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The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans · To Your Good Health

0:00
David Friedman, BS: Hello, This is Dr.
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David Friedman, host of To You Good Health Radio.
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What happens When Life doesn't go according to Plan When a
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diagnosis changes everything?
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When an injury ends a dream or the future you imagine vanishes
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overnight, maybe you've experienced it yourself, a health crisis that
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forced you to redefine who you are.
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Or perhaps you're watching somebody love, navigate a transformative
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issue that they've never asked for.
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These moments can feel like the end of everything we know, but what if these
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setbacks are actually the beginning of something bigger than we expected?
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Our next guest is Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist who's
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discovered something extraordinary.
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Our brains are wired to resist change.
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When we understand how identity evolves, especially through crisis,
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we can tap into hidden power that transforms devastation into possibility.
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If you've ever felt stuck, lost your sense of purpose, or maybe wondered who you are
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on the other side of hardship, stay tuned.
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Maya is in the house to show you how to turn your mess.
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Into your message, and it all starts now.
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Our next guest is a cognitive scientist, author and creator
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and host of the award-winning podcast, A slight change of plans.
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She served as a senior advisor in the Obama White House where she
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founded and chaired their social and behavioral scientist team.
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She was also the first behavioral science.
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Advisor to the United Nations and served as a core member of Pete
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Buttigieg debate preparation team during the 2020 presidential run.
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She holds a PhD in cognitive psychology from Oxford University, where she
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studied as a Rhodes Scholar, post doctorate Fellowship and cognitive
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neuroscience from Stanford University.
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Anna a BA from Yale University.
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She's been profiled by the New Yorker, and featured on NPRs All Things
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Considered CBS Mornings And the Today Show and National Geographics
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Limitless with Chris Hemsworth.
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The new book is called The Other Side of Change, who We Become
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When Life Makes Other Plans.
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Love that title.
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Welcome to the show, Dr.
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Maya Shakar.
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Maya Shankar: Thank you so much for having me.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah, welcome.
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Now your book.
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Tackle something we all face, but rarely understand how to
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navigate devastating transitions.
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What compelled you to write this book?
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Maya Shankar: You know, I've had a lot of formative experiences with change and I
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found it really scary, and I know a lot of other people find unexpected change.
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Very scary, And in my moments of hardship.
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I've so often heard the phrase that while you can't control what happens to you, you
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can control your response to what happens.
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And it's meant to be an empowering mantra.
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But in my difficult moments, it is registered as a platitude.
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You know, I'm like, how the heck am I supposed to actually do that?
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There's no switch in my brain that I can just flip on, that will
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suddenly make me feel more peaceful or hopeful, or more enlightened.
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And so my goal with the other side of change was to give people a resource.
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Actually help them think and feel differently about the
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big changes in their lives.
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And I did this by going on a quest to find the most extraordinary
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stories of change that I could around the world and to pair that with
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scientific insights and evidence-based strategies that all of us can use.
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David Friedman, BS: That's so great.
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I know our brains, you mentioned in your book, they're hardwired
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to perceive change as a threat.
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It's basically a survival mechanism, but the same protective instinct.
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Can trap us.
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What's a specific evidence-based cognitive strategy that maybe you
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can share that can override our brain's default resistance to change?
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Maya Shankar: Well, one of the big reasons why, we struggle with
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change is that it's filled with a profound amount of uncertainty.
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And research shows that we are not wired to enjoy uncertainty.
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Our brains don't like it.
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My favorite research study shows that we are more stressed when we're told
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we have a 50% chance of receiving an electric shock than when we're told we
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have a 100% chance of getting that shock.
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And so we would rather be certain that a bad thing is gonna happen than to
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have to grapple with any ambiguity.
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many of the strategies I give in the book have to do with decreasing our need for
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certainty, but then also giving people.
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Access to strategies they can use to reclaim whatever control they do have.
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Right?
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Because at the end of the day, as humans, we really do love having
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a firm grip of the steering wheel.
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we really like knowing how, the story's gonna end.
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I certainly do.
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so I did wanna give people concrete advice that they could use too.
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Get to the other side, feeling a little bit less anxious about change.
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one quick strategy I'll share here is that we can often ruminate after a negative
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change because we're dealing with so much uncertainty And so much anxiety.
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And one way to do This is to do what psychologists call affect labeling.
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And That is when you give your negative emotions, concrete labels.
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So rather than just feeling a cloud of negative emotions, you give them specific.
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Names, maybe it's anger, maybe it's envy, maybe it's jealousy, maybe it's anxiety.
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Research shows that when we label our emotions, we shift our focus away from
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being the emotion, feeling like we embody that negativity to just having
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the emotion, And that can help us achieve what's called psychological distance.
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It can help give us some space and some objectivity on the
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problems we're facing so that we can see them with greater clarity.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah.
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I love that you said, that 50% chance of something bad happening compared to
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a hundred percent, we wouldn't know.
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And it reminds me, I read a study that when someone says, I've got
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good news and bad news for you, which one do you want first?
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75% want the bad news.
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Just tell me so I can prepare so it's so true how we're wired like that.
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I know you blend this cutting-edge neuroscience with
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deeply personal storytelling.
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I love that.
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Can you share maybe one transformation from the book that moved you
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most And what did their journey teach you about human resilience.
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Maya Shankar: I mean, one of my favorite stories is about a guy named Dwayne
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and when he's 16, he gets sentenced to nine years in prison for a carjacking.
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He committed and he had had such a promising future, And then, in an
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effort to try to impress the boys in his neighborhood, he he did this awful
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thing and, he had to pay the costs.
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Now most of us know what it's like to feel a bunch of doors
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closing in our lives, right?
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It.
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Might be an illness, it might be heartbreak, it might be an accident.
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Any number of twists of fate can derail our future.
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And for Dwayne, he actually became on the other side of this, a
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world-renowned poet that speaks to the experiences of young boys and
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men of color in the prison system.
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what I loved about his story is that.
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The thing that changed the game for him, the thing that led him onto a
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different path was an encounter with a fellow prisoner who was deeply inspiring
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to Dwayne in that he violated all of Dwayne's expectations about what you had
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to be like in order to survive prison.
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This guy he encountered was so deeply caring.
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He taught the younger boys how to box to help them protect
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themselves from violence in prison.
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Would wake up an hour before count time to do 250 pushups.
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He had a crisply ironed.
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outfit every day.
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Dwayne said that he carried himself like a man in uniform, And that he
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taught him what it means to be lovely.
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And this experience that Dwayne had is called moral elevation.
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It's that warm fuzzy feeling we get in our chest when we witness someone
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else's extraordinary actions, whether it's their kindness or self-sacrifice,
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or their courage or resilience.
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And what's so amazing about moral elevation is that it
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doesn't just make us feel good.
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It actually changes our brains.
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It turns out that when we witness someone violating our expectations of what humans
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are capable of in the best way possible, it can actually crack open our own
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imagination of what we are capable of.
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And it is exactly that.
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That led Dwayne to start writing poetry in prison.
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And now he's a Yale Law School graduate.
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He's a MacArthur Genius Prize winner.
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He has this incredible future, and I find it so heartening that small moments with.
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Our fellow humans can inspire that kind of turn.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah.
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Such a touching story.
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That's great.
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There's something I learned in biology that I'll share.
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It profoundly shifted my perspective.
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I learned that when a bone breaks and heals, it doesn't just return
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to normal, it becomes stronger.
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More calcium builds at that fractured site, making that heel bone tougher.
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Then one that hasn't been broken.
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And I think there's a powerful metaphor here.
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When we break, we too can become stronger.
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And I think you prove that in your book.
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Share this for those that have lost maybe a core part of their identity,
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maybe the athlete who can no longer walk, musician who can't play.
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What's the first step in rebuilding a sense of self
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rather than, You know, always me.
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Oh, pity me.
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What?
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What should they do first?
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Maya Shankar: Yeah, I've had those kinds of changes.
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I mean, I was an aspiring concert violinist who was studying at ju.
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As a little kid And then a hand injury ended.
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Those dreams overnight, doctors told me that my career was over,
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so I totally relate to that.
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One strategy that I found very helpful is to expand my self-identity rather
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than defining myself simply by what I do.
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I try to expand my self-identity to include why I do that thing.
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So to make this concrete, I asked myself, what is it that I loved about the violin?
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It turns out emotional connection was at the root of my passion, and just because
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I lost the violin didn't mean that I lost.
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What led me to love it in the first place, that part of myself was fully intact
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and I could use this insight, right, knowing that it was human connection
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that drove me to chart out my next steps.
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It could be a compass for me.
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To help soften the blow and help me have a promising future.
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And I would urge everyone who's listening to ask themselves what is their why?
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Maybe it's a love of service.
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Maybe it is having a creative outlet.
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Maybe it's the thrill of, being alongside teammates, right?
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maybe it is having, the joy of seeing yourself improve at something.
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Whatever the why is.
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That can be a very stable force in the face of change, and to help
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make you feel like you haven't lost everything as a result of the change.
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The why will still be there, and it can be a guide as you move forward.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah, that's so great.
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I've always believed that a lack of purpose is life's greatest
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destroyer, and it's why so many people decline rapidly after retirement.
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They spent half a century focusing just on their work as being
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their reason for existing and.
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Then they retire And then, it's all over.
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When the job disappears, spark goes away.
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What role does purpose play in your research on navigating change?
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Maya Shankar: Yes.
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Meaning and purpose is everything.
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one of the most heartening findings from the research is that giving
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back to other's being of serve.
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Us to other's is one of the best ways for us to reclaim our sense of
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meaning and purpose in the throes of a really difficult change.
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And it's somewhat counterintuitive, right?
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We would often think, oh, it's about self-care.
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You know, that's where the answers are gonna be, but actually it's
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thinking about other people and how we can be helpful to them.
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That can really be the thing that unlocks us.
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David Friedman, BS: so true.
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I know your podcast, a slight change of plans won Apple's best show of the year
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after interviewing hundreds of people about their life-changing moments.
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I'm curious, were there any surprises, maybe some insights
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that you found congruent across different stories that you heard?
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Maya Shankar: One of the best insights that I have from writing my book,
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the Other Side of Change And then hosting the podcast, is that most
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of the experiences we have when it comes to change are, similar.
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we often think that we're gonna find answers and stories that look just
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like our own, but the argument that I'm making in the book is actually we
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can learn so much from stories that look nothing like ours on the surface.
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For example, one of the insights that I had was, I was interviewing a cancer
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patient on one episode of a slight change of plans, And then I was interviewing
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a woman who found out that her husband had cheated on her in another episode.
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And they were both grappling with this feeling of betrayal, and they
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had a lot more in common, in terms of their stories than stories that
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might have looked more similar.
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And so, one of the things I try to do with the other side of change is to include
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a really diverse set of stories, right?
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Heartbreak illness, loss of a dream, loss of a job, loss of memories.
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but to really show that we are so much more connected than we think.
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I'm hoping that readers read a story that they can hardly relate to, but then the
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universal lesson that emerges from That is so compelling because it really does
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relate to some aspect of their life.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah, you mentioned the person that was cheated on, it
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reminds me of the, rock group Chicago had that hit song where a man realizes
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he found the love of his life.
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Only because his previous relationship fell apart, And the lyrics goes,
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if she would've been faithful, I would've missed out on you.
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What a neat outlook.
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It's such a powerful reminder that our detours can lead us
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exactly where we need to be.
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And let me ask you, so looking back on your own journey, do you think
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your greatest achievements were born from your deepest disappointments?
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As there a correlation there, do our valleys propel us
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toward those mountaintops?
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Maya Shankar: there's no squeaky clean answer here, right?
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I would say that what I do feel confident about is.
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While we might not have wanted the changes to happen to us, by and large, I found
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that everyone I interviewed for the book was extremely grateful for the person
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they became as a result of their change.
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So they told me, you know, I would never invite this illness or this
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heartbreak back into my life, but I do feel like I emerged with new
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perspectives and abilities and, values and capabilities that I
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might never have accessed otherwise.
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I do feel that there are many moments in my life where.
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Inflection points are what led to the most profound growth that led me to become
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a different person on the other side.
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And I am deeply grateful for those experiences because don't
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think without them, that I would be the person I am today.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah, so try no.
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Resilience isn't just about bouncing back.
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Your research actually reveals it's far more nuanced.
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What does the science tell us about how resilient people navigate adversity
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differently than those who just get stuck in their suffering and stay?
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Maya Shankar: So resilience often has to do with the mindset shift,
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which is remembering at the outset of a change that you will become a
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different person on the other side is very liberating because it helps you
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stay open to what the change can teach.
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Chew rather than thinking of yourself as this like fixed entity right set
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in stone that has no ability to grow.
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And so I think the most resilient people are the ones that are
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humble at the outset of change.
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The ones that are curious, the ones that engage in a lot of self-reflection
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to try to figure out what impact the change has had on them.
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Those are the people that thrive the most.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah, so trying.
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Now we're living through an era of relentless change
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and change scares people.
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You got the AI disruption, political friction, ongoing health threats,
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and how can we prepare ourselves for continuous rapid change where
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we don't panic people, fear change.
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Is there a way to build change stamina.
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Maya Shankar: I think what I've tried to do is give people a guide
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that they can use to preemptively build their change armor.
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So I call this the, change survival kit, and it's it's at the end
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of the other side of change.
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And my hope is that they can use that as a companion, right?
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It can be something that, helps them.
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Weather changes big and small.
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It can also help them get ahead of future changes, and it can also help them renew
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their relationships with past changes.
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David Friedman, BS: Yeah.
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So Greg, I know you founded the White House Social and Behavioral Science team.
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first of its kind, what were you trying to accomplish and how did behavioral
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science translate into policy decisions affecting millions of Americans?
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Maya Shankar: My goal was to use our best understanding of human behavior to
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improve public policies and programs.
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And so this was everything from helping people access
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the free school lunch program.
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this was helping veterans sign up to enroll in benefits programs,
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helping student loan borrowers understand their options.
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I'll just give you a quick example of one.
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This little tweak we made that had a really outsize impact.
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We were trying to get veterans to sign up for an educational and
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employment benefit that we knew would help them as they transition
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from military life to civilian life.
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And not enough veterans had signed up, you know, there was low exposure.
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And the VA had one email they were sending out about this program, and
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they said, okay, Maya and team, you can change, whatever words you want.
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that's the only budget we have, And we ended up changing just one word
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in the email message Rather than telling veterans that they were
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eligible for the program, we simply reminded them that they had earned
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it through their years of service.
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And that one word change led to a 9% increase in access
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to the veterans program.
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And This is actually an insight called the Endowment Effect.
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This tweak is a nod to a behavioral economics principle called the
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Endowment Effect, which says that we value things more when we feel that
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we own them or have earned them.
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I just love seeing how this really subtle cost-free change could lead to a
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massive improvement in people's lives.
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David Friedman, BS: That's great.
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And the minute we have left, is there anything else you'd like to
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share that we didn't cover today?
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Maya Shankar: I just think that I've, ive.
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Because of the experience of writing the other side of change,
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I just feel so much more hopeful about the experience of change.
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I actually entered the space because I'm really scared of change and do a
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really terrible job of dealing with it.
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And I'm hopeful that the strategies I outline in this book And the,
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stories that readers will experience will help them in their own
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moments of uncertainty and despair.
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the wisdom from the people I interviewed have certainly helped me.
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David Friedman, BS: Well, thanks so much for spending time with us today.
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The book is called The Other Side of Change, who We Become
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When Life Makes Other Plans.
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You can get your book@mayashankar.com
17:46
and while there, check out her a Slight Change podcast.
17:50
You can follow her on Instagram at Dr.
17:53
Maya Shankar.
17:54
You can follow me on Facebook and X at Dr.
17:56
David Friedman.
17:57
On Instagram, I'm a Dr.
17:59
D Friedman.
18:00
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