Speaker 1: Pushkin Hey, Slight Changers, maya here. My good friend doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos, hosts of The Happiness Lab, asked me to
Speaker 1: join her on her show recently to do a live
Speaker 1: episode about the science of happiness and change. It was
Speaker 1: a really fun conversation with some listener questions at the end,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to share it with you all here
Speaker 1: and some very exciting news. Will be back in your
Speaker 1: feed with brand new episodes of A Slight Change of
Speaker 1: Plants every Monday starting October eleventh. See you soon. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite parts of hosting this podcast is getting
Speaker 1: so many of your questions about how to stay happy.
Speaker 1: And one of the kinds of questions I keep getting
Speaker 1: over and over again, especially right now, is about happiness
Speaker 1: and change. Things like how can we make changes that
Speaker 1: actually stick, or how can we stay happy through hard
Speaker 1: life changes that come our way, or how can we
Speaker 1: do with the collective happiness changes that are happening in
Speaker 1: this transformative time that we're all going through in the
Speaker 1: midst of this pandemic. And so with all these questions,
Speaker 1: I thought I would be best if I called in
Speaker 1: an expert on change for this special bonus episode, and
Speaker 1: so I'm super excited to welcome back behavior Change Expert,
Speaker 1: extraordinary host of one of my favorite new podcasts, A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans, and my former student, Maya Schunker.
Speaker 1: It's so much fun to be Helar. Great to see you.
Speaker 1: So you are back on the Happiness Lab a bit
Speaker 1: ago before, and the last time you were here on
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab, we talked briefly about how you get
Speaker 1: interested in the psychology of change, and so I wonder
Speaker 1: if you'd quickly share that story again for me. I
Speaker 1: think it'll help listeners really understand how you get interested
Speaker 1: in the kind of like studying behavior change and how
Speaker 1: it's really affected you personally. So, yeah, so how did
Speaker 1: you get interested in change? Yeah? I definitely had a
Speaker 1: very formative experience with change. When I was six years old,
Speaker 1: I started playing the violin and I became so passionate
Speaker 1: about the instrument and it very quickly my goal to
Speaker 1: become a professional violinist. And so when I was nine
Speaker 1: years old, I started studying at the Juilliard School of
Speaker 1: Music in New York. And when I was in high school.
Speaker 1: It's a pearlman who's considered, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: greatest violinists of our time asked me to be his
Speaker 1: private violin student, and so I was on the speed
Speaker 1: train Laurie to becoming hopefully a professional violinist. And I
Speaker 1: would say all of my eggs were in that basket.
Speaker 1: I felt like my identity was first and foremost a violinist.
Speaker 1: And then when I was fifteen, I experienced a sudden
Speaker 1: hand injury that fully derailed my career and basically ended
Speaker 1: it overnight, and I was forced to reassess who I was.
Speaker 1: You know, up until that point, I had only seen
Speaker 1: myself as a violinist. Like if you had asked me
Speaker 1: who I was at that point, I would have said,
Speaker 1: first that I was a violinist, and second that I
Speaker 1: was Maya. And I just didn't know where to go
Speaker 1: from there because it felt like such a fixed part
Speaker 1: of who I was. And there's interesting searching cognitive science
Speaker 1: that talks about this phenomenon. It's called identity foreclosure, and
Speaker 1: it refers to the idea that in adolescence, certainly, but
Speaker 1: it can carry through into adulthood, we can get very
Speaker 1: settled in a very specific identity, and the consequence of
Speaker 1: that is it prevents us from having an exploratory frame
Speaker 1: of mind, from allowing ourselves to inhabit other spaces, other identities,
Speaker 1: other roles, and to pursue other passions. And I absolutely
Speaker 1: fell prey to identity foreclosure. It felt like I fully
Speaker 1: lost myself in the process. And you know, we can
Speaker 1: talk more about how my psychology has changed over this
Speaker 1: whole period of time, but the biggest lesson that I
Speaker 1: learned from that whole experience is that I had to
Speaker 1: see my identity as more malleable, as extending beyond any
Speaker 1: specific pursuit. And so this is so important. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons I love your story have changed so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, one reason I love your story of changes
Speaker 1: that it brought you to me. It brought you to
Speaker 1: my lab, and that's how we got to know each other.
Speaker 1: But it also shows just so many of these misconceptions
Speaker 1: that we have about identity and change and change and happiness. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, all of my happiness Lab listeners know that
Speaker 1: I'm constantly talking about the ways that our minds lie
Speaker 1: to us in terms of the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: make us happy. And I think the kind of misconception
Speaker 1: you're talking about is important. This idea that our identity
Speaker 1: is fixed. It fits with what psychologist Dan Gilbert talks
Speaker 1: about with an illusion known as the end of history illusion.
Speaker 1: The deal is, if you ask people, hey, how much
Speaker 1: do you think you're going to change in the next
Speaker 1: ten years, most people say, well, you know, not so much, right, Like,
Speaker 1: my core identity is sort of fixed, my history has
Speaker 1: kind of ended. But if you ask people how much
Speaker 1: have you changed, like as of the last ten years,
Speaker 1: like in the last decade, how much of you change?
Speaker 1: People usually say a lot. And so the funny thing
Speaker 1: is we tend not to notice our own changes. We
Speaker 1: tend to have this belief that we're like stopped definitely,
Speaker 1: But the research really shows that we're that we're kind
Speaker 1: of more malleable than we think. And the other reason
Speaker 1: I love this story is it shows a different misconception
Speaker 1: about the mind that I think is incredibly powerful, which
Speaker 1: is this idea about the nature of identity change, like
Speaker 1: how it works right. You know, there's this sense that
Speaker 1: people think you have to have this like crazy brain
Speaker 1: altering experience to experience some change that will change your identity.
Speaker 1: I know on your podcast you've talked to people who've
Speaker 1: looked at these changes in the context of like psychedelic experiences,
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, absolutely yeah. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: on the point of the end of history illusion, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think we can all relate to the experience of
Speaker 1: hearing a clip of you talking when you're you know, teenager,
Speaker 1: or when you're in your twenties, or seeing a picture
Speaker 1: and thinking, oh my god, how is that me? I
Speaker 1: don't even relate to this person? And then you suddenly realize,
Speaker 1: am I going to think this way about myself right now?
Speaker 1: In ten years? And that inevitably is the case, right,
Speaker 1: We can feel so much distance between our current cells
Speaker 1: and our past cells, but like you said, in real time,
Speaker 1: we always underestimate how much change and how much growth
Speaker 1: will happen in the year ahead. And you're absolutely right
Speaker 1: on the topic of psychedelics. I mean, I think what's
Speaker 1: so interesting is that as humans we are both averse
Speaker 1: to change, we're scared by it, but then we also
Speaker 1: seek it out in these really profound ways, which is
Speaker 1: why we've seen a surge and interest in doing psychedelics.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a lot of medical research going
Speaker 1: on and how psychedelics can help people. I think the
Speaker 1: reassuring thing for those of us who don't want to
Speaker 1: do psychedelics, myself included, is that you can achieve profound
Speaker 1: change through other means in your life. I mean, the
Speaker 1: first way is that you can understand that it is
Speaker 1: absolutely a misconception that our personality stop changing after the
Speaker 1: age of thirty. This is a finding that's just floating
Speaker 1: around out there, but it's since been disproven through large studies,
Speaker 1: and what they find is that personality traits they continue
Speaker 1: to change gradually and systematically throughout the course of your life,
Speaker 1: and that things like conscientiousness and agreeableness and other key
Speaker 1: personality traits increase as you get older. Traits like neuroticism
Speaker 1: decrease as you get older, which is good, is great,
Speaker 1: and it can signal right that their maturity is increasing.
Speaker 1: And I always have found it so promising that naturally, right,
Speaker 1: we might become better versions of ourselves just through the
Speaker 1: natural aging process. That's already very reassuring, I think. And
Speaker 1: then we also know, and you can talk more about this,
Speaker 1: but transformative experiences can alter us in ways that rival,
Speaker 1: you know, the best version of a psychedelic experience, and
Speaker 1: we can actually grow profoundly even from traumatic experiences. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to kind of talk more about this idea
Speaker 1: of transformative experiences because I find it so profound. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, the personality changes you were just talking about
Speaker 1: are really gradual, you know, the kind of thing we
Speaker 1: might not even notice unless we were carefully sampling you know,
Speaker 1: what happened to our agreeableness or neuroticism. But transformative experiences
Speaker 1: is a concept that has been developed by one of
Speaker 1: my colleagues here at Yale, Laurie Paul, the philosopher. You know,
Speaker 1: she talks about these moments where you have like profound
Speaker 1: in transformative change in so many aspects of your identity,
Speaker 1: like what you think of as your identity, your preferences,
Speaker 1: what you want out of life, what you consider important
Speaker 1: in life, and they happen at these kind of like
Speaker 1: moments that are big but also pretty regular, pretty mundane. Right,
Speaker 1: So going to college, you know, as you know, probably
Speaker 1: may I watch you like, yeah, this transformer experience. Right,
Speaker 1: You're a different person after you go to college than not, right,
Speaker 1: getting married, having a baby, switching a job, right, all
Speaker 1: of these things are cases where you just like kind
Speaker 1: of change your preferences. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: Laurie Paul talks about, which is I think pretty cool
Speaker 1: is that you know, before you make the change, you
Speaker 1: might not know what those preferences are. Right If I ask,
Speaker 1: like Violin playing maya, you know, like do you like
Speaker 1: cognitive science? Like, you know, do you want to run experiments?
Speaker 1: Do you want to have a podcast? Like? It might
Speaker 1: not even those questions might not even have made sense
Speaker 1: to you. Right, You know, the same thing like before
Speaker 1: you get married, you know, what what will you think
Speaker 1: of about other people? You know what your preferences for
Speaker 1: what you do on a weekend look like? Right, you
Speaker 1: just can't expect what's going to happen afterwards. But then
Speaker 1: after this life change, preferences are different, your biases are different,
Speaker 1: You're just a different person. The crazy thing is, these
Speaker 1: transformative experiences happen to us all the time, and it's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you've seen on your show A
Speaker 1: bunch right, absolutely, And I would add to that, in
Speaker 1: addition to going to college, marriage, those sorts of things
Speaker 1: constituting these big moments, negative experiences too can lead to
Speaker 1: the same results. And so I would say to listeners
Speaker 1: of this, even if it's a negative change, even if
Speaker 1: you're perceiving as a negative change, you can still emerge
Speaker 1: with some of these profound changes. And to your point, Laurie, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I think you and I both studying this field.
Speaker 1: No all the time that our mind plays tricks on us,
Speaker 1: and we never have a full understanding of who we
Speaker 1: are at any given moment in time, right, because in
Speaker 1: the face of a change, I'm predicting how I'm going
Speaker 1: to respond based on only the data points I have
Speaker 1: about myself up until that point in time, Right, I
Speaker 1: don't know all these other parts of my personality that
Speaker 1: I not have tapped into, or all these other aspects
Speaker 1: of my resilience that I might not have tapped into
Speaker 1: until that moment appeared. I think that's why, in part,
Speaker 1: we're bad cognitive forecasters, because we're working with limited data
Speaker 1: on ourselves, and sometimes these change moments can really help
Speaker 1: us appreciate the full range of reactions and emotions that
Speaker 1: we can experience in the face of a change. With
Speaker 1: respect to a slight change of plans, I have found
Speaker 1: reliably that people don't know actually what to expect in
Speaker 1: the face of a change. And in advance of this podcast,
Speaker 1: I think if someone came to me and said, MAYA,
Speaker 1: what would you what would advice would you give to
Speaker 1: someone who's going through a change? I would have said, well,
Speaker 1: I would give different advice to someone based on whether
Speaker 1: it was a wanted or unwanted change, right, a willed
Speaker 1: or unwilled change. And I realized by making a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans that that framework was totally off. And
Speaker 1: the reason for that is there are so many unexpected
Speaker 1: consequences of a change that occur that we can't possibly anticipate.
Speaker 1: You know, we like to think of change happening in
Speaker 1: the vacuum, right, I'm going to be exactly, Maya. It's
Speaker 1: just that this one thing about me is going to change.
Speaker 1: But that's just not how the human experience works, right.
Speaker 1: We are these intricate ecosystems where change in one area
Speaker 1: of our lives has these profound spillovers into other parts
Speaker 1: of our lives, and we just can't anticipate, like I
Speaker 1: said before, all the ways in which it might impact us.
Speaker 1: So a good example of this is I interviewed a
Speaker 1: guy named Scott. He's in his early thirties. He's a
Speaker 1: cancer researcher, and he got a stage four cancer diagnosis
Speaker 1: during quarantine, and this was his worst nightmare come true
Speaker 1: because unlike you and me, Laurie, he was a health nut.
Speaker 1: And you know, he was doing high intensity interval training,
Speaker 1: intermittent fasting. I don't even know what that is. I
Speaker 1: can't do that. He was adding turmeric to his food,
Speaker 1: eating chia seeds by the handful. Like this guy was
Speaker 1: super into preserving his body right and reducing what he
Speaker 1: calls diminishment. And then he gets his stage four cancer
Speaker 1: diagnosis and it's his worst fear come true. And yet
Speaker 1: when I interviewed him and I talked to him, he said,
Speaker 1: you know, I think I'm actually a better person and
Speaker 1: that the emotional thermostat has persevered, which is so profound. Right,
Speaker 1: he violated his own expectations. He thought for sure that
Speaker 1: this would be the absolute worst thing that happened to me.
Speaker 1: But I'm sitting here, you know, six months into my
Speaker 1: chemotherapy treatments, having had multiple surgeries, including amputating my leg,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting here feeling gratitude for the fact that
Speaker 1: I feel more or less as happy as I did before.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so incredible, right, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: it's something that's been documented obviously by psychological research. On
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab, we've talked about this idea of what's
Speaker 1: called the psychological immune system. Right, Like, just like we
Speaker 1: have an immune system that will fight disease, you know,
Speaker 1: physical diseases, viruses, and so on, so too do we
Speaker 1: have a psychological immune system that will fight when bad
Speaker 1: things come up, Right, It'll fight the bad consequences, will
Speaker 1: rationalize our decision, or we'll see some meaning in it,
Speaker 1: or we'll seek out resources, seek out social support. You know,
Speaker 1: the psychological immune system means that aren't as bad as
Speaker 1: we think, but it still feels like the worst possible
Speaker 1: thing you imagine happening. Happening would be bad and would suck,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't react with gratitude. But the amazing thing
Speaker 1: about our minds is that that's just not the case.
Speaker 1: It's just yet another spot where we're forecasting that change
Speaker 1: is going to feel awful, but like it's not always
Speaker 1: as bad as we think. It's so profound, it is profound.
Speaker 1: Another trait that I've seen emerge in almost all of
Speaker 1: my guests, and I've seen kicking for me psychologically in
Speaker 1: the face of an unwanted change is to irresistibly want
Speaker 1: to build stories out of our experiences to build narratives
Speaker 1: and find ways to make sense of the things that
Speaker 1: have happened to us. And this is true irrespective of
Speaker 1: religious beliefs spiritual beliefs. Right. I find this across the board,
Speaker 1: you know, believers and nonbelievers alike. And you know, in
Speaker 1: talking with Scott, he was saying, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: happen to believe things happen for a reason. I don't
Speaker 1: happen to have any spiritual beliefs to guide me through
Speaker 1: this process. But in my mind, I almost need to
Speaker 1: justify this, and I need to make sense of what
Speaker 1: is otherwise a fully random system. And so what he
Speaker 1: was telling me was, you know, if my body is
Speaker 1: going to deteriorate in this way, at least my personality
Speaker 1: needs to become better. And so he worked really hard
Speaker 1: at becoming a more empathetic person, becoming a better listener,
Speaker 1: showing more compassion towards himself and others. And I just
Speaker 1: find and again, I hope this is reassuring to listeners
Speaker 1: that we just irresistibly as humans, right, narratives about our
Speaker 1: lives and our stories, and that can bring you comfort
Speaker 1: in those moments, because no matter what happens to you,
Speaker 1: you will try to find some meaning or purpose in it.
Speaker 1: And this is you know again, you know, right out
Speaker 1: of the research playbook, right you know, it comes from
Speaker 1: some fantastic work by researchers like Jamie Pennybaker and his
Speaker 1: colleagues right where he just finds that if you're going
Speaker 1: through something really difficult, especially if you know right now
Speaker 1: a listener is in the midst of a change, you know,
Speaker 1: sit down and actually journal it. If that process of
Speaker 1: sense making and meaning making and narrative making isn't happening naturally,
Speaker 1: you can engage it, right, just sit down and start
Speaker 1: journaling about it, and you'd be surprised how quickly this
Speaker 1: sense making kind of takes the four It's one way
Speaker 1: if you're having trouble going through a change, that you
Speaker 1: really can kind of fast forward some of that sense
Speaker 1: making process. But your story is about all these kinds
Speaker 1: of cases, you know, to tell me a lot of things, right,
Speaker 1: It tells me like change is happening, like whether we
Speaker 1: want it or not, you know, especially right now, in
Speaker 1: the midst of everything that's going on, it sometimes happened
Speaker 1: and so without us realizing it, right, you know, we
Speaker 1: can accidentally step into a transformative experience without knowing it,
Speaker 1: and that means that I think we need some like
Speaker 1: advice for how to deal with changes, right, like, how
Speaker 1: do we deal with this? And from a happiness perspective,
Speaker 1: how do we best use these moments of change to
Speaker 1: improve our well being? And one piece of advice that
Speaker 1: I know you've given before and that you've you've taken
Speaker 1: on through your own changes in your own life, is
Speaker 1: that you need to recognize that you shouldn't get wedded
Speaker 1: to one particular pursuit or how you're framing the things
Speaker 1: that you really enjoy in life. You might be able
Speaker 1: to think about a little bit flexibly and so talk
Speaker 1: about you know, how this played out in the context
Speaker 1: of your violin playing when that change happened. You know,
Speaker 1: how did you kind of come to terms with pursue
Speaker 1: you were really going after that you didn't realize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So going back to you know, the age of fifteen,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, I was absolutely devastated in the face
Speaker 1: of this loss, and I didn't really know how to
Speaker 1: pick up the pieces because I was thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: I literally lost the thing that I'm completely in love with.
Speaker 1: And I think in hindsight, what I've learned is that
Speaker 1: it can be really helpful to try to identify the
Speaker 1: features of the pursuit that you really enjoyed, rather than
Speaker 1: focusing too much on the thing itself. So I think
Speaker 1: you had asked me as a young kid, what do
Speaker 1: you love about the violin, I would have said to you, Oh, Laurie,
Speaker 1: I love how it sounds and how it feels. And
Speaker 1: I think in hindsight, what I've learned is that actually
Speaker 1: what really got me to tick when it came to
Speaker 1: the violin was forging an emotional connection with people. You know,
Speaker 1: as a young kid, you go on stage, there's thousands
Speaker 1: of strangers in the audience, right, no one's met anyone,
Speaker 1: and within a moment, based on what you're playing, you
Speaker 1: can make people feel something that they've never felt before.
Speaker 1: And that is an incredibly empowering and toxicating feeling, right
Speaker 1: to have that kind of emotional connection with people. And
Speaker 1: so what I learned from that is, Oh, it's actually
Speaker 1: human connection that gets me moving, Like violin was an
Speaker 1: instrument towards that. Oh gosh, me with the puns, they're
Speaker 1: all unattended, okay. Violin was a vehicle for me to
Speaker 1: achieve that desire for human connection. But I found the
Speaker 1: through line over the course of my career, which might
Speaker 1: seem very disparate and not connected, is that I've been
Speaker 1: searching for human connection throughout and I did this by
Speaker 1: studying cognitive science under your tutelage in undergrad and beyond
Speaker 1: where I was studying the human mind and understanding how
Speaker 1: it is we even develop relationships with people and make
Speaker 1: decisions and move about in this world and connect with
Speaker 1: one another. And then through my podcast, a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans, right, it is the ultimate excuse where you
Speaker 1: can go in your room with a person you'd never met,
Speaker 1: and within minutes you're talking about you deeply personal parts
Speaker 1: of your life and asking questions about how it is
Speaker 1: that they've gone through things, and you are connecting on
Speaker 1: a really deep level. So for those who have lost
Speaker 1: something in their lives, right, and I know that twenty
Speaker 1: twenty fold with so much loss across the board, I
Speaker 1: think it could be a really valuable exercise to take
Speaker 1: a step back and say, what are the traits, what
Speaker 1: are the features of the different things in my life
Speaker 1: that bring me joy, and let me see if I
Speaker 1: can construct that in other areas in other ways. And again,
Speaker 1: you know, this is something that we know from a
Speaker 1: lot of the research on the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: make us happier. Right. You know, there's so much fantastic
Speaker 1: work by Marty Seligman and his colleagues on this idea
Speaker 1: of character strengths. You know, these kinds of like values
Speaker 1: that you have, strengths that you have, you know, the
Speaker 1: kinds of things, as you said, maya that kind of
Speaker 1: bring you joy. And there are things like as you express,
Speaker 1: like connecting with people. You know, they could be things
Speaker 1: like a love of learning, a sense of bravery, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that you're really pursuing creative pursuits,
Speaker 1: even things like you know, emotions like transcendence or spirituality. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: we all have these things that are the things that
Speaker 1: get us going. And Seligman finds that if you apply
Speaker 1: those things more in your life, whether that's in your
Speaker 1: career and your relationships, you will just get more joy
Speaker 1: out of it. It matters less the specific job that
Speaker 1: you have or the specific activity you're engaging in, and
Speaker 1: more that you kind of bring these traits out. And
Speaker 1: here's these two examples I'd love to share This one
Speaker 1: is an exercise that I have my students do in class,
Speaker 1: which Seliman calls a strengths date. That how you pick
Speaker 1: a friend, you know, your spouse, a friend, and you
Speaker 1: find these strengths that you really like. You know, so
Speaker 1: for you would be like connecting with other people, right Like,
Speaker 1: how can you engage in some sort of fun date
Speaker 1: night activity that lets you connect more with other people?
Speaker 1: The idea is like, you're not picking a specific activity,
Speaker 1: You're just building this thing that's based on the strengths
Speaker 1: and the values that you love. Another wonderful exercise is
Speaker 1: to figure out how you can build these strengths more
Speaker 1: into your career, right Like, you might have some particular
Speaker 1: job description, but can you shape your job description more
Speaker 1: in the direction of the things you enjoy? Right? You know?
Speaker 1: And I think this is one of the reasons your
Speaker 1: podcast is so fantastic is that it's obvious how much
Speaker 1: you enjoy connecting with your guests and connecting with your listeners.
Speaker 1: It's obvious that's a strength of yours, and it's so
Speaker 1: obvious that it brings you joy. But we can all
Speaker 1: even if you're not a podcaster, like you can figure
Speaker 1: out ways to build in strengths in your own life,
Speaker 1: which I find just so profound. I love that so much.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, a lot of times, when
Speaker 1: you are looking for a job or you're getting hired
Speaker 1: for a job, you're hiring manager might not even know
Speaker 1: that they have so much to benefit from these untapped
Speaker 1: into skills. Right. You know, You've been in my life
Speaker 1: several times where I've written job descriptions from scratch or
Speaker 1: for jobs that didn't exist that I wanted to see happen,
Speaker 1: And it can be extremely profound to say, in addition
Speaker 1: to the core traits you've articulated, here are my superpowers,
Speaker 1: and here's what I plan to bring to the job.
Speaker 1: Here's what I think could benefit the role. You know.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of piece of advice. Number one I
Speaker 1: think is like, you know, bringing in these values, not
Speaker 1: necessarily wetting your identity to one thing, but recognizing that
Speaker 1: your identity is really based on these core kinds of strengths,
Speaker 1: these core kinds of values. You know. A second piece
Speaker 1: of advice that I think comes from your experience with
Speaker 1: change is this idea that you know, we forget how
Speaker 1: resilient we are in the face of change. You know,
Speaker 1: We just talked about all these examples where people go
Speaker 1: through these awful, awful events and they're fine or maybe
Speaker 1: better off for it. But the sad thing is that
Speaker 1: we forget that bad change can be good. We forget
Speaker 1: we're resilient enough to get through it. And that means
Speaker 1: we don't like take on changes that might be really
Speaker 1: beneficial to us because we're kind of scared about how
Speaker 1: we're going to react to them. I think that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think so many of us face a
Speaker 1: change of version of some kind, right because you know,
Speaker 1: we have things like the status quo bias. It's very
Speaker 1: comfortable to allow inertia to move us forward. But by
Speaker 1: and large, every guest I've had on a slight change
Speaker 1: of plans has been grateful in some way for having
Speaker 1: had a big change happen to them, or having a
Speaker 1: change that they inspired. And it's not because it always
Speaker 1: turned out perfectly or even made them happier in the
Speaker 1: short term. It's because it allowed them to grow in
Speaker 1: some way and help them better understand who they are
Speaker 1: and what they're capable of and what their full potential is.
Speaker 1: And I find that to be an empowering lesson because
Speaker 1: I think one of the reasons why we can always
Speaker 1: forget our own resilience is that there's this cognitive fallacy
Speaker 1: that I feel we all have where when we're confronted
Speaker 1: with a big change, we latch onto how novel the
Speaker 1: specifics of that change feels. So in twenty twenty, for example,
Speaker 1: with COVID, it was like, oh my gosh, this is
Speaker 1: such an unprecedented thing to happen to all of us.
Speaker 1: None of us know how to deal with this big change.
Speaker 1: This is awful. But what helped me during twenty twenty
Speaker 1: was realizing that while the specifics of what twenty twenty
Speaker 1: through our way was unprecedented, our human ability to navigate
Speaker 1: change is not unprecedented. We'd done this rodeo so many
Speaker 1: times before, but the content has been different, right, or
Speaker 1: we didn't maybe experienced it as a collective glow. But
Speaker 1: we've all had changes in our personal lives that we've
Speaker 1: had to navigate and we've come out the other side.
Speaker 1: And so I think just reminding yourself in the face
Speaker 1: of change that is surprised to you and you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to deal with this specific change,
Speaker 1: remember that in many ways, our psychologies are built for change,
Speaker 1: and this is a universal set of features we all
Speaker 1: share as human beings. And I think that recognizing that
Speaker 1: we're built for a change can help alleviate, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the anxiety that comes with these big changes
Speaker 1: that might be coming up, or changes that we might fear.
Speaker 1: But I think recognizing that we're built for a change
Speaker 1: gets to kind of the last piece of advice that
Speaker 1: I wanted to focus on, which is this idea that
Speaker 1: like we can change, right, you know, so if you're
Speaker 1: kind of stuck in a rut in terms of your
Speaker 1: well being, or engaging in habits that you're maybe not
Speaker 1: proud of, or if you feel like you're not flourishing enough,
Speaker 1: I think we can sometimes feel like, well, that's it,
Speaker 1: Like you know, this is how I am. I'm just
Speaker 1: stuck here. But the fact of the matter is that
Speaker 1: the entire scientific literature shows that change is possible, especially
Speaker 1: change towards experiences of more joy, more happiness, more flourishing.
Speaker 1: Like we can actually change more than we think, even
Speaker 1: though we don't realize it. Right, absolutely, like you said,
Speaker 1: all of the research and psychology can help support this.
Speaker 1: There's also research and neuroscience showing just how plastic the
Speaker 1: brain remains over the course of our lives. And what
Speaker 1: I love about the Happiness Lab and what I love
Speaker 1: about happiness research is that it gives us so many
Speaker 1: tactical recommendations of how we can introduce this kind of
Speaker 1: positive change into our lives. My husband and I had
Speaker 1: a really challenging personal experience the other day, and I
Speaker 1: remember going to bed thinking, oh, this is such a
Speaker 1: shitty day, like I hate this day. And my husband, Jimmy, said,
Speaker 1: we're going to write gratitude lists, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to. You know, you're so begrudging in
Speaker 1: that moment, right the last thing you want to do
Speaker 1: when you're in the throes of a bad change or
Speaker 1: whatnot is to commit to a gratitude list. But oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, you soften, you know, by number three on
Speaker 1: that list. You start to frame your life differently, You
Speaker 1: start to frame the change event differently, you start to
Speaker 1: have perspective to take some distance from it. And I
Speaker 1: found it to be such a therapeutic exercise. And again
Speaker 1: I think, you know, some of these recommendations from from
Speaker 1: our field can seem like common sense, right, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: just write down your gratitude thoughts. But I think what
Speaker 1: the research shows us is what a huge impact it
Speaker 1: can have on well being, which we might not appreciate, right,
Speaker 1: And it can lead you to actually commit to doing
Speaker 1: those things, even in hard moments. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I love the idea that you know, it feels like
Speaker 1: common sense, but it's not common practice, right, you have
Speaker 1: to do it, and when you do it, you know,
Speaker 1: you see these benefits. And I think, you know, that's
Speaker 1: one of the intuitions that I think we get wrong
Speaker 1: or that can kind of lead us astray, right, which
Speaker 1: is like this, it's not going to work, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm fixed, I'm not going to change. But you know,
Speaker 1: you I think identify a lot of a different kind
Speaker 1: of mindset that we can take to some of these changes,
Speaker 1: you know, which researchers call this idea of a growth mindset.
Speaker 1: You know, So what's this idea of a growth mindset?
Speaker 1: And how how can we apply it better? Yeah? The
Speaker 1: growth mindset refers to the idea that we should see
Speaker 1: our brains in the same way that we see our muscles. Right,
Speaker 1: So we always we believe if we run around the
Speaker 1: track a certain number of times, our calf muscles will
Speaker 1: get stronger. We should see our minds in the same way. Right,
Speaker 1: If you do enough exercises, if you commit to that
Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation practice for five minutes a day, you will
Speaker 1: build that mental strength. And I think we've always had
Speaker 1: a disconnect in our minds about how our bodies grow,
Speaker 1: but that our minds somehow don't have that same potential.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of really compelling research about how
Speaker 1: in fact it does. I mean, you and I might
Speaker 1: not want to run around the track eight times, So
Speaker 1: maybe it's a bad analogy, but in theory, if we
Speaker 1: were to our casts to get stronger, and the beauty
Speaker 1: is like, it's really the thing I mind most fascinating
Speaker 1: about their growth mindset research is that it's our mindset, right.
Speaker 1: Our beliefs about the extent to which we can change
Speaker 1: in fact affect the degree to which we change, I mean,
Speaker 1: in part just because it affects what we do. Right.
Speaker 1: If you believe you can't change, you're not going to
Speaker 1: start running around the track, You're not going to engage
Speaker 1: in a gratitude practice, you're not going to start meditating
Speaker 1: every day. You have to kind of believe it's going
Speaker 1: to work to see the effects of these changes. But
Speaker 1: the good news is that we can change those beliefs.
Speaker 1: And I think the science helps. As you said, like
Speaker 1: just knowing the brain is incredibly plastic that it basically
Speaker 1: works like a calf muscle can help you see like,
Speaker 1: this is worth it. I should put time into it,
Speaker 1: I should try these practices. Yeah, it can change the
Speaker 1: way that you act. Like you said, just a simple
Speaker 1: mindset shift can affect performance. And so this is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I was so excited you agreed
Speaker 1: to this bonus episode, because you know, do you really
Speaker 1: think that understanding the science of change better can be
Speaker 1: kind of a path to improving or flourishing overall? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think my goal with making this podcast
Speaker 1: was that I felt like I didn't have all the
Speaker 1: answers to change right, and I thought it would be
Speaker 1: such a fascinating experience to try to marry what the
Speaker 1: science tells us about happiness with people's real life stories
Speaker 1: and real life narratives. And I feel like that blending
Speaker 1: of wisdom, like mining people's stories for their wisdom, but
Speaker 1: then also mining the research literature to try to figure
Speaker 1: out strategies for better managing change. It certainly made me
Speaker 1: a better, more resilient person, and I'm hoping that it's
Speaker 1: had the same impact on listeners. And speaking of listeners,
Speaker 1: we had promised that this would also involve some listener questions,
Speaker 1: and so I have a few of them that listeners
Speaker 1: submitted through Facebook earlier, and so Maya. If you wouldn't mind,
Speaker 1: I'd love to get your your take on some of
Speaker 1: these questions. The first question is how do you gauge
Speaker 1: if a life change will actually make you happier? You
Speaker 1: know that the reader goes on to ask is the
Speaker 1: grass always greener on the other side, you know, how
Speaker 1: do you know if you turn down an opportunity that
Speaker 1: that will ultimately be a good thing. I wish I
Speaker 1: had the answer to that question at large, because it
Speaker 1: would mean that, you know, I could forecast everyone's future.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that'd be much more a financially lucrative
Speaker 1: than running a podcast, right, yeah, yeah, definitely. But I
Speaker 1: can say this, which is people reliably, they get it
Speaker 1: wrong often how a change is going to affect them.
Speaker 1: And you know, we talked a little bit before Larie
Speaker 1: about how change doesn't happen in a vacuum. And so
Speaker 1: there have been guests on my show who have come
Speaker 1: on thinking that they were willing what was going to
Speaker 1: be a positive change. They were absolutely certain that this
Speaker 1: change they were going to introduce into their lives was
Speaker 1: going to make them happier and better off, and what
Speaker 1: they found afterwards is that that wasn't the case. So
Speaker 1: a good example of this is that a woman named
Speaker 1: Elma on my show and her lifelong goal was to
Speaker 1: become thin, and she did it in five months. She
Speaker 1: very unhealthily lost over one hundred pounds, and for a
Speaker 1: short time, she thought that she was living her dream life,
Speaker 1: and slowly she started to realize that she was becoming
Speaker 1: a worse person. She was buying into standards of beauty
Speaker 1: that she didn't want to buy into. She was becoming
Speaker 1: more superficial, she was losing the boldness and a reverence
Speaker 1: that she had had prior. And what she learned from
Speaker 1: that experience is it's not like a magic trick where
Speaker 1: you just get to walk through a mirror and you're
Speaker 1: exactly the same Elma, with all the same psychology and
Speaker 1: all the same mindsets, and you're just thin. Right, That's
Speaker 1: not how it works, because as we talked about, we
Speaker 1: are these complicated ecosystems. And so what her story taught
Speaker 1: me is that we need to audit our change experiences. Right.
Speaker 1: We cannot go in with too much confidence about it
Speaker 1: either being positive or negative, because there will inevitably be
Speaker 1: aspects of the change experience that surprise you in some way.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's so important to approach change
Speaker 1: with a profound amount of humility, to go through the
Speaker 1: change thinking, Okay, I'm trying to you know, I'm taking
Speaker 1: on this new job, or I'm investing in a new friendship.
Speaker 1: Let me just have you know a mind how other
Speaker 1: parts of me might be interacting with this change. And
Speaker 1: I think through those auditing experiences you can eventually build
Speaker 1: some intuitions about yourself and whether a change is likely
Speaker 1: to end up being positive or negative or somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle, which is often how life works. Right. All
Speaker 1: the happiness research shows that these what we believe to
Speaker 1: be clearly good outcomes often carry some downsides and vice versa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the idea of audit too, because one of
Speaker 1: the pieces of advice I've gotten for if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about a change is to ask someone who's been through
Speaker 1: that change, right, Like, you can't necessarily from your perspective
Speaker 1: on that transformative experience, know what's going to happen on
Speaker 1: the other side. But if you ask someone who's been
Speaker 1: through it, they can tell you. You You know that, I
Speaker 1: can say, you know, being someone who say, for example,
Speaker 1: it became a head of college and taught a happiness class,
Speaker 1: what are the pros and cons or that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: that no one who had done that would like know
Speaker 1: what that was. So, you know. The other thing, I've
Speaker 1: also learned how universal the psychologies we can recruit are
Speaker 1: in the face of very diverse changes. That's another thing
Speaker 1: I've learned from this experience, which is if you're a
Speaker 1: cancer patient, you might actually find the most resonance with
Speaker 1: the person on my show who was going through a divorce,
Speaker 1: because in both cases the loss felt similar and the
Speaker 1: way in which their psychologies were recruited felt similar, and
Speaker 1: they might feel less resonance in an episode that was
Speaker 1: specifically about going through an illness. And I find that
Speaker 1: really profound because it means that when listeners are going
Speaker 1: through a big change, if they can't find someone who
Speaker 1: has had you know that exact experience. And I know
Speaker 1: that many of us can feel this way like no
Speaker 1: one will understand what I'm going through one's been through
Speaker 1: this specific thing like fear not because you can find
Speaker 1: someone who has more of a mind meld with you
Speaker 1: and may have gone through a vastly different change experience,
Speaker 1: but can still share wisdom and insights about how they
Speaker 1: managed it. Love it, and this idea of kind of
Speaker 1: the shared demiss that we get out of change, this
Speaker 1: idea of going through collective change gets to the next
Speaker 1: question that someone submitted through Facebook, which is, these times
Speaker 1: are filled with both uncertainty and change, two things I
Speaker 1: find extremely stressful. What are some strategies to deal with
Speaker 1: both of these kinds of things? So uncertainty and change,
Speaker 1: what are some strategies you know you'd used to deal
Speaker 1: with kind of these things? Yeah, I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, you know, uncertainty and change were
Speaker 1: the motivations for creating a slight change of plans, because
Speaker 1: I also find those two things extremely stressful. One of
Speaker 1: the tactics that I use. One of the strategies is
Speaker 1: something you alluded to earlier, which is that we reliably
Speaker 1: underestimate our psychological immune system. Right, we reliably underestimate just
Speaker 1: how resilient we will be in the face of a change,
Speaker 1: and in the moment, it can be very hard to
Speaker 1: get your emotions to appreciate that. I think it's easy
Speaker 1: to intellectualize in the moment. I know I'm this resilient,
Speaker 1: but I sure as hell don't feel that way, right.
Speaker 1: But I think you know, if you think it enough times,
Speaker 1: over time, your emotions will catch up to that intellectual feeling.
Speaker 1: And I found that to be true in my own life,
Speaker 1: which is in the moment, I'll tell myself, Okay, Maya,
Speaker 1: you are a cognitive scientist. You do know what all
Speaker 1: the research says. I know you don't believe it right now,
Speaker 1: because the emotions feel so raw and you feel so vulnerable,
Speaker 1: but just remember that we do actually have this incredible
Speaker 1: immune system. And I have found that over time these
Speaker 1: changes have started to feel slightly less volatile as a
Speaker 1: result of cultivating that mindset. What strategies have you used, Larry, Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things I've really used, especially recently,
Speaker 1: to deal with the uncertainty part of this equation is
Speaker 1: really taking time to notice and experience what that does
Speaker 1: to me, right, I mean I think part of the
Speaker 1: reason uncertainty and change you're scary is because we think, well,
Speaker 1: it might make us sad, or it might make us fearful,
Speaker 1: or it might make us anxious, and we feel like
Speaker 1: we just can't deal with those emotions. We want to
Speaker 1: run away from those emotions. But you know, the research
Speaker 1: shows that if you just take time to accept those emotions,
Speaker 1: like hang out with them for a while, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe really just like ride the wave. On our podcast,
Speaker 1: we talk a lot about urge surfing. So I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna sit with this sadness, you know, for a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes, or I'm just going to sit with this
Speaker 1: anxiety for a couple of minutes. It's not going to
Speaker 1: feel great. But the you know, the research tends to
Speaker 1: show that emotions work like a wave. It'll crest and
Speaker 1: kind of go up, but then it'll subside and go
Speaker 1: down and you'll get through it. And so counterintuitively, one
Speaker 1: of the ways I deal with the negative emotions that
Speaker 1: come with uncertainty and change is to really sit with them,
Speaker 1: you know. And I've been you know, you were talking
Speaker 1: about personal issues that you're going through. I have a
Speaker 1: really close friend who's going through a really scary health
Speaker 1: diagnosis right now. That's come with a lot of uncertainty,
Speaker 1: a lot of fear for me, and I've really just
Speaker 1: done some like quick meditations where I just sit with
Speaker 1: that and notice how it feels and kind of let
Speaker 1: it ride out. And oddly enough, you can get through
Speaker 1: negative emotions and kind of sitting with them makes you
Speaker 1: realize like, actually, I'm strong enough to hang out with
Speaker 1: some sadness for a little bit, like I'll be okay.
Speaker 1: And that for me has been incredibly powerful. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love hearing that, and I'm so sorry about your friend.
Speaker 1: I absolutely think that's right. And the more you sit
Speaker 1: in negative emotions, the more they lose power over you,
Speaker 1: and that's the most powerful part of it all. I
Speaker 1: interviewed a guy named Ramsey for a slight change and
Speaker 1: this guy, when he was twenty, woke up with profound tinitis,
Speaker 1: so a high pitched, high frequency ringing in his ear
Speaker 1: that has been permanent ever since. It is a permanent
Speaker 1: fixture of his life that every waking moment of every
Speaker 1: single day he hears a blaring siren in his left ear.
Speaker 1: And he thought, initially the antidote to this is a
Speaker 1: medical solution, right, how do I fix this? How do
Speaker 1: I fix this? And over time he actually put what
Speaker 1: you've just said into practice, which is, let me be
Speaker 1: at peace with this sound, let me embrace it, let
Speaker 1: me reinterpret this sound is not an enemy that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to swing a baseball bat at, but as just
Speaker 1: a presence in my life that I acknowledge and I
Speaker 1: accept it. Sometimes I don't love it, but I don't
Speaker 1: hate it either, And that was actually his cure. His
Speaker 1: care to his tenitis did not have medical tones to it.
Speaker 1: It was a psychological shift in how he perceived this
Speaker 1: intrusive thing that had happened in his brain. And he said, today,
Speaker 1: you know, it just doesn't have power over him in
Speaker 1: the way that it did before. It doesn't bother him,
Speaker 1: doesn't irk him in the way he said, even now.
Speaker 1: You know, I can close my eyes and it's there
Speaker 1: and I hear. It hasn't changed in its intensity at
Speaker 1: all over the years, but my relationship with it has changed.
Speaker 1: And I thought to myself, if he can get if
Speaker 1: he can make peace with the blaring siren in his head,
Speaker 1: like I can deal with these feelings of sadness, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think it's so powerful, and it might be
Speaker 1: a great way to sort of end with this idea
Speaker 1: of allowing, you know, I think once you get to
Speaker 1: the point where you can allow some change in your life,
Speaker 1: even if it's unwanted change, what you often find is
Speaker 1: that it leads to more growth, more resilience, more positives
Speaker 1: than you really expect. And so Maya thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on this podcast with me and talking
Speaker 1: with me about the science of change. Listeners, I hope
Speaker 1: it's changed your mind about change to listen to this,
Speaker 1: and that you've very very meta and that you've gotten
Speaker 1: some tips that you can use to feel a little
Speaker 1: bit happier. Well. As you know, Laurie, I love any
Speaker 1: excuse to chat with you, so thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me on. Awesome. Thanks so much. Thanks everyone,
Speaker 1: We'll see you soon. The Happiness Lab is co written
Speaker 1: and produced by Ryan Dilley. Our original music was composed
Speaker 1: by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by
Speaker 1: Evan Biola. Joseph Fridman checked our facts. Sophie Crane mckibbon
Speaker 1: edited our scripts. Emily and Vaughan offered additional production support.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Mila Belle, Carly mcgliori, Heather Fame, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Danielle Lucarne, Maya Kanig, Nicole Morano, Eric Sandler, Royston Baserve,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Dars that Pinus Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. And meet doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Sanders