The Uncomfortable Truth About Life Most People Learn Too Late | Maya Shankar

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   Why is it that so many of us struggle with changes that we don't want and are often unexpected?

2. MSDr. Maya Shankar0:09

   Yeah, and I should first say that I'm one of those people who feels a huge allergy to any sort of unexpected changes in my life. And so one of the reasons that I gravitated towards studying this topic is because I find unexpected change really scary. Um, and I don't always feel like I've done the best job of managing my emotions and understanding how to really extract any sense of possibility that sits within the change. There's a lot of reasons why unexpected change is destabilizing. One of the biggest ones is that change is filled with so much uncertainty, and our brains are not wired to like uncertainty. So one of my favorite research studies shows that we are more stressed when we're told we have a 50% chance of getting an electric shock than when we're told we have a 100% chance [laughs] of getting that shock. And so we'd rather be certain that a negative thing is gonna happen than to have to grapple with any ambiguity or uncertainty. And it sounds so silly, Rangan, but if you're like me, you resonate with this finding.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:13

   Mm-hmm.

4. MSDr. Maya Shankar1:13

   I like knowing how the story ends. I like having a firm grip at the steering wheel. And so when the future is unknown to me, I start to get anxious, I start to ruminate, I start to over-plan, and it's very hard to sort of embrace the unknown.

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:30

   It's fascinating when you talk about that research study, and it very clearly demonstrates how much human beings like certainty in our lives. It made me think about the difference between GPs and specialists. So in medicine-

6. MSDr. Maya Shankar1:49

   Yeah

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:49

   ... I used to think about this when I moved from specialism into general practice, and here in the UK, at least, in the National Health Service, if you're a specialist in a hospital, you have access to all kinds of tests, so in many ways you're able to get a higher degree of certainty when your patient comes in, whereas-

8. MSDr. Maya Shankar2:11

   Mm

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:11

   ... in general practice, you don't have access to all those tests. And so I've often wondered, and I haven't seen any research on this, whether primary care physicians and GPs are better able to manage uncertainty because they have fewer tests and they have to do that as part of their day-to-day job compared to specialists.

10. MSDr. Maya Shankar2:32

    Oh, that's such a fascinating observation. Um, I really do think that tolerance for uncertainty is a muscle that we can all build, and one of my goals actually in writing The Other Side of Change was to learn to live more comfortably alongside uncertainty. And so I think your hypothesis may very well be true, which is that by virtue of not having all the information, they have to feel okay, uh, making recommendations or weighing in on certain treatment options without having the full picture and, and learning to calm their nervous systems even when, uh, they don't have that full information set.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee3:11

    Yeah. Would you say that some people are better at navigating change than others, and if so, why do you think that is?

12. MSDr. Maya Shankar3:22

    Yes. So it is definitely true that people who are more open-minded about what may come may navigate change better because they don't seek cognitive closure as much as the rest of us. So what is cognitive closure? It's the desire for clear, definitive answers, black and white answers. The challenge is that when we climb out of the rubble of a negative change in our lives, often all we see is gray space. [laughs] And so, um, we have to be a little bit more open-minded about what may come, and that can be adaptive. But the focus of my work is on figuring out, okay, aside from our natural dispositions, what can each of us do to increase our tolerance in the face of uncertainty so that we can be more resilient in the face of change no matter what our starting point is? And what I've learned is that a subtle shift in mindset can actually have a transformative impact on any given person's resilience. When a big change happens to us, it also leads to lasting change within us, and this is something that most people forget. So at the outset of a change, they might feel extremely daunted, thinking, "There is no conceivable way that I, Maya, am capable of navigating this harrowing change. I just don't have the skills, I don't have the abilities, I don't have the right perspectives or values or beliefs." But what I'm lacking to appreciate when I say that is that I will be changing as a result of this experience, and the person who will emerge on the other side of change will be different from the person I am today. Now, there's a cognitive bias that can often prevent us from realizing this. It's called the end of history illusion. So what does the end of history illusion say? It says that while we all fully appreciate we've changed considerably in the past, so if you were to ask me, you know, "Look at these photos of 10-year-old Maya or 20-year-old Maya. Do you feel that you're different today than you were back then?" I would say, "Of course, Rangan. [laughs] #cringe. This is horrible. [laughs] I thought we were friends. Why are you showing me this footage?" Um, but interestingly, if you were to ask me, "Well, how much do you plan to change moving forward?" I would say, "Oh, no, no, no, no. What you see is what you get."

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:42

    Yeah.

14. MSDr. Maya Shankar5:42

    "This is the finished product." And so researchers say that we strangely view the present as a watershed moment in which we have become the person we will be for the rest of our lives.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee5:55

    Yeah.

16. MSDr. Maya Shankar5:55

    And so what this does is that it limits our understanding of how we might transform moving forward, right? Because of course we are continuing to change, and the thesis of my book is that these massive anvil-sized changes that drop from the sky on a clear blue day accelerate these internal transformations.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:17

    Yeah.I love that end of history illusion. It's so, so true, isn't it? That we can just reflect on our own lives in terms of, I guess, personal growth. You know, in our 20s, I thought I knew about the world. I thought I knew-

18. MSDr. Maya Shankar6:30

    [laughs]

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:30

    ... how I thought, what was going on, and you know, when I'm 30, I'll probably look back and go, "Wow, you were quite juvenile and naive back then," and-

20. MSDr. Maya Shankar6:38

    100%.

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee6:38

    You know, and you keep doing that. But now of course at 48, I know the real deal about the world and how it all is. But of course, that, that denies the possibility and the probability that I am going to keep on changing as I progress in the world.

22. MSDr. Maya Shankar6:57

    That's exactly right, and when we are thrust into a new reality filled with a new set of constraints, what it can do is reveal to us the beliefs that we have that were maybe previously hidden from view, capabilities that we didn't know we were c- we had in our possession. Um, new vantage points, new perspectives. By and large, the people that I interviewed for The Other Side of Change, and you know, you've read the book, they've been through harrowing changes, right?

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee7:29

    Yeah.

24. MSDr. Maya Shankar7:29

    Illness, heartbreak, loss, the discoveries of a, of a secret in their families, whatever it was. They're not necessarily happy that the change happened to them. Who would willingly invite loss or heartbreak into their lives? Very few people. But they're deeply grateful for the person that they became as a result of the change they went through. They tapped into newfound confidence, newfound freedom, a new way of seeing their families and their past, a new way of relating to people, just new ways of seeing themselves and the world around them, and their place in it. And all of them emerged with a new kind of enlightenment that really served them well, and a newfound understanding of who they were and who they are and who they can become.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:18

    Yeah, the stories in the book are, are fabulous. In, in most of those stories we can see an element of ourselves, and I, so I thought that was a really nice way of trying to write this book and, and share these tools with us. I sort of think about some of the things you've said, right? You, you said about beliefs, how important, um, beliefs are, and I think one of my favorite chapters in the book is The Blank Slate. I think it's chapter five.

26. MSDr. Maya Shankar8:44

    Yes.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:44

    And you know, I'm, I'm fascinated by beliefs and how much our beliefs shape our reality. But of course, beliefs only hold true as long as we believe in them, right? The truth is the truth irrespective of whether we believe in it or not. But a belief only holds true as long as we subscribe to it, and a lot of us are walking around with beliefs that we've never, ever questioned before. And I think that chapter beautifully illustrates this idea that sometimes it takes an unwanted and unexpected change to be thrust upon your life for you to start questioning your beliefs.

28. MSDr. Maya Shankar9:28

    One of the things I talk about in the book is change serving as revelation, and what's so interesting is that when a negative change happens to us, it can feel like a personal apocalypse of sorts. It can feel like the world that was once available to us is no longer in view. And apocalypse actually comes from the Greek word apokalypsis, and interestingly, that word means revelation. And so this etymology is really instructive.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:59

    Mm.

30. MSDr. Maya Shankar9:59

    Yes, change can upend us, but it can also reveal things to us that, as I was saying earlier, were previously hidden from view. Exactly as you said, we move about in this world carrying so many beliefs, and it's easy to believe that our belief systems reflect an immutable sacred truth about the world. But in actuality, so few of these beliefs we've actually interrogated over the course of our lives. It would be cognitively impossible to do that, right? Because we, we have so, so, so many beliefs, and we don't have the cognitive bandwidth to every day wake up and think, "Which belief should I interrogate today?"

Episode duration: 1:47:08