January 12, 2026 • 39 mins
Life has a way of upending even our best-laid plans. Breakups, job losses, scary health diagnoses — these unexpected changes can leave us feeling stuck and uncertain about what comes next.
Dr. Laurie speaks with her dear friend and former student, Dr. Maya Shankar, author of The Other Side of Change and host of A Slight Change of Plans, about how to navigate these major shifts, including practical tips for leaning into change instead of resisting it and reimagining the possible selves we can become in the new year.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, especially in the new year. We tend to associate
feeling happier with making changes, sometimes little changes moving a
bit more or connecting more with friends, and sometimes big
changes leaving a toxic job or starting a new creative project.
But when we fantasize about the change we'll experience in
(00:37):
twenty twenty six, we're usually thinking about the changes that
we choose, But life can also hit us with changes
that we don't see coming, being dumped, getting laid off,
or even receiving a frightening health diagnosis. When unexpected changes
like these happen, they can often leave us feeling very stuck.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
We feel like who we are and who we can
become is no longer clear. We don't have a firm
grip on ourselves anymore.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
In this second episode in our season about getting unstuck
in the new Year, we're going to explore how we
can work with change in six rather than fighting it,
and we have the perfect guest to guide us, though
I admit I might be a little biased.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'm doctor Mayah Schunker, and I'm host of the podcast
A Slight Change of Plans and the author of the
Other Side of Change, Who We Become when life makes
other plans.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
And you're also my former student.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
I am seventeen, man, that's how long I've known.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
It wasn't when you was seventeen. You must have been
like three, because I can't possibly be nibled.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Since her time is my student. Maya has become an
expert on how to tackle unexpected change, and one of
her biggest insights is the unexpected change is terrifying.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
We are afraid of change for at least two reasons.
The first is that change is often accompanied by a
lot of uncertainty, and our brains are not wired to
enjoy uncertainty. So there's this fascinating research study which shows
that people are more stressed when they're told they have
a fifty percent chance of receiving an electric shock than
(02:07):
when they're told they have a one hundred percent chance
of receiving an electric shock. So we would rather be
certain that a bad thing is going to happen than
to have to grapple with any uncertainty. And I so
resonate with this, Laurie. I'm like, bring on the shocks.
I just want to know how the story ends. I
really feel so much anxiety when I don't have clarity
(02:28):
on what comes next. And another reason why change is
so scary is that it involves loss of some kind.
So almost by definition, we are moving from one way
of being, an old way of being, into a new
way of being. And so even when the change is good,
there's still some element of grief that accompanies that shift.
(02:49):
Change can involve a threat to our sense of identity,
and I think that is the most destabilizing thing.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So you have all these roles and labels that you
assign yourself. I'm a teacher, I'm a violinist, I'm a volunteer,
whatever it is, and then something happens in your life
and all of a sudden that identify that you attached
so much weight to, that gave your life so much meaning,
and where you placed your self worth is now in jeopardy.
And I think that's one reason again that we can think,
(03:18):
oh my god, I feel completely unmoored.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
But these days Maya is a fan of embracing life's curveballs.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So I should clarify I am a fan of exploring change,
and I'm recovering when it comes to my relationship with change.
So you're recovering, change hater, change hater exactly exactly. So
I've been terrified of change my whole life. I am
a creature of habit I love routines. As I mentioned earlier,
I like knowing how the story ends and how everything's
(03:45):
going to unfold, and not just by the way, Laurie,
how the story's going to unfold, but how I'm going
to feel about how the story unfolds. And so I'm
the type of person that just loves having her hands
firmly on the steering wheel, dictating every single move. And
I think one reason why I've been scared of change
is that I had this really formative experience with change
(04:08):
as a kid that I was not prepared for, and
I didn't have any of the cognitive science strategies I
have today to even know how to navigate it. So
right before I met you, Laurie and entered your undergrad class,
I was an aspiring concert violinist. So I started playing
the violin when I was six. It quickly became the
center of my life. When I was nine, I started
(04:30):
studying at the Juilliard School of Music. When I was
a teenager, the renowned violinist It'sack Pearlman inviting me to
be his private violin student. I was traveling, I was
solong with the orchestras, like all my big dreams were
coming true, and I finally thought to myself, maybe I
have what it takes to go pro one day, and
that was so exhilarating. Everything was going according to plan
(04:53):
until one morning, when I was fifteen, I overstretched my
finger on a single note. I heard a popping sound,
and it turns out that I had damaged tendons in
my hand, and doctors later told me that this was
a career ending injury. And as you can imagine, I
was absolutely devastated and probably not a lot of fun
(05:15):
for my parents and siblings to be around during that
period of time. But there was something so interesting about
my grief, and this hearkens back to our conversation about identity.
I was grieving not just the loss of the instrument,
but also the loss of myself. I think sometimes we
don't realize how much something defines us until we lose it,
(05:36):
until it's taken away from us. It turns out that
the violin at that point had become an extension of
my body. If someone had asked me who I was,
I would have said, I'm a violinist before I even
told people I was Maya.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Right, it was at the core of my being.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And so I found myself so destabilized because the thing
that I felt made me me.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Was taken away.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And I imagine so many people can relate to changes
happening like this and you get really stuck in those moments.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
But it also seems you lost something else. You lost
this thing that psychologists call the illusion of control. What
does this illusion mean and what happens when it falls
apart in our lives?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, in everyday life, most of us fall prey to
the illusion of control, which basically means that we overestimate
our degree to influence outcomes in our lives, to basically
dictate how our lives turn out. And this is obviously
very psychologically adaptive, right, Larie, because it would be quite dispiriting,
I think for our morale if we just moved about
(06:35):
the world being like, yep, we're not in control at.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
All, can't control anything. Circumstances are affecting me terribly.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, yeah, like nothing we do matters. It doesn't matter
if I work hard at this or not. And obviously
we are in control of many things. But when a
big and unexpected negative change happens when that proverbial anvil
falls from the sky. It can shatter that illusion, and
in those moments we are forced to confront the true
limits of our control.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
And so dealing with these big changes, these big moments
of trying to get unstuck, they involve giving up this
illusion of control, often at least a little bit. But
you've argued that we can deal with these moments a
little bit better if we get over other misconceptions we
have about change. That way, we can chill out about change,
as it were, to get So let's dive into some
of these misconceptions. One of these is the end of
history illusion. What's that illusion? And how can we overcome it?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I love the end of history illusion, and I feel
like understanding it has changed the way that I see
my whole future. Research shows that we greatly underestimate how
much we'll change in the future, even though we fully
acknowledge that we've changed considerably in the past. And again
I so resonate with this because, Laurie, if you showed
me footage from my years as an undergrad from seventeen
(07:48):
year old Maya, which as your professor, I can yes,
and you have have the receipt all of that blackmail
on me. I will have a total cringe moment. I'll
be like, who is that person? Oh my god, I'm
so embarrassed that she was ever like that. But if
you ask me today how much are you going to
change in the future, Maya, I'm going to say to you,
finished product over here, done changing. And I love it
(08:11):
because the researchers who coin this term, Dan Gilbert and
his colleagues, they say something like people regard the present
day moment as this watershed moment in which they become
the person they will be for the rest of their lives.
And so what happens in the face of a change
is that we falsely believe that who we are right
now in this moment is going to be the person
(08:32):
navigating that full experience, when actually we will become different
people on the other side of change.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
And this is the idea that you've pushed that change
changes us. What are some of the ways in which
change changes us?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
We are constantly evolving, and importantly, a major disruption in
our lives can accelerate that internal transformation. So, in other words,
when a big change happens to us. It can also
lead to profound change within us, and that's because the
unique stresses and demands of being thrust into this new
(09:07):
reality can uncover unexpected and sometimes astonishing insights to us
about who we are that we're previously hidden from view.
Like I think one illusion we have is that we
have a really good grasp of who we are. But
the truth is that you and I have a self
concept that is based on the random set of data
points that we've happened to collect over our lives, based
(09:29):
on the arbitrary set of experiences that we've had. It's
not a comprehensive view of who we are. And when
we get thrust into change, all of these things now
come to the fore that we didn't previously see, certain beliefs,
that we are laboring under abilities that we had never
tapped before, new perspectives. Oh my gosh, I never thought
I could even see the world this way, right, It's
just being thrown into the deep end where everything gets unearthed,
(09:52):
and we now have to contend with all those things
we see.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
It sounds like you're talking about this as like a positive, like,
oh my gosh, changes us and we have all these
new perspectives, but we're also getting thrown into the deep end,
as you say, like it seems really scary. But your
book I love because it argues that we should see
this as a moment of feeling empowered. The fact that
change will change us winds up being ultimately a good thing.
(10:16):
Explain to me why that is because I'm seeing the
deep end Part one that I'm seeing the impact.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Absolutely and again, for most of my life I was
a deep ender, so I never saw what the positive was.
When we think about a terrible thing that happens in
our lives, it can feel like we are going through
an apocalypse. And when you look at the origin of
the word apocalypse, it actually comes from the Greek word apocalypsis,
and that means revelation. While change can up end things,
(10:44):
it can also reveal things to us about who we are.
And so what I've realized in having hundreds of conversations
over the years with people on a slight change of
plans and then interviewing them for my book is that
by and large, while people might not have been necessarily
grateful for the change itself, they were deeply grateful for
(11:06):
the person they became as a result.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Of their change.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
And that's because when we are in these pressured moments,
when we realize, for example, that we have a new
set of skills that we're going to need to build
to meet this moment, we can actually shape the person
that we become. I think it's really empowering to remember
that we can become different people on the other side
of change, Because when we feel so overwhelmed at the
(11:32):
outset of a change, like there is no chance that
I maya will be able to navigate this with any
kind of ease, It will probably destroy me. There is
some comfort in knowing that the person who will undergo
that full experience will be different from the person I
am right now. And so the relevant question to ask
in the face of change isn't how the hell am
(11:54):
I going to navigate this change, but rather how will I,
with potentially new capabilities and perspectives and values navigate this change?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So, if unexpected change can reshape who we become, is
there a way to help guide that processes? After the
break Maya will walk us through specific tools that can
help us navigate these shifts in healthier ways, so the
unexpected changes become opportunities for growth rather than leaving us stuck.
The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Cognitive
(12:30):
scientist Maya Shunker has dedicated her life to helping people
get unstuck by embracing change. But when you're dealing with
a not so great major life change, the idea of
embracing it can feel overwhelming. So I asked Maya to
walk us through some practical techniques strategies that she's used
herself to move through life's big moments, and one of
Maya's favorite tips is what's known as a self affirmation exercise.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
A self affirmation exercise involves actively shifting your mental spotlight
towards aspects of yourself that you really value, but that
importantly are not threatened by the change you're going through. So,
for example, if you are struggling with a challenging moment
in your relationship, you might use the affirmation exercise to
(13:15):
remind yourself that you really value the community you have
at work, or your spiritual life, or your ability to
play pickleball or whatever it is, the things that really
make you whole. And an added bonus of doing self
affirmation in addition to helping you zoom out and see
your life through a bigger picture lens is that it
(13:36):
can also make you less susceptible to denial, because it
reminds you that your identity does not hinge entirely on
what has been threatened by the change, and in doing so,
it reduces the intensity of the threat. And so if
I'm facing a really unexpected, really destabilizing change, reminding myself
of all the other things that constitute my identity can
(13:56):
be really grounding and affirming.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
And knowing you well, I know that this is something
you've used recently in your own life, But can you
share this last story of when you had to use
self affirmation to get through a big time a feelate stuck.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, there was a a really big moment a couple
of years ago. At that point, my husband and I
had been trying to start a family for years. It
had been a really arduous journey, filled with many heartbreaks
and disappointments, and I remember on the night of the
second pregnancy loss with our surrogate, my husband, Jimmy, came
(14:30):
into our bedroom and said he actually unknowingly engaged me
in this self affirmation exercise, Laurie. He's a software engineer,
so he didn't even know that this is what was happening.
But he said, let's just name a couple things that
were really grateful for And in that moment, I was like, Oh,
hell Na, you take your Instagram vs and go over
(14:50):
to the corner and you do your positive thing. I'm
staying under the sheets where I'm going to be miserable
and feel self pity and just like bad for myself.
But with some time, Jimmy kind of wore me down
and I started to kind of rattle off a couple things. Oh,
I'm really grateful that, you know, I've had the same
colleagues for like ten plus ye years and we make
each other laugh all the time. Or how lucky am
(15:12):
I that I get to be an aunt to my
six nieces and nephews. Or I just love my zoom
workouts with my trainer and we get to gossip about
the Bachelor and love is Blind. And it was incredible
because I felt Larri like magic happened at that moment.
All of a sudden, I was able to zoom out
on my life as a whole and see that there
(15:34):
were so many other rich identities that I found meaning
in and that I valued, and that made me me
and I think sometimes what can happen when we're chasing
after a goal is that we develop tunnel vision. We
become so singularly focused on achieving that goal that I
had lost perspective on my life as a whole. And
(15:58):
in engaging in the self affirmation exercise, I felt so
much more grounded by the end, and I remember thinking, oh, wait,
even though it feels like in this moment, I've lost
everything because I lost this identity I'd been aspiring for
since I was a little kid right one day becoming
a mom, I actually haven't lost everything. So much of
me still remains.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
This is such an important technique, and it fits with
other techniques that really allow us to get unstuck by
thinking about different possibilities for ourselves. Another one that you
talk about in the book is this technique of really
thinking explicitly about our possible selves and questioning the beliefs
we have about them. Explain how this works.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, So as we go about our lives, we conjure
up these possible selves all the time. They come in
different forms. So there's the hope for selves which reflect
all of our dreams and our goals. And you know,
I hope one day, I can do this, and I
imagine Maya in the future doing XYZ. There's also feared selves.
So feared selves reflect our worries and our anxieties, and
(16:59):
expected selves represent our predictions of what we think is
most likely to happen. So yes, I may have dreams
of becoming Taylor Swift, never going to happen, and so
expectedselves are what is actually likely to happen, which is
I will be a cognitive scientist in five to ten
years and hopefully hosting my podcast.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
So, what's interesting about change is that when we navigate
a change, our possible selves can shift dramatically in response
to our new circumstances. So let's say we're facing an illness,
or the end of a relationship or the loss of
a job. We now feel all these doors closing, and
our life feels so constrained and small. But what I
(17:39):
learn from writing the other side of change is that
sometimes our minds constrain us beyond what is necessary, beyond
what's reasonable. And that's because we bring all of the
stereotypes we have, and all of our prior experiences and
influences from society into those possible cells. We generate and
(18:00):
those assumptions make us think that certain selves are no
longer available to us what actually they might be.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Which seems so interesting because it seems like the possible
selves we get have is just limited by our current circumstances.
But if we can kind of think a little bit
more broadly, we might be able to come up with ideas.
And of course that's a really helpful way to get unstuck,
because if you have a belief that, like, well, my
possible self could be like this, then you might be
able to get a little bit motivated to change these
things around to fix it.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yes, this was actually my favorite chapter to write because
I think cracking open our imagination to conjure up new
possible selves is one of the most exciting, invigorating exercises
that we can do.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Okay, but then how do we do that? What are
some techniques for finding more possible selves?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Okay, So the first is to experience what psychologists call
moral elevation. So moral elevation is that warm, fuzzy feeling
that we often experience in our chests when we witness
someone else's extraordinary actions, and those can be any wonderful
things we witness, so it can be their kindness, their resilience,
(19:03):
their self sacrifice, their courage, their ability to forgive.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
You name it.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
If you're impressed by it, and it fills you with
the feeling of awe and wonder that humans are capable of.
That thing that counts as moral elevation.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
But what's really.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Important to note is that when we experience moral elevation,
we are not simply feeling good. It's not just a
bump in our joy or happiness in that moment. It
actually changes our brains. And that's because when a person's
extraordinary actions challenge our understanding of the world and what
humans are capable of, and we have to assimilate that
(19:36):
new information into our brains, it actually cracks open our
imagination of who we can be. So in my book,
I write about a young man who was sentenced to
nine years in adult prison as a sixteen year old
for committing a carjacking, and as you can imagine, the
vast majority of his positive possible selves disappeared from view.
(19:58):
And this guy, Dwayne, talks about how he was so
fearful of who he might become within the confines of prison,
and then one day, about a year in two a setons.
He has an experience of moral elevation with another prisoner.
So this other prisoner he holds himself in a certain way.
He cares for the younger prisoners. He teaches them how
(20:20):
to box and how to protect themselves against violence. He
would do two hundred and fifty push ups before the
guards even came in the morning, just to show people like, no,
this is my identity. And it was through that experience
and moral elevation that when Dwayne later encountered a book
of poetry that spoke to the experience of young boys
(20:41):
in prison, he thought, oh my gosh, maybe I can
be a poet. Maybe that sort of future self is
available to me. And fast forward today, Dwayne is a
MacArthur Genius Prize winning poet. He's a Yeo Law school graduate,
and he writes the most beautiful, poignant poetry about his
experiences in prison. And in the same way that that
(21:04):
man he met in prison cared for the younger prisoners,
he now uses his voice to represent and then the
stories of people in prison who might not otherwise have
a voice.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
History also shows a second technique we can use to
figure out more possible selves, which is just to surround
ourselves with new ideas. It strikes me that what Dwayne
was doing was also surrounding himself with ideas of what
people could do. I love that you included the story
in your book because it reminds me of what you
did after your violin incident. You know, you were this
fifteen year old who found out you couldn't be a violinist,
and you were searching for your next step. You were
(21:36):
trying to figure out your new possible self.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
It's really interesting, too, Laurie, because I think when I
had the experience of losing the violin and it was
sort of cemented that I was not going to be
a violinist the summer before college. So I was really disoriented,
and I also felt massive imposter syndrome, like, oh my god,
I feel like I only got accepted to Yale because
of the violin, and now I don't even have that.
I'm not going to fit in and I'm not going
to survive. My dad gave me some really helpful advice,
(21:59):
which was to one look around and absorb as much
new information as I could. He was like, you've been
wearing blinders for the last ten years. Watch documentaries, read articles,
have as many conversations as you can, and just open
up your mind to the world of possibility out there.
And it was during that exploratory period that I came
(22:20):
across my first book about the mind. It was The
Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. And as soon as I
read that book, I went to my college course catalog
and I looked up what options existed, and that's when
I first saw, oh my god, there's a cognitive science major.
And so that's how cognitive scientists maya came to be.
And another thing that was helpful for me in that
(22:41):
moment was to remember just because I lost the violin
didn't mean that I lost all of the skills that
I built as a result of being a violinist. So
being able to play chords not useful in other domains.
But I had actually built a lot of grit. As
you can imagine, I had built a very high tolerance
for failure and for critical feedback. I had also cultivated
(23:04):
a love of learning and really enjoying seeing myself get
better at something, and all those skills were still going
to be super relevant in whatever I chose to do
moving forward. So the right question to ask yourself at
these moments of transition, is who else can this person be?
This person that's had all of these experiences and who's
built all of these skills and as all of these abilities.
(23:26):
And I think that was helpful in kind of calming
me down during this transition. And then thankfully, this very
lovely professor Laurie Santos took me under her wing my
freshman year and then allowed me to actually become a
cognitive scientist.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
I love the story because basically what your dad was
doing was he was giving you an opportunity to challenge
the beliefs that you had about yourself. Like you were
just thinking of yourself as violinist and that's it. But
he was saying, Maya, if you watch some documentaries and
you read some books, you're going to learn that you
have lots of these different parts. There's lots of parts
of you that you're not paying attention to exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So another strategy you can use is to define yourself
not just by what you do, but by why you
do it. That can be a more robust and stable
kind of self identity. So, in the context of the
violin I asked myself, well, what do I love about
the violin. Just because I lost the ability to play
it didn't mean that I lost what made me love
(24:20):
it in the first place. And those traits were really
enjoying emotionally connecting with people, and getting better at a craft.
And when you anchor your identity to those things. So
in other words, I'm a person who loves emotional connection
and loves self improvement, then the exercise simply becomes well
(24:41):
through what other outlets can I express these parts of myself?
And it turns out that I found other ways to
express them. So, for example, in my role as a
podcaster and in writing this book, I've been able to
build deep emotional connections with the people that I've interviewed.
I always am improving when it comes to being a
cognitive scientist, and so I would urge people listening to ask.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Themselves what is their why?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
What lights them up about the things that they love,
and that can be a soft landing for them and
a compass as they try to figure out their next
steps in the face of the change.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So far, we've heard some great strategies for getting unstuck
by embracing new possible selves, But what about the tough
emotions that come up when we embrace those selves. After
the break, we'll chat about how to navigate all the
hard feelings that stem from big changes without the usual
beating the crap out of ourselves. The happiness lab will
be right back.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
So we've been talking about how we can change our beliefs,
but I want to switch gears to another thing that
often happens when we are feeling really stuck, which is
that we tend to beat ourselves up a lot.
Speaker 5 (25:55):
And I know that what are you talking about, Laurie,
I've never done that.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
I was gonna say. I know you're now a fan
of change, but I seem to remember that used to
beat yourself up.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I used to, Oh my god, like self compassion is
something I'm very much still working on.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
I am so self critical, oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
And so let's talk about the strategies you zoos, because
I think this is a big one. People find themselves
feeling stuck, and it's not just the pain of feeling stuck,
it's also the sense that, like, I suck because I
am stuck. So how can we stop beating ourselves up
so much?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It's the perfect topic to address when it comes to
feeling stuck, because if you feel that you are unworthy
of compassion, if you feel you are truly irredeemable, that
is a permanent feeling of stuckness. One reason that change
can lead us to blame ourselves is because of what
we talked about earlier, which is we have a strong
illusion of control. And so when we think that we
(26:47):
are the ones dictating events and something goes really wrong,
who do we look to blame ourselves? What can happen, though,
is that we unfairly blame ourselves for things that we're
truly out of our control. Not everything happens for a reason.
Something's happen just because, But it is so easy still
to engage in a lot of self burration and self blame.
(27:09):
And so one thing that we can do in these
moments is to engage in a compassion exercise. So this
is phenomenal research by the psychologist Kristin Neth, and basically
she talks about self compassion as recognizing your suffering, mindfully
engaging with your emotions and understanding. And this is the
most important part. I think that what you're feeling is
(27:32):
part of a shared human experience. So when a big
change happens and we're blaming ourselves. We can often feel
exceptional in that moment, like, Oh, this sort of thing
only happens to me, and it's because I am bad,
and I just like will bad things to happen because
whatever I made a bad decision, or I don't trust
my instincts, or people don't like me enough. You know,
(27:52):
we can come up with all sorts of ideas about
ourselves in these moments of stress. But when you engage
in a self compassion exercise in which you remind yourself
that the thing that's happened to you is likely something
that's happened to a lot of other people, then you
can interpret the event as something that is happen been
to you as opposed to something that's happened because of you.
(28:13):
And there is really compelling research where people were instructed
to write to themselves with kindness and concern, to try
to write about their feelings in a really objective way,
and to importantly brainstorm all the ways in which other
people may have endured a very similar thing to the
thing you're enduring right now, and that led to a
(28:34):
significant reduction and shame and then kind of paradoxically, another
way to boost our self compassion is actually to look
outwards and help other people. And I just love this
insight because it's just like speaking to the better angels
of our nature, right, which is, Oh, I'm feeling a
lot of shame. I'm feeling a lot of self hatred.
But guess what when I volunteer, I can see up
(28:57):
close that I am capable of being valuable to other people. Right,
I'm able to see my mark on others, and that's
going to have this virtuous cycle when it comes to
my self concept.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
It also makes you feel connected to other people too, right,
which is a huge thing for making us feel like
we are not alone, that we have the kind of
skills that we need to do better. Is just like
a superpower for making us feel better in these tough moments. Absolutely,
one of the things that happens when we feel stuck
is that we often get stuck in our thoughts. We
get stuck in this rumination cycle, both about our fears
(29:28):
of change and about the uncertainty. Like what's Maya's take
on rumination? What does it feel like?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, first of all, I should make very clear, I
feel like you think I have a PhD in cognitive science.
I feel like I have a PhD In ruminating because
I am the absolute worst call for it when it
comes to getting into these ruminative loops and just driving
myself crazy. And so I use techniques to help break
me from these mental spirals literally every single day.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
So what are some of the techniques that you use?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
The first one is on inspiring experiences. So when do
we feel awe? We feel awe when we are in
the presence of something that is vast and that transcends
our current understanding of the world. That vastness can be
physical or it can be conceptual, right, it can be
this like incredible skyscraper or the expanse of the night sky,
(30:17):
or it can be the complexity of a math theorem
or a piece of music. When we experience awe, it
creates these little earthquakes in our minds. It prompts us
to revise our existing assumptions about the world. And there
is neuroscience research showing that when we experience awe, the
regions in our brains that are associated with self focused
(30:40):
self immersion actually decrease. And so what that does is
it allows us to step outside of ourselves, to step
outside of our individual needs and wants and anxieties, and
to internalize that we are part of a larger whole,
that we are part of this big community of human beings,
and that we are not alone, and that our thoughts
(31:00):
are not exceptional in any way. And it gives us
some much needed perspective.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
So how have you used AWE to break out of
rumination in your own life? I'm curious what's your go
to AH ex experiences.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I had a terrible experience with rumination in twenty twenty.
I mean, if we can go back to that period
of time.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
That's some pretty brutal exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
But I developed insomnia for the first time in my life,
and it was something I was not familiar with. But
I very quickly, after a few sleep truly sleepless nights,
right like zero minutes of sleep, became obsessed with the
problem of sleep. I was wondering why I couldn't sleep.
I was wondering if I was ever going to sleep again.
It was the only thing that I thought or cared
(31:41):
about in my life. The whole world was shut down,
and I was out of my regular rhythms and whatnot.
And I walked to our downtown area and as I
walked downtown. I just put in my air pods and
I listened to one of my favorite violin pieces, and
I just remember being captivated by how beautiful the instrument
(32:05):
was and how beautiful the melodies were. And I felt
so sweat in that moment by the music and by
the way I experienced the same feeling with pop music,
and you know hip hop is I'm not just like
a classical music nerd.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
I love all sorts of music.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
In that moment when I felt this profound awe, it
was like there had been this high pressure balloon blowing
up in my head and someone just punctured it with
a needle. It just instantly deflated. And obviously it was
not a panacea for my insomnia. But what it did
was it gave me hope when I was feeling totally helpless,
(32:43):
like there was going to be no light at the
end of the tunnel. And that's what a small moment
of aw can do for you. And so I felt
something other than immense fury at my brain for the
first time in weeks. And so, yeah, that's one of
my favorite strategies because all is all around us, right,
it just requires a keen observer.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
So that's using AWE to break out of rumination cycles.
Another strategy that you talk a lot about is getting
some distance from our emotions, even just through the simple
act of labeling them. What is affect labeling and why
is it so effective?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, So, affect labeling simply involves taking a step back
and trying to identify what specific negative emotions you're experiencing
as a result of your rumination. So, for example, in
my head, I'm thinking, right, all these like negative emotions
or like pin balls in your head, right, you can't
make sense of any of them. What you're doing when
(33:36):
you affect label is giving your negative feelings specific labels.
It's like, oh, that one that's frustration, Oh oh that
other one that's despair, Oh that's envy, that's jealousy, whatever
it is. And research shows that when you name your emotions,
it fosters psychological distance and it shifts your perspective away
(33:56):
from being the emotion to simply having the emotion. And
that is a seismic change, I feel in the way
that we experience rumination because when I am, you know,
mired in anxiety, I feel like I am anxious versus oh,
I'm having anxiety. Anxiety as an emotion simply that I'm feeling,
and so that's been very, very effective.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
You've also talked about ways that we can distance ourselves,
not just from our emotions, but from our thoughts. Share
some strategies that we can use for thought self distancing.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
My favorite and go to recently has been mental time travel.
So our brains have a remarkable ability to travel both
backwards and forwards in time, and we can use this
capability to our advantage in the context of ruminations. So
you can travel back in time to contextualize present day
challenges within the larger story of humanity or within your
(34:49):
own life story. Right, you might remind yourself of a
moment where you showed a lot of resolve in the
face of adversity, and that can encourage you in the present.
You can also travel to the future and imagine how
you're going to feel about your current problem in five
hours from now, five days from now, five years from now,
and I find that to be very useful. So, for example,
(35:12):
if you've had a negative experience with your coworker or
your boss and you just can't get it out of
your head, right, you are as Ethan Cross says on
the hamster wheel. Right, it's like running and running and running.
You can just take a step back and say, am
I going to care about this as much in five
years from now? And suddenly you think, oh my god,
this situation is transient. So it just like takes a
(35:34):
lot of the emotional energy out of the space you're
occupying and you can see it with a little bit
more perspective. Another thing that I do is just more
basic psychological distancing. So, as I mentioned to you, I'm
extremely self critical. So when I have messed up and
I may be ruminating because I have a lot of regret,
I'm not the kindest to myself. And so one way
you can be a little bit kinder to yourself is
(35:56):
to coach yourself like you would a friend. You're going
to give a lot more compassion to a friend when
you're advising them. You're also going to have a lot
more emotional distance when you're coaching someone, and you have
more of a third party, objective, observer point of you.
And so I try to remind myself, okay, you're talking
to someone else. Try to see your problem.
Speaker 5 (36:15):
Through that lens.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
So these are ways that we can separate ourselves from
our thoughts. You've also argued that we can fight rumination
by lessening our need for cognitive closure. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, so this isn't a short term solution, because I
think this is sort of at least for me anyway.
It's my contending with a lifelong struggle that I will
never have clear, definitive answers for every challenge in my
life or every question I have in my life. But
I think a lot of us, as humans, we do
crave black and white clarity. And the challenge is that
(36:49):
when we climb out of the rubble of an unexpected
negative change, all we see around us is gray. It's
all gray. There's no black, there's no white. And I
do think that one of the long term ways for
us to tame our rumination is to start becoming more
comfortable with uncertainty. Rumination often arises in our effort to
(37:12):
resist the uncertainty that a change brings. We rehash why
that breakup happened in the way it did, and we
if only I'd done this, we would still be together.
If only I'd said that. If only you just keep
going over the same negative thoughts over and over again,
when you might not actually know for sure why a
breakup happened, and it's actually okay to not know all
the answers, And so I think building slowly but surely,
(37:35):
our tolerance of uncertainty, our desperate need to find answers
when there are none to be found, is honestly not
even in the context of ruination. But it's just a
healthier way to embrace change in our lives.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Overall, this was amazing. I feel like you just gave
our listeners so many strategies for getting in stuck. I
hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I'm
so glad you had that little pop in your hand
and that you get to God you're a science student
that you get to help so many of my listeners
become unstuck.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
That's so sweet. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
I'm glad you had a career ending injury. It's really
worked out for me in a wonderful way.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Well, I'm grateful for you, Laurie, So thanks.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Unexpected changes can leave us feeling stuck, but there are
also opportunities. So the next time life throws you a curveball,
remember that change changes you.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
You might not feel.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Ready to be changed, but the person you become probably
has the strength and wisdom to navigate your new situation
with confidence. And if you need help on the way
to becoming that new person, try some of the strategies
Maya talked about today. Take a moment to journal, to
engage in self affirmation and to explore possible selves. Do
something new that cultivates awe, Take a deep breath and
(38:44):
speak to yourself with self compassion, and if all else fails,
remind yourself that you're doing the great work of building
comfort with uncertainty. If you want even more tips for
getting unstuck from unexpected change, I highly recommend Maya's new book,
The Other Side of Change. It's out in stores this week.
Next week on the Happiness Lab, we'll continue exploring strategies
(39:05):
for getting unstuck. I'll chat with author and political commentator
David Brooks about how focusing on character and connection can
be an unexpected path to moving forward in the new year.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
A lot of people have not been taught basic social
skills like how do you sit with someone who's depressed,
how do you break up with someone without crushing their heart?
How do you ask for an offer forgiveness? And that's
a skill just the way learning tennis is a skill
the way learning carpentry is a skill.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
That's coming up next week on Happiness Lab with me
doctor Laurie Santos
Pushkin, especially in the new year. We tend to associate
feeling happier with making changes, sometimes little changes moving a
bit more or connecting more with friends, and sometimes big
changes leaving a toxic job or starting a new creative project.
But when we fantasize about the change we'll experience in
(00:37):
twenty twenty six, we're usually thinking about the changes that
we choose, But life can also hit us with changes
that we don't see coming, being dumped, getting laid off,
or even receiving a frightening health diagnosis. When unexpected changes
like these happen, they can often leave us feeling very stuck.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
We feel like who we are and who we can
become is no longer clear. We don't have a firm
grip on ourselves anymore.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
In this second episode in our season about getting unstuck
in the new Year, we're going to explore how we
can work with change in six rather than fighting it,
and we have the perfect guest to guide us, though
I admit I might be a little biased.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'm doctor Mayah Schunker, and I'm host of the podcast
A Slight Change of Plans and the author of the
Other Side of Change, Who We Become when life makes
other plans.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
And you're also my former student.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
I am seventeen, man, that's how long I've known.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
It wasn't when you was seventeen. You must have been
like three, because I can't possibly be nibled.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Since her time is my student. Maya has become an
expert on how to tackle unexpected change, and one of
her biggest insights is the unexpected change is terrifying.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
We are afraid of change for at least two reasons.
The first is that change is often accompanied by a
lot of uncertainty, and our brains are not wired to
enjoy uncertainty. So there's this fascinating research study which shows
that people are more stressed when they're told they have
a fifty percent chance of receiving an electric shock than
(02:07):
when they're told they have a one hundred percent chance
of receiving an electric shock. So we would rather be
certain that a bad thing is going to happen than
to have to grapple with any uncertainty. And I so
resonate with this, Laurie. I'm like, bring on the shocks.
I just want to know how the story ends. I
really feel so much anxiety when I don't have clarity
(02:28):
on what comes next. And another reason why change is
so scary is that it involves loss of some kind.
So almost by definition, we are moving from one way
of being, an old way of being, into a new
way of being. And so even when the change is good,
there's still some element of grief that accompanies that shift.
(02:49):
Change can involve a threat to our sense of identity,
and I think that is the most destabilizing thing.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So you have all these roles and labels that you
assign yourself. I'm a teacher, I'm a violinist, I'm a volunteer,
whatever it is, and then something happens in your life
and all of a sudden that identify that you attached
so much weight to, that gave your life so much meaning,
and where you placed your self worth is now in jeopardy.
And I think that's one reason again that we can think,
(03:18):
oh my god, I feel completely unmoored.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
But these days Maya is a fan of embracing life's curveballs.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So I should clarify I am a fan of exploring change,
and I'm recovering when it comes to my relationship with change.
So you're recovering, change hater, change hater exactly exactly. So
I've been terrified of change my whole life. I am
a creature of habit I love routines. As I mentioned earlier,
I like knowing how the story ends and how everything's
(03:45):
going to unfold, and not just by the way, Laurie,
how the story's going to unfold, but how I'm going
to feel about how the story unfolds. And so I'm
the type of person that just loves having her hands
firmly on the steering wheel, dictating every single move. And
I think one reason why I've been scared of change
is that I had this really formative experience with change
(04:08):
as a kid that I was not prepared for, and
I didn't have any of the cognitive science strategies I
have today to even know how to navigate it. So
right before I met you, Laurie and entered your undergrad class,
I was an aspiring concert violinist. So I started playing
the violin when I was six. It quickly became the
center of my life. When I was nine, I started
(04:30):
studying at the Juilliard School of Music. When I was
a teenager, the renowned violinist It'sack Pearlman inviting me to
be his private violin student. I was traveling, I was
solong with the orchestras, like all my big dreams were
coming true, and I finally thought to myself, maybe I
have what it takes to go pro one day, and
that was so exhilarating. Everything was going according to plan
(04:53):
until one morning, when I was fifteen, I overstretched my
finger on a single note. I heard a popping sound,
and it turns out that I had damaged tendons in
my hand, and doctors later told me that this was
a career ending injury. And as you can imagine, I
was absolutely devastated and probably not a lot of fun
(05:15):
for my parents and siblings to be around during that
period of time. But there was something so interesting about
my grief, and this hearkens back to our conversation about identity.
I was grieving not just the loss of the instrument,
but also the loss of myself. I think sometimes we
don't realize how much something defines us until we lose it,
(05:36):
until it's taken away from us. It turns out that
the violin at that point had become an extension of
my body. If someone had asked me who I was,
I would have said, I'm a violinist before I even
told people I was Maya.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Right, it was at the core of my being.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
And so I found myself so destabilized because the thing
that I felt made me me.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
Was taken away.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And I imagine so many people can relate to changes
happening like this and you get really stuck in those moments.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
But it also seems you lost something else. You lost
this thing that psychologists call the illusion of control. What
does this illusion mean and what happens when it falls
apart in our lives?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, in everyday life, most of us fall prey to
the illusion of control, which basically means that we overestimate
our degree to influence outcomes in our lives, to basically
dictate how our lives turn out. And this is obviously
very psychologically adaptive, right, Larie, because it would be quite dispiriting,
I think for our morale if we just moved about
(06:35):
the world being like, yep, we're not in control at.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
All, can't control anything. Circumstances are affecting me terribly.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, yeah, like nothing we do matters. It doesn't matter
if I work hard at this or not. And obviously
we are in control of many things. But when a
big and unexpected negative change happens when that proverbial anvil
falls from the sky. It can shatter that illusion, and
in those moments we are forced to confront the true
limits of our control.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
And so dealing with these big changes, these big moments
of trying to get unstuck, they involve giving up this
illusion of control, often at least a little bit. But
you've argued that we can deal with these moments a
little bit better if we get over other misconceptions we
have about change. That way, we can chill out about change,
as it were, to get So let's dive into some
of these misconceptions. One of these is the end of
history illusion. What's that illusion? And how can we overcome it?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I love the end of history illusion, and I feel
like understanding it has changed the way that I see
my whole future. Research shows that we greatly underestimate how
much we'll change in the future, even though we fully
acknowledge that we've changed considerably in the past. And again
I so resonate with this because, Laurie, if you showed
me footage from my years as an undergrad from seventeen
(07:48):
year old Maya, which as your professor, I can yes,
and you have have the receipt all of that blackmail
on me. I will have a total cringe moment. I'll
be like, who is that person? Oh my god, I'm
so embarrassed that she was ever like that. But if
you ask me today how much are you going to
change in the future, Maya, I'm going to say to you,
finished product over here, done changing. And I love it
(08:11):
because the researchers who coin this term, Dan Gilbert and
his colleagues, they say something like people regard the present
day moment as this watershed moment in which they become
the person they will be for the rest of their lives.
And so what happens in the face of a change
is that we falsely believe that who we are right
now in this moment is going to be the person
(08:32):
navigating that full experience, when actually we will become different
people on the other side of change.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
And this is the idea that you've pushed that change
changes us. What are some of the ways in which
change changes us?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
We are constantly evolving, and importantly, a major disruption in
our lives can accelerate that internal transformation. So, in other words,
when a big change happens to us. It can also
lead to profound change within us, and that's because the
unique stresses and demands of being thrust into this new
(09:07):
reality can uncover unexpected and sometimes astonishing insights to us
about who we are that we're previously hidden from view.
Like I think one illusion we have is that we
have a really good grasp of who we are. But
the truth is that you and I have a self
concept that is based on the random set of data
points that we've happened to collect over our lives, based
(09:29):
on the arbitrary set of experiences that we've had. It's
not a comprehensive view of who we are. And when
we get thrust into change, all of these things now
come to the fore that we didn't previously see, certain beliefs,
that we are laboring under abilities that we had never
tapped before, new perspectives. Oh my gosh, I never thought
I could even see the world this way, right, It's
just being thrown into the deep end where everything gets unearthed,
(09:52):
and we now have to contend with all those things
we see.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
It sounds like you're talking about this as like a positive, like,
oh my gosh, changes us and we have all these
new perspectives, but we're also getting thrown into the deep end,
as you say, like it seems really scary. But your
book I love because it argues that we should see
this as a moment of feeling empowered. The fact that
change will change us winds up being ultimately a good thing.
(10:16):
Explain to me why that is because I'm seeing the
deep end Part one that I'm seeing the impact.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Absolutely and again, for most of my life I was
a deep ender, so I never saw what the positive was.
When we think about a terrible thing that happens in
our lives, it can feel like we are going through
an apocalypse. And when you look at the origin of
the word apocalypse, it actually comes from the Greek word apocalypsis,
and that means revelation. While change can up end things,
(10:44):
it can also reveal things to us about who we are.
And so what I've realized in having hundreds of conversations
over the years with people on a slight change of
plans and then interviewing them for my book is that
by and large, while people might not have been necessarily
grateful for the change itself, they were deeply grateful for
(11:06):
the person they became as a result.
Speaker 5 (11:08):
Of their change.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
And that's because when we are in these pressured moments,
when we realize, for example, that we have a new
set of skills that we're going to need to build
to meet this moment, we can actually shape the person
that we become. I think it's really empowering to remember
that we can become different people on the other side
of change, Because when we feel so overwhelmed at the
(11:32):
outset of a change, like there is no chance that
I maya will be able to navigate this with any
kind of ease, It will probably destroy me. There is
some comfort in knowing that the person who will undergo
that full experience will be different from the person I
am right now. And so the relevant question to ask
in the face of change isn't how the hell am
(11:54):
I going to navigate this change, but rather how will I,
with potentially new capabilities and perspectives and values navigate this change?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
So, if unexpected change can reshape who we become, is
there a way to help guide that processes? After the
break Maya will walk us through specific tools that can
help us navigate these shifts in healthier ways, so the
unexpected changes become opportunities for growth rather than leaving us stuck.
The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Cognitive
(12:30):
scientist Maya Shunker has dedicated her life to helping people
get unstuck by embracing change. But when you're dealing with
a not so great major life change, the idea of
embracing it can feel overwhelming. So I asked Maya to
walk us through some practical techniques strategies that she's used
herself to move through life's big moments, and one of
Maya's favorite tips is what's known as a self affirmation exercise.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
A self affirmation exercise involves actively shifting your mental spotlight
towards aspects of yourself that you really value, but that
importantly are not threatened by the change you're going through. So,
for example, if you are struggling with a challenging moment
in your relationship, you might use the affirmation exercise to
(13:15):
remind yourself that you really value the community you have
at work, or your spiritual life, or your ability to
play pickleball or whatever it is, the things that really
make you whole. And an added bonus of doing self
affirmation in addition to helping you zoom out and see
your life through a bigger picture lens is that it
(13:36):
can also make you less susceptible to denial, because it
reminds you that your identity does not hinge entirely on
what has been threatened by the change, and in doing so,
it reduces the intensity of the threat. And so if
I'm facing a really unexpected, really destabilizing change, reminding myself
of all the other things that constitute my identity can
(13:56):
be really grounding and affirming.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
And knowing you well, I know that this is something
you've used recently in your own life, But can you
share this last story of when you had to use
self affirmation to get through a big time a feelate stuck.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Yeah, there was a a really big moment a couple
of years ago. At that point, my husband and I
had been trying to start a family for years. It
had been a really arduous journey, filled with many heartbreaks
and disappointments, and I remember on the night of the
second pregnancy loss with our surrogate, my husband, Jimmy, came
(14:30):
into our bedroom and said he actually unknowingly engaged me
in this self affirmation exercise, Laurie. He's a software engineer,
so he didn't even know that this is what was happening.
But he said, let's just name a couple things that
were really grateful for And in that moment, I was like, Oh,
hell Na, you take your Instagram vs and go over
(14:50):
to the corner and you do your positive thing. I'm
staying under the sheets where I'm going to be miserable
and feel self pity and just like bad for myself.
But with some time, Jimmy kind of wore me down
and I started to kind of rattle off a couple things. Oh,
I'm really grateful that, you know, I've had the same
colleagues for like ten plus ye years and we make
each other laugh all the time. Or how lucky am
(15:12):
I that I get to be an aunt to my
six nieces and nephews. Or I just love my zoom
workouts with my trainer and we get to gossip about
the Bachelor and love is Blind. And it was incredible
because I felt Larri like magic happened at that moment.
All of a sudden, I was able to zoom out
on my life as a whole and see that there
(15:34):
were so many other rich identities that I found meaning
in and that I valued, and that made me me
and I think sometimes what can happen when we're chasing
after a goal is that we develop tunnel vision. We
become so singularly focused on achieving that goal that I
had lost perspective on my life as a whole. And
(15:58):
in engaging in the self affirmation exercise, I felt so
much more grounded by the end, and I remember thinking, oh, wait,
even though it feels like in this moment, I've lost
everything because I lost this identity I'd been aspiring for
since I was a little kid right one day becoming
a mom, I actually haven't lost everything. So much of
me still remains.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
This is such an important technique, and it fits with
other techniques that really allow us to get unstuck by
thinking about different possibilities for ourselves. Another one that you
talk about in the book is this technique of really
thinking explicitly about our possible selves and questioning the beliefs
we have about them. Explain how this works.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah, So as we go about our lives, we conjure
up these possible selves all the time. They come in
different forms. So there's the hope for selves which reflect
all of our dreams and our goals. And you know,
I hope one day, I can do this, and I
imagine Maya in the future doing XYZ. There's also feared selves.
So feared selves reflect our worries and our anxieties, and
(16:59):
expected selves represent our predictions of what we think is
most likely to happen. So yes, I may have dreams
of becoming Taylor Swift, never going to happen, and so
expectedselves are what is actually likely to happen, which is
I will be a cognitive scientist in five to ten
years and hopefully hosting my podcast.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
So, what's interesting about change is that when we navigate
a change, our possible selves can shift dramatically in response
to our new circumstances. So let's say we're facing an illness,
or the end of a relationship or the loss of
a job. We now feel all these doors closing, and
our life feels so constrained and small. But what I
(17:39):
learn from writing the other side of change is that
sometimes our minds constrain us beyond what is necessary, beyond
what's reasonable. And that's because we bring all of the
stereotypes we have, and all of our prior experiences and
influences from society into those possible cells. We generate and
(18:00):
those assumptions make us think that certain selves are no
longer available to us what actually they might be.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Which seems so interesting because it seems like the possible
selves we get have is just limited by our current circumstances.
But if we can kind of think a little bit
more broadly, we might be able to come up with ideas.
And of course that's a really helpful way to get unstuck,
because if you have a belief that, like, well, my
possible self could be like this, then you might be
able to get a little bit motivated to change these
things around to fix it.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yes, this was actually my favorite chapter to write because
I think cracking open our imagination to conjure up new
possible selves is one of the most exciting, invigorating exercises
that we can do.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
Okay, but then how do we do that? What are
some techniques for finding more possible selves?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Okay, So the first is to experience what psychologists call
moral elevation. So moral elevation is that warm, fuzzy feeling
that we often experience in our chests when we witness
someone else's extraordinary actions, and those can be any wonderful
things we witness, so it can be their kindness, their resilience,
(19:03):
their self sacrifice, their courage, their ability to forgive.
Speaker 5 (19:06):
You name it.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
If you're impressed by it, and it fills you with
the feeling of awe and wonder that humans are capable of.
That thing that counts as moral elevation.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
But what's really.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Important to note is that when we experience moral elevation,
we are not simply feeling good. It's not just a
bump in our joy or happiness in that moment. It
actually changes our brains. And that's because when a person's
extraordinary actions challenge our understanding of the world and what
humans are capable of, and we have to assimilate that
(19:36):
new information into our brains, it actually cracks open our
imagination of who we can be. So in my book,
I write about a young man who was sentenced to
nine years in adult prison as a sixteen year old
for committing a carjacking, and as you can imagine, the
vast majority of his positive possible selves disappeared from view.
(19:58):
And this guy, Dwayne, talks about how he was so
fearful of who he might become within the confines of prison,
and then one day, about a year in two a setons.
He has an experience of moral elevation with another prisoner.
So this other prisoner he holds himself in a certain way.
He cares for the younger prisoners. He teaches them how
(20:20):
to box and how to protect themselves against violence. He
would do two hundred and fifty push ups before the
guards even came in the morning, just to show people like, no,
this is my identity. And it was through that experience
and moral elevation that when Dwayne later encountered a book
of poetry that spoke to the experience of young boys
(20:41):
in prison, he thought, oh my gosh, maybe I can
be a poet. Maybe that sort of future self is
available to me. And fast forward today, Dwayne is a
MacArthur Genius Prize winning poet. He's a Yeo Law school graduate,
and he writes the most beautiful, poignant poetry about his
experiences in prison. And in the same way that that
(21:04):
man he met in prison cared for the younger prisoners,
he now uses his voice to represent and then the
stories of people in prison who might not otherwise have
a voice.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
History also shows a second technique we can use to
figure out more possible selves, which is just to surround
ourselves with new ideas. It strikes me that what Dwayne
was doing was also surrounding himself with ideas of what
people could do. I love that you included the story
in your book because it reminds me of what you
did after your violin incident. You know, you were this
fifteen year old who found out you couldn't be a violinist,
and you were searching for your next step. You were
(21:36):
trying to figure out your new possible self.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
It's really interesting, too, Laurie, because I think when I
had the experience of losing the violin and it was
sort of cemented that I was not going to be
a violinist the summer before college. So I was really disoriented,
and I also felt massive imposter syndrome, like, oh my god,
I feel like I only got accepted to Yale because
of the violin, and now I don't even have that.
I'm not going to fit in and I'm not going
to survive. My dad gave me some really helpful advice,
(21:59):
which was to one look around and absorb as much
new information as I could. He was like, you've been
wearing blinders for the last ten years. Watch documentaries, read articles,
have as many conversations as you can, and just open
up your mind to the world of possibility out there.
And it was during that exploratory period that I came
(22:20):
across my first book about the mind. It was The
Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker. And as soon as I
read that book, I went to my college course catalog
and I looked up what options existed, and that's when
I first saw, oh my god, there's a cognitive science major.
And so that's how cognitive scientists maya came to be.
And another thing that was helpful for me in that
(22:41):
moment was to remember just because I lost the violin
didn't mean that I lost all of the skills that
I built as a result of being a violinist. So
being able to play chords not useful in other domains.
But I had actually built a lot of grit. As
you can imagine, I had built a very high tolerance
for failure and for critical feedback. I had also cultivated
(23:04):
a love of learning and really enjoying seeing myself get
better at something, and all those skills were still going
to be super relevant in whatever I chose to do
moving forward. So the right question to ask yourself at
these moments of transition, is who else can this person be?
This person that's had all of these experiences and who's
built all of these skills and as all of these abilities.
(23:26):
And I think that was helpful in kind of calming
me down during this transition. And then thankfully, this very
lovely professor Laurie Santos took me under her wing my
freshman year and then allowed me to actually become a
cognitive scientist.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
I love the story because basically what your dad was
doing was he was giving you an opportunity to challenge
the beliefs that you had about yourself. Like you were
just thinking of yourself as violinist and that's it. But
he was saying, Maya, if you watch some documentaries and
you read some books, you're going to learn that you
have lots of these different parts. There's lots of parts
of you that you're not paying attention to exactly.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So another strategy you can use is to define yourself
not just by what you do, but by why you
do it. That can be a more robust and stable
kind of self identity. So, in the context of the
violin I asked myself, well, what do I love about
the violin. Just because I lost the ability to play
it didn't mean that I lost what made me love
(24:20):
it in the first place. And those traits were really
enjoying emotionally connecting with people, and getting better at a craft.
And when you anchor your identity to those things. So
in other words, I'm a person who loves emotional connection
and loves self improvement, then the exercise simply becomes well
(24:41):
through what other outlets can I express these parts of myself?
And it turns out that I found other ways to
express them. So, for example, in my role as a
podcaster and in writing this book, I've been able to
build deep emotional connections with the people that I've interviewed.
I always am improving when it comes to being a
cognitive scientist, and so I would urge people listening to ask.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Themselves what is their why?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
What lights them up about the things that they love,
and that can be a soft landing for them and
a compass as they try to figure out their next
steps in the face of the change.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
So far, we've heard some great strategies for getting unstuck
by embracing new possible selves, But what about the tough
emotions that come up when we embrace those selves. After
the break, we'll chat about how to navigate all the
hard feelings that stem from big changes without the usual
beating the crap out of ourselves. The happiness lab will
be right back.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
So we've been talking about how we can change our beliefs,
but I want to switch gears to another thing that
often happens when we are feeling really stuck, which is
that we tend to beat ourselves up a lot.
Speaker 5 (25:55):
And I know that what are you talking about, Laurie,
I've never done that.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
I was gonna say. I know you're now a fan
of change, but I seem to remember that used to
beat yourself up.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I used to, Oh my god, like self compassion is
something I'm very much still working on.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
I am so self critical, oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
And so let's talk about the strategies you zoos, because
I think this is a big one. People find themselves
feeling stuck, and it's not just the pain of feeling stuck,
it's also the sense that, like, I suck because I
am stuck. So how can we stop beating ourselves up
so much?
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It's the perfect topic to address when it comes to
feeling stuck, because if you feel that you are unworthy
of compassion, if you feel you are truly irredeemable, that
is a permanent feeling of stuckness. One reason that change
can lead us to blame ourselves is because of what
we talked about earlier, which is we have a strong
illusion of control. And so when we think that we
(26:47):
are the ones dictating events and something goes really wrong,
who do we look to blame ourselves? What can happen, though,
is that we unfairly blame ourselves for things that we're
truly out of our control. Not everything happens for a reason.
Something's happen just because, But it is so easy still
to engage in a lot of self burration and self blame.
(27:09):
And so one thing that we can do in these
moments is to engage in a compassion exercise. So this
is phenomenal research by the psychologist Kristin Neth, and basically
she talks about self compassion as recognizing your suffering, mindfully
engaging with your emotions and understanding. And this is the
most important part. I think that what you're feeling is
(27:32):
part of a shared human experience. So when a big
change happens and we're blaming ourselves. We can often feel
exceptional in that moment, like, Oh, this sort of thing
only happens to me, and it's because I am bad,
and I just like will bad things to happen because
whatever I made a bad decision, or I don't trust
my instincts, or people don't like me enough. You know,
(27:52):
we can come up with all sorts of ideas about
ourselves in these moments of stress. But when you engage
in a self compassion exercise in which you remind yourself
that the thing that's happened to you is likely something
that's happened to a lot of other people, then you
can interpret the event as something that is happen been
to you as opposed to something that's happened because of you.
(28:13):
And there is really compelling research where people were instructed
to write to themselves with kindness and concern, to try
to write about their feelings in a really objective way,
and to importantly brainstorm all the ways in which other
people may have endured a very similar thing to the
thing you're enduring right now, and that led to a
(28:34):
significant reduction and shame and then kind of paradoxically, another
way to boost our self compassion is actually to look
outwards and help other people. And I just love this
insight because it's just like speaking to the better angels
of our nature, right, which is, Oh, I'm feeling a
lot of shame. I'm feeling a lot of self hatred.
But guess what when I volunteer, I can see up
(28:57):
close that I am capable of being valuable to other people. Right,
I'm able to see my mark on others, and that's
going to have this virtuous cycle when it comes to
my self concept.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
It also makes you feel connected to other people too, right,
which is a huge thing for making us feel like
we are not alone, that we have the kind of
skills that we need to do better. Is just like
a superpower for making us feel better in these tough moments. Absolutely,
one of the things that happens when we feel stuck
is that we often get stuck in our thoughts. We
get stuck in this rumination cycle, both about our fears
(29:28):
of change and about the uncertainty. Like what's Maya's take
on rumination? What does it feel like?
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Well, first of all, I should make very clear, I
feel like you think I have a PhD in cognitive science.
I feel like I have a PhD In ruminating because
I am the absolute worst call for it when it
comes to getting into these ruminative loops and just driving
myself crazy. And so I use techniques to help break
me from these mental spirals literally every single day.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
So what are some of the techniques that you use?
Speaker 2 (29:56):
The first one is on inspiring experiences. So when do
we feel awe? We feel awe when we are in
the presence of something that is vast and that transcends
our current understanding of the world. That vastness can be
physical or it can be conceptual, right, it can be
this like incredible skyscraper or the expanse of the night sky,
(30:17):
or it can be the complexity of a math theorem
or a piece of music. When we experience awe, it
creates these little earthquakes in our minds. It prompts us
to revise our existing assumptions about the world. And there
is neuroscience research showing that when we experience awe, the
regions in our brains that are associated with self focused
(30:40):
self immersion actually decrease. And so what that does is
it allows us to step outside of ourselves, to step
outside of our individual needs and wants and anxieties, and
to internalize that we are part of a larger whole,
that we are part of this big community of human beings,
and that we are not alone, and that our thoughts
(31:00):
are not exceptional in any way. And it gives us
some much needed perspective.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
So how have you used AWE to break out of
rumination in your own life? I'm curious what's your go
to AH ex experiences.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I had a terrible experience with rumination in twenty twenty.
I mean, if we can go back to that period
of time.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
That's some pretty brutal exactly.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
But I developed insomnia for the first time in my life,
and it was something I was not familiar with. But
I very quickly, after a few sleep truly sleepless nights,
right like zero minutes of sleep, became obsessed with the
problem of sleep. I was wondering why I couldn't sleep.
I was wondering if I was ever going to sleep again.
It was the only thing that I thought or cared
(31:41):
about in my life. The whole world was shut down,
and I was out of my regular rhythms and whatnot.
And I walked to our downtown area and as I
walked downtown. I just put in my air pods and
I listened to one of my favorite violin pieces, and
I just remember being captivated by how beautiful the instrument
(32:05):
was and how beautiful the melodies were. And I felt
so sweat in that moment by the music and by
the way I experienced the same feeling with pop music,
and you know hip hop is I'm not just like
a classical music nerd.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
I love all sorts of music.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
In that moment when I felt this profound awe, it
was like there had been this high pressure balloon blowing
up in my head and someone just punctured it with
a needle. It just instantly deflated. And obviously it was
not a panacea for my insomnia. But what it did
was it gave me hope when I was feeling totally helpless,
(32:43):
like there was going to be no light at the
end of the tunnel. And that's what a small moment
of aw can do for you. And so I felt
something other than immense fury at my brain for the
first time in weeks. And so, yeah, that's one of
my favorite strategies because all is all around us, right,
it just requires a keen observer.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
So that's using AWE to break out of rumination cycles.
Another strategy that you talk a lot about is getting
some distance from our emotions, even just through the simple
act of labeling them. What is affect labeling and why
is it so effective?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, So, affect labeling simply involves taking a step back
and trying to identify what specific negative emotions you're experiencing
as a result of your rumination. So, for example, in
my head, I'm thinking, right, all these like negative emotions
or like pin balls in your head, right, you can't
make sense of any of them. What you're doing when
(33:36):
you affect label is giving your negative feelings specific labels.
It's like, oh, that one that's frustration, Oh oh that
other one that's despair, Oh that's envy, that's jealousy, whatever
it is. And research shows that when you name your emotions,
it fosters psychological distance and it shifts your perspective away
(33:56):
from being the emotion to simply having the emotion. And
that is a seismic change, I feel in the way
that we experience rumination because when I am, you know,
mired in anxiety, I feel like I am anxious versus oh,
I'm having anxiety. Anxiety as an emotion simply that I'm feeling,
and so that's been very, very effective.
Speaker 4 (34:17):
You've also talked about ways that we can distance ourselves,
not just from our emotions, but from our thoughts. Share
some strategies that we can use for thought self distancing.
Speaker 2 (34:26):
My favorite and go to recently has been mental time travel.
So our brains have a remarkable ability to travel both
backwards and forwards in time, and we can use this
capability to our advantage in the context of ruminations. So
you can travel back in time to contextualize present day
challenges within the larger story of humanity or within your
(34:49):
own life story. Right, you might remind yourself of a
moment where you showed a lot of resolve in the
face of adversity, and that can encourage you in the present.
You can also travel to the future and imagine how
you're going to feel about your current problem in five
hours from now, five days from now, five years from now,
and I find that to be very useful. So, for example,
(35:12):
if you've had a negative experience with your coworker or
your boss and you just can't get it out of
your head, right, you are as Ethan Cross says on
the hamster wheel. Right, it's like running and running and running.
You can just take a step back and say, am
I going to care about this as much in five
years from now? And suddenly you think, oh my god,
this situation is transient. So it just like takes a
(35:34):
lot of the emotional energy out of the space you're
occupying and you can see it with a little bit
more perspective. Another thing that I do is just more
basic psychological distancing. So, as I mentioned to you, I'm
extremely self critical. So when I have messed up and
I may be ruminating because I have a lot of regret,
I'm not the kindest to myself. And so one way
you can be a little bit kinder to yourself is
(35:56):
to coach yourself like you would a friend. You're going
to give a lot more compassion to a friend when
you're advising them. You're also going to have a lot
more emotional distance when you're coaching someone, and you have
more of a third party, objective, observer point of you.
And so I try to remind myself, okay, you're talking
to someone else. Try to see your problem.
Speaker 5 (36:15):
Through that lens.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
So these are ways that we can separate ourselves from
our thoughts. You've also argued that we can fight rumination
by lessening our need for cognitive closure. How does that work?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Yeah, so this isn't a short term solution, because I
think this is sort of at least for me anyway.
It's my contending with a lifelong struggle that I will
never have clear, definitive answers for every challenge in my
life or every question I have in my life. But
I think a lot of us, as humans, we do
crave black and white clarity. And the challenge is that
(36:49):
when we climb out of the rubble of an unexpected
negative change, all we see around us is gray. It's
all gray. There's no black, there's no white. And I
do think that one of the long term ways for
us to tame our rumination is to start becoming more
comfortable with uncertainty. Rumination often arises in our effort to
(37:12):
resist the uncertainty that a change brings. We rehash why
that breakup happened in the way it did, and we
if only I'd done this, we would still be together.
If only I'd said that. If only you just keep
going over the same negative thoughts over and over again,
when you might not actually know for sure why a
breakup happened, and it's actually okay to not know all
the answers, And so I think building slowly but surely,
(37:35):
our tolerance of uncertainty, our desperate need to find answers
when there are none to be found, is honestly not
even in the context of ruination. But it's just a
healthier way to embrace change in our lives.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Overall, this was amazing. I feel like you just gave
our listeners so many strategies for getting in stuck. I
hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I'm
so glad you had that little pop in your hand
and that you get to God you're a science student
that you get to help so many of my listeners
become unstuck.
Speaker 5 (38:02):
That's so sweet. Thank you.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
I'm glad you had a career ending injury. It's really
worked out for me in a wonderful way.
Speaker 5 (38:09):
Well, I'm grateful for you, Laurie, So thanks.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Unexpected changes can leave us feeling stuck, but there are
also opportunities. So the next time life throws you a curveball,
remember that change changes you.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
You might not feel.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Ready to be changed, but the person you become probably
has the strength and wisdom to navigate your new situation
with confidence. And if you need help on the way
to becoming that new person, try some of the strategies
Maya talked about today. Take a moment to journal, to
engage in self affirmation and to explore possible selves. Do
something new that cultivates awe, Take a deep breath and
(38:44):
speak to yourself with self compassion, and if all else fails,
remind yourself that you're doing the great work of building
comfort with uncertainty. If you want even more tips for
getting unstuck from unexpected change, I highly recommend Maya's new book,
The Other Side of Change. It's out in stores this week.
Next week on the Happiness Lab, we'll continue exploring strategies
(39:05):
for getting unstuck. I'll chat with author and political commentator
David Brooks about how focusing on character and connection can
be an unexpected path to moving forward in the new year.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
A lot of people have not been taught basic social
skills like how do you sit with someone who's depressed,
how do you break up with someone without crushing their heart?
How do you ask for an offer forgiveness? And that's
a skill just the way learning tennis is a skill
the way learning carpentry is a skill.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
That's coming up next week on Happiness Lab with me
doctor Laurie Santos
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