably feeling not only despair, but a feeling of being stuck, right? It's very, very hard for you to imagine new possibilities for yourself. I talked earlier about how Duane, the guy who was sentenced to nine years in prison, ended up becoming a poet. Well, how did that happen? He actually, he actually had an encounter with moral beauty while behind bars.

Jeff Berman 34:06 Yeah.

Maya Shankar 34:06 He gets to know a guy named Bilal who defies all of Duane's stereotypes about what it means to be a prisoner. So Bilal shows so much care for the younger boys in prison and teaches them how to box as a means of protecting themselves from violence in an environment where Duane thought you had to be ruthlessly self-interested in order to survive. Bilal wakes up an hour before count time and does 250 pushups and irons his prison clothes and, as Duane says, he carries himself like a man in uniform.

Jeff Berman 34:40 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 34:40 You know? And Duane also says that Bilal taught him how to be lovely.

Jeff Berman 34:45 Hmm.

Maya Shankar 34:46 And it was through that experience of moral elevation that Duane, for the first time, realizes that maybe he isn't destined to become a certain kind of person just because he's a prisoner. Maybe you're not destined to become a certain kind of person. Maybe all those feared selves that you're imagining because now you're a caregiver, or you're a college dropout, or you're unemployed, or now you're a caregiver, maybe all those selves don't actually have to come true. May- maybe there's a whole suite of hoped-for selves that you just haven't thought to think about yet, right? To conjure up yet. And I love the, I love moral beauty as a tool because it is actually avail- it is actually available to us everywhere if we are just keen observers.

Jeff Berman 35:35 Um, I can't think of a better place to wrap. Um, the book is The Other Side of Change. Um, folks are gonna love the book and get so much out of it.

Maya Shankar 35:42 Thank you.

Jeff Berman 35:42 Thank you so much for being on Masters of Scale.

Maya Shankar 35:44 Thanks for having me, Jeff. This was such a thoughtful conversation, and you asked wonderful questions.

Jeff Berman 35:48 Well-

Maya Shankar 35:49 So-

Jeff Berman 35:49 Uh, you make it easy

Maya Shankar 35:49 ... it was a pleasure.

Jeff Berman 35:50 Yeah. Thank you.

Maya Shankar 35:51 Thank you so much.

Jeff Berman 35:53 Thanks again to Maya Shankar. Her new book is The Other Side of Change. Whatever kind of transformation you may be facing or trying to make, this book will be an invaluable tool. And I have to say, I probably start a couple of dozen of these kinds of books a year. I finish maybe half of them. It is the rare one that I absolutely devour and literally hug when I finish it. Maya's book, The Other Side of Change, is one of those books. I can't encourage you enough to pick it up and give it a read. Be sure also to check out her podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. We'll put a link to both in the show notes. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. [outro music]