Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, I'm Brene Brown and this is Dare to Lead.
Speaker 2: I have a really beautiful, powerful conversation for you on
Speaker 2: this episode. I am talking to doctor Maya Schunker, a
Speaker 2: cognitive scientist, and we are talking about everything from the
Speaker 2: science of change, what it means to lead, We're talking
Speaker 2: about love, and what we're really digging into is what
Speaker 2: happens when we are so surefooted on our path. We're
Speaker 2: so surefooted in fact, that we've built identities around what
Speaker 2: we're accomplishing and what we're doing, and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden life happens and we're not just noted down on
Speaker 2: the path, were knocked completely off the path. How do
Speaker 2: we get back up, how do we figure out who
Speaker 2: we are without that path? And how do we start
Speaker 2: building a new way to walk through the world. It
Speaker 2: is just truly a meaningful conversation. I'm so glad you're
Speaker 2: here to be a part of it. Before we jump in,
Speaker 2: I want to tell you a little bit about Maya.
Speaker 2: Doctor Maya Schunker is a cognitive scientist who is the creator,
Speaker 2: executive producer, and host of the Pushkin podcast show A
Speaker 2: Slight Change of Plans Beautiful Conversations. Maya was a senior
Speaker 2: advisor in the Obama White House, where she founded and
Speaker 2: served as chair of the White House Behavioral Science Team.
Speaker 2: Just the story of how she landed there is basically
Speaker 2: the lesson from our conversation in a nutshell. She also
Speaker 2: served as the first behavioral science Advisor to the United Nations.
Speaker 2: Maya has a post doctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience from Stanford,
Speaker 2: a PhD from Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, and a
Speaker 2: BA from Yale. This woman's gone to school, y'alle. She
Speaker 2: is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music's pre
Speaker 2: college program, where she was a private violin student of
Speaker 2: Ishtac Pearlman's and performed alongside of him at Carnegie Hall,
Speaker 2: which is another story that'll just This is a podcast
Speaker 2: about mastery, love and courage. Let's jump in. I have
Speaker 2: to say Maya that you have been on our podcast
Speaker 2: list since we imagined the podcast, so welcome to dare
Speaker 2: to lead.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's such an honor to hear. I'm
Speaker 3: a huge fan, so thanks for saying that.
Speaker 2: We're very grateful that you're here. And we always start
Speaker 2: our podcast with the same question, will you tell us
Speaker 2: your story.
Speaker 3: So I would start my story at the age of six,
Speaker 3: when my mom went up to our attic and brought
Speaker 3: down my grandmother's violin that she had brought with her
Speaker 3: all the way from India when she immigrated to this
Speaker 3: country in the nineteen seventies. My grandmother had played Eastern
Speaker 3: classical music in the very traditional Southern Indian style, and
Speaker 3: my mom just opened the violin case, just eager to
Speaker 3: show her young daughter the instrument. She had shown my
Speaker 3: older three siblings the instrument and they were like, this
Speaker 3: isn't cool.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was very cool.
Speaker 3: And I was enraptured by the instrument so quickly, and
Speaker 3: it was stunning for my mom because I so quickly
Speaker 3: asked for a pint sized violin of my own. It
Speaker 3: was a quarter sized instrument, and she never had to
Speaker 3: tell me to practice. It's like even as a six
Speaker 3: year old, And I assure you, Brene, there were many
Speaker 3: things I did not want to do as a six
Speaker 3: year old, but violin just felt like it was such
Speaker 3: a core part of me, like it spoke to me
Speaker 3: in an important way. And it's overwhelming to think about
Speaker 3: how emotionally close I felt with something so quickly you
Speaker 3: know that's incredible.
Speaker 2: I mean, was it ancestral? Was it you just saw
Speaker 2: it and thought, yeah, this is me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I loved the way that it sounded, I love
Speaker 3: the way that it felt, and I loved the process
Speaker 3: of getting better at something. It was just so motivating
Speaker 3: for me to feel like there was an input output
Speaker 3: model of sorts, which we don't always get handed in life, right,
Speaker 3: but I always felt like, oh, by and large, the
Speaker 3: more I practice, the better I get. And when I
Speaker 3: was nine years old, I had big dreams really early
Speaker 3: on forney, and my parents did not know how to
Speaker 3: translate their daughter's dreams because my dad is a theoretical
Speaker 3: physics professor and my mom helps immigrants get green cards
Speaker 3: to study in this country, and so they had no
Speaker 3: inns in the western classical music space. I was always
Speaker 3: telling my mom, oh, I want to go to Juilliard.
Speaker 3: You know, Juilliard's the pinnacle for me, and she's like, well,
Speaker 3: I don't quite know how to make this happen. So
Speaker 3: one day my mom and I were just on a
Speaker 3: trip to New York, and I happened to have my
Speaker 3: violin with me, and we were walking by the Juilliard
Speaker 3: schools building, and my mom said, why don't we just
Speaker 3: go in? I was like, what do you mean to
Speaker 3: just go in? She's like, what's the worst thing that
Speaker 3: can happen? And I'm thinking, I'll tell you the worst thing,
Speaker 3: security cards escorting us out of the building.
Speaker 1: That's the one thing that can happen.
Speaker 3: And she's like, Okay, let's just go in and see
Speaker 3: what happened. So we walk in unannounced. My mom strikes
Speaker 3: up a conversation with a fellow musician and says, oh,
Speaker 3: do you mind if my daughter meets your teacher after
Speaker 3: your lesson? And they very generously said yes. I continue
Speaker 3: to be in all of how many times people are
Speaker 3: willing to just say yes if.
Speaker 1: You ask right?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's incredible.
Speaker 3: And I auditioned for this teacher on the spot. He
Speaker 3: accepted me into a summer music program basically a boot camp,
Speaker 3: and I ended up auditioning and getting accepted into Juilliard
Speaker 3: in the fall. And that was such a critical learning
Speaker 3: ex experience for me because it taught me life might
Speaker 3: not always hand opportunities to you on a silver plate.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you have to make the damn plate, you know,
Speaker 3: you just have to walk into the building or cold
Speaker 3: call or cold email or whatever it is. And that
Speaker 3: fearlessness is ultimately what got me to a point where
Speaker 3: I was even good enough to get into this school,
Speaker 3: and it really changed my life forever. That began an
Speaker 3: extremely intense violin life for me. So, starting when I
Speaker 3: was nine, every Saturday, I lived in Connecticut. So every Saturday,
Speaker 3: my mom and I would get up at four thirty
Speaker 3: in the morning, take the train from Connecticut to New York,
Speaker 3: and I would engage in ten hours of classes.
Speaker 1: And again this was the remarkable part.
Speaker 3: She'd wake me up at four thirty and she says,
Speaker 3: I would just jump out of bed, and she didn't
Speaker 3: have to be like, Maya, come on, get ready, it's time,
Speaker 3: Like I just couldn't wait. I felt like those were
Speaker 3: my people. Musicians were my people. And then the greatest
Speaker 3: honor came when I was a teenager. When I was thirteen,
Speaker 3: and it's a Pearlman, my violin idol asked me to
Speaker 3: be his private violin student.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's just pause for a minute here, Let's just
Speaker 2: let that soak in for a second. How many people
Speaker 2: in the world do you think can say when ishtak
Speaker 2: Pearlman asked me to be his private violin student.
Speaker 3: It does feel remarkable to say, and I still pinch
Speaker 3: myself about it, and I still question it. I actually
Speaker 3: I asked Pearlman's wife recently. We were just hanging out
Speaker 3: having coffee, and I said, Toby, we both know I
Speaker 3: was not as technically gifted as my peers. Why the
Speaker 3: hell did he take me on as his student? And
Speaker 3: she said because he felt you had something to say.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And that moved me so much because it is so true.
Speaker 3: I had so many insecurities about my technique. As I mentioned,
Speaker 3: my parents were not steeped in the classical music world.
Speaker 3: They were having me work with graduate students who had
Speaker 3: never taught someone before. I didn't even know how to
Speaker 3: read sheet music when I got accepted into Juilliard. That
Speaker 3: was a big secret, Like I was just makeshifting my
Speaker 3: way into this world. And I loved that he felt
Speaker 3: like I had these emotions that he wanted to tap
Speaker 3: into through my music.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I love that he did feel I had something to say,
Speaker 3: because I felt like I had something to say. That
Speaker 3: was in large part why I loved the violin. Reflecting
Speaker 3: back and trying to figure out, like, what is it?
Speaker 3: That I loved about the violin. As a kid of
Speaker 3: you had asked me, I would have said, I feel
Speaker 3: like I loved how it sounded, and I loved the.
Speaker 1: Phrases I could produce.
Speaker 3: But I think actually what I loved about the violin
Speaker 3: is that I could go on stage and within moments,
Speaker 3: I can make a room full of thousands of strangers
Speaker 3: feel something that they may never have felt before, Like
Speaker 3: we could forge this deep emotional connection, and that was intoxicating,
Speaker 3: you know, And so that's really what made me tick.
Speaker 3: And so I felt like Pearlman saw that he saw
Speaker 3: the craving that I had within me to connect with
Speaker 3: other people, and he saw that thirst and that desire.
Speaker 3: And I felt so heard hearing Toby tell me that,
Speaker 3: because I never really quite understood why it is that
Speaker 3: he gave me his vote of confidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just so beautiful. I just want to sit
Speaker 2: in it for a second. It's just I don't know
Speaker 2: what that unnameable thing is that makes you pop up
Speaker 2: at four thirty. It's like love. It's like you loved
Speaker 2: what you were doing, and he had to have seen that,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just incredible. So you become his student.
Speaker 1: I do, and I'm on the fast track.
Speaker 3: Like I'm convincing my Indian American parents that I'm not
Speaker 3: going to the liberal arts college that they'd hoped i'd
Speaker 3: go to and have a well rounded education, but instead,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to a music conservatory. And so
Speaker 3: finally everyone's on board with this whole plan. My older
Speaker 3: three siblings had gone to normal colleges. My parents, I
Speaker 3: think it always hoped that I would have that path,
Speaker 3: But Peerlman taking me on, I think, was that vote
Speaker 3: that everyone in the family needed to get behind this.
Speaker 3: So when I was f fifteen, I was studying at
Speaker 3: Pearlman's music camp and it was, oh gosh, these moments
Speaker 3: you never forget.
Speaker 1: So I woke up.
Speaker 3: It was a July morning, it was very cold, it
Speaker 3: was on Shelter Island, and I woke up and went
Speaker 3: to my practice room and I was playing a very
Speaker 3: challenging piece. It's by Paganini, Paganini Caprice number thirteen for
Speaker 3: any musicians out there, they know Paganini stuff. And I
Speaker 3: just overstretched my finger on a single note and I
Speaker 3: heard a popping sound and I knew in that moment
Speaker 3: that something was terribly wrong. But I was also fifteen Forney.
Speaker 3: So I entered denial mode immediately. I was like, I
Speaker 3: can play through the pain. There's no issues here, ignore it.
Speaker 3: And I kept resisting doctors telling me, sorry, kid, you're
Speaker 3: not going to be able to play the violin anymore.
Speaker 2: And oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and my dreams just ended like that in a moment.
Speaker 3: And like I said, I resisted it. I played through pain,
Speaker 3: I kept performing in concerts, and suddenly I had to
Speaker 3: confront the harsh truth that everybody else had accepted before
Speaker 3: I did, which is this huge dream that I had
Speaker 3: that I poured everything into. Like to this day, Brene,
Speaker 3: my right shoulder is slightly higher than my left because
Speaker 3: of all the years that I spent in the violin position,
Speaker 3: Like my spine is slightly curved, Like my body literally
Speaker 3: grew around the ergonomics of this instrument. It was an
Speaker 3: extension of my body. And now suddenly it was no
Speaker 3: longer a part of my life. And I think the
Speaker 3: best way to describe it is I was thrown into
Speaker 3: this existential spiral where I was asking myself all sorts
Speaker 3: of questions like who am I? Who am I without
Speaker 3: this instrument? And I think as kids, sometimes we can live,
Speaker 3: at least for me. Maybe precocious kids aren't like that,
Speaker 3: But we can live in this unreflective mode where we
Speaker 3: just go about our business and we do the things
Speaker 3: that we love, and we don't take the time to
Speaker 3: ask ourselves what to finds us, what makes me Maya?
Speaker 3: And suddenly I was forced to ask myself the question.
Speaker 3: And it's like I didn't like what I found because
Speaker 3: every answer didn't involve the violin.
Speaker 2: Were you just untethered? Was it an untethered feeling? Was
Speaker 2: it a like you had lost your mooring? Like what
Speaker 2: I mean? You're young too, You're in the height of adolescence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I was despondent. I was impatient. I'm
Speaker 3: an extremely impatient person. I was listening to you and
Speaker 3: Angela duckworths, she and I share this dream, deeply impatient.
Speaker 3: I want to ask yeah, yeah, and you too. I
Speaker 3: want things to have happened yesterday. So I felt this
Speaker 3: huge urgency to find the next thing. And of course
Speaker 3: you've already picked up on the depth of my love
Speaker 3: for the instrument, right it's hard to even put into words.
Speaker 3: You're not going to find that right away. And it
Speaker 3: was just like push and pull in my mind of acceptance,
Speaker 3: acceptance of the loss, and then also trying to figure
Speaker 3: out I need to move on, I need to find
Speaker 3: something else, not wanting to and that's what created this
Speaker 3: tension in my mind.
Speaker 2: So then what happens? Do you stay at Juilliard?
Speaker 3: So oh yeah, this is a little known story, but
Speaker 3: it's that Pearlman actually continued to teach me and I
Speaker 3: would play open strings in my lessons. That's how dedicated
Speaker 3: a teacher he is. I could not use my left hand,
Speaker 3: so I just rested on the instrument and we would
Speaker 3: just focus on making a beautiful sound for lesson upon lesson.
Speaker 1: Nice is.
Speaker 3: It was remarkable, right, And then finally he also had
Speaker 3: to accept that my violent dreams were over.
Speaker 1: We both did.
Speaker 3: It was a joint process of acceptance, and I stopped
Speaker 3: playing entirely. And then there was another turning point. I
Speaker 3: was helping my parents clean out their basement the summer
Speaker 3: before college, as a dutiful daughter does per day. In
Speaker 3: the counterfactual world, I was supposed to be in China
Speaker 3: touring with my musical classmates. So like, equally cool summer
Speaker 3: situation going on here, and I'm just exploring their bookshelf
Speaker 3: and I come across a book by Stephen Pinker called
Speaker 3: The Language Instinct, and it detailed our remarkable ability to
Speaker 3: comprehend and produce language. And up until that point, I
Speaker 3: had completely taken my language abilities for granted, right, I
Speaker 3: never even really thought about them. And what Pinker did
Speaker 3: is he pulled the curtain back for me, and he
Speaker 3: revealed the complex cognitive machinery that's at work behind the
Speaker 3: scenes fueling this mental ability. And I felt in awe.
Speaker 3: Awe is the best word to use to describe that.
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, Oh my gosh, if this is
Speaker 3: what's behind language, what is behind the ability to do
Speaker 3: complex mathematics. I can't do complex math, but my dad
Speaker 3: can't write. Or like falling in love or high level
Speaker 3: decision making or pondering about philosophical questions, like what's behind
Speaker 3: all that? I just became insatiable. I wanted to read
Speaker 3: every book there was on the mind. And I ended
Speaker 3: up studying cognitive science and undergrad and I was really
Speaker 3: lucky because my undergrad institution had a cognitive science program.
Speaker 3: It's more common now that back in the day, it
Speaker 3: was a relatively new program, and it's an interdisciplinary program
Speaker 3: that blends psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, computer science, anthropology, basic biology.
Speaker 3: Like you're studying the mind from multiple different angles to
Speaker 3: try to arrive at some conclusion. And that's where I
Speaker 3: studied non human primates and nonverbal abilities and language and
Speaker 3: visual perception. Like again, I just had the time of
Speaker 3: my life, right, I was for doing research in all
Speaker 3: of these labs, and I ultimately got my PhD in
Speaker 3: cognitive science and ended up getting a post doc in
Speaker 3: cognitive neuroscience. So it was very much on the academic
Speaker 3: path at that point.
Speaker 2: I love the threat of passion and purpose. I bet
Speaker 2: if you had to go study cognitive science at four
Speaker 2: point thirty in the morning on a Saturday, you would
Speaker 2: have popped right back up too, just like maybe four
Speaker 2: forty five.
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, yeah, I'd gotten older by this point.
Speaker 2: Okay, so then tell us what happens. You finish your
Speaker 2: postdoc and you're on your trajectory. Is probably an academic position.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, I'm gonning to be a professor, right, That's
Speaker 3: what you do when you've just spent ten years studying something,
Speaker 3: and I think is so common. Sometimes I felt like,
Speaker 3: finally I've got it. All figured out.
Speaker 1: That's that as a feeling that we all, you know,
Speaker 1: we all aspire for it. It's a fiction.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I finally got it all figured out. My
Speaker 3: dad's a professor. I've always wanted to be a professor.
Speaker 3: I admired professors. And then there's this again turning point
Speaker 3: where I'm sitting in the basement of an E. Fhor
Speaker 3: Marie laboratory, so I'm doing brain scans. It's at Stanford,
Speaker 3: That's where I was doing my POSTOC and I've been
Speaker 3: scanning people's brains all morning in this windowless laboratory and
Speaker 3: this guy comes in and within moments I'm like looking
Speaker 3: at as amygdala and I.
Speaker 2: Don't know so personal so quickly I mean yes, I mean,
Speaker 2: are you happy to see me? Or is that your amygdalah?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's God's kind of funny, but it's probably
Speaker 2: funny for you and me, like party of two, we're laughing,
Speaker 2: the nerds are laughing, but it is kind of oh absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean your point.
Speaker 3: That was exactly the challenge for me, which is it
Speaker 3: felt like the order of operations was off given my personality,
Speaker 3: because I wanted to know, what does this person love
Speaker 3: to do do they have a family, do they have kids?
Speaker 3: What's their favorite ice cream flavor, what's their favorite book
Speaker 3: that they've read? Like, those were the questions that I
Speaker 3: was so excited, how do they make decisions? And instead
Speaker 3: it felt like a depersonalized version of the process. Now,
Speaker 3: kudos to neuroscientists everywhere, we need them out there, but
Speaker 3: I just knew in that moment, this is not a
Speaker 3: good match for me. This is not a good match
Speaker 3: for my personality. I want to be working on teas.
Speaker 3: I need to be in a window windowed office, not in.
Speaker 1: A dark Stanford laboratory office.
Speaker 3: And so there were just things like that where I
Speaker 3: just realized this is not quite right. But I felt
Speaker 3: so much inertia because again I poured it was similar
Speaker 3: in some sense to the violin. I mean, this was
Speaker 3: on my own polition. Maybe that was departing, but you
Speaker 3: still feel that same poll like, oh my gosh, I've
Speaker 3: just spent so many years doing this thing and now
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that I want to do it anymore.
Speaker 2: God, You're like, it's like sunk cost.
Speaker 3: Hell absolutely, oh my gosh. And I was studying the
Speaker 3: sunk cost fallacy at the time, but man, I fell
Speaker 3: prey to it for Nay.
Speaker 1: None of us are reviewed.
Speaker 2: None of us are Yeah, it's a really certain you
Speaker 2: would explain it real quick for everyone that's listening that
Speaker 2: doesn't know it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we tend to overvalue the investments we've
Speaker 3: made in stuff, and we cling onto that stuff far
Speaker 3: beyond when it's rational too, And it's deeply painful to
Speaker 3: incur losses, right for the things that we've poured so
Speaker 3: much time and energy, but when actually we should just
Speaker 3: cut our.
Speaker 1: Losses and move forward, right totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I at this moment, I think this
Speaker 3: was around yeah, twenty twelve, So behavioral science was just
Speaker 3: kind of like a burgeoning field at that time, and
Speaker 3: I didn't know what my options were, right, I thought, well,
Speaker 3: what does a cognitive neuroscience postdoc do? They either become
Speaker 3: a professor or they become a general management consultant. Like
Speaker 3: those are the only two options that I knew about.
Speaker 2: So that sounds right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I called it my undergrad advisor, Laurie Santos, who's
Speaker 3: known me since I was seventeen, And I said, Laurie,
Speaker 3: so you know that thing I've been doing for like
Speaker 3: a long time, don't want to do that anymore. I'm
Speaker 3: thinking of trying to apply for a general management position
Speaker 3: consulting position, and she's like, Okay, Maya, before you do that.
Speaker 3: I can see her like clinging on to the student
Speaker 3: that she's coached for so long, being like, I don't
Speaker 3: want to lose you in the field. She tells me
Speaker 3: about this remarkable work that's happening in the federal government
Speaker 3: at the time. So this was in the Obama White
Speaker 3: House where they were leveraging insights from the field of
Speaker 3: behavioral economics from the stuff that I was studying in
Speaker 3: real time to help feed hungry children. So, long story short,
Speaker 3: the government offers what's called the National School Lunch Program,
Speaker 3: and despite the fact that millions of kids are eligible
Speaker 3: for the program, millions of kids were still going hungry
Speaker 3: at school every day because their parents hadn't filled out
Speaker 3: the application form for the program, and a behavioral audit
Speaker 3: of the program revealed that the reason for this is
Speaker 3: the application process was extremely burdensome. It required referencing multiple
Speaker 3: tax documents, it required going to the post office at
Speaker 3: a certain moment in the time, moment in time, and oh,
Speaker 3: if you fill out something wrong, there's a potential penalty
Speaker 3: that you might incur and put yourself in the shoes
Speaker 3: of a single mom who's working three shifts to make
Speaker 3: ends meet, who's trying to make sure that her children
Speaker 3: thrive at school, and we're putting these demands on her
Speaker 3: just to make sure that they gave access to lunch.
Speaker 3: That's unreasonable, right. And then another barrier was that there
Speaker 3: was a stigma associated with signing up your kids for
Speaker 3: a public benefits program. Or later on, when I was
Speaker 3: at the White House, I talked to principles and parents
Speaker 3: who said, look, I work really hard for a living.
Speaker 3: I don't want my kids depending on the government. So
Speaker 3: what they did, in turn was they leveraged the power
Speaker 3: of the default option, and basically what that means is
Speaker 3: they turned the program from an opt in program to
Speaker 3: an opt out program. So now all eligible kids were
Speaker 3: automatically enrolled in the school lunch program and parents had
Speaker 3: to only take a step if they actively wanted to
Speaker 3: unenroll their children. And as a result of this very
Speaker 3: elegant change in the behavioral design of the program, twelve
Speaker 3: and a half million more kids were now eating lunch
Speaker 3: at school every day, and I.
Speaker 1: Was blown away.
Speaker 3: The emotional resonance of this example just oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: It lit me up, and I think out to myself,
Speaker 3: this is what I want to be doing with my life.
Speaker 1: I actually want to be.
Speaker 3: A practitioner of behavioral science. I didn't even know that
Speaker 3: was a thing, but if I can make that into
Speaker 3: a thing, that would be awesome.
Speaker 1: Right, And so.
Speaker 2: I have to trust off you here because I'm looking
Speaker 2: at my sister who's sitting across and it's like every
Speaker 2: time I want to do something, I always I am
Speaker 2: always like, hey, can you google if this is a
Speaker 2: thing or not? Like am I allowed to be doing this?
Speaker 2: Like I want to be a social worker with a PhD,
Speaker 2: But I really want to do this kind of Is
Speaker 2: that a thing? Is anyone else? Where's the blueprint for this?
Speaker 2: And sometimes there's not a blueprint? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: There had been the seminal book written by Cass Sunstein
Speaker 3: and Richard Thaler called Nudge, and some work that was
Speaker 3: happening overseas, but the federal government was not hiring for
Speaker 3: a behavioral scientist. And so I so desperately wanted to
Speaker 3: this role that the role didn't exist.
Speaker 1: And so what do I do?
Speaker 3: I recruit my mom's Juilliard method the cold I.
Speaker 2: Was going to guess that you pulled your mom's Juilliard.
Speaker 1: I pulled the mom's Juilliard methods.
Speaker 3: So what I did is I ended up sending Cass Sunstein,
Speaker 3: right author of this book Nudge, and a former Obama official,
Speaker 3: a cold email in which I basically said, Hey, I'm Maya.
Speaker 3: I am a postdoc who's published nothing of significance, and
Speaker 3: I have no public policy experience, but I'd love to
Speaker 3: work in government at the intersection of behavioral science and policy.
Speaker 3: It was just like seeping with insecurities.
Speaker 1: Brene.
Speaker 3: I even wrote, I know I'm not cool enough to
Speaker 3: work with the likes of Obama, but if there's a
Speaker 3: state or local government opportunity, please do let me know.
Speaker 3: And thankfully for me like pass ignored all the insecurity
Speaker 3: and he wrote back within minutes saying, so great to
Speaker 3: hear from you, Maya. I'm connecting you with President Obama's
Speaker 3: science advisor. Let them know I passed you along. And
Speaker 3: within days two days later, I'm buying a business suit
Speaker 3: because I had an interview with White House officials where
Speaker 3: I'm pitching them on this idea of creating a new
Speaker 3: role for me, a role that is dedicated to the
Speaker 3: translation of behavioral science into improvements in public policy. And
Speaker 3: I remember I had the meeting, you know, I had
Speaker 3: this interview, right, and can I just share there was
Speaker 3: like a Michelle Obama moment, just.
Speaker 2: Like totally coming away.
Speaker 3: So I had been waxing poetic for some time about
Speaker 3: the potential virtues of applying behavioral science to policy, right.
Speaker 3: It had been mapped out by many researchers. We were
Speaker 3: all kind of getting excited about the translation space. And
Speaker 3: I remember I was pitching the person who would become
Speaker 3: my future boss on some changes I would love to
Speaker 3: see in the messaging around Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative,
Speaker 3: and his response was, oh, yeah, I know Michelle Obama
Speaker 3: and or her team, we can make that happen. And
Speaker 3: I was like, you want shit, Oh shit, Okay, I
Speaker 3: guess this is like a real thing now, you know.
Speaker 3: And it was in that moment that I was filled
Speaker 3: kind of with that same excitement and adrenaline and enjoy
Speaker 3: that I felt when I was playing the violin. I
Speaker 3: was like, Wow, this sky it felt like a sky's
Speaker 3: the limit situation. And so at the end of the interview,
Speaker 3: he said, Mamaya loved talking to you. I love to
Speaker 3: stay in touch, and I'm like, why stays touched? Do
Speaker 3: you mean like, don't call me, I'll call you. Like
Speaker 3: we're going to be besties, hang out on the weekends,
Speaker 3: we're going to work together. Do you mind just clarifying?
Speaker 3: And so he says, well, there's just a couple things
Speaker 3: that need to happen. One, Obama needs to get reelected
Speaker 3: in a few weeks. This was in October of twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: Two.
Speaker 3: I need to run this up the chain and make
Speaker 3: sure that everyone's on board. In three, we need to
Speaker 3: make sure there's a desk for you. And that's also
Speaker 3: when like my West Wing dreams were kind of shattered.
Speaker 3: I'd imagined the White House as this like resource rich environment,
Speaker 3: and it turns out everyone's really scrappy in there.
Speaker 1: We're all just trying to.
Speaker 3: Make ends meet. And so I end up moving to
Speaker 3: DC with a very informal verbal offer. So before I
Speaker 3: even have a formal offered at my bags, I've sold
Speaker 3: everything in California except for my bike, just in case,
Speaker 3: and I move across the country. I sign a one
Speaker 3: year lease in DC, and I essentially just show up
Speaker 3: on the doorsteps of the White House and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm here, let's make this happen. And sure enough the
Speaker 3: job gets secured and I started at the beginning of
Speaker 3: Abam the second term.
Speaker 2: So one of the things I want to do because
Speaker 2: I want to know the rest of the story. We're
Speaker 2: in it, but I know there are Yeah, no, it's great,
Speaker 2: but I want to pause for a second and say something.
Speaker 2: I want to share a thought and then get your
Speaker 2: feedback on it. The walking into Juilliard kind of uninvited, unannounced,
Speaker 2: the calling folks and saying, hey, I'd really love to
Speaker 2: do this. I've had some real slighting door of moments
Speaker 2: like that in my career, Like moments that I just
Speaker 2: were not supposed to work, but they did. But there
Speaker 2: was a shit ton of work. It's not like you
Speaker 2: picked up a violin on Monday and on Friday you
Speaker 2: thought you should be at Juilliard. How many hours do
Speaker 2: you think you had practiced from the time you first
Speaker 2: picked it up to the time your mom said let's
Speaker 2: just go in.
Speaker 1: I mean thousands, right, yeah, right.
Speaker 3: You raise an extremely important point that I think is
Speaker 3: sometimes easy to overlook, Like these moments only work when
Speaker 3: you come immensely prepared. So the minute that I get
Speaker 3: this potential White House interview, I mean, I'm spending forty
Speaker 3: eight hours in the most intense prep mode of my life,
Speaker 3: right Like, every minute is accounted for in terms of
Speaker 3: prepping for this interview. And of course, now I don't
Speaker 3: want to make it seem like I did all the
Speaker 3: prep in two days. I had done years of work
Speaker 3: as an actual cognitive scientist, so I obviously knew all
Speaker 3: the research stuff, but certainly with the violin, it wasn't
Speaker 3: enough to just show up and have the audition. I
Speaker 3: had to do a good job in the audition. I
Speaker 3: had to show up having done the hard work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's just a super powerful combination of competency and
Speaker 2: just ballsiness and love and passion that is just the
Speaker 2: swirl of it is so powerful. But it all has
Speaker 2: to be there. There has to be a passion and
Speaker 2: love for what we're doing. There has to be the work,
Speaker 2: the competency, the mastery, and then there has to be
Speaker 2: some really courageous Anyone seeing what I'm doing right now
Speaker 2: would think I'm nuts to even ask moments, but I
Speaker 2: think it's very easy to kind of become magnetized to
Speaker 2: an idea without understanding every variable that's at play. Well said,
Speaker 2: it's complicated for people to I think sometimes I'm thinking.
Speaker 2: I just interviewed James Clear for the Dare to Lead
Speaker 2: podcast which will air in December, and talking about habits
Speaker 2: and change, and we were talking about this thing of
Speaker 2: consistency over intensity, and I'm thinking about the consistency in
Speaker 2: your violin plane, the consistency in your academic preparedness. It's there, right,
Speaker 2: It's not just the intense moments of reaching out and
Speaker 2: trying something ballsy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in many ways, there's this positive feedback loop,
Speaker 3: which is when you put in the hard work, it
Speaker 3: fuels you to make these courageous decisions because they actually
Speaker 3: feel less courageous because you think you deserve it. You
Speaker 3: think that there could be a chance because you have
Speaker 3: put in the hard work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 3: So I almost see them as really interconnected. People will
Speaker 3: say sometimes why did you and your mom walk into
Speaker 3: that building? And it's like, because I felt like I
Speaker 3: could have what it takes. I didn't feel I had it,
Speaker 3: but I felt like I could because I'd put it
Speaker 3: in so much hard work and I had seen progress.
Speaker 2: It's funny that you say that, because one of the
Speaker 2: things that's been really important for me is this idea
Speaker 2: of mastery over success, kind of always learning. And one
Speaker 2: of the questions I ask when I'm getting ready to
Speaker 2: do something really may feel outrageous in an area of
Speaker 2: mastery for me is if not me, whom you know?
Speaker 2: Why not? It's not like I'm going to I'm walking
Speaker 2: into Juilliard, never having held a violin in my life.
Speaker 2: It's just the relationship between the two things, between mastery
Speaker 2: and courage is really interesting that you think absolutely.
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me.
Speaker 3: You know, one of my favorite movies is Free Solo
Speaker 3: because I don't know if you're.
Speaker 1: Familiar with this movie, but oh god, yeah, Alex Hunneled.
Speaker 3: Just for listeners who haven't seen the movie, but Alex
Speaker 3: hunneled Free solos El Capitan in Yosemite Park, and free
Speaker 3: soloing means literally no gear, no ropes, You're on your own.
Speaker 3: And the reason that I loved the movie is that
Speaker 3: I think it's I think it taught so many viewers
Speaker 3: that they were laboring under a false understanding of what
Speaker 3: it is that Alex does so a lot of people say,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, do you have a death wish? Why
Speaker 3: are you willing to put yourself in these insanely high
Speaker 3: risk situations?
Speaker 1: Are you out of your mind? But what the movie
Speaker 1: does is.
Speaker 3: It teaches you that Alex saw his climbing essentially like
Speaker 3: a choreograph dance. Every single move was mapped out in
Speaker 3: his head with incredible detail and precision and practice. He
Speaker 3: had redone all of these moves with ropes countless times,
Speaker 3: such that by the time he decided to actually make
Speaker 3: the ascent, it no longer felt risky to him. Now, granted,
Speaker 3: there are exogynous variables that play a role in humpy
Speaker 3: free solo. You can't saw for the rock falling from
Speaker 3: you know whatever? Yeah, of course, so yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I'm never going to be a free solo er. Also,
Speaker 3: I probably don't have the athletic ability, but that's another
Speaker 3: that's an aside, But that illustrates to me. I think
Speaker 3: what you're getting at and what I felt with Juilliard, right,
Speaker 3: which is you get to the point where you have
Speaker 3: such mastery it no longer feels as risky to do.
Speaker 1: The outrageous thing.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting too, there's something beletic about it for
Speaker 2: me as well, because sometimes true mastery is perceived as easy,
Speaker 2: and that's because it looks easy because of the level
Speaker 2: of mastery. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I was talking with Angela Duckworth about this, right,
Speaker 3: We were talking about grit and deliberated practice and all
Speaker 3: these things, and exactly those same themes were emerging from
Speaker 3: our conversation. Which is in the same way that you
Speaker 3: see only the success stories and not the failures. Right
Speaker 3: when you see the mastery, it's really hard to see
Speaker 3: all that went into it.
Speaker 2: So interesting, all right, So tell us, I've got, as
Speaker 2: you can imagine, I've got five gagillion questions. What have
Speaker 2: you learned about change and how we change, how we
Speaker 2: resist change, how we approach change. What have you learned
Speaker 2: about change that still shocks you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm having a new thought
Speaker 3: in this moment, which is I think the reason why
Speaker 3: we can have so much discomfort in the face of
Speaker 3: change is because it threatens our sense of self identity.
Speaker 3: Say that again, I think the reason why we can
Speaker 3: have so much anxiety or trepidation in the face of
Speaker 3: change is because it can threaten our sense of self.
Speaker 3: It can threaten our self identity.
Speaker 2: So if change is threatening our sense of self or
Speaker 2: our identity, what is the what's it whispering? What is
Speaker 2: change telling us that feels threatening? Yeah? Let me's a messaging.
Speaker 3: Let me call upon my own experience right to help
Speaker 3: unpack this a bit, which is, as you and I
Speaker 3: know from my story, I lose the violin and I
Speaker 3: don't know who I am. I don't know what my
Speaker 3: value is in this world. I don't know what I'm
Speaker 3: going to attach myself to next. And what that taught me.
Speaker 3: The lesson that I learned from that experience is that
Speaker 3: it's much more sustainable to attach my identity to the
Speaker 3: features of pursuits that light me up and make me tick,
Speaker 3: rather than a very specific activity or thing. And as
Speaker 3: I mentioned to you, what I learned is that the
Speaker 3: actual thing that made me light up about the violin
Speaker 3: wasn't necessarily the violin itself. It was an instrument, uh
Speaker 3: there with the puns, but it was an instrument and
Speaker 3: for forging emotional connections with other people. So I learned, ah, okay,
Speaker 3: that's a trait of the violin that I loved. Let
Speaker 3: me see if I can now find that trait in
Speaker 3: other things, because life will present barriers and obstacles and
Speaker 3: twists and turns that many of which are out of
Speaker 3: my control, that deny me the ability to pursue certain
Speaker 3: things that I love. Let me see if I can
Speaker 3: find it elsewhere. And I was able to find it elsewhere.
Speaker 3: So I found that same desire for human connection in
Speaker 3: studying cognitive science. I literally study how it is that
Speaker 3: we relate to other human beings and we make decisions
Speaker 3: and move about in this world. I found that kind
Speaker 3: of same connection when I was working in the Obama
Speaker 3: White House and I was on the ground in Flint, Michigan,
Speaker 3: working on the Leaden water crisis and talking with residents
Speaker 3: of Flint about how decades of disenfranchisement and racism led
Speaker 3: to this problem in the first place and they needed help.
Speaker 3: And I feel that human connection today with my podcast,
Speaker 3: The Slight Chain Plans, which is all about connecting with
Speaker 3: other people who have gone through extraordinary changes in their lives.
Speaker 3: And I feel like I have licensed through this podcast
Speaker 3: to go into a room with you know, Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Speaker 3: or Tiffany Hattish or Tommy Caldwell or Casey Musgraves or
Speaker 3: Riz Ahmed and to say, hey, so I know we
Speaker 3: just met, but what was the most challenging moment of
Speaker 3: your life? Like, what's your deepest, darkest secret. You know,
Speaker 3: it's another way of forging intimacy. And so for those
Speaker 3: people who are listening, who are struggling because life has
Speaker 3: thrown them a change of plans and they feel this
Speaker 3: loss of control and they feel like they've lost the
Speaker 3: thing that they love near and dear, just do an assessment.
Speaker 3: Ask yourself, Okay, I know I can't have that thing,
Speaker 3: but what about that thing did I love? And then
Speaker 3: mine the world for other places where you might find that.
Speaker 2: I'm really just taking it all in. I just I
Speaker 2: just have to warn you that we call this the
Speaker 2: pause cast. Sometimes. I know, I love that I feel
Speaker 2: no need to fill in just open air sometimes because
Speaker 2: I think you've just said a lot of really important
Speaker 2: things that I think is worth sitting with and also
Speaker 2: worth kind of unpacking a little bit. What you're saying
Speaker 2: to me reminds me very much of some purpose work
Speaker 2: that I've done before, where every time I tried to
Speaker 2: figure out, like in these exercises, what's my purpose? What's
Speaker 2: my purpose? The question was always deeper, deeper, deeper, And
Speaker 2: then I got to this really core thing of using
Speaker 2: images and words to connect the seemingly unconnectable to help
Speaker 2: people live braver lives. And then it's so weird because
Speaker 2: that what you're talking about, that thing that is just
Speaker 2: part of me is can survive unwelcome change because I
Speaker 2: can find that and express that through a myriad of things.
Speaker 2: And when I choose to do things that are only
Speaker 2: surface level connected to that bigger thing for me, that
Speaker 2: purpose for me, I freaking hate them. I end up
Speaker 2: hating them. I end up having no passion for them.
Speaker 1: Can you give an example?
Speaker 2: I can? I mean weekly examples, like I have a
Speaker 2: team of thirty people and we go through a lot
Speaker 2: of incoming request to do things, and there are a
Speaker 2: lot of bright and shiny things, and we ask a
Speaker 2: simple question of everything I do, does it serve the work?
Speaker 2: And for me, work is using words and images to
Speaker 2: connect the seemingly unconnectable to help people better understand their
Speaker 2: lives and be braver. And so if it's do you know?
Speaker 2: So when we ask does this serve the work? And
Speaker 2: the answer is no, I normally don't do it. You know,
Speaker 2: does it serve the ego. Maybe I'll do something that
Speaker 2: doesn't really serve the work because it sounds fun. But
Speaker 2: I don't think in the past five years I've done
Speaker 2: anything mistakingly thinking it would serve the work and it wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Just because we're so to use your word about free solo,
Speaker 2: there's so much precision in our vetting of those things.
Speaker 2: When I think about the violin and being on stage
Speaker 2: and connecting to people yourself, and there's something that just
Speaker 2: makes sense to me, just intuitively about the violin and
Speaker 2: the free lunch program. It's about inextricable human connection. Music
Speaker 2: does that, and making sure that kids are eating does that.
Speaker 2: It says no one's full until we're all fed, you know,
Speaker 2: And what are the barriers do that? So let me
Speaker 2: throw something at you, just kind of going so like you,
Speaker 2: I go into organizations a lot, and we work with
Speaker 2: leadership teams, and we work with teams to better understand
Speaker 2: what's going on in culture, what's getting in the way
Speaker 2: of innovation, what's getting the way of productivity. And I
Speaker 2: want you to diagnose something from your lens that we
Speaker 2: have found in our research. The greatest shame trigger at
Speaker 2: work is the threat of being irrelevant, and in the
Speaker 2: midst of change, whether it's a merger and acquisition, digital transformation, reductions,
Speaker 2: in the midst of change, people get very scared. They
Speaker 2: double down, and irrelevance almost becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
Speaker 2: for them, because instead of leaning in and learning what's
Speaker 2: new and how are we changing, they get territorial shut down.
Speaker 2: This is bullshit, This is not the way we've always
Speaker 2: done it. What's happening in that situation?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's so interesting you share this story
Speaker 3: because I think it really does trace back to back
Speaker 3: to identity and self worth and how much people are
Speaker 3: defining their identity and self worth in their particular jobs right,
Speaker 3: which is very understandable. We have lots of research in
Speaker 3: labor economics showing what a morale boost just being in
Speaker 3: work gives you. I think that's a beautiful thing. I
Speaker 3: will say that, by and large, even though I've had
Speaker 3: guests on a slight change of plans with so many
Speaker 3: diverse stories, the connective tissue between all of them is
Speaker 3: that they've been able to see their identities as far
Speaker 3: more malleable than they otherwise would have.
Speaker 2: Say more about that, So.
Speaker 3: What I mean by that is, they have allowed themselves
Speaker 3: to embody new ways of being, new ways of moving
Speaker 3: about in the world in the face of a big change,
Speaker 3: which has allowed them to navigate that change with less
Speaker 3: anxiety and less fear or you're in the specific case
Speaker 3: of the work like less fear of quote irrelevance. So
Speaker 3: the story that's screaming out to me is around this
Speaker 3: notion of like identity. Specifically, there's this guy named Scott
Speaker 3: who I interviewed. He's actually just a colleague of my husband's.
Speaker 3: He is in his early thirties, he's a cancer researcher,
Speaker 3: he builds breast cancer detection tools, and he's a self
Speaker 3: proclaimed health nut. So he's spent the last decade of
Speaker 3: his life trying to optimize his life. So I'm talking
Speaker 3: intermittent fasting, high intensity interval training, chi as seeds, turmeric,
Speaker 3: the whole shebang. And last year in twenty twenty, he
Speaker 3: gets a stage four bone cancer diagnosis Jesus that within
Speaker 3: weeks leads him to have to amputate his right leg,
Speaker 3: move to M d Anderson in Texas, receive eighteen administrations
Speaker 3: of chemotherapy and remove a vertebra from a spine and
Speaker 3: multiple other surgeries.
Speaker 2: Oh God.
Speaker 3: Now Scott is telling me I have this identity as
Speaker 3: a fit person, right as someone who is super healthy
Speaker 3: and can conquer the world, and who's got all the
Speaker 3: potential in the world. And he said, And I'm sitting
Speaker 3: here now, six months into my chemotherapy, having a cup
Speaker 3: of coffee, and I'm realizing that maybe these parts of
Speaker 3: my identity are more negotiable than I thought. That's the
Speaker 3: word that he used.
Speaker 2: Negotiable's the word negotiable.
Speaker 1: Negotiable.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, I say more that I'm still.
Speaker 3: Scott at the end of the day, that the things
Speaker 3: that I find joy in, I can still find joy in.
Speaker 3: I still love that bite of food, I still love
Speaker 3: that sound of music. At the moment, I can't walk,
Speaker 3: I can't run a marathon. But I'm realizing that Scott
Speaker 3: in many ways he was telling me, Brene, that Scott
Speaker 3: was bigger, was more robust than maybe the Scott he
Speaker 3: had thought he was before. You know that Scott inhabits
Speaker 3: a much broader array of wonderful traits and characteristics and ability.
Speaker 2: He's transcended a very small identity.
Speaker 3: He's transcending. So I do want to pay amens to
Speaker 3: the fact that he's in the middle of this process
Speaker 3: and it's not complete, but he's in the throes of it,
Speaker 3: and he's realizing for the first time ever that he
Speaker 3: needs to start seeing his identity in this way. And
Speaker 3: an another thing that really surprised him is this guy's
Speaker 3: worst nightmare came true, right, And he's also sitting there
Speaker 3: having this cup of coffee, telling me, I feel like
Speaker 3: the psychological thermostat has prevailed, my psychological immune system has prevailed,
Speaker 3: because I more or less feel as happy as I
Speaker 3: did before. And he said, sure, the lows are lower,
Speaker 3: you know, the treatments are deeply uncomfortable. He described having
Speaker 3: Civil War pain with the amputation. But I, Scott, feel
Speaker 3: whole and I feel more or less again just as happy.
Speaker 3: And I am stunned by that because this completely ran
Speaker 3: counter to his old model of himself. How Scott would
Speaker 3: respond to this experience. And so, look, this is not
Speaker 3: everyone's experience with illness or disease or any kind of change,
Speaker 3: but it is Scott's experience.
Speaker 2: What a beautiful story. I'm going to send all my
Speaker 2: good prayers and just thoughts to Scott in this process,
Speaker 2: because what an incredible story of I love how you
Speaker 2: caught me and said he's transcending, like he's in process. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and sometimes that lasts three days and sometimes at last
Speaker 2: thirty years. Sometimes every morning we recommit to transcending, I
Speaker 2: think after a big change. So let me ask you
Speaker 2: this question. The podcast is fascinating, and you know I
Speaker 2: can't help, but as a qualitative researcher or think, what
Speaker 2: are the themes and patterns that I'm hearing here that
Speaker 2: are saturating across the interviews which you're sharing with us.
Speaker 2: Help me reverse engineer into what we can do or
Speaker 2: think about on a daily basis to become more malleable,
Speaker 2: to become bigger than the identities that we rest in
Speaker 2: all often, how can we what's the word I'm looking for,
Speaker 2: build resilience to change now as opposed to trying to
Speaker 2: build it in the midst of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 3: I think it is to appreciate what complex ecosystems we
Speaker 3: are just by virtue of being human. And the reason
Speaker 3: I say that is any given change in our life
Speaker 3: doesn't happen in a vacuum. So I think we tend
Speaker 3: to think, oh, I'm just going to be I'm going
Speaker 3: to be me Maya. But it's as though I'm going
Speaker 3: to walk through this magic mirror and this one thing
Speaker 3: will have changed about me. But that's not actually a
Speaker 3: human's word, no, right, there's all sorts of unexpected spillover
Speaker 3: effects on other parts of our lives and our sense
Speaker 3: of self that we simply can't predict. And again we
Speaker 3: do fall prey to this cognitive fallacy like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to change this one thing, but like everything
Speaker 3: else is going to stay firmly intact and constant. And
Speaker 3: I think when we appreciate that, we won't have the
Speaker 3: whole equation figured out. Kind of ironically, it might lead
Speaker 3: us to embrace change more than we otherwise would have,
Speaker 3: because we're constantly going to surprise ourselves, and we might
Speaker 3: surprise ourselves in the wrong direction. So, for example, there
Speaker 3: was a woman I interviewed named Elna, and her lifelong
Speaker 3: dream was to become thin. She really felt that if
Speaker 3: she could lose the weight, all of her big dreams
Speaker 3: would come true, and she achieved that goal through very
Speaker 3: unhealthy means. In five and a half months, she lost
Speaker 3: over one hundred pounds, and for a while there she
Speaker 3: did think that she was leaving her dream life until
Speaker 3: she started to realize that she was becoming a worse person.
Speaker 3: She was actually losing her self confidence. She felt less
Speaker 3: emboldened in situations, she felt more judgmental, she felt more superficial.
Speaker 3: She was losing these core parts of Elna again that
Speaker 3: she felt would almost certainly stay intact. Right again, she's
Speaker 3: walking through the magic mirror where she's Elna through and through,
Speaker 3: who was before this transition, extremely bold, audacious, outspoken, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, she feels like she's losing these
Speaker 3: parts of herself. And so that's an example where she
Speaker 3: was willing what she thought would be a positive change
Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden, it turned out to
Speaker 3: be a negative one. But then you take Scott's story,
Speaker 3: which is he so anticipated that this was going to
Speaker 3: be the worst change of his life, and he's now
Speaker 3: realizing there's all these positive spillover effects in terms of
Speaker 3: how he's developing as a person and how he's seeing himself.
Speaker 3: And so that unexpected element, the richness of the change experience,
Speaker 3: the multifaceted nature of the change experience, is hopefully more
Speaker 3: appealing to people than the black and white model of
Speaker 3: change they may be carrying in their minds. It's going
Speaker 3: to be hard, but it is going to be transformative
Speaker 3: and filled with growth of some kind, and you can
Speaker 3: always hold on to that.
Speaker 2: It's powerful. Yeah, I think people don't think about the
Speaker 2: physics of systems once small change reverberates in places you
Speaker 2: can never even anticipate.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And look, we know from research, right Brene, like
Speaker 3: we are, we're typically very bad cognitive forecasters. We are
Speaker 3: terrible at predicting how we will respond emotionally to things.
Speaker 3: And look, change circumstances are no different. They're falling into
Speaker 3: the same camp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. Just it's really interesting, like change is coming.
Speaker 2: Maybe the best thing you can do is get an emotional, spiritual,
Speaker 2: physical shape for reverberation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, another thing that you're making me think of,
Speaker 3: just in terms of advice for embracing change, is to
Speaker 3: share a personal experience. So in twenty twenty, I was
Speaker 3: feeling absolutely overwhelmed by the change that was happening. I mean,
Speaker 3: there was the pandemic, there was racial injustice upheaval, there
Speaker 3: were personal losses I was experiencing in my own life, miscarriage,
Speaker 3: and I just felt overwhelmed and disoriented. I felt like,
Speaker 3: all of this is so new, and I don't know
Speaker 3: how to manage any of it. But then I put
Speaker 3: on my cognitive science hat, and I realized, while the
Speaker 3: specifics of what twenty twenty is throwing my way and
Speaker 3: throwing our way may be unprecedented, our human ability to
Speaker 3: navigate change is absolutely not unprecedented. We've done this rodeo
Speaker 3: so many times before as a civilization, as individuals, our
Speaker 3: minds are wired for change because it's such a core
Speaker 3: part of the human experience.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: What that taught me is it is possi it is
Speaker 3: possible for us to recruit learnings and insights from our
Speaker 3: prior change experiences from other people's change experiences. I mean,
Speaker 3: in many ways, this was the genesis for a slight
Speaker 3: change of plans. I'm like searching the world for people
Speaker 3: with the most fascinating change stories so that I can
Speaker 3: learn as much as I can, so listeners can benefit
Speaker 3: as much as they can.
Speaker 1: And to see that.
Speaker 3: While you might be intimidated by the specific nature of
Speaker 3: the change, don't forget that human psychology can often transcend
Speaker 3: those specifics. There are many episodes where people have reached
Speaker 3: out to me, and the recent divorcee is finding more
Speaker 3: resonance in the cancer patient's story than they are in
Speaker 3: a story about someone who's recently divorced, Because again, it's
Speaker 3: all about human psychology, it's about how we respond to change,
Speaker 3: and so that fills me with optimism at hope for
Speaker 3: a few reasons. One, when I'm confronted with a change,
Speaker 3: I build my confidence by saying, Maya, you've done this
Speaker 3: change thing before, like fear not right. But number two,
Speaker 3: try to dissociate yourselves from yourself from the specifics of
Speaker 3: the change for just a moment. Try to see it
Speaker 3: with some distance and try to figure out what are
Speaker 3: the psychological strategies that you can recruit that you've learned
Speaker 3: from your own guests on a slight change of plans
Speaker 3: to help you navigate this moment. I'm sorry, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: get emotional for a second. This played out in my
Speaker 3: own life recently, where my husband and I lost identical
Speaker 3: twin girls to a miscarriage via surrogacy. So it's our
Speaker 3: third pregnancy loss, and it happened recently. It happened like
Speaker 3: two months ago. It happened in September, and I was
Speaker 3: so overwhelmed again, and I started feeling those things like well,
Speaker 3: I haven't gone through this before, you know. And then
Speaker 3: I called it my producer and I said, I need
Speaker 3: this show right now, like I need a slight change
Speaker 3: of plans for me right now. And so he turned
Speaker 3: on the mic, and two days later he interviewed me
Speaker 3: about my change story, and I shared that with everyone,
Speaker 3: and I processed out loud. I did the thing that
Speaker 3: I'd asked my guests to do so many times with me,
Speaker 3: to be raw and vulnerable and to process their own
Speaker 3: change experiences out loud, but I had never done myself.
Speaker 3: And as I was doing that exercise, I was realizing
Speaker 3: I have learned so much about the psychology of change
Speaker 3: from people who have gone through wildly different experiences from
Speaker 3: my own than I'm using right now. And one of
Speaker 3: those had come from a close friend of mine, Michael Lewis.
Speaker 3: He's obviously a extremely famous author and podcaster. He has
Speaker 3: a heart of gold, He's an incredible human being, and
Speaker 3: the Lewis family tragically lost their daughter. Michael lost his
Speaker 3: nineteen year old daughter in a car crash earlier this year,
Speaker 3: and Michael and I talk off and but when this happened,
Speaker 3: we were talking about grief and he was telling me, Maya,
Speaker 3: no one knows sit about grief. Everyone's telling me, you know,
Speaker 3: I was visiting his house shortly after the passing of
Speaker 3: his daughter. Everyone's telling me how to feel and what
Speaker 3: to read and which therapist to see. And then I
Speaker 3: should journal this and I should journal. No, that shit's
Speaker 3: not working for me. I need to figure out the
Speaker 3: Michael Lewis plan. And he figured out his own plan.
Speaker 3: He figured out what brings him joy, he figured out
Speaker 3: what brings him healing, and he structured his own plan
Speaker 3: because he was realizing that a one size fits model
Speaker 3: does not work. And so Renee, when I was going
Speaker 3: through this traumatic experience of my own, I called upon
Speaker 3: that wisdom. I said, I have to create a Maya plan.
Speaker 3: What does healing look like for me specifically? And it
Speaker 3: turned out healing for me looked like trying to turn
Speaker 3: my pain into something good, and that meant sharing my
Speaker 3: experience with all my listeners so that the person out
Speaker 3: there who has felt stigma around a miscarriage, the person
Speaker 3: out there who has felt the pain of loss, can
Speaker 3: feel less alone. And so I just feel like we
Speaker 3: have so much to learn from one another.
Speaker 2: It is a brave and breathtaking episode.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I didn't know you'd heard it. Thank you
Speaker 1: for that.
Speaker 2: First of all, let me say I'm incredibly deeply sorry
Speaker 2: for your miscarriages. That is a huge loss. Was it
Speaker 2: hard to be vulnerable and share on the kind of
Speaker 2: the quote unquote other side of the microphone.
Speaker 1: It was, and it wasn't.
Speaker 3: In many ways, I saw this sharing as almost the
Speaker 3: love letter to my surrogate Haley. We can't work with
Speaker 3: her anymore, as I describe in my interview, but sometimes
Speaker 3: surrogates can get kind of relegated to the footnotes of
Speaker 3: these sorts of experiences. Creating families is complicated and hard,
Speaker 3: and sometimes you have the gift of having an amazingly generous,
Speaker 3: magnificent woman enter your life who tries to help you
Speaker 3: make your dreams happen. And so much of this episode
Speaker 3: is about her and how much I love and admire her,
Speaker 3: And so that part felt easy, That part felt joyful.
Speaker 3: I was sharing with the world about this special person
Speaker 3: that I'd gotten to know in this extremely intimate way,
Speaker 3: and I wanted everyone to recognize how wonderful she was.
Speaker 3: But the parts that were really hard, where that I
Speaker 3: was processing several grief layers all at once, and I
Speaker 3: myself didn't know what my conclusions were. It's scary to
Speaker 3: go into an interview when you don't know what You
Speaker 3: don't even know, you know. It's like when I go
Speaker 3: to interview my guests, I do my homework Renee, you know,
Speaker 3: I spend hours practicing the violin. I'm spreading hours studying
Speaker 3: my guests, listening to every interview they'd done. Like I
Speaker 3: come prepared, and I did not come to this interview prepared.
Speaker 3: I came a total mess. And one thing that was
Speaker 3: beautiful about it is I had this really important insight
Speaker 3: in real time that I love to share right now
Speaker 3: because I do hope it can help others, which is
Speaker 3: I think we tend to see life as an outcome
Speaker 3: oriented process.
Speaker 1: I do. I have.
Speaker 3: I often see things as achieve the goal. And to
Speaker 3: summarize my experience for listeners, we had a surrogate, Haley,
Speaker 3: and she was pregnant with our baby and miscarried, and
Speaker 3: then she was pregnant with our identical twins and miscarried,
Speaker 3: and so we had these losses and we did not
Speaker 3: get the outcome that the three of us wanted in
Speaker 3: this relationship, and I think the insight that I gleaned
Speaker 3: was that life is about more than just achieving outcomes.
Speaker 3: It's about creating space that invites these unexpected gifts into
Speaker 3: your life. And that gift for me was Haley. And
Speaker 3: all I needed to do is just make room for
Speaker 3: that and to see that in and of itself is value.
Speaker 3: You can not get the end goal, but you can
Speaker 3: get so much love and growth in enrichment and humanity
Speaker 3: from an experience, and that is enough. And I just
Speaker 3: want people to hear that like that, that is enough.
Speaker 3: That can be the finish line sometimes and it's really
Speaker 3: hard for me to say that sort of thing. I'm
Speaker 3: that type a personality, you know, As I mentioned, I'm impatient.
Speaker 3: I want the thing to have happened. But this experience
Speaker 3: taught me that, like that beautiful relationship that my husband
Speaker 3: and I formed with Haley was enough, and it was beautiful.
Speaker 3: It was something that I will cherish forever.
Speaker 2: The Maya Plan for grief, it sounds like, is a
Speaker 2: love base plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's right. Never thought about it like.
Speaker 2: That, And I don't think there's anything more different than
Speaker 2: an outcome based plan than a love base plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the and and the love.
Speaker 3: I was, of course scared like anyone when this was
Speaker 3: going out into the world. I didn't know how people
Speaker 3: would respond. And Brenee, I have been overwhelmed by the
Speaker 3: outpouring of love and care and virtual hugs from all
Speaker 3: over the world and people sharing their experiences of loss
Speaker 3: with me. And it's a loss, a wide ranging loss,
Speaker 3: you know, to our earlier point that our circumstances can
Speaker 3: be very different, but the same psychology might come into play.
Speaker 3: And that is felt like a true silver lining in
Speaker 3: all this, to feel in some way like I have
Speaker 3: helped people heal. So many people heal, it's been all
Speaker 3: came Yeah what came back? Wow, well said what came
Speaker 3: back with love? And I guess I just didn't know
Speaker 3: that I could expect that. And I'm so glad that
Speaker 3: that's what came back.
Speaker 2: There's so much wisdom that you've shared with us today.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. It's I bet you were really good
Speaker 2: in that lab at Stanford, but I'm so glad you're
Speaker 2: not there anymore, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I just there's got to be something core to you
Speaker 2: that's about connection and love between people. There's just got
Speaker 2: to be something there because that's what radiates. I guess,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe that's that thing that you were describing
Speaker 2: that Ishtuk Pehlman saw.
Speaker 1: I love that. I think that's so true. I think
Speaker 1: that's so true.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm the one who's like writing these a
Speaker 3: fusive love letters to the people that I love in
Speaker 3: my life all the time.
Speaker 1: They don't get back.
Speaker 2: That doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 3: They don't hear it enough. I can't hear it enough
Speaker 3: because I do feel that effusiveness. I've always wanted to
Speaker 3: share that. So I think you nailed it.
Speaker 2: Are you ready for some rapid fires?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, let me pivot.
Speaker 2: Well, bring your love with you's freeing love? Yeah, fill
Speaker 2: in the blank for me. Vulnerability is.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: I'm saying this from the vantage point of being a
Speaker 3: woman in particular, but being willing to admit when you're
Speaker 3: good at something.
Speaker 2: Hmmm? Does that for everything? Yes? It does. I don't
Speaker 2: like it, but it's true. Okay. What's one thing that
Speaker 2: people often get wrong about you?
Speaker 1: M Okay?
Speaker 3: So I'm a petite woman, like five to four in
Speaker 3: a good day, five three and three quarters. I mean
Speaker 3: you probably talking an abundance of enthusiasm.
Speaker 1: Like I tend to have a.
Speaker 3: Very cheerful, exuberant, smiley disposition, and I love that about myself,
Speaker 3: but I also think it can lead people to underestimate
Speaker 3: just how much I'm willing to fight for things and
Speaker 3: how much I'm willing to stand up for other people
Speaker 3: and to stand up for myself, you know, like I
Speaker 3: may be small, but I'm fierce inside for Nay, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I yeah, yeah, no, I'm clear on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There are many times in government where these older dudes
Speaker 3: would kind of be like, oh, Maya the bright eyed,
Speaker 3: bushy tailed, energetic woman or girl or whatever they use,
Speaker 3: and you know it, say, you know, I could tell
Speaker 3: she has big dreams, but I'm not really sure if
Speaker 3: she can really make it happen, you know that sort
Speaker 3: of thing. And I have resisted dampening the enthusiasm. I
Speaker 3: won't do it because that is so core to who
Speaker 3: I am. So instead I listen, but then I really
Speaker 3: show it to them. On the other side, I'm like, Nope, actually,
Speaker 3: you can't talk to me like that. Because bullied as
Speaker 3: a kid, not willing to be bullied as an adult.
Speaker 2: My problem. I would love to observe this just once
Speaker 2: with an old white guy, especially just yeah, Okay, what
Speaker 2: is one piece of leadership advice that you've been given
Speaker 2: that so remarkable you need to share it with us?
Speaker 2: Are so shitty you need to warn us?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I love these questions. Okay, all right, this one's coming
Speaker 3: from my White House boss. Uh, always think like an entrepreneur,
Speaker 3: no matter what circumstance you're in. So quick aside, when
Speaker 3: I was in the White House, so you know, the
Speaker 3: challenge just didn't stop just in getting the job. I'd
Speaker 3: made it my goal to build out a whole team
Speaker 3: of behavioral scientists, and I didn't have a mandate and
Speaker 3: I didn't have a budget to do so. So I
Speaker 3: couldn't just be like Obama says we should do this.
Speaker 3: It was Maya says we should do this. And it
Speaker 3: was a really hard, scrappy process moving forward where I
Speaker 3: felt like I was building a startup in my parents' basement.
Speaker 3: But I really tried He called this policy entrepreneur, So
Speaker 3: I really tried to see this job as though I
Speaker 3: was creating my own company within the federal government, and
Speaker 3: I was trying to like do the equivalent of fundraising
Speaker 3: and getting quick wins here and there, and it was
Speaker 3: a crucial change in mindset.
Speaker 2: Yeah, scrappy, hungry. Yeah, I think that's great advice. What
Speaker 2: is the hard lesson for you? That the universe just
Speaker 2: keeps putting in front of you over and over and
Speaker 2: you just have to keep unlearning and relearning.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, okay, yeah, okay, I've got one. This is
Speaker 3: also recently relevant. So I have like intermittent I have
Speaker 3: intermittent vocal strain issues, and it apparently emerges from a
Speaker 3: condition in which I get so excited when I talk
Speaker 3: I forget to breathe. This is literally what a doctor
Speaker 3: told me once. And so what that means is that
Speaker 3: I can very easily strain my vocal cords. And there
Speaker 3: have been long stretches of time where I have had
Speaker 3: to be on complete vocal rest. I'm talking like Adell
Speaker 3: Celendi style vocal rest. Geez hard, It's very hard. I
Speaker 3: felt like this news and meditative maya came out. But
Speaker 3: what I learned from that experience was so valuable, Renee,
Speaker 3: because you really do learn how to be a good
Speaker 3: listener in those moments, and because there are moments there
Speaker 3: were times where I could talk a little bit but
Speaker 3: not a lot. For the first time ever, you could
Speaker 3: tell them a total chatterbox, right. I had to be
Speaker 3: so judicious about what it is that I chose to
Speaker 3: say in meetings, in conversations, and it made me, I think,
Speaker 3: just a better human being because I tend to talk
Speaker 3: in this kind of unfiltered way a lot. I just
Speaker 3: say everything that I'm thinking, and it was just, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was just a very different experience for me to
Speaker 3: have to really be thought like, is this worth saying?
Speaker 3: That's a question we should all ask ourselves as leaders.
Speaker 1: I can't tell me.
Speaker 3: It's like I can say it. I mean, I lead
Speaker 3: this team. I can technically say it, But is it
Speaker 3: worth saying? I think that's such an important question that
Speaker 3: we should ask ourselves.
Speaker 2: WHOA, that's a good one. All right, what's one thing
Speaker 2: you're really excited about right now?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm all about the small stuff. So I'm a
Speaker 3: vegetarian and this local ramin place that my husband loves
Speaker 3: now has a vegetarian faced broth and it will knock
Speaker 3: your socks off. In fact, my meat eating husband, well,
Speaker 3: he's kind of trying to be vegetarian, but he's like
Speaker 3: a pseudo vegetarian. He opts for the vegetarian version over
Speaker 3: the meat version. That's how good it is.
Speaker 2: That's impressive.
Speaker 3: Like I love just I mean, you can tell from
Speaker 3: my answer, like I love food. I feel like it
Speaker 3: was in my it was implicit in my marriage contract
Speaker 3: that like I loved food and then I love my
Speaker 3: husband second. So that's a well greed upon understanding of
Speaker 3: their home.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, what's one thing you're deeply grateful for right now?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Wow, you know, I'm honestly really grateful for a slight
Speaker 3: change of plans that I've created because it was there
Speaker 3: for me when I needed it most, Like I need
Speaker 3: it as much as it needs me, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: And yes, it is such a gift to have this
Speaker 3: artistic endeavor that fuels you on an emotional level. It's
Speaker 3: like feeding all the parts of my brain from various
Speaker 3: parts of my life. It's like there's the musical side
Speaker 3: of my brain that's like working on the soundtrack and
Speaker 3: actually recorded and I've picked up my violin for the
Speaker 3: first time and forever recently, I actually recorded music for
Speaker 3: the soundtrack, and just like the artistic qualities of piecing
Speaker 3: together an episode. And then there's the cognitive science part
Speaker 3: of my brain that's weighing in with questions and insights
Speaker 3: and everything. And then there's the the human emotion connection part,
Speaker 3: which is just like through the roof because I get
Speaker 3: to meet these incredible people and so I just it's
Speaker 3: hard for me to remember something that I love as
Speaker 3: much as this thing. I would wake up as the
Speaker 3: thirty five year old that I am at four thirty
Speaker 3: in the morning on Saturdays for a slight change of plans,
Speaker 3: and it's been a while since I felt that way.
Speaker 3: It's been Yeah, it's been an utter joy.
Speaker 2: I love how you light up when you talk about it.
Speaker 2: That's that's that's what we need, all right. We make
Speaker 2: mini mixtapes for all of our guests, and we ask
Speaker 2: you for five songs you can't live without. This is
Speaker 2: what you gave us. The Leaves that are Green My
Speaker 2: Simon and Garfunkle, Blinding Lights by Weekend, Forever and Always,
Speaker 2: Shania Twain, slow Burn, Casey Musgraves, and Halo by Beyonce.
Speaker 2: In one sentence, what does this mini mixtape say about you?
Speaker 3: Maya one sentence, mm hmm, I'm all about a good hook, says.
Speaker 2: The cognitive behavoralist that you gotta tell me that you
Speaker 2: thought of this before. Did you come up with this
Speaker 2: line right now, sitting right here?
Speaker 1: I did. I didn't know this was a question. I
Speaker 1: just thought you were gonna load up the mixtape.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that was the best answer. This has
Speaker 2: been such a just a joy. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining us on Dear to Luis Well.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, Brene. I love it when an
Speaker 3: interview is just a conversation, and that's what this felt like.
Speaker 3: So thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you really radiate love and joy and it's so powerful.
Speaker 3: Thank you for saying that. That's the highest compliment that
Speaker 3: I can receive. So if I'm giving that off, awesome.
Speaker 2: You're giving it off and I'm receiving you can see
Speaker 2: my migdala anytime. Let me just say that I hope
Speaker 2: y'all enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and again,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for being a part of it.
Speaker 2: You can find Maya's podcast, A Slight Change of Plans
Speaker 2: wherever you like to listen to podcasts. We'll also post
Speaker 2: a link to it on the dare to lead episode
Speaker 2: page on Brene Brown dot com and if you haven't visited,
Speaker 2: we have a brand new Brene Brown dot com. H
Speaker 2: It is so beautiful and so many people worked their
Speaker 2: asses off. I can't even tell you months and months
Speaker 2: and months of sprints and designs and redesigns and testing
Speaker 2: and it's just it's gorgeous, and I hope y'all love
Speaker 2: it as much as I do. You can find Maya
Speaker 2: at m A y A s h A n k
Speaker 2: R dot com. She's also on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn,
Speaker 2: and we'll have all those links on the episode page
Speaker 2: as well. Really appreciate you being here very much. Appreciate
Speaker 2: you being a part of Dare to Lead. I just
Speaker 2: learning by ourselves is not as effective as learning together
Speaker 2: and having conversations about what we're trying to learn and
Speaker 2: learn and relearn. Thank you, stay awkward, brave and kind, y'all.
Speaker 2: Dear to Lead is produced by Brene Brown Education and
Speaker 2: Research Group. Music is by the Sufferers. Get new episodes
Speaker 2: as soon as they're published by following Dear to Lead
Speaker 2: on your favorite podcast app. We are part of the
Speaker 2: Voxmedia podcast Network. Discover more award winning shows at podcasts
Speaker 2: dot voxmedia dot com.
Speaker 1: I just got to get out most days.
Speaker 2: You see, I like it's good for me. Well we
Speaker 2: go ahead, take me to the towns.
Speaker 1: I just got to get out those days.
Speaker 2: You see this work for me