Maya Shankar (5:46)

Thank you so much for having me, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here.

Dan Harris (5:49)

Yeah, it's a pleasure to have you here again. Just to say to the listener, this is going to be quite a different conversation than the one we had last time. But there is one thing I want to get you to repeat from the last time you were on the show. And I will put a link in the show notes to your prior appearance if people want to go back and hear it. You told a story the last time you were on that feels foundational for the rest of this discussion, so I'd love to have you repeat it. And I know it's not an easy story to tell, but you've had a few bumps in the road in your life that got you interested in how we navigate change. One in childhood and one in adulthood. Would you mind talking about those?

Maya Shankar (6:23)

It's worth saying right off the bat that the reason I study change as a cognitive scientist is that one, I'm really scared of it and don't do a great job with it. And two, like you mentioned, I do have these foundational experiences of change in my past and my present. That is what keeps my interest in this topic very much alive and well. So as a little kid, I was an aspiring concert violinist. And when I was nine, I began studying at Juilliard and I started winning concerto competitions, soloing with orchestras. Itzhak Perlman, the renowned violinist, took me on as one of his private students very quickly. Becoming a violinist was my biggest dream. Everything was going according to plan. I was having visions of the future, this future life of Maya as the violinist, until one morning, I overstretched my finger on a single note. I heard a popping sound. And doctors later told me that I had damaged tendons in my hand and that it was a career ending injury. As a 15 year old, you can imagine, Dan, I was really devastated by this, filled with grief. But in hindsight, I realized that there was something really curious about my grief, which is that I wasn't just mourning the loss of the instrument. I was in a deeper way mourning the loss of myself. And I think this was sort of the first lesson I got on change, which is that sometimes we don't know how much something has defined us. How core it is to our self identity and our sense of self worth and value until we lose it over time. I navigated this very clumsily, eventually stumbled upon a book about the science of the mind and became a cognitive scientist and worked in public policy, went through all these other shifts in my professional and personal life. And then more recently, to your point, I got hit with another big change. And this is the one that has led me to more deeply try and examine how we can do change better in our lives, how we can build hardier versions of ourselves that are more resilient in the face of these anvil drop from the sky moments. You know, long story short, my husband and I have been trying to start a family for years and years and years. We had to confront so many obstacles and disappointments and heartbreaks and man, just navigating pregnancy losses with our surrogate. I mean, it was just, it was so disorienting in a way that brought me back to childhood because similar to the violin, from the time I was four or five years old, I always imagined that I would one day become a mom. I think it was actually the earliest identity I've ever had. My dad tells me he would come downstairs and I would be with my little kitchen set, just like talking with my fictitious neighbors on the little play telephone about my rambunctious children and how they were misbehaving. And I was always in that mindset of like, one day I'll become a mom. And so when we kept not being successful at achieving that dream, I once again felt this huge threat to my self identity. I can talk in a moment about what lesson I've learned from that that I think will be helpful to your listeners. But I think this sort of solidified a broader insight about change, which is that one reason change can be so disorienting and leave us unmoored is because it threatens our sense of self.

Dan Harris (9:55)

Well, first of all, I'm sorry both of those things happened to you. You said there was something you learned that you thought would be helpful to people listening. I want to give you a chance to say what that is.

Maya Shankar (10:05)

Yeah, I mean, this has taken me a long time to learn, so it's certainly something I didn't apply at the time. But I want listeners to have this wisdom so they don't have to suffer through whatever I suffered through. Basically, when it comes to self identity, look, we don't want to do away with them altogether. Right? Self identities are so powerful. If I identify as a violinist or as an athlete or As a teacher, it breeds an immediate camaraderie with people who also share that label or that role. Right. It also gives you a ton of purpose. It can help stave off existential angst about the future if every day you wake up and you're like, okay, I gotta practice or I have to go to rehearsal or what have you. And so I'm not telling people, don't attach your identity to things. But what I would recommend is that people build more robust, expansive identities. By this I mean try and anchor your self identity not simply to what you do, but to why you do that thing. So in the case of the violin, I asked myself, what was it that made me love the instrument? And I realized that at its core, I loved emotionally connecting with people. That was the primary thing that led me to become glued to it from the time I was a little kid. And just because I lost the ability to play the violin didn't mean that I lost what led me to love it in the first place. And that is the insight, right? Your why is still stable and very much present and can be a compass that guides you towards your next steps. And so it's true that emotional connection has kind of subconsciously been at the heart of everything else I've been driven towards, right? And as a cognitive scientist, I'm studying the science of connection as an interviewer for my podcast and now my book, the Other side of Change. Emotional connection is at the heart of all those interviews that I've conducted. And so you can still find your why in other places when the world takes your what away from you. I think that everyone should ask themselves, what is their why? What is the thing that lights them up? Maybe it's a desire to help people. Maybe it's a desire to keep learning things. Maybe it's a desire to see yourself improve at something. Whatever that why is, it could be the thing that you anchor your identity to, right? I am the type of person who loves improving, loves giving back, loves caring for people. Fill in the blank with whatever it is and then use that as your North Star.

Dan Harris (12:31)

So I always feel sheepish when I do what I'm about to do. And sometimes I get comments. There'll be like an individual comment for some complainant about me talking too much, but I'm about to talk too much. But in the spirit of.

Maya Shankar (12:44)

That's totally. I want to hear your point of view.

Dan Harris (12:48)

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I just want to pick up on the thing about your why, and hopefully this is useful. I have found first of all this concept of your why, your values, your kind of North Star for what your job is on the planet has come up a lot on the show over the last year. It's come up on the show a lot for the last nine years or 10 years, however long I've been doing this. But I've thought about this a lot in the context of the line of anxiety. For me, there's this kind of just through line of anxiety that has bird dogged me for so long, which is a fear my career is going to bottom out and I'm going to live under a bridge and that it's going to be financially devastating and I'm going to have to like make a bunch of changes. And also that it's going to be very embarrassing. And I maybe think back to the people that I started my career around and many of whom are really successful in television news or now in the broader influencer space or whatever it is that I do, who might look down on me for having everything fall apart. I'm aware of it, but it still retains its potency, notwithstanding my awareness of it, that there's this spiral that I can go down. But I find that something that's really healing is when I view my life through the lens of my why, which is in Buddhist terms, doing everything for the benefit of all beings, like that is really my North Star. All that other bullshit falls away. Okay, so I said a lot there. Now I'm going to shut up. How does all that land with you?

Maya Shankar (14:24)

First of all, that was not even a lot, okay? If you want to go head to head with a fellow chatterbox, okay, I will have you beat every single time. Okay? So I totally agree with you. And of course I fall prey to all those kinds of social pressures and anxiety and judgment of others and whatnot. And I do feel like when we orient ourselves in our why, it just bursts the bubble that we're living in. And it's an artifice, right? And so I also think that in our most devastating moments, it gives you clarity about what a future could look like. Because I'll tell you this. On the night of the second miscarriage, when we found out that we had lost identical twin girls, two things happened. I want to tell you quickly about my reaction. So the first one was, oh my God, every future that I had imagined for myself has now disappeared. Maya is gone. Because the thing that was going to bring meaning and purpose and color into her life is no longer on offer right now. What would have been so helpful to me in that moment, had I had this wisdom then, was to say, well, what were you craving from motherhood? What's your why around motherhood? Because your why will change depending on what your goal is, right? We don't have the same central why in every single space. And so now I'm asking myself, right, as I envision a potentially child free life, well, what did I want from motherhood? Well, I definitely want a deep emotional connection, so that one's the same as the violin space and podcasting and writing, et cetera. I also want snuggles and time with cute little kids that light up my imagination. Well, I'm an aunt to six nieces and nephews. Okay, great. I could try to fill that box. Oh, I love mentoring. Okay. Could I find more mentorship opportunities within my professional life and the ability to coach people and see them grow? And so when you are at that juncture and at that inflection point, when life has cut a dream short or just taken away some future that you once imagined for yourself, that's when you can say, okay, well, what was driving my interest in this? Why was this a dream of mine? And sometimes, by the way, Dan, you realize that not all of it was even your goal. So, yes, I intrinsically have always wanted to be a mom, but what I realized from my journey was, oh, shoot. It's also because society has told me and my Indian background, cultural forces have told me that this is what makes me valuable as a woman in this society. Okay. That is a norm that I need to challenge and I need to kind of reconcile and I need to maybe rework in my brain so that I don't anchor my self worth to whether or not I have children. Right. And so that's also very clarifying when you realize that actually maybe part of the dream and is kind of irrelevant because it's not something you value in the first place, or it wasn't something that was intrinsically generated. It was externally generated. Right. And imposed upon you. So that's the first thing. And then, see, I told you I can talk a long time. Okay. And then the second thing, Well, I.

Dan Harris (17:29)

Mean, you're the interviewee, you're supposed to be talking.

Maya Shankar (17:32)

Okay, thank you. Thank you. So the second thing that happened, and this actually leads to another piece of advice and a technique that people could use that's very evidence based is on the night of that heartbreaking news, my husband Jimmy came into our bedroom, I remember, And I was totally despondent, right. We had had a roller coaster of a day with hearing Heartbeats. And then being told everything was fine, and then there being a miscarriage a few hours later. It was just so disorienting. And he comes in and he's like, mai, which is his pet name for me. He's like, let's just list a bunch of things we're grateful for. And I was like, dude, no, I was so pissed. I was like, you take your toxic positivity Instagram nonsense and go to the corner, you do your gratitude exercise. But I'm not doing that. I'm staying under the covers and I'm gonna be mopey and depressed and feel self pity. That was my state of mind. Eventually Jimmy wore me down and I was like, okay, fine, let me just do this thing to get him off my case. And so I start naming a couple things. Dan. I'm like, okay, well, I am grateful that I've worked with the same people for over a decade. I feel like one of the greatest honors of my life is that the same people who worked with me in the Obama White House still work with me today. Like, what an amazing team that we built. I get to work with some of my best friends. I love that. I get to do my zoom workouts with my trainer. And we like, gossip about the Bachelor and Love is blind. And I love the fact that I've rooted myself here in California with like such beautiful sunshine every day. And I swear to God, as this list just kind of poured out of me, something magical happened. And I don't mean in a supernatural sense. I just mean in the sense that I zoomed out on my life. I saw that I actually had this rich, multifaceted identity. And I also saw that I built tunnel vision over all those years, which I think is such a natural thing that happens. And when we are so single mindedly focused on a goal, right? I had become so laser focused on this goal of building a family that I had completely lost sight of the richness of my life outside of that. And when I did what's known as a self affirmation exercise. So my husband's a software engineer, by the way. He was unknowingly engaging me in the self affirmation exercise. But all that that means is that you take, say, five to 10 minutes and you jot down every identity that brings you value or meaning, gives your life purpose that is not threatened by the change you're going through. So for example, if you're in a tough spot in your relationship, you might mention that your spiritual life is really strong or that you love Your co workers. Right. Or you find a lot of value in your job. And so that night, like, did I go to bed super happy? Of course not. But did I go to bed feeling the loss of change less acutely because I remembered how much of myself was still intact? Yes. And that was a really powerful antidote to feeling just complete and utter despair in that moment.

Dan Harris (20:37)

I think I've heard three really practical takeaways here, going back to earlier in the discussion. How finding your why your sense of purpose is can, you know, really protect you amidst life's ups and downs. The value of gratitude, not in the sense of toxic positivity, but just to add some perspective on whatever's happening. And then the third is this self affirmation to give you a sense of your sense of self being less under threat than you might think in the face of whatever adversity is happening.

Maya Shankar (21:11)

I love the way you summarize that last exercise, self affirmation. Because research actually shows that self affirmation exercises make people less prone to denial. Because why does denial happen? Well, it's a psychological immune response. It's our brain's way of protecting us from more than we can handle. But if we don't think the change is threatening something as large as our brains have led us to believe, that actually diminishes our denial, which means we can maybe move on from the change or move through it, whatever it is, faster.

Dan Harris (21:44)

So I'm going to use a term, but I might be misusing the term, so please correct me, but I think there are some cognitive biases that you have discovered through your personal experience and your work that operate in many of us in the face of adversity. Am I using that term correctly? And then I'll get to the biases that I think are really interesting.

Maya Shankar (22:07)

Yes, you are using that perfectly.

Dan Harris (22:10)

Okay, so one of them is the illusion of control. Can you say more about that?

Maya Shankar (22:16)

Yeah, I mean, I'm a self expert in the illusion of control because I've been making five and 10 and 15 year plans from the time I was five years old. So just to give people insight into my personality type, it's a total joy. Okay, so the illusion of control in everyday life. Most of us operate under the belief that we have far more control over how things turn out for us than we actually do. This is obviously very adaptive, right? I mean, it would be quite dispiriting for you and me to go about our lives thinking, yep, we aren't in the driver's seat. Like, just let the world happen. To us, it would probably lead us to descend into nihilism or all sorts of other compromised psychological states. So there's obviously some value in overestimating the degree to which we influence outcomes. But the challenge is that when a big and unexpected negative change happens in our lives, it shatters that illusion, right? And we are just forced to confront the limits of our genuine control. And actually going back to this challenge around becoming parents, I actually think that one thing that left me reeling in this particular events in my life is that I'm so used to working my way out of challenges, just hustling my way through them, like, oh, I failed at something, or I'm facing a setback, I'm just going to try harder and eventually figure out my way forward. There's no such thing as trying harder in the context of fertility. Stuff like the universe does not care how much you want the outcome, it's indifferent towards that. And so I was contending with the limits of my own control. I remember in that context. And actually kind of similar to the violin injury, you can't kind of outwork an injury, especially if you damage tendons. And so I think all of us are kind of forced to reckon with those limits. And it's very challenging because when we don't feel in control, guess what increases a lot in our minds? The uncertainty we feel. And our brains are not wired to tolerate or like uncertainty. My favorite research study shows that we're 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 of getting an electric shock. So we would rather be certain that a negative event is gonna happen than to have to grapple with any uncertainty, any ambiguity. And it sounds kind of wild, right? But I'm sure you can resonate with it. I resonate with it. I'm like, yeah, I just wanna know how the story ends. Bring on the shocks. Just don't leave me in this horrible period of anticipatory pain, right? Which is sort of the worst case scenario.

Dan Harris (24:58)

I completely resonate with it. And it just goes right back to this ancient neurosis of worrying that my career's going to go to shit, because there's just. I wish I could somebody could just tell me, how's this thing going to go, rather than having to navigate all of these variables all the time.

Maya Shankar (25:16)

100%.

Dan Harris (25:17)

The other cognitive bias that you talk about is the end of history, illusion.

Maya Shankar (25:24)

What is that one thing you've talked about a lot on Your show is that we are really bad at affective forecasting. So we simply don't make good predictions about how we will feel about specific events in the future. For example, we overestimate how good the good stuff is going to be. And we also overestimate how bad the bad stuff is going to be, right? So we aren't very good at that sort of hedonic exercise. Bad affective forecasting is due to many cognitive biases, but among them, and this is something that's central to my book, the Other side of Change is that we forget that we too will change over time. This is the bias known as the end of history illusion. So simply put, we fully acknowledge that we have changed considerably in the past. So for example, you, Dan, show me pictures of high school Maya or college Maya, and I would be like, oh my God, how do I forge as much psychological distance between my current day self and this former self? I barely even relate to her anymore. I am a wildly different person, right? So it seems so self evident that we have changed markedly relative to our past selves. And yet, and this is the funny quirk of our brains, when we're asked how much we are going to change in the future, we think, oh no, we're done. The Maya you see right now, this is the fully finished product, none changing. And the researchers who coined this term, Dan Gilbert and his colleagues, they say something like, people regard the present moment as a watershed moment in which a person has finally become the person they're going to be for the rest of their lives. The fascination for me around the end of History illusion is that one, of course we're always changing. But importantly, a big life disruption, the kind that I study in my work, can accelerate those sorts of internal changes. So in other words, when a big change happens to us, it also leads to lasting change within us. I actually find that there's a lot of hope in this message because when we are at the outset of a change, let's say it's a loss, an illness, an identity crisis, which is often accompanying most of these big changes, we can often feel very daunted, like we are just completely ill equipped to navigate the road ahead. But then we can remember that we actually become, and we will become different people on the other side. By the way, Dan, that is why my book is called the Other side of Change, because we will become new people on the other side. The pressure test of change will unlock new perspectives, new and new values and new abilities, new ways of seeing the world that we previously had not accessed. And all of those things can lead us to not only navigate the change with more ease and possibility, but to actually become better versions of ourselves. And by and large, the people that I've interviewed over time have told me, look, I'm not happy the change happened. I mean, who would say that? Who would invite illness into their lives or loss? Right. But they were really, really grateful for the person that they became on the other side. As I was starting to observe this insight among the people I interviewed for the book, Look, I'm skeptical. I'm cynical. I'm all the things that most people are. So I was suspicious because I'm allergic to two things. I'm allergic to soy, and I'm allergic to cliches and platitudes. Okay. So I was like, are we sure this silver lining thing is true? But then we could talk about this later. I actually experienced that same evolution within myself post all those losses in my life. And so when I saw it firsthand, I thought, oh, wow, there must be something. Maybe your cynicism wasn't well placed here. There is truly a powerful evolution that's happening through the experience of change.

Dan Harris (29:17)

I think I hear another value proposition here. I mean, I completely agree with you about the silver lining thing. And notwithstanding the fact that it is a cliche, although I would add that there's a reason why cliches become cliches. It's because they're generally true, which is annoying.

Maya Shankar (29:30)

I know.

Dan Harris (29:31)

I think there's another value proposition, but I want to check it with you.

Maya Shankar (29:34)

Yeah.

Dan Harris (29:34)

Because many people listening to this right now may not be in the throes of some major change.

Maya Shankar (29:38)

Absolutely.

Dan Harris (29:39)

But they may be in the throes, as I keep harping on, of constant catastrophic thinking about possible future changes, what I find so calming and soothing about the end of history illusion is, yeah, bad shit is gonna happen. I don't know what it's gonna be. Maybe related to my career. It may be related to my health. It may be related to the health of the people I love. Maybe related to political scene. Although that has already happened.

Maya Shankar (30:04)

It may be, by the way, in an area that you're not even thinking to solve for, because that often happens in life.

Dan Harris (30:10)

Totally.

Maya Shankar (30:11)

Like, whoa. Didn't think this was gonna be a thing.

Dan Harris (30:13)

Yes. So the good news, or I think the other piece of good news here is that we can handle it. You know, I think if you just. And I haven't done this. This is a guess, but I suspect every time you find yourself in a spiral of catastrophic Thinking if you brought to mind the end of history illusion, like, yeah, dude, you'll change and grow. You'll manage it. And like everything else that's happened in your life, like, you will deal with whatever you're worried about right now anyway. Again, I said a lot, but does all of that land for you?

Maya Shankar (30:46)

Absolutely. First of all, you and I are totally the same in this way. I honestly have spent so much of my life living in the future that I only recently realized there was a present to be lived. Okay, so so much of my life was spent trying to anticipate the future and also catastrophizing the future. And so I actually have written this book just like you said, not simply for people who are in the throes of change, but who are either trying to process a past change differently, to change the relationship with that change, or more importantly, who are irresistibly consumed with the threat of future change. And so many of the strategies I put forward are about liberating people from that mental spiraling and all of that negative chatter and all of those catastrophic images that they see play on loop in their minds. One reason, by the way, people should feel empowered through the end of history illusion is that we tend to think we have a fairly good understanding of self in any given moment. So when you think, for example, oh my God, my whole career is going to fall apart, and the Dan that I know today is not going to be able to handle that well, guess what? The Dan you know today is actually a fairly incomplete model of who Dan even is today. Because your self understanding is based on a fairly random set of data points that you've happened to collect over your lives through the arbitrary set of experiences that you've had. You have not had a comprehensive view of who you are, including values that have remained hidden from view that you're sort of laboring under, operating under, that are kind of subconscious. You are not actually aware of all of the abilities and your potential. And so I think there's something exciting about the prospect that change can actually serve as revelation. When a big negative change happens in our lives, it can feel like a personal apocalypse of sorts, right? Like the world we knew has now been destroyed. And what's really interesting about the etymology of the word apocalypse is that it actually comes from the Greek word apokalypsis, which means revelation. Change can upend us, but it can also reveal really important things to us about who we are. Some of the people that I've interviewed for the book, they did not realize, for example, that they were carrying massive shame around their family's history. Until they went through the change, they did not realize they had a deeply avoidant attachment style. Until they went through their change, they did not realize they were so beholden to what other people thought about them and their need to people, please and to curate an image until they went through their change. And so change can be this forcing mechanism of revelation where all of a sudden these parts of yourself, savory or unsavory, come into the light. You're now forced to confront them and challenge them and revisit them. As uncomfortable as it may be to revisit your beliefs, that's actually a huge way to unlock freedom. And then they were able to shape a better version of themselves that ended up dealing, like you said, with the crap that the future gave them.

Dan Harris (33:56)

I love that thing about apocalypse and revelation. It's just so hopeful. None of us is sitting around wishing for apocalypse, but it's going to happen. And so it's just comforting to know that a lot can be revealed and healed in those processes.

Maya Shankar (34:11)

I don't, and I didn't want people to have to go through the apocalypse part to learn the important lessons I and others and researchers have discovered about going through change. The idea is that I want to teach people all this stuff before they have to go through the future thing so that they are armed, they have all the skills they need, they have the right questions to ask, they have the right thought experiments, they have the right tools in their toolkit. And that way they will deal with any future change or even just minimize their anxiety in present day thinking about that hypothetical future change. Because they think, okay, I've got it. I have what I need to do a good job in this situation.

Dan Harris (34:49)

Yes, that is just so helpful. And it's exactly what I think, personally, I need. Coming up, Dr. Maya Shankar talks about how to reexamine your beliefs about yourself, the utility of distraction and denial. I was surprised to hear her make this case. And some tools for getting unstuck from rumination. It's a new year, colder days for many of us. So therefore, this is a moment where your winter wardrobe really has to be on point, really has to deliver. If you're craving a winter reset, start with pieces truly made to last season after season. Quince brings together premium materials, thoughtful design, and enduring quality so you stay warm and you look sharp and feel your best all season long. Quince has everything you need. Men's Mongolian cashmere sweaters. I got a bunch of those wool quotes, leather and suede outerwear that actually holds up to daily wear and still looks good. Each piece is made from premium materials by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. By cutting out the middlemen and traditional markups, Quint delivers the same quality as luxury brands, but at a fraction of the price. As I've told you before, I actually order this stuff on my own dime. Even though I do get some free stuff because they're a sponsor. But I like them so much I spend my own dough on quints. I actually just recently made an order. I got a bunch of boring stuff like socks and underwear, but then I got. I love sweaters that kind of you can button up kind of like a shirt. I don't know what they're called. Anyway, I got one of those Digging that Anyway, Hardy endorsements for Quince. Refresh your winter wardrobe with quint. Go to quince.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com happier free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com happier. The new year is here. Get back into an at home routine you love and elevate your space with Wayfair. From bedding and mattresses to storage solutions for every room in the house, Wayfair is your one stop shop. Wayfair has everything. I've been on their website many times. It's super comprehensive. They've got bedding and bath basics, stuff for kids rooms, home decor, storage for every space, kitchen essentials, everything you need for a home office, etc. My wife recently went on a spending spree at Wayfair Fair and she bought all these beautiful translucent little shelves on wheels. She's loading these shelves up with all of the books that she has been buying as research for her upcoming book. Side note, I don't know when the book's coming out but it's on imposter syndrome and it's going to be great having all these books in these little translucent mobile shelving units. It looks beautiful. Get organized, refreshed and back on track this new year. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair every style, every Home. I do want to pick up on something you just said there about challenging beliefs about yourself that were implanted or formed in childhood. Is there more to be said about practically how to do that?

Maya Shankar (38:18)

Yeah, most of us Subconsciously think about our beliefs and our values as these immutable truths about the world. Right. Because in everyday life we're busy. It's not like I wake up every morning thinking, hmm, I have so much free time on my hands. What belief would I like to challenge today? You know, none of us have the bandwidth to do that. And I think we also believe that most of our beliefs are the result of very thoughtful deliberation and good reason. And the reality is that that's just not true. We likely reached many of our beliefs via mental shortcuts. So through intuition, through subconscious messages we absorb from loved ones or societal norms. I mentioned earlier that so so much of my self worth was rooted in becoming a mom one day because of these sorts of societal norms. Right. And I never really interrogated if there was merit to that. Just to help people see the fragility around their beliefs. We're affected by the emotional state that we are in when we hear information. If you're a young child and you're hearing something passed down to you by a parent or a caregiver, your sense of love and belonging to and attachment is bound up in that message. So naturally you're going to take it in. Because if you don't, what does that mean about the safety of your caregiver structure? Right. You'll also be affected by who the messenger is. Or maybe you overinterpreted or misunderstood a message that you were given. One of the stories I tell in the book, it's this fascinating story of a woman who had a lot of shame around her family's Colombian heritage and some of the indigenous traditions that she had. What I tried to do, by the way, for this book, Dan, was search the world for the most fascinating, extraordinary stories of change. Because I wanted this to be a page turner for people where it's story first and you're just in it with that person and then it's kind of like, you know, hiding broccoli in kids foods. Like the lessons are there too, but you just sort of don't even notice that you're learning along the way. For all of us, going through maybe slightly more ordinary changes because they're just such gripping reads. And so this woman has a biking accident and it leaves her with amnesia. So she is kind of left with a blank slate where she has forgotten so much of her past. And what's so curious about her experience is that as memories start to come back, and at one point when her family's memories come back, she's able to see those stories anew without all of the discrimination and the shame and, and negativity that she had attached to them pre amnesia. And when she does revisit those stories without all of that, she thinks, oh, my God, these are such beautiful, rich, amazing stories. And she renews her relationship with her family's history in that way. And only later does she remember the shame part. But it was too late. The shame part just felt intellectual at that point. She's like, no, no, no, no, no. My brain has already decided that these stories are great, and maybe I should question all. All the times I was judged for having this family history. And so in this case, I think Ingrid's story is a wonderful reminder that we could have been totally different people had we experienced a slightly different version of life. Had we learned something before something else, like in a different temporal sequence, or had certain people told us different things along the way, we would have ended up with a drastically different worldview. And I think that's a wonderful thought experiment for all of us because a lot of our beliefs might be holding us back. This belief that Ingrid had was holding her back. She was a writer. She never wanted to write the memoir version of her life. And guess what? After this amnesia episode, she ends up writing a memoir, and it becomes a Pulitzer Prize finalist. So good thing she revisited that relationship.

Dan Harris (42:09)

So most of us are hopefully not going to have bike accidents. Are there practical things we can do to challenge some of these self limiting beliefs?

Maya Shankar (42:17)

Yeah, so my advice to everyone is get amnesia. No, of course. So obviously I don't want anyone to experience amnesia. And I think change can be a wonderful moment to reexamine our beliefs, beliefs that we discover are not, in fact, these sacred, immutable truths. So there's a lot of great advice out there around how to change your beliefs, which is, by the way, very hard because our beliefs about ourselves constitute what's known as our narrative identity. This is work by Dan McAdams and others. We really value consistency when it comes to our narrative identity. We don't like the idea of changing single beliefs because they may be deeply entangled with many other beliefs. And so that can be a disorienting process and something that we're reluctant to initiate, but it's worth the payoff from my perspective. So the biggest thing is to treat your beliefs as hypotheses that should be tested. So what this means is you should actively seek out data, even if that contradicts your views. You want to stay curious and humble. You want to be constantly questioning your assumptions. And importantly, and this hearkens back to our earlier conversation about identity. You don't want to tie your beliefs to your self identity because what happens when you do that is then when you challenge a belief, you think you are under threat, your sense of self is under threat, and that's not setting you up for success. Some other helpful prompts are you can ask yourself, how did I actually get from point A to point B in my thinking? So Ingrid, in the case of the woman who, you know, had negative beliefs about her family story, realized, oh, it actually came because when I was little, my mom told me not to share these stories because she was worried that I might be on the receiving end of violence or discrimination. But that didn't actually mean that my mom was ashamed of these beliefs. She was just issuing a warning to me. Okay. Now that I understand that, maybe I would have gotten to a different destination that wasn't shame. Based on her advice, you can also ask based on what existing beliefs you formed this new belief. A lot of times the beliefs we form are just layering on top of other beliefs. And then when you do that exercise, you may realize, oh, wow, there's actually this foundational belief that I have that's really problematic. And maybe I learned that from my culture or because I was born into a certain family at a certain time with a certain worldview. Okay. And then my favorite, favorite, favorite one is, and I like using this not only on myself but with other people in theory, what evidence would persuade me to change my mind? And I love this one. And this is based on work by Arnaldo Camoufo, the economist. And Adam Grant writes about this. And think again. It presupposes that you ought to be willing to change your mind in the face of evidence. And that's one of the best ways to recognize that there is in fact, flexibility in the things that we think. And so that's one of my favorites. But I think the broader thought experiment here for everyone listening is just imagine that you were born in a different time or place or into a different culture or family. Would you have the same beliefs that you have now? Almost certainly not.

Dan Harris (45:33)

It feels to me like perhaps a foundational step here would be to do a taxonomy of your beliefs about yourself. What are the things I don't know that I've ever done that or that most people ever do that. That seems like a healthy first step. Would you agree with that?

Maya Shankar (45:49)

Yes. Yes. Because I think what we do is we sometimes do little personality audits. Like, okay, I know I'm neurotic in these ways, I know I'm hopeful in these ways. I know I'm pessimistic. But we never actually do the same exercise when it comes to our belief systems. And our belief systems are so entangled with our well being and the way that we see the world and the way that we interpret new information. I've started to do that and I've realized how many faulty, problematic, non evidence based beliefs I have. And that's true for all of us. I grew up in a family with a theoretical physicist. It was a very scientific household. And yet I still, because of all of the forces that influence the way that our brains think and operate, have so many views that I've had to revisit about other people and most importantly, about myself. Again, beliefs that have really, really held me back. And by the way, I want to make sure I'm super clear on something. I'm not telling you to believe things that are just self serving. The facts matter, the data matters, evidence matters. You can't just opportunistically choose what you want to believe because it makes you happier. But what you might learn is that you have unfounded beliefs that are making you unhappy. And those are worth revisiting.

Dan Harris (47:01)

Yes. Okay. There's a big section in the book about getting unstuck from rumination. Rumination can happen, obviously when bad shit happens to us or when we're contemplating bad shit, which I guess in and of itself is a form of rumination. And there's a whole menu of techniques for pulling yourself out of these spirals. I'm going to list some of the techniques and then you can pick up on and expand on any of the ones you want to talk about. Zooming out, cognitive reappraisal, mental time travel, relinquishing the need for closure, awe, affect, labeling, distance, self talk. Which ones should we talk about?

Maya Shankar (47:39)

I mean, are you getting the sense that I as the author might have some challenges with rumination? Dan? Because if so, you're correct. Rumination has been like a hallmark of my life. As I mentioned. Actually, if I can just share this, something that I talk about in the final chapter of the book, which is actually memoir. So the other chapters focus on another person's story. But I kind of turned the mirror on myself and tried to figure out how I was navigating my current change. But while my peers were having a really fun, adventurous time in college, I, after reading about some hate crimes, descended into this incredibly oppressive ruminative space around my future children's suffering. You don't choose the things that you're going to fixate on in your life. Right. But if I had to put the pieces together, it's Maya's dream is to one day become a mom. Okay. Maya also might have a self sabotaging personality. Let's find something that she can endlessly fixate on that might threaten this dream that she really wanted for herself. And so I just remember as a 17 year old being in my dorm room endlessly looping through the ways in which my hypothetical. I don't even have children. I'm so far away from ever having children. And yet this was gripping my mind all the ways in which my future children could suffer. The reason I share this is that there's the fear itself. And then I think there is also this meta frustration that we have with the fact that we're ruminating over this topic at all. It's like, why the heck am I doing this when I could be at a party with my friends like a normal person? Salman Rushdie, in his memoir, he talks about Orwell's 1984. And there's this torture chamber in the book. And this torture chamber, this room 101 is a room that represents your worst nightmare or the biggest fear that you have. Your worst nightmare come true. And so for the protagonist in the book, it's a fear of rats. That's just his thing. A room full of rats. Like that's his worst nightmare. And for whatever reason, my room 101 was occupied by future children of mine suffering because I was so deeply troubled by suffering. And I hated the idea that I might in some way be responsible for that child's suffering or the world might just cause these humans that I love to suffer. I just want to share that because it's so easy to resent your own brain. I resented my own brain for so long and I just want to normalize that. You just don't have control over the things that cause you angst. That's okay. You have to have a little bit of self compassion for you, Dan. It's. I'm worried my career is going to end abruptly one day and I'm going to be living under a bridge. And for younger Maya, it was. I'm worried that my kid is going to be on the receiving end of a hate crime, for example. Okay, so just want a table set that can help alleviate some suffering. For people who are listening. In terms of strategies, I'm going to go through the really quick ones first. So one of my favorites is affect Labeling, this involves just taking a step back and trying to identify what negative emotions you're experiencing as a result of your rumination. So research shows that giving a negative feeling a specific label. So for example, frustration, despair, envy, that labeling process can reduce the intensity of the negative emotion. And that's because when you name something, it fosters psychological distance by shifting your perception away from being the emotion to simply having the emotion. Because when we have this flurry of negativity in our brains, it's easy to think, oh gosh, this is who I am. I am this negative whatever. And you're now saying, oh, actually I'm feeling frustration. This is an emotion that I'm feeling. Another one that I love is called mental time travel. So our brains have this remarkable ability to travel both forward and backward in time. We can travel backwards to contextualize present day challenges within the larger story of human history. So we might feel, for example, quite a lot of despair at this present moment in time. And then we can look back in human history and think about all those moments where we faced existential crises. And through a combination of collective action and self sacrifice, we as humans were able to overcome those challenges. We can also go into the past to mine our personal history for examples. When we showed extraordinary resilience or courage that we didn't expect, we had. And that actually led us to fairly good outcomes on the other side. And then we can travel into the future to remind ourselves that our current situation is transient. And I do this one, by the way, all the time. So I was up at three in the morning recently just ruminating over an awkward interaction with someone. And you can ask yourself in that moment right at 3am when you're so annoyed that you can't fall back asleep, how am I going to feel about this in five hours, five days from now, five years from now? Chances are it's going to have less significance to you. Maybe it was a coworker, right? You might not even be co workers with this person in five years. And so it just helps you break out of the little mental prison that you've built for yourself. And to remember with some distance, oh, this is not a fixed state of the world. This will probably not carry as much importance to me down the line.

Dan Harris (53:19)

I love both of those. Are there any other techniques? You said you were going to start with the quickest ones. Are there others that are more detailed?

Maya Shankar (53:28)

This one I love, which is seeking out awe inspiring experiences, because we can do this all the time, everywhere, every day. So what is awe Dacher Keltner describes it as the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends our current understanding of the world. This sense of vastness can be produced by anything that's larger than we are, right? So it could be physically larger, conceptually larger, and it could be in the domain of music and art or architecture, or my favorite one is moral beauty. So other people's kindness or courage or self sacrifice, or fill in the blank of any other outstanding character trait a human can have. Or maybe it's the complexity of a math theorem or a transcendent experience that comes along with a guided psychedelic trip. Awe is everywhere. Nature, right? If we are perceptive and attentive and are keen observers. And the reason why awe is so effective is that when we experience awe, it creates these little earthquakes in our minds that prompt us to revise our existing assumptions about the world, and it diminishes our sense of self. There are neuroscience studies showing that when we experience awe, areas in the brain that are associated with self focus decrease. And that allows us to step outside of ourselves and to see beyond our individual wants and needs and anxieties and to internalize that we are part of a larger whole. We are part of a connected set of humans who are likely going through similar experiences to what we're going through. I think there's maybe two other techniques that I love to share. The first is that distraction gets a really bad rap. But actually, research shows it can be a very productive and helpful tool after a negative event. So I think one problematic narrative that has emerged in social media circles and also in Western conversations around wellness is that the only healthy way to process a bad experience is to fully and directly confront those negative emotions all the time. Otherwise you risk having those negative emotions resurface in the future with even greater force. So I had a friend of mine who lost his daughter in a car accident, and he was concerned because his son was actually doing okay and was engaging in distractions. So he loved playing basketball, he loved hanging out with his friends. And I remember my friend telling me, is this just gonna rear its ugly head 20 years down the line and he's gonna be in therapy forever? And it's just suppression. And the reality is that recent research on resilience shows a much more complex story in which individual differences play a massive role in determining what makes for a healthy response in any given circumstance. And so there are people for whom distraction is actually good and effective. And when you look at long term outcomes from people who were distracting themselves in the short term and didn't feel these negative emotions constantly resurfacing. They do really great long term. And so I think the upshot of the research is that if persistently confronting your emotions, for example, with a therapist is working well for you, great, stay the course. But if you're not gravitating towards that approach, or if some combination of both approaching the problem and avoiding the problem is your sweet spot, I don't want anyone to feel guilty about that approach or to fear that they're going to pay for it later because that's just simply not what the research says. So if you're like me, go watch reality tv, take up a knitting habit, go do a dance class, like that's totally great.

Dan Harris (57:18)

Are you using distraction and denial interchangeably?

Maya Shankar (57:22)

So I'm not.

Dan Harris (57:23)

Okay.

Maya Shankar (57:23)

Distraction is engaging in any activity that temporarily shifts your attention away from your negative emotions. Denial. Well, there's two different types of denial. There's first order denial and then there's second order denial. Those differences don't matter for your question, but that means literally not recognizing the facts of your situation.

Dan Harris (57:46)

Is there any argument for the utility of denial?

Maya Shankar (57:49)

Yes. Yes. So that's one of the things I discovered doing research for this book. There's research showing actually that denial in the short term actually can lead to better outcomes. So there was this one study where they looked at patients who had been hospitalized for heart problems and they found that those with higher levels of denial had better short term outcomes. So they spent less time in intensive care and had fewer heart related symptoms during their hospital stays than those who had low levels of denial. But what that same study showed is that in the longer term, people with high levels of denial had worse outcomes than those with low denial patients. Researchers think about denial as a psychological immune response. And the researchers, Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler, they talk about denial as having grace and it being nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle. So I think if you're going through a hard time or you're seeing someone else go through a hard time, and in the short term they're showing some symptoms of denial, you can actually be reassured. That can also be part of a healthy response to a change because the processing time around, especially things that are very harrowing, like a death in the family, for example, it can take your mind time to, to fully process those events. And we need to have patience and self compassion during that period.

Dan Harris (59:17)

Coming up, Maya talks about some more tools for breaking out of the mental prison of Rumination. We've been talking about rumination, but I took us away to talk about denial. You did mention a few moments ago that there were two more things you wanted to talk about under the aegis of rumination. We got to one of them. I want to give you an opportunity to discuss whatever the second might have been.

Maya Shankar (59:45)

I'm going to add on one more as well. So just two more. Two more. Sorry.

Dan Harris (59:48)

Sure.

Maya Shankar (59:48)

It's in the broader category of what's called psychological distancing. This basically refers to the idea that we want to forge as much distance between us and our current preoccupations as possible. As much emotional distance as we can. So you can do this in a couple of ways. The first is you can replay an episode that happened in your mind. So let's say a tense exchange with a coworker, but this time you imagine it from the point of view of a third party observer. So a fly on the wall. What you're trying to do is actually poke holes in your own self narrative of what happened. So you might have left that exchange maybe thinking one of two extremes. Right, I'm totally in the wrong or I'm totally in the right. And the point of this exercise, I think is to draw a slightly more balanced perspective of what actually happens so that we can take accountability for where we went wrong and hold the other person accountable for where they went wrong. The reason why this is so effective is that when we are mired in all of those, in the hormonal fog of all the emotions that we feel coming out of a heated exchange, for example, it is just impossible to see the situation for what it was, to see it clearly. And so we can often find more constructive solutions to our problems when we take that perspective. The other thing you can do is imagine that you're counseling a friend. So if you're like me, Dan, you're very, very self critical and you engage in a lot of self beation when you feel like you've messed up. I've definitely done this, so I'll often ruminate about ways in which I've erred. One thing that's been helpful is to imagine that I'm actually helping another friend. And when I help a friend, I'm not using such disparaging language and I'm not being so critical and harsh. I'm showing them a lot more compassion than I would show myself. And we know from research by Kristin Neff and others that when you have more self compassion, it actually leads to a more productive response. It's not just the, you know, nice feel good thing to do. People actually take more action when they show self compassion because they don't feel that criticizing themselves or pointing out ways in which they've gone wrong is a sign that they are bad, but simply that they engage in a bad action or that they had a bad behavior. Right. A third way to achieve the psychological distance is to just. This is something that the psychologist Ethan Cross talks a lot about. He says, talk to yourself in the third person versus the first person. So rather than saying, oh my God, I need to get a grip, you say, oh my God, Maya, you need to get a grip. It sounds really gimmicky, but it's been shown super effective in so many studies across a wide range of emotions. The Maya distances me. Right. And then the you actually, because it's the universal you, reminds you that this is probably something faced by a lot of other people. So it sort of contextualizes the problem that you're dealing with. The other thing is, and I think this is a topic you've discussed on the show, even if you didn't use this exact name, cognitive reappraisal. So it simply means interpreting a situation differently to alter its emotional impact on a person. And so one of the people that I interviewed for the book had a similar experience to you, Dan. Matt Gutman at abc, he had a panic attack on air, threatened his livelihood, and he was absolutely convinced after the fact that he was a faulty human being with screwed up genes and that that was the only reason why someone like him had made it and had been born. That's how he appraised the situation. Right. He was like, my panic attacks are a sign that I am broken in some way, that my brain is broken. And then with the help of an evolutionary psychiatrist, he comes to see his assessment differently. So this psychiatrist tells Matt, actually our ability to panic is a crucial reason why humans survived as long as they did. You in the past, had you been a member of your tribe, might have been the one to save everyone from danger. So yes. Are you overreacting? Sure. But does this make you a faulty human? No, it doesn't. And that small reframe in terms of how he sees the situation. Oh, panicking doesn't mean that I'm broken. Panicking means that I'm not broken. Allowed him to free himself from his shame and start to actually take productive steps forward because he saw himself as actually redeemable. Right. If you are so consumed by shame, there's nothing to fix because there's no ability to fix who you are. That was a very effective strategy. A parting thought on the rumination stuff, which has been very helpful for me. I think that when we are really deep in our mental spirals, we come to think that we are exceptional in some way, that the particular complicated knot our minds have tied is unlike anyone else's knot. And no one can understand us and no one can relate to us, and we're unique in this way. I remember when I struggled with Insomnia in 2020. I started to believe that all the thoughts I were having were not like other people's thoughts. And being in community with others can really be a powerful antidote to this belief. So one person I interviewed on my podcast, Florence Williams, she found out that her husband had had an affair, and she spiraled into this mental vortex, asking all sorts of questions and feeling even physically ill as a result of it. And it was only when she visited the Museum of Broken Relationships and saw these exhibits devoted to all these people who had been through similar experiences and were similarly broken hearted, that she, for the first time ever, was able to zoom out and see that her response and her condition had not been exceptional after all, and that she was part of this bigger community of people and that she could actually learn something from their experiences. And that was a wonderful way of just breaking out again of these mental prisons that we build for ourselves when we are in this state of rumination.

Dan Harris (65:46)

Let's close on this. You mentioned before that you've had an evolution and you're thinking about motherhood as this struggle has evolved. Where are you now?

Maya Shankar (65:57)

I think that one thing that can happen when a big, unexpected change occurs in our lives is that the possible selves that we create can just vanish from sight. So researchers talk about these possible selves in a couple categories. So there's the hoped for selves that reflect our dreams. There's the feared selves that embody our worries, and then there's the expected selves that simply represent what we think is most likely to happen, good or bad. What can happen in the face of a negative change is that all those hoped for selves go away and all the fear selves loom large as we anticipate what the future will look like. One thing that I learned from writing this book is that, of course, our set of possible selves shifts dramatically in response to our new circumstances. If I'm no longer going to be a violinist, or I'm no longer going to be a mom, or whatever it is, let's say you're no longer going to be a journalist. Then of course, our possible selves in the future don't reflect those visions. But often our minds constrain us beyond what is necessary. And that's because our possible selves are shaped by our prior experiences and our social and cultural environments. And for that reason, the possible selves we generate don't always fully encompass the range of what is actually available to us. So to make this concrete, we might have assumptions or stereotypes around what possible selves exist. For someone who is a high school dropout or who is a teen mom, or who is incarcerated, or who is a caregiver or or who is jobless, those expectations often don't actually reflect the full landscape of possibility. All of this to say one thing I explore in my book is how we can conjure up new possible selves, right? How we can use evidence based techniques to actually crack open our imagination about who we can be. And using these techniques, leveraging all the wisdom that I accrued from the people that I interviewed for the book, has left me in a place that I literally never saw coming. Dan, if you had asked me on the night of the second miscarriage, what does the future look like? Is anything good going to happen from this? And could you ever feel whole not becoming a parent, I would have said, absolutely not. I'm going to get to that goal no matter what. But then slowly and I think just over time and subconsciously by learning these messages, I still remember this one day where my husband came home and it was six or seven years of being in this space, right? We had explored adoption, obviously surrogacy, but it never had occurred to either of us that maybe a child free life was a possibility for us. Because again, so much of my self worth and identity had been wrapped up in this. So why would that ever be on the table? And I still remember when my husband brought up the idea of maybe just hitting pause and like maybe not trying to become parents. And for the first time ever, I didn't feel my life convert into grayscale. I didn't feel fully empty. I didn't feel that my life had been sapped of its meaning and its purpose. I still felt fully intact. And that was so surprising for me given my starting point. And I think that's the power of change. That's where I have gotten to on the other side of change, someone with new perspectives and new values, new positive possible selves that project for me a more hopeful and rich and wonderful child free life. So such that that is now a real possibility for us. And I just feel so much gratitude to have gotten to this place because no matter what the future holds, whether I become a parent through surrogacy or adoption or fostering or, I don't become a parent at all. I just don't feel my identity hinging on it as tightly as it had before. And there is something so freeing and liberating about the kind of detachment that Buddhists have been talking about forever. Right. To have achieved that in my own life, I am the happiest and most hopeful version of myself that I've ever been. And that's the end of history, illusion. You know, I did not remember that I was going to be a new person on the other side of this. And I'm grateful for that experience and I'm grateful for all the wisdom of the people that I interviewed for the book. And I really hope that no matter what readers or listeners are going through in their own lives, this will at least give them a sense of hope that they too can become new people. And I think there's something very energizing about that.

Dan Harris (70:57)

I agree. And that's a real achievement to have arrived where you have. Dr. Maya Shankar, author of the Other side of Change and host of A Slight Change of Plans. Thanks for coming on the show.

Maya Shankar (71:08)

Thank you so much for having me, Dan.

Dan Harris (71:15)

Thanks again to Maya Shanker. Always great to talk to her. I'll drop a link in the show notes to her prior appearance on this show. If you want some more from Maya Shanker. If you want to meditate with me, I highly recommend you check out my new app. It's called 10% with Dan Harris. You can get it over on danharris.com There's a free 14 day trial if you want to try before you buy. We've got tons of meditations. We're creating new ones all the time. We have relationships with many of the greatest living meditation teachers who are guiding practices for us and for you. We also do weekly live meditation and Q and A sessions. We've got community features and we're growing all the time. We'd love to have you sign up danharris.com finally, thank you very much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.