Speaker 1: At nine, I auditioned for the Juilliard School of Music
Speaker 1: in New York. I would have ten hours of classes.
Speaker 1: I was achieving my big dreams until one day I
Speaker 1: heard a popping sound, and doctors eventually told me that
Speaker 1: it was a career ending injury. Without it, I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure anymore who I was and who I could be.
Speaker 2: Maya Shanka is a cognitive scientist who studies how our
Speaker 2: identities are formed, how they break, and how we rebuild
Speaker 2: after life doesn't go to plan. But what makes Maya
Speaker 2: so special is the way she translates complex science into
Speaker 2: deeply human insight.
Speaker 1: A reason that we might not feel as connected to
Speaker 1: one another from my vantage point as a cognitive scientist,
Speaker 1: is that we haven't figured out a deeper version of
Speaker 1: our identity. When we think about self identity, we have
Speaker 1: to remember that, of course, it serves a lot of
Speaker 1: purpose in our lives. The challenge, though, is that when
Speaker 1: life makes other plans, change can serve as a moment
Speaker 1: of revelation for people. At the beginning of the change.
Speaker 1: If you're feeling daunted by it and you think I
Speaker 1: can't possibly get through this change, don't forget that the
Speaker 1: person enduring. It will be different from the person you
Speaker 1: are right now. There is going to be a new
Speaker 1: version of Rady on the other side of change, who
Speaker 1: is different in ways that are likely to be extraordinary.
Speaker 2: I'm Rady Wukah and on my podcast A Really Good Cry,
Speaker 2: we embrace the messy and the beautiful, providing a space
Speaker 2: for raw, unfielded conversations that celebrate vulnerability and allow you
Speaker 2: to tune in to learn, connect and find comfort together. Maya,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on to A Really
Speaker 2: Good Cry. I'm so excited to have you here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Raddy, It's such a pleasure.
Speaker 2: I know you went on Jay's podcast. We're just talking
Speaker 2: about Amaya has been on Jay's podcast how many years ago,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, twenty twenty one, And when I mentioned
Speaker 2: that I was having Maya on my podcast to Jay,
Speaker 2: he was like, she is the sweetest person. He was like,
Speaker 2: I'm so excited you're having her on and make sure
Speaker 2: I'm here when she comes. And he doesn't usually say
Speaker 2: that about my guest because he doesn't usually know them,
Speaker 2: but he absolutely adores you, and he was so excited.
Speaker 2: So I'm really really happy we get to have this conversation,
Speaker 2: I'm glad too.
Speaker 1: And as I was also saying before we started recording,
Speaker 1: when I came by your place for Jay's podcast, you
Speaker 1: open the door and I just felt like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm encountering a truly special human being. You had so
Speaker 1: much warmth and radiance, and despite the fact that I
Speaker 1: was a stranger to you, you immediately made me feel
Speaker 1: so accepted and like, what an incredible gift that you
Speaker 1: can give to people that you meet in your life,
Speaker 1: that kind of love and attention and care. And so
Speaker 1: it's so rare that I have an encounter with someone
Speaker 1: who makes me feel the way that you did within
Speaker 1: seconds of meeting.
Speaker 2: Okay me, you properly has made me feel exactly the
Speaker 2: same way about you. I'm not just saying it because
Speaker 2: you said that about me, but I think it's always
Speaker 2: you know, whenever I think about energy, I think there's
Speaker 2: so much about the reciprocation of it. It's like you
Speaker 2: you only have that interaction with that exchange when you
Speaker 2: also hold those qualities. And I've really noticed that in people,
Speaker 2: even watching we're talking about my grandma, even watching my
Speaker 2: grandma do that with people, it's like the energy is
Speaker 2: always a reciprocal thing, like you can really fill the
Speaker 2: blog when it's.
Speaker 1: Not that yes, and when it's not there, I'm like
Speaker 1: my brain enters SOS mode, start short circuiting, like why
Speaker 1: is this person not giving me anything back? So it's
Speaker 1: definitely a struggle.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, and you definitely have that energy to
Speaker 2: thank you. I wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: your new book that's just come out, The Other side
Speaker 2: of Change, who we become when life makes other plans.
Speaker 2: Have it right here in my hand, and I had
Speaker 2: a beautiful read thrower, and I would like to kind
Speaker 2: of gave me an insight into your life. Number one,
Speaker 2: So I feel like I kind of already know you
Speaker 2: before you've even sat in front of me. But I
Speaker 2: would love to go back to how you went from
Speaker 2: trying to be a professional violinist, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: is incredible. It's one of my favorite instruments. I also
Speaker 2: paid to when I was younger, not to the degree
Speaker 2: you did till I was maybe like twelve or thirteen,
Speaker 2: but you went from being a violinist to now being
Speaker 2: a cognitive scientist. So give me the rundown of.
Speaker 1: How that happened. It's a very very unusual trajectory. As
Speaker 1: you mentioned, from the time I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: my obsession was the violin. So I remember my mom
Speaker 1: going up to her attic and bringing down my grandmother's
Speaker 1: old violin that she had played in India and in
Speaker 1: Burma growing up as a little girl. She had played
Speaker 1: in Indian classical style, and my older three siblings had
Speaker 1: rejected the violin on the grounds it wasn't cool enough.
Speaker 1: But when my mom opened the case, I felt something magical,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, actually rothy if it was in part
Speaker 1: because I was so close with my grandmother. Whenever we
Speaker 1: would visit her during our summer vacations to India, we
Speaker 1: were just attached at the hip. So I would sleep
Speaker 1: next to her on the linoleum floor with our sorry
Speaker 1: cloths folded up with pillows. And when she would go
Speaker 1: into the pooja room, the prayer room, I would sit
Speaker 1: next to her and just try to emulate her rocking motions.
Speaker 1: And I would stand next to her in the kitchen
Speaker 1: when she was cooking delicious meals. So I was obsessed
Speaker 1: with my grandmother, and I wonder if my little kid
Speaker 1: brain thought this is a way of bridging some of
Speaker 1: the distance that exists between me and her because we're
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of miles apart. And so I asked
Speaker 1: my mom very quickly for a pint sized violin of
Speaker 1: my own, and I immediately fell in love. So this
Speaker 1: was at age six, and then at nine, I auditioned
Speaker 1: for the Juilliard School of Music in New York. That
Speaker 1: began a very intense period where I would wake up
Speaker 1: at four thirty in the morning every Saturday, catch a
Speaker 1: train to go to New York from Connecticut. I would
Speaker 1: have ten hours of classes, come home at night. But
Speaker 1: I never ever complained about it. I was never frustrated
Speaker 1: by it because I felt like I had found my
Speaker 1: true passion. And when I was in high school, For
Speaker 1: those who follow classical music, they'll know the renowned violinist
Speaker 1: Itzac Pearlman invited me to be his private student.
Speaker 2: Wow. And for me at.
Speaker 1: Thirteen, that's incredible, And for me that was the vote
Speaker 1: of confidence. I feel like I needed to think maybe
Speaker 1: I had a shit because you know, when you're in
Speaker 1: a pressure cooker environment like Juilliard, you have all sorts
Speaker 1: of insecurities.
Speaker 2: Cool, So I.
Speaker 1: Did not think in that environment I was going to
Speaker 1: be able to thrive. But when Pearlman took me on
Speaker 1: as a student, I thought, okay, there might be a chance, right,
Speaker 1: And everything was going according to plan, and I was
Speaker 1: achieving my big dreams until one day I overstretched my
Speaker 1: finger on a single note. I overstretched my pinky finger,
Speaker 1: and I heard a popping sound, and doctors eventually told
Speaker 1: me that it was a career ending injury.
Speaker 2: No way.
Speaker 1: And I was in denial for so long. Right, imagine
Speaker 1: you're fifteen, Your biggest dream has been taken away from you.
Speaker 1: And so I was playing through pain and I had
Speaker 1: surgeries and all these alternative treatments and took excess and
Speaker 1: anti inflammatories, everything that I could possibly do to restore
Speaker 1: my big dream. But eventually I had to sort of
Speaker 1: face the facts. And yeah, it was just such a
Speaker 1: heartbreaking moment for me.
Speaker 2: Of course, that was fifteen years old. You said, right,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, imagine being in a position where you've
Speaker 2: already had a full dream happen in your life by
Speaker 2: the age of fifteen. Right, how did you at that age,
Speaker 2: Because obviously that's an age where we don't often go
Speaker 2: through something that's so traumatic, Like not many of us
Speaker 2: go through things that that you're living life as a
Speaker 2: kid and fine, you have to go to school, but
Speaker 2: not much else happens. And as someone who had to
Speaker 2: go through that at the age of fifteen, what were
Speaker 2: some of the things that you noticed in yourself? How
Speaker 2: did it affect you as you grew up then? And
Speaker 2: then how did you end up in the work that
Speaker 2: you do now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such a wonderful question. Reflecting back, I realized
Speaker 1: that there was something really curious about my grief, which
Speaker 1: is that I wasn't just grieving the loss of the violin.
Speaker 1: I was grieving the loss of myself. And I think
Speaker 1: this is common for so many of us. We often
Speaker 1: don't realize how much something has come to define us,
Speaker 1: how formative it was for us, until we lose that thing. Right,
Speaker 1: and the violin had almost become an ex of my
Speaker 1: body at this point, right, I mean, to this day, Robbie,
Speaker 1: my right shoulder is slightly elevated compared to my left
Speaker 1: because of all the hours I started doing this, like
Speaker 1: my body literally grew around the instrument, and so without it,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure anymore who I was and who I
Speaker 1: could be. And you realize too, that your identity is,
Speaker 1: in my case as a musician, is entangled with so
Speaker 1: many other parts of your self confidence, in your well being.
Speaker 1: So one thing that I faced a lot as a
Speaker 1: kid was I was bullied a lot at school. So
Speaker 1: I was one of a few brown kids in a
Speaker 1: predominantly Caucasian community, and the girls in my neighborhood were
Speaker 1: particularly cruel. So I was a very insecure child. I
Speaker 1: cried a lot because I was just so I have
Speaker 1: a very sensitive interior and so when they said really
Speaker 1: mean things, I internalized it and I took it as
Speaker 1: evidence that I was broken in some way. And music
Speaker 1: and that musical world was a place. It was a
Speaker 1: refuge for me, actually because unlike my hometown, Juilliard was
Speaker 1: an international school, so there were students who had come
Speaker 1: from all over the world who were studying here, and
Speaker 1: the color of my skin was irrelevant. I mean, I
Speaker 1: just I felt so accepted and like I really belonged
Speaker 1: in that community. And so that was also entangled with
Speaker 1: my identity. So it's like, oh, wow, I've lost this
Speaker 1: other pillar of my life. And so I think that
Speaker 1: was the first indication to me. And you know, now
Speaker 1: I study change, but that one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: change can be so challenging to navigate is because it
Speaker 1: does threaten our self identity. Yeah, it makes us question
Speaker 1: who we are at this really fundamental level. And I
Speaker 1: don't think I was prepared for that.
Speaker 2: How does someone balance the idea of wanting to be
Speaker 2: something attaching themselves to this identity that they desire, that
Speaker 2: they really want. And you know, we hear this idea
Speaker 2: of okay, well you have to fake it till you
Speaker 2: make it, or you have to believe that you already
Speaker 2: are something before you even go into If this is
Speaker 2: what you want, then you have to almost believe that
Speaker 2: you've already achieved it. So how does someone go from
Speaker 2: having that information where Okay, if this is what I want,
Speaker 2: it's all I should think about, It's everything I should
Speaker 2: become to then also being detached from this idea of
Speaker 2: if something changes, I have to be okay with it, Like,
Speaker 2: how can someone navigate that?
Speaker 1: Okay, that, first of all, that is so beautifully articulated.
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking that question, because you're getting actually
Speaker 1: at the core of one of the theses of my book.
Speaker 1: So when we think about self identity, we have to
Speaker 1: remember that, of course it serves a lot of purpose
Speaker 1: in our lives, so we don't want to do a
Speaker 1: way with these identity anchors either. Right, if you identify
Speaker 1: as a mom, or a podcaster, or a writer or
Speaker 1: an athlete, it breeds instant solidarity and camaraderie with your
Speaker 1: fellow peers who are also in that spaces. Right, Oh,
Speaker 1: you're an athlete too. Oh great, we have a point
Speaker 1: of connection. So that's wonderful. What's a wonderful aspect of
Speaker 1: attaching ourselves seting regularly to a role. We also feel
Speaker 1: meaning and purpose when we wake up every day. If
Speaker 1: I'm a musician, I know what my hours are going
Speaker 1: to be devoted to on any given day. It helps
Speaker 1: stave off some of the existential inks that I might
Speaker 1: otherwise feel. So that's another benefit of having a really clear,
Speaker 1: strong identity. The challenge, though, is that when life makes
Speaker 1: other plans and it threatens the role or label that
Speaker 1: you've so for so long attached yourself to, you can
Speaker 1: then feel very destabilized. So one insight I've had only
Speaker 1: in recent years, I wish I had had this insight
Speaker 1: as a fifteen year old is to identify yourself not
Speaker 1: simply by what you do, but by why you do
Speaker 1: those things. So when I ask myself, well, Maya, what
Speaker 1: did you love about playing the violin? I realized that
Speaker 1: at its core, what drew me to it as a
Speaker 1: six year old and a nine year old and a
Speaker 1: twelve year old was that it was a vehicle for
Speaker 1: emotionally connecting with people. I was able to generate feelings
Speaker 1: within myself that I never felt before through music and
Speaker 1: to share that with my fellow musicians. Or if I
Speaker 1: was on stage playing in front of an audience, there
Speaker 1: might be someone in the audience that was feeling something
Speaker 1: for the first time that they never felt before. If
Speaker 1: I was successful in my role as a musician and
Speaker 1: so forging that kind of emotional intimacy was so special.
Speaker 1: So if identify as someone who just thrives on emotional connection,
Speaker 1: then the question becomes through what other outlets can I
Speaker 1: express this part of myself? So when life throws me
Speaker 1: that curveball and I can't do the thing that I'm
Speaker 1: doing right now, can I find other means of expressing
Speaker 1: this core part of myself? And I love this insight
Speaker 1: because it's a source of stability when we're in the
Speaker 1: midst of change, right It was a reminder to me
Speaker 1: just because I lost the violin didn't mean that I
Speaker 1: lost what led me to love it in the first place.
Speaker 1: That part of me was still so fully intact, It
Speaker 1: was still robust, It could still serve as a compass
Speaker 1: guiding me towards my next steps. That reason, I would
Speaker 1: urge everyone who's listening or watching to ask themselves, what
Speaker 1: is my why? What is the thing that makes me tick.
Speaker 1: Maybe it is giving back to your community, Maybe it
Speaker 1: is caring for others, Maybe it's learning something new. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's finding ways for creative expression to unfold in your life.
Speaker 1: Whatever your why is, and be non judgmental about it.
Speaker 1: Is just the thing that lights you up, that like
Speaker 1: made you excited as a kid. Make that a part
Speaker 1: of your identity, because it will be a north star
Speaker 1: when you have to figure out what comes next.
Speaker 2: I love what you just said. I had so many
Speaker 2: thoughts that came from from those few sentences, And the
Speaker 2: first thing I thought about was, you know you mentioned
Speaker 2: how it created a point of connection for you, And
Speaker 2: do you think a lot of loneliness right now in
Speaker 2: the world and in you know, the even though we
Speaker 2: have so much access to so many people. People seem
Speaker 2: to be getting lonely and nonia. Could that be because
Speaker 2: they're struggling to figure out what the identity is.
Speaker 1: I've never thought about that, and I think you're really
Speaker 1: onto something. I think think also a reason that we
Speaker 1: might not feel as connected to one another from my
Speaker 1: vantage point as a cognitive scientist, is that we haven't
Speaker 1: figured out a deeper version of our identity. So we're
Speaker 1: always asking kids what do you want to be when
Speaker 1: you grow up? Which is a really harmful message because
Speaker 1: we are inherently implying that it should be about the
Speaker 1: role they occupy, or the label they give themselves or
Speaker 1: the job they do. We never ask them who do
Speaker 1: you want to be when you grow up? And when
Speaker 1: you realize what your mission is, what your purpose is
Speaker 1: in life, right, and this is obviously work that you
Speaker 1: and Jay are doing every day, then you actually feel
Speaker 1: connections across domains, across disciplines that make you feel so
Speaker 1: much more connected to all these people that you meet
Speaker 1: in your life. And because of my background, I'm so
Speaker 1: focused actually on what unites us, right. We all have
Speaker 1: a shared psychology, We all often have a common set
Speaker 1: of goals, which is to be kind, to one another,
Speaker 1: to meaningfully contribute to our communities and to the people
Speaker 1: that we love, to engage in appropriate amounts of self compassion,
Speaker 1: because we often reserve so little compassion for ourselves and
Speaker 1: so much for others, And so when we have these
Speaker 1: kinds of goals, we realize, oh my gosh, we're actually
Speaker 1: so much less isolated than we think. We have so
Speaker 1: much more in common with one another. And what you're
Speaker 1: making me realize in this moment for the first time,
Speaker 1: which is why, by the way, I'm loving this conversation
Speaker 1: you're giving me all these new thoughts, is maybe if
Speaker 1: we were to be clear about what our whys were,
Speaker 1: we would start to feel so much more unity with
Speaker 1: the people in our lives, even if they are doing
Speaker 1: wildly different things, even if their stories look so different
Speaker 1: on their surface than ours do. We would realize that
Speaker 1: there's actually so many points of connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's this deep intention behind your identity. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think about even if you have this. I was
Speaker 2: thinking about myself, and you know, I always had this
Speaker 2: desire to be adopt and at first it was because
Speaker 2: I thought it was like a prestigious thing to be
Speaker 2: doing as Popla oulature. And then when I realized I
Speaker 2: couldn't be a doctor the first because I didn't get
Speaker 2: the grades for it. The first thing I thought about
Speaker 2: was when I know, I want to do something to
Speaker 2: do with children like that was always something I wanted
Speaker 2: to do, whether it was a pediatric doctor or whatever.
Speaker 2: The next thing I decided to do, I needed to
Speaker 2: be with children. I didn't know why I wanted that
Speaker 2: or but it was a really deep feeling that I had.
Speaker 2: And so then my mum recommended that I go and
Speaker 2: do nutrition, and I was like, Okay, well, if I
Speaker 2: do nutrition, I want to be a children's nutritionists. And
Speaker 2: I realized a big part of that was because I,
Speaker 2: as a child struggled so much with my weight and
Speaker 2: it was something that has definitely shaped a lot of
Speaker 2: who I am, and going into something like that was
Speaker 2: now that I realized something where I could help people
Speaker 2: in a way that I struggled. And then I did
Speaker 2: six years of training to be this clinical dietitian in
Speaker 2: a hospital. I worked there for less than a month.
Speaker 2: I got married, Jay got a job in New York.
Speaker 2: I moved to New York. I couldn't do any of
Speaker 2: that anymore, and at that point, I felt like my
Speaker 2: whole identity that I had built because one was an
Speaker 2: identity of being someone who worked in a hospital that
Speaker 2: I absolutely loved and I wanted to be that person.
Speaker 2: I've been trying to be that person for such a
Speaker 2: long time. And then there was also this idea or
Speaker 2: finally I think, I know what I want to do
Speaker 2: and I'm doing it, and then I go somewhere where
Speaker 2: I can't do any of that. I was on a
Speaker 2: spouse visa. I couldn't work there, I couldn't do any
Speaker 2: of it, and.
Speaker 1: That slight change of plans. Yeah, exactly, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: And in that moment I was like, okay, well that
Speaker 2: was the one use I had. What else I'm not
Speaker 2: even going to do? Everything has gone. What is the
Speaker 2: point now? And then what I now realize is that
Speaker 2: that intention that you have, if it is a strong
Speaker 2: intention and a deep desire, and if it is beyond yourself,
Speaker 2: A lot of the time these what you were saying,
Speaker 2: the surface level identity, you know, things that we create
Speaker 2: about ourselves. It's a lot of the time based on
Speaker 2: the surface level desires of I want these people to
Speaker 2: think this. It's it's a very outwardly thing versus if
Speaker 2: you have a thread that can be threaded through no
Speaker 2: matter what job you do, no matter what role you play,
Speaker 2: then you actually realize that that deep desire can be
Speaker 2: put into place, like you said, in so many different ways.
Speaker 2: It can be on an online platform, it can be
Speaker 2: a one to one thing that you're doing for someone.
Speaker 2: It can be in the house that you live in
Speaker 2: with your own children, with your own partner, and you
Speaker 2: can feel justice fulfilled if that intention is coming from.
Speaker 1: The right place, that's exactly right, and it turns out subconsciously.
Speaker 1: I've kind of done this because think about the work
Speaker 1: that I do today. I host a slight change of plans.
Speaker 1: What's at its core deep emotional connection. I get to
Speaker 1: cut through all the platitudes and just get right to you. Okay,
Speaker 1: what was the hardest moment of your life? Writing my
Speaker 1: book The Other Side of Change, where I did long
Speaker 1: form interviewing for years with the same people. That's also
Speaker 1: about forging deep emotional connection. And so I want to
Speaker 1: share one quick story with you, which is I heard
Speaker 1: from someone who he had listened to my ted talk
Speaker 1: and heard about this why versus what distinction? So he
Speaker 1: was a Harvard trained human rights lawyer, such a successful dude,
Speaker 1: Rhodes scholar, etc. And then he got plagued by long
Speaker 1: COVID and he became more or less incapacitated, right, incredible
Speaker 1: amounts of brain fog, unable to perform his daily duties,
Speaker 1: had to take a step back from all the legal
Speaker 1: work he was doing. And then he asked himself, well,
Speaker 1: what's my why? And he said, well, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, I like advocating for underrepresented communities. That's
Speaker 1: why I'm a human rights lawyer. He said, but I
Speaker 1: can't do that now. And then he said, but maya
Speaker 1: guess what I figured out. I can actually still achieve
Speaker 1: that why by being an advocate for the long COVID community.
Speaker 1: So now he is all over Scott, Shout out to Scott.
Speaker 1: He's representing people that neither rights to be acknowledged. He
Speaker 1: is making sure that he's a spokesperson for everyone who's
Speaker 1: struggling with the aftermath of a COVID infection. And I'm
Speaker 1: so proud of him for discovering that there was still
Speaker 1: some means by which he could express this fundamental part
Speaker 1: of who he is, despite the severe constraints and limitations
Speaker 1: he faces.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think that we, you know, there's so much
Speaker 2: that we're taught when we're younger, like this is good,
Speaker 2: this is bad, these are negative emotions, these are positive emotions,
Speaker 2: And I think that really restricts us in being able
Speaker 2: to see that the only thing that is constant, as
Speaker 2: you've said, is changed. The change is something that always
Speaker 2: always happens. We see, there are things that we've categorized
Speaker 2: as negative change and things that we've categorized as positive change.
Speaker 2: And I think sometimes that's where the issue lies. Where
Speaker 2: something negative that we perceive as negative happens in our
Speaker 2: life and we think that it is a downfall. We
Speaker 2: think that we can't go anywhere from it. But what
Speaker 2: if the thing that you're perceiving as negative is exactly
Speaker 2: what we're supposed to happen for you to fulfill the
Speaker 2: dream that you have. How do you help people shift
Speaker 2: their mindset around change and the perception that we have
Speaker 2: of things that are good or bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I always say that we must approach change with
Speaker 1: a profound amount of humility, because, like you said, we
Speaker 1: tend to label changes at their outset, this is a
Speaker 1: negative change, this is a positive change. But by and large,
Speaker 1: most people that I've interviewed have been wildly surprised and
Speaker 1: kind of taken aback by the events in their life
Speaker 1: that they assumed would definitely be positive or definitely been negative. Right,
Speaker 1: the reality is much more complex. So we in general,
Speaker 1: and this is what the research in cognitive science shows,
Speaker 1: are very bad at predicting how we are going to
Speaker 1: feel about future events. So we're bad aspective forecasters, and
Speaker 1: we're bad for a bunch of reasons. But one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why we get this wrong, why, for example,
Speaker 1: when you first moved to New York you thought, oh
Speaker 1: my god, all my dreams are over. This is the
Speaker 1: end for me, is because we forget that we too
Speaker 1: will be altered by the experiences we're going through, that
Speaker 1: we too are constantly changing. So there's a bias known
Speaker 1: as the end of history illusion, which says that we
Speaker 1: fully acknowledge we've changed considerably in the past. So if
Speaker 1: you showed me footage of ten year old maya twenty
Speaker 1: year old Maya, first of all, I would cringe, and
Speaker 1: sightly I'd be like, oh my god, I am such
Speaker 1: a different person today. Not even I can't even relate
Speaker 1: to that young person. But if you were to ask me, Robbie, well,
Speaker 1: how much do you think you're going to change moving forward?
Speaker 1: I would be like, oh, no, girl, I'm done changing.
Speaker 1: What you see is what you get. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the finished product. Researchers say it's like a watershed moment
Speaker 1: in which we falsely believe that the person we are
Speaker 1: right now in this moment is the version of us
Speaker 1: that's here to stay right, that we're going to be
Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives. But of course we
Speaker 1: are going to keep changing, and when we have a
Speaker 1: really big event that happens in our life, positive or negative,
Speaker 1: it is going to accelerate those internal changes. Being thrust
Speaker 1: into a new reality and facing the new demands and
Speaker 1: stresses of that environment will unlock new capabilities, new perspectives,
Speaker 1: new values, ways of being in the world that we
Speaker 1: simply never saw coming. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of optimism in that message. And that's what is the
Speaker 1: most helpful reframe, which is at the beginning of a change,
Speaker 1: if you're feeling daunted by it and you think I
Speaker 1: can't possibly get through this change, don't forget that the
Speaker 1: person enduring it will be different from the person you
Speaker 1: are right. Now, there's another version. There's a reason my
Speaker 1: book is called The Other Side of Change. There is
Speaker 1: going to be a new version of Rathi on the
Speaker 1: other side of change, a new version of Maya on
Speaker 1: the other side of change, who is different in ways
Speaker 1: that are likely to be extraordinary, right and will help
Speaker 1: you overcome and actually explore new possibilities in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of change that you never saw.
Speaker 2: When you were saying unlock, I was thinking about this
Speaker 2: is so random, But I was thinking about those video
Speaker 2: games where you know, it's like a supersonic type of
Speaker 2: character and collecting all these coins along the way, have
Speaker 2: you seen, And then sometimes they have to like bang
Speaker 2: into boxes to collect all these coins, and some of
Speaker 2: them have to like do all these things where they
Speaker 2: get so flustered and they've got the dizzy spells going
Speaker 2: off on top of them. But al those things are
Speaker 2: unlocking all these weapons or these superpowers that they're able
Speaker 2: to collect with them to use when the time is right.
Speaker 2: And I was like, that is exactly how I'm now
Speaker 2: imagining change to be for a person. When you said unlock,
Speaker 2: I was like, that's such a positive way of putting it.
Speaker 2: It's saying that even though it may seem really difficult
Speaker 2: and it's there feels like there's a lot of resistance.
Speaker 2: There is something being unlocked in you. There is actly
Speaker 2: a new, different part of you that you would not
Speaker 2: have been able to access had you not done this correct.
Speaker 2: That's really fun to think about. Scary, but also how
Speaker 2: incredible that that that can happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hope giving because I think one of the
Speaker 1: arguments I'm making in the book is change can serve
Speaker 1: as a moment of revelation for people. So there's an
Speaker 1: interesting etymology. If you just love you do a nerdy yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know, I know your listeners enjoy the nerdy stuff.
Speaker 1: When a big negative change happens in our lives, right
Speaker 1: when that proverbial anvil falls from the sky, it can
Speaker 1: feel like we're in the middle of a personal apocalypse,
Speaker 1: right like the world that we came to new and
Speaker 1: feel stable in is no longer available to us. And
Speaker 1: what's so interesting about the word apocalypse is that it
Speaker 1: actually comes from the Greek word apocalypsis, which means revelation.
Speaker 1: And so that's really instructive because what it's saying is, yes,
Speaker 1: change can upend us, but It can also reveal really
Speaker 1: valuable things to us about our views of the world,
Speaker 1: things that we might want to question or challenge because
Speaker 1: maybe they're holding us back in some way, aspects of
Speaker 1: ourselves that were previously hidden from view that are now
Speaker 1: surfacing for the first time. On a personal level, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about my formative experience with change as a kid.
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with an adult version of this, which is
Speaker 1: I've for so long assumed that I would become a
Speaker 1: mom one day. It's probably the earliest identity I ever
Speaker 1: associated myself with. And in part I'm sure that was
Speaker 1: because of cultural influences. Right, I really believe I absorbed
Speaker 1: subliminal messages saying like you're worth as a woman comes
Speaker 1: from eventually having children, Right, that is why you're valuable.
Speaker 1: And I also felt an inherent desire to become a mom,
Speaker 1: and I, like you, I love kids, and so for
Speaker 1: so long I have just assumed that one day I
Speaker 1: would become a mom. And over the last seven plus years,
Speaker 1: my husband and I have had a really challenging journey.
Speaker 1: We've had to navigate many obstacles, many disappointments, many heartbreaks,
Speaker 1: and I remember on the night of the second miscarriage,
Speaker 1: when we found out that our surrogate had miscarried and
Speaker 1: that we lost identical twin girls, I really did feel
Speaker 1: totally empty, like my life went from color to grayscale
Speaker 1: in a second. And I think that is in part
Speaker 1: because of exactly what we're talking about. And I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite understand why I was feeling like a broken version
Speaker 1: of myself again until I realized that I had, through
Speaker 1: all of these messages over the course of my life,
Speaker 1: felt like I no longer had self worth in some
Speaker 1: fundamental way unless I achieved this goal of mine. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure that I was carrying that subconsciously for so long.
Speaker 1: But it's only when change strikes and you're forced to
Speaker 1: confront those beliefs that you're carrying, that the beliefs are
Speaker 1: making you feel the way that you do about yourself
Speaker 1: and about the world, that you're really given the opportunity
Speaker 1: to re examine them anew and to start asking yourself
Speaker 1: provocative questions like well, why do I believe that my
Speaker 1: self worth has to come from this place? Why do
Speaker 1: I think that I can't live a full life if
Speaker 1: I'm not a mother, I'm an aunt to six nieces
Speaker 1: and nephews. I found all these beautiful ways in my
Speaker 1: life to give back. I mean this hearkens back to
Speaker 1: the conversation about my why I just love. I just
Speaker 1: love loving. I mean, that's kind of my thing. So
Speaker 1: I can find ways to love in so many other domains,
Speaker 1: but for me, it has served as this really valuable
Speaker 1: point of reflection in My husband and I have had
Speaker 1: so many conversations where he's like, Maya, we need to
Speaker 1: unpack this, like why is so much of your self
Speaker 1: worth tied up in this identity and then slowly peeling
Speaker 1: back the layers and being like, well, growing up, I
Speaker 1: heard my Indian aunties and uncles talking about parenthood in
Speaker 1: this way or that way, and so I just think
Speaker 1: that it serves as a wonderful moment when change can
Speaker 1: where we take a step back and we reevaluate all
Speaker 1: of these beliefs that we assumed were sacred, immutable truths
Speaker 1: about the world that actually are worthy of re examination,
Speaker 1: because in daily life, we're not waking up every day
Speaker 1: thinking what beliefs should I revisit today?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And that's why change They bring them to the fore
Speaker 1: and they make them really salient.
Speaker 2: That's a first, Sorry you went through that, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's such a difficult journey for many women
Speaker 2: that go through this. And I guess what a question
Speaker 2: that came from that was you talked about when you
Speaker 2: come to face a challenge, that's when all your beliefs
Speaker 2: are sometimes heightened.
Speaker 1: Yes, and revealed to you sometimes for the first time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But for people who want to start maneuvering this and
Speaker 2: want to start becoming really aware of their belief system,
Speaker 2: want to really start becoming aware of where their resistance is.
Speaker 2: Are there any practices that you've done throughout your days, Like,
Speaker 2: are they daily practices people can do to help them
Speaker 2: navigate change better, or when change does come or fear
Speaker 2: does come, for them to face it in a more
Speaker 2: logical way that benefits them absolutely.
Speaker 1: And importantly, I wanted to make sure that I wrote
Speaker 1: the other side of change, not just for people who
Speaker 1: are in the throes of change, but those who are
Speaker 1: trying to renew a relationship with a past change. Maybe
Speaker 1: they still feel very troubled by it and they want
Speaker 1: to unpack it and understand what was at the core
Speaker 1: of their angst or their anxiety. And also for people
Speaker 1: who are trying to get ahead of future changes. So
Speaker 1: I don't want people to have to go through what
Speaker 1: I went through or many mistakes that I made. I
Speaker 1: want them to learn from my experiences so that and
Speaker 1: from the experiences of the people I interview, so that
Speaker 1: they don't repeat the same mistakes and they're armed with
Speaker 1: the knowledge and the toolkit. So the best advice comes
Speaker 1: from research by economists and psychologists that show you should
Speaker 1: think about your beliefs as hypotheses that should be tested. Okay,
Speaker 1: So one thing that's important for people to know is
Speaker 1: that all of us form what's called the narrative identity
Speaker 1: over time. That is a story we tell ourselves about
Speaker 1: who we are and about how our lives are unfolding,
Speaker 1: and our brains really value you consistency in this narrative.
Speaker 1: We don't like for there to be holes. So you
Speaker 1: can think of the narrative identity as this tapestry. If
Speaker 1: I take one belief and I start to jiggle that tapestry,
Speaker 1: everything kind of gets distorted me. Right, So there's a
Speaker 1: high cost to actually re engaging with our beliefs and
Speaker 1: new but it's such a critical part of the growth process, right,
Speaker 1: And so to overcome this. What you want to do
Speaker 1: is interrogate your beliefs. Like you as a scientist, you
Speaker 1: ask yourself, how exactly did I arrive at this belief
Speaker 1: How did I get from point A to point B
Speaker 1: in my thinking? Would I have different beliefs if I
Speaker 1: had grown up in a different family, or had grown
Speaker 1: up in a different country, or in a different religious environment,
Speaker 1: or a different spiritual environment, or a different political environment. Right,
Speaker 1: you can also ask yourself in theory, what evidence would
Speaker 1: convince me to change my mind? And I love this
Speaker 1: one because it presupposes that you ought to be convinced
Speaker 1: in the base of new evidence.
Speaker 2: Right, get to debate yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And by the way, these are all techniques
Speaker 1: that have proven very effective in the context of influencing
Speaker 1: other people. But in my book, I wanted to turn
Speaker 1: it on yourself and say, well, how can you interrogate
Speaker 1: your own beliefs? And what's so interesting is one of
Speaker 1: the women Ingrid that I interviewed for the Other Side
Speaker 1: of Change, she grew up feeling profound shame around her
Speaker 1: family's heritage, her family's Colombian heritage and the indigenous practices
Speaker 1: that they engage with and she wouldn't share any of
Speaker 1: her family's stories with her boyfriend or any of her
Speaker 1: American friends. She was just very sheepish about it. And
Speaker 1: then she gets amnesia because she has a biking accident,
Speaker 1: and she loses all of her memories. And there's something
Speaker 1: so fascinating about the ways that her memory and the
Speaker 1: order in which her memories return, Her memories of her
Speaker 1: family's story and that rich heritage resurfaces and gets restored
Speaker 1: before her memory of her shame gets restored. Okay, so
Speaker 1: she first gets these stories coming back into her brain
Speaker 1: is flooded with all of these rich like all the
Speaker 1: rich folklore and the amazing water blessings and the tarot
Speaker 1: cards and what have you, and she is just filled
Speaker 1: with feelings of awe and reverence and wonder and she's like,
Speaker 1: I love these stories. Why have I never shared them
Speaker 1: with anyone? I need to tell everyone I know about them.
Speaker 1: And then only a few weeks later does the memory
Speaker 1: that she felt shame about them return, But it's too late.
Speaker 1: She's already made up her mind about that family heritage
Speaker 1: and love. I tried to choose by the way stories
Speaker 1: that were so exceptional in their nature, but wants to
Speaker 1: have a universal lesson that's buried within them. I love
Speaker 1: that it shows that there is such fragility in our
Speaker 1: belief systems. When Ingrid asked herself, why did I have
Speaker 1: so much shame around her family? It turns out that
Speaker 1: when she was a kid, her mom had cautioned her
Speaker 1: about sharing these stories publicly because she was worried that
Speaker 1: Ingrid might face discrimination or some backlash, or maybe even
Speaker 1: violence from people who didn't understand. But young Ingrid's mind
Speaker 1: interpreted that message as a sign and well, if I'm
Speaker 1: being told I can't talk about this, that probably means
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with this. And so it was a
Speaker 1: simple misunderstanding, right. And we forget sometimes that our belief
Speaker 1: systems are influenced by who the messenger was, what the
Speaker 1: emotional state was that we were in when we even
Speaker 1: receive those messages. Messages we receive in childhood are bound
Speaker 1: up with our sense of love and belonging. They're especially
Speaker 1: hard for us to challenge in these moments. But if
Speaker 1: we again take that critical lens and we ask ourselves, well,
Speaker 1: would these beliefs hold up with the people that I
Speaker 1: trust in my life? Right? Would they hold up given
Speaker 1: what I know about science and about what the facts say,
Speaker 1: then we get into that more curious mindset that unlocks
Speaker 1: changes in our belief system and in that process you
Speaker 1: might realize, oh, wow, these beliefs were really holding me
Speaker 1: back before. Now I can flourish. And just to add
Speaker 1: a PostScript to that, Ingrid went on to write a
Speaker 1: whole memoir about her family's culture and their history, and
Speaker 1: it was a Pulitzer Price finalist. So turns out her
Speaker 1: stories were globally embraced and I'm so proud of her
Speaker 1: for that kind of internal evolution. And again, that's the
Speaker 1: power of change. It can free you from chains that
Speaker 1: you had needlessly put on yourself in times past.
Speaker 2: A great story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible.
Speaker 2: I wanted to go back a little bit to do
Speaker 2: with you know, I have mostly, if not all, female
Speaker 2: listeners in this podcast, and I get a lot of DMS,
Speaker 2: and I have people in my own life that are
Speaker 2: really dealing with this identity shift of motherhood and whether
Speaker 2: it's because they've got polycystic ovary syndrome, whether it's they've
Speaker 2: tried IVF once, twice, three four times and it's been unsuccessful.
Speaker 2: And I guess something people really struggle with in within
Speaker 2: that is, how do I know when I just have
Speaker 2: to stop trying? Like, how do I know that I'm
Speaker 2: not supposed to based on my vision of myself as
Speaker 2: as part of my identity? How do I not how
Speaker 2: do I know that this is not something I should
Speaker 2: keep trying with until when? And so I would love
Speaker 2: to get your perspective on that and to how someone
Speaker 2: can really help the family members going through it, but
Speaker 2: also anything that they can do for themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm getting emotional just because I feel so much for
Speaker 1: people who are in this position. I'm a listener of
Speaker 1: your show, and I loved hearing the conversation you had
Speaker 1: the Jay about these exact topics, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't understand how much it can ruin a person's
Speaker 1: day to ask them questions like, see, you have kids, right,
Speaker 1: how many kids you have? I'm like, I don't have kids,
Speaker 1: but you're going to have them right? And there's just
Speaker 1: such a lack of appreciation for what we go through
Speaker 1: on an individual level. And I felt so heard. First
Speaker 1: of all, thank you for doing that episode. I felt
Speaker 1: so heard listening to you talk so thoughtfully about this
Speaker 1: topic and to make space for people who are in
Speaker 1: many different moments in their journey.
Speaker 2: I appreciate you saying that, because I really didn't want
Speaker 2: to have that conversation.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you did. It is such a hard one
Speaker 1: and by the way, one of the hardest episodes of
Speaker 1: my podcast, The Slight Change of Plans I've Ever done,
Speaker 1: was recorded the day after Jimmy and I found out
Speaker 1: about the second miscarriage, and I did not want to
Speaker 1: have that conversation. Right we were expecting twins. I was
Speaker 1: over the moon. We were thinking we got to move
Speaker 1: out of our small apartment. We're making all these plans,
Speaker 1: and I remember telling my producer, especially as a South
Speaker 1: Asian woman, I have to do this episode. I have
Speaker 1: to represent people who are in my shoes who don't
Speaker 1: feel licensed to talk about this topic. And I need
Speaker 1: to do it soon, because well, one, I'm going to
Speaker 1: change my mind if we wait too long. But two,
Speaker 1: I don't want to have a polished story to tell.
Speaker 1: I want people to hear me in my rawest, most
Speaker 1: vulnerable state, because that is the gift that all my
Speaker 1: guests have given me on the show, and I feel
Speaker 1: like I owe my listeners as well, you know, so
Speaker 1: I want to share a little bit more depth that's
Speaker 1: okay around my journey to motherhood because it's a bit
Speaker 1: more complicated. So I did not want to write the
Speaker 1: last chapter of this book, and I forced myself to.
Speaker 1: So every chapter in the other side of Change is
Speaker 1: focused on someone else. The last chapter is memoir, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Maya, you have to turn the mirror
Speaker 1: on yourself and you need to figure out this change
Speaker 1: you're processing in real time and how you're going through it. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to the fertility struggles that I alluded to
Speaker 1: when I was seventeen years old, so when I was
Speaker 1: a college student, I spiraled into a really unhealthy rumination
Speaker 1: around my future kids suffering. We don't choose the things
Speaker 1: that we get fixated on. But I had read about
Speaker 1: some hate crimes and I'd watched a documentary, and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, and I think it's because becoming a mother
Speaker 1: was my biggest goal, my brain connected these dots, which was,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm seeing this child suffer. I want
Speaker 1: to be a mother one day. Oh my goodness, could
Speaker 1: I ever tolerate my child's suffering to this degree? And
Speaker 1: it killed me to imagine someone that I love hurting
Speaker 1: in that way, and it made me feel incapacitated because
Speaker 1: there was this tension within me, which is, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, I love children so much and I'm so
Speaker 1: desirous of becoming a parent, and on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I feel things so deeply and I have such a
Speaker 1: hyper empathy towards children to see them in pain might
Speaker 1: literally destroy me. And it threatened my big dream and
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to work my way out of it.
Speaker 1: And it's not one of those worries that just goes
Speaker 1: away with time, because my brain, because it was spiraling,
Speaker 1: was conjuring up every way that a child can suffer, right,
Speaker 1: And it was so you know, I think as a
Speaker 1: little kid, you just have dream fantasy worlds of your
Speaker 1: future family where you're in with the white picket fence
Speaker 1: and the and the two kids that are super well
Speaker 1: adjusted and they have great friends, and they confide in me,
Speaker 1: and they may challenges and as their mother, I'm able
Speaker 1: to solve every problem for them. And it was just
Speaker 1: reckoning with the fact that the world can be indiscriminately
Speaker 1: cruel and I did not know if I had the
Speaker 1: right constitution to deal with that. And for the first time, Robbie.
Speaker 1: And it's such a joy, by the way, to be
Speaker 1: able to talk about this part of my story, because
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to in talking about this book. Really,
Speaker 1: I had to reckon with the fact that this thing
Speaker 1: I wanted so much might not be compatible with my
Speaker 1: well being, and I never thought about it that way before.
Speaker 1: I knew women who didn't want kids, and I definitely
Speaker 1: didn't fall into that category. I fell into a different category,
Speaker 1: which was I desperately wanted kids, but did not know
Speaker 1: if I had the right constitution for motherhood, the right
Speaker 1: emotional constitution for motherhood. And we don't talk about that enough,
Speaker 1: that disconn or that mismatch. We're told in society, follow
Speaker 1: your dreams, overcome your fears. And there has been a
Speaker 1: point in my adult life where have I made a
Speaker 1: lot of progress on this rumination and these anxieties. Yes
Speaker 1: I have my husband, who's a relentless optimist, has helped me,
Speaker 1: you know, change my orientation and focus on the positives,
Speaker 1: like all the ways that our children could experience joy,
Speaker 1: not just suffering. But obviously I still have that seed
Speaker 1: within my brain and it's a work in progress, but
Speaker 1: I am finally coming to terms because right now I
Speaker 1: don't have children. We've put the whole process on pause.
Speaker 1: We you know, we have embryos and a freezer. We've
Speaker 1: talked about adoption, we've talked about other ways to start
Speaker 1: a family, but we are on like a hiatus right now.
Speaker 1: And there is a feeling of peace descending on me,
Speaker 1: which is, maybe it's okay if in life the things
Speaker 1: I want the most I don't actually do because they
Speaker 1: wouldn't promote my well being. What an interesting for me
Speaker 1: revelatory concept because I had never given myself license to
Speaker 1: make that choice for myself.
Speaker 2: For you to be the person that you prioritize.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because life is full of trade offs. So did
Speaker 1: I feel over the holidays avoid in my stomach? Of course.
Speaker 1: When I went to Like Pottery Barn and was buying
Speaker 1: furniture for her home and I saw the little like
Speaker 1: baby section, Yeah, it was kind of sad as I
Speaker 1: looked at all that furniture that I realize, but I
Speaker 1: also really care that I'm not anxious all the time,
Speaker 1: and I really care that I have a healthy relationship
Speaker 1: with suffering in the world. And I'm an EmPATH, and
Speaker 1: so maybe it's okay. So I don't have global advice
Speaker 1: for when people should stop trying, But I can only
Speaker 1: share my own personal story, which is I never thought
Speaker 1: I would stop trying, and I have now come to
Speaker 1: a point in my life where we decided, officially we're
Speaker 1: stopping trying. Today I feel contentment. I feel contentment in
Speaker 1: my heart, and I feel full as a person, and
Speaker 1: I feel that I can live a happy, rich life
Speaker 1: in which I have meaningful connections with adults and children alike.
Speaker 1: And never I never thought that I could get to
Speaker 1: this place. If you had asked me on the night
Speaker 1: of the second miscarriage, like maya, will you ever feel
Speaker 1: whole if you don't achieve this goal? Will you ever
Speaker 1: feel there's anything that redempted that will come from this?
Speaker 1: Will you become a better person on the other side
Speaker 1: of change? Like I would have been like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I could not see that for myself. And that's the
Speaker 1: personal evolution that this book is very personal for me
Speaker 1: because I experienced in an unexpected internal evolution writing it
Speaker 1: and benefiting from the wisdom of the people I spent
Speaker 1: years with in conversation with, and saw myself become a
Speaker 1: better version of myself on the other side of change.
Speaker 1: I just did not expect that. RADI there's a freedom
Speaker 1: in that. There's a freedom in releasing yourself from the
Speaker 1: pressures that you have imposed on your life.
Speaker 2: Thank you for sharing that. I think that's going to
Speaker 2: help so many people, because I do believe that it's
Speaker 2: one of the hardest decisions for a woman to make.
Speaker 2: For some people, it's an easy decision, but for others
Speaker 2: who are struggling and have this identity and have a
Speaker 2: big part of their life connected to it, it is
Speaker 2: often a ten year, fifteen year journey that they have
Speaker 2: to go through. And sometimes it's a well, now there's
Speaker 2: no other option, and now we have exhausted all options,
Speaker 2: and now we make the decision. Or some people get
Speaker 2: to where you have and they think, okay, well I've
Speaker 2: tried enough for it to really wear me down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's so much Sorry to interrupt, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say, like, there is so much exhaustion in
Speaker 1: this process. I mean, we were at it for six
Speaker 1: seven years. Yeah, and we did initially pause out of
Speaker 1: sheer exhaustion and because we had to take a step
Speaker 1: back and reevaluate our lives and gain perspective, and also
Speaker 1: recalibrate our marriage, because this had been the focal point
Speaker 1: of just about every conversation that we had had for
Speaker 1: so long, and it was that that initially led to
Speaker 1: the pause. But then during the pause, I felt like
Speaker 1: I experienced some degree of enlightenment, which is, oh, there's
Speaker 1: actually other reasons to press pause on this. And that's
Speaker 1: not to say again that there isn't profound grief. It's
Speaker 1: just the recognition that there are so many beautiful ways
Speaker 1: that a person can live their life. And I had
Speaker 1: been met with lots of condescending, disparaging comments like maya,
Speaker 1: you'll never know real love or like true love, or
Speaker 1: you'll never know the joy and happiness of being a parent.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's true. But what I can tell you is
Speaker 1: that I love my husban been more than I can
Speaker 1: imagine loving a person.
Speaker 2: And I have tried, and it's I've been trying.
Speaker 1: And I've been trying, and also like, maybe that's enough
Speaker 1: for me. And also, and I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: shared this, but there's also a liability in loving a
Speaker 1: little human as much as I would love a little human,
Speaker 1: which is that all those platitudes and cliches they say
Speaker 1: about like your heart running outside of your body, and
Speaker 1: you're only ever as happy as your least happy kid.
Speaker 1: Like all of those would be true. Yeah, less happy
Speaker 1: than my least happy kid. And so to love so
Speaker 1: blindly and so unconditionally is also scary for me as
Speaker 1: a person, given that I again do feel things so deeply.
Speaker 1: And I know many of your listeners in particular because
Speaker 1: you attract mpaths. I think my show does too. They
Speaker 1: will resonate, They will resonate with that which is like
Speaker 1: your heart really does leave your body.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think about you know, I was thinking about
Speaker 2: people who are mothers and this identity that obviously is
Speaker 2: created through having you know, a full human that you
Speaker 2: look after and you nurture and you nourish, and you
Speaker 2: literally grow from being a little little thing to being
Speaker 2: a toddler to an adult. And this idea of having
Speaker 2: to detach or at least shift the way that you
Speaker 2: are a mother through that journey. And so first off,
Speaker 2: you are the person that is fully liable for this
Speaker 2: child like you, they don't exist without you, yes, and
Speaker 2: then as they get older, you know, I think about
Speaker 2: my mum. I think she really struggles with this idea
Speaker 2: of taking that away from our relationship and we've really
Speaker 2: created such a great friendship now, but there's still elements
Speaker 2: of this which comes out as control for me and
Speaker 2: my sister. But this element of I still know best
Speaker 2: for you. Of course, I should be the person that
Speaker 2: you get my opinion. I should be the one that
Speaker 2: you know. If I tell you something, it's it's because
Speaker 2: I know better. And obviously it all comes from a
Speaker 2: place of love. But I have seen that course so
Speaker 2: much issues When mothers or parents are unable to see
Speaker 2: the change of their child becoming an adult. They will
Speaker 2: always be their child, but their child does become an adult,
Speaker 2: and this shift that can happen, and often it makes
Speaker 2: the relationship more and more distant instead of being becoming
Speaker 2: closer and closer, which if you think about it, as
Speaker 2: we get older, we become closer and closer to understanding
Speaker 2: our parents because we're becoming what they were. But because
Speaker 2: the adult or the parent doesn't seem to be able
Speaker 2: to disconnect themselves from I used to be the person
Speaker 2: that gave you life, and now you don't need me
Speaker 2: in the same way anymore. It's a really hard shift
Speaker 2: to make, yes, And so I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: know whether it's even a place for you to give
Speaker 2: advice on or or if you have any thoughts on it.
Speaker 2: But it is an identity shift that I see many
Speaker 2: struggle with and ruining relationships because of Oh.
Speaker 1: My gosh, my mom so old. I told you I
Speaker 1: wanted four my oldest brother almost fifty. Yeah, my mom
Speaker 1: will be our mom forever. Yeah, that dynamic is never
Speaker 1: going to change. She will always call us, she will
Speaker 1: always share what's on her mind and advice she has
Speaker 1: from us and feedback. Yeah, whatever it is like that,
Speaker 1: That is just I feel like it's just written on
Speaker 1: our birth cert like I'm going to be your mom forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no boundaries, like you know, Western people always like,
Speaker 2: you know, you have to have boundaries with.
Speaker 1: It, like what are boundaries? Like?
Speaker 2: What kind of what kind of relationship? What kind of
Speaker 2: family did you grow up in? Because boundaries is not
Speaker 2: something that is possible in mine. Even if I don't
Speaker 2: ask for an opinion, I'm going to get it.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: And that's a non negotiable. It's not it's not even
Speaker 2: a discussion point. It's a I'm your mother, I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell you. I think I will say you can
Speaker 2: take it on you. But what I mean is take.
Speaker 1: It, yes, exactly. One of my absolute favorite episodes of
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is called The Devastation of
Speaker 1: Things Going Exactly according to Plan, and it is about
Speaker 1: a mother raising two daughters and letting them fly out
Speaker 1: of the nest. And that is the as you was saying,
Speaker 1: that's the best case scenario is my kids become in
Speaker 1: the autonomous independent they're living their own lives. And she's like,
Speaker 1: and this is absolutely heartbreaking. And so for anyone who's
Speaker 1: listening who's struggling with their parents being like this, send
Speaker 1: them the episode because I think it's this mother actually
Speaker 1: reckoning with that loss and realizing I have to take
Speaker 1: a step back now. As an Indian American, I was like,
Speaker 1: no one in my culture will relate to you, Kelly.
Speaker 1: So it's really nice to hear you say these things.
Speaker 1: But I send it to my parents and I'm sure
Speaker 1: they're just like, what is this? I know, but it
Speaker 1: was at least eye opening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like you to hear that, I keep wanting
Speaker 2: to like, I've experienced so many parents that tell me
Speaker 2: the way that they are with their children. I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: this is amazing. Yeah, you can do what everyone but
Speaker 2: just know that I'm here for you, you know, whenever
Speaker 2: you want to talk. Yeah, and there's so much of
Speaker 2: me that has this vision of being a mother like that.
Speaker 2: But then I wonder if it's just in my dna
Speaker 2: to not be like that, you know, totally. It's like
Speaker 2: this ideal version of who I think I'm going to be,
Speaker 2: But really I will probably end up like my mom.
Speaker 1: And I know that I would be that kind of
Speaker 1: mom where I'm like still calling my kid when they're fifty.
Speaker 2: Right, like super erotic about my children until.
Speaker 1: Until it is a kind of love and care.
Speaker 2: Also feel it's definitely a cultural thing too, you know.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about parents and me and Jay have
Speaker 2: had lots of these conversations. I lost my grandma this
Speaker 2: year and we've been talking about so every time I
Speaker 2: talk about a MIxS grand but we've been talking about
Speaker 2: the idea of loss.
Speaker 1: Sorry, really.
Speaker 2: This is going to happen for a while. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, my dad wasn't. Something happened to my dad
Speaker 2: this year and he's fine, but it made us think
Speaker 2: about the idea of you know, as you get older
Speaker 2: in your thirties and your forties, these are the changes
Speaker 2: that you have to start getting now, like you have
Speaker 2: to start coming to terms with. And you know, some
Speaker 2: people who'se their parents when they're really young, and that
Speaker 2: change is like such a it's like an explosion that
Speaker 2: happens in their life and as we get older. Obviously
Speaker 2: it's a natural part of life, but it's obviously the
Speaker 2: hardest thing that anyone has to deal with. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so I guess my question is around future change. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and how do people you know, that's one of the
Speaker 2: biggest changes that a lot of us have to go through,
Speaker 2: is the idea of people who've been in our life,
Speaker 2: our whole life, not being there any longer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think especially for our generation, it's like this
Speaker 2: is the time you're like, oh, wow, people in my
Speaker 2: family going to hospital more, they're getting more health issues,
Speaker 2: they're you know, they're at the age where they have
Speaker 2: to be so much more careful, and we want to
Speaker 2: spend more time with them because time is limited. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: But how do you navigate this idea of future change
Speaker 2: that is literally impossible to change, It's impossible to avoid,
Speaker 2: but is the hardest thing to have to think about
Speaker 2: day and day out.
Speaker 1: Well, for some I'm so sorry for your last and
Speaker 1: I know the gorgeous relationship that you shared with your
Speaker 1: similar to your grandma. Yeah yeah, And as I was
Speaker 1: sharing that, I was thinking, oh, my gosh, she must
Speaker 1: relate to this so much. And you're absolutely right there.
Speaker 1: I think I had this moment maybe five or six
Speaker 1: years ago where I was like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is the age and I was seeing this within my
Speaker 1: parents and my aunts and uncles and my parents' friends,
Speaker 1: all these health issues emerge, and so much loss and
Speaker 1: so much grief. I think one instinct that I have
Speaker 1: had in these moments, which is not healthy, is to
Speaker 1: almost preemptively start to detach myself from the people that
Speaker 1: I love most because I'm so afraid of losing them,
Speaker 1: and it can lead to an avoidant attachment style, honestly right.
Speaker 1: And it is actually reminding me of one of the
Speaker 1: stories in the book. This woman Tara. She actually lost
Speaker 1: her beloved father, who is a veteran of the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: to suicide when she was a teenager, and she loved
Speaker 1: her dad. Tara's dad was her best friend, her role model,
Speaker 1: her confidant, and to see someone who was the life
Speaker 1: of the party and were so joyful and so full
Speaker 1: of life, and his life because of you know, profound
Speaker 1: PTSD following a war led her just shut off to everyone.
Speaker 1: In fact, she vowed to herself as a teenager, I
Speaker 1: will never love anyone again deeply because the pain of
Speaker 1: being hurt is just too unbearable, right, I'd rather just
Speaker 1: not put myself in a position again where I can
Speaker 1: get hurt. She said. She felt like her heart had
Speaker 1: been cut up into like a million pieces, and she
Speaker 1: literally went to the library and looked up whether it
Speaker 1: was possible to die of a broken heart, like that's
Speaker 1: how painful it was. And it was actually through another
Speaker 1: unexpected life change that Tara for the first time realized
Speaker 1: that that kind of distance was untenable for someone like her,
Speaker 1: that her nature was to love fiercely and to love deeply,
Speaker 1: and that she was going to have to start taking
Speaker 1: baby steps towards facilitating a more secure attachment style. And
Speaker 1: by the way, the research shows it's quite a positive
Speaker 1: message that we are not destined to have the attachment
Speaker 1: styles that we form in childhood. So I think there's
Speaker 1: a popular narrative that if we've experienced that kind of
Speaker 1: trauma in childhood, it is our destiny to have an
Speaker 1: avoidant or an insecure attachment style and adulthood. And while
Speaker 1: there is a weak correlation between childhood experiences an adult
Speaker 1: attachment style, each of us can actually take very concrete,
Speaker 1: deliberate steps that move us towards more secure attachment. So Tara,
Speaker 1: with such profound bravery, starts engaging in these small stats
Speaker 1: baby steps. Every time she gets scared, she just backs
Speaker 1: off a little bit, tries again the next day. It's
Speaker 1: all incremental progress, right, There's no silver bullet in this space.
Speaker 1: And over time she built one of the most robust,
Speaker 1: secure communities of love that I have ever witnessed in
Speaker 1: my life. Her life is brimming with love and humanity.
Speaker 1: She has a sisterhood when it comes to her friendships.
Speaker 1: She has such loving relationships in her life. And I
Speaker 1: have been so moved by that example because she has
Speaker 1: every reason to resist that, to continue to let fear rule.
Speaker 1: And there's a quote at the end of the book
Speaker 1: where she says, am I going to keep allowing myself
Speaker 1: to be open to others but with the risk that
Speaker 1: it might all hurt me so much? One day? And
Speaker 1: she said, you know, for as long as it's possible.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep trying. And I find that so inspirational, because,
Speaker 1: like you, it's just so easy to be filled with
Speaker 1: so much grief. We almost want to get ahead of
Speaker 1: our grief. And Tara is a wonderful reminder to me
Speaker 1: that if we're very intentional with the way that we
Speaker 1: love others, actually we can do the reverse, which is
Speaker 1: to foster the deepest, most intimate connections. And that's what's
Speaker 1: going to fill us with the least amount of regret
Speaker 1: when we lose the people we love, because we would
Speaker 1: know that we had given it our all.
Speaker 2: You know, well, honestly, that's exactly how I felt about
Speaker 2: my grandmother. We had a lot of notice with my
Speaker 2: grandma and it was actually so beautiful. It was like
Speaker 2: that almost I always say, like she had the perfect
Speaker 2: leaving story that you could imagine it was. Everybody found out,
Speaker 2: everybody rushed to her bedside. We had twenty five of
Speaker 2: us family with her every single day. Everyone got to
Speaker 2: spend you know, family members who didn't have a good
Speaker 2: relationship with her suddenly over those months created this beautiful
Speaker 2: relationship with her, one that they never even thought was possible,
Speaker 2: but they found you know, family members who had a
Speaker 2: broken relationship with her had suddenly found themselves absolutely obsessed
Speaker 2: with her and loved her and wanted to be of
Speaker 2: service to her in every moment. And then I have
Speaker 2: had a wonderful relationship with her and I got to
Speaker 2: spend every single moment by her side. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 2: kind of good. It was so beautiful, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 2: it was such a lovely way to have that connection
Speaker 2: with her at the end where no one had regrets.
Speaker 2: Every single person felt like they had this fulfilled version
Speaker 2: of their relationship that they needed with her. And I
Speaker 2: was thinking, wow, that preparation and all of us having
Speaker 2: the like, what a blessing it was to have that preparation,
Speaker 2: My gosh.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: But in the same way, you can kind of have
Speaker 2: these conversations with your partner, with people that you love
Speaker 2: about what is inevitable and what's going to happen, And
Speaker 2: it's difficult, it is to talk about having some sort
Speaker 2: of preparation in your mind is probably going to be
Speaker 2: a good thing. Like having in your mind and thinking
Speaker 2: about it, just like you said, it allows you to
Speaker 2: do all the things that you want to. You know,
Speaker 2: when you spoke about your friend and the idea of
Speaker 2: blocking things off. It's so funny. When my grandma went
Speaker 2: into hospital, the first thing I said was, I don't
Speaker 2: want to call her for a couple of days because
Speaker 2: I don't want her to see me upset, or like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to see her right now. And so
Speaker 2: I did everything that I could in the background, like
Speaker 2: helping with logistics, but I did not want to talk
Speaker 2: to her. Yeah, And then when my dad went in hospital,
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't want to talk to dad.
Speaker 2: Don't want me when when you're with him, don't call
Speaker 2: me because I need a couple of days to just
Speaker 2: like think about it and to not feel that upset
Speaker 2: and to become a bit more logical. And I realized
Speaker 2: that our natural instinct is to block off us. It's
Speaker 2: like I don't want to be too close to them
Speaker 2: right now because it's too painful. But I think it
Speaker 2: also gives you time to like think about it and
Speaker 2: really prepare and really think about how you feel about
Speaker 2: the situation. And I think those conversations at our age
Speaker 2: are really really important to allow yourself to one have
Speaker 2: the connections that you want right now, but also to
Speaker 2: prepare yourself so that when those moments do come, you
Speaker 2: are able to deal with it with love and not
Speaker 2: feeling blocked off. Yeah, it's like, now that I've deal
Speaker 2: with these blocked off phases, I'm like, hopefully when it
Speaker 2: comes to that time, I will have more open heart
Speaker 2: because my body and my mind have been through that
Speaker 2: process already. But if we don't do that, and we
Speaker 2: and we literally ignore it for our whole life, when
Speaker 2: it happens, it can completely destroy you and destroy your
Speaker 2: maybe you'd regret so much more how you reacted in
Speaker 2: that moment or how you dealt with that situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a radical acceptance that requires that, which is
Speaker 1: what I think you're saying. And I mean, what a privilege.
Speaker 1: I have the kind of end of life that your grandma.
Speaker 1: I wish that for everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: You know, to be in the presence of your loved ones,
Speaker 1: to die with dignity. It's a beautiful way to go.
Speaker 1: And I mean, at the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: think that, like human connection is my religion. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I think the meaning of life is. It's about
Speaker 1: the feeling of being understood by others and allowing them
Speaker 1: to feel understood by you. I think that's what makes
Speaker 1: humanity thrive. And I think that's what when I'm on
Speaker 1: my deathbed, I'm going to think the most about did
Speaker 1: I make people feel loved and heard and understood by me?
Speaker 1: And what you're expressing in the way that you care
Speaker 1: for your grandmother at the end of her life, that
Speaker 1: you just did exactly that, like you, Yeah, it's so beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely was a special time. I wanted to
Speaker 2: go back just a little bit to this idea of
Speaker 2: you know, we spoke about feeling lost than identity, and
Speaker 2: so for some people they're really attached to their identity,
Speaker 2: but for others, they don't know who they even are.
Speaker 2: And so how does someone who feels really lost start
Speaker 2: to even create what their identity is, start to figure
Speaker 2: out who they are, what they love? Like any pieces
Speaker 2: of advice that you have for people who feel really
Speaker 2: lost in their life at the moment, whether their identity
Speaker 2: has been crushed or whether they don't know who they are.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. So one thing you can do
Speaker 1: is travel back in time to your childhood and ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what were the things that I naturally gravitated towards. So
Speaker 1: when you were on the playground. Was it going to
Speaker 1: the highest point on the whatever monkey bars or you know,
Speaker 1: was it going up let or were you like me
Speaker 1: listening to what everyone else was saying and trying to
Speaker 1: get in on like human psychology, how did you spend
Speaker 1: your free recreational time? Were engaging in storytelling and playtime?
Speaker 1: And that can give you a really nice indicator of
Speaker 1: what the things are that you love. The other thing
Speaker 1: that people can do, especially if they're going through change,
Speaker 1: is to do what's called the self affrict exercise. This
Speaker 1: is where you just take five minutes and you write
Speaker 1: down all the identities that you value in your life
Speaker 1: that bring your life meeting, however big or small. So
Speaker 1: this could be as simple as I joined a pickleball club.
Speaker 1: That's one of my identity pickleball player. Okay, it could
Speaker 1: be oh, I organized the big sale for our local PTA. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a PTA person, I'm a parent, I'm a caregiver,
Speaker 1: I'm the coach of the little league team, I am
Speaker 1: part of a dance class, or I do you know?
Speaker 1: For me, it's like I do zoom workout sessions with
Speaker 1: my trainer. Okay, I'm gonna write that down. I'm one
Speaker 1: of Ma's students, you know, and you write down all
Speaker 1: of these. And you can also if you are going
Speaker 1: through something that's making you feel very disoriented, right you've
Speaker 1: just lost your job, or you're having trouble, for example,
Speaker 1: in your relationship, what you can do is focus on
Speaker 1: those aspects of who you are that are not threatened
Speaker 1: by the change you're going through. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: you're in a if you've just lost your job, you
Speaker 1: might focus on the fact that you really value your
Speaker 1: role in your community. If you are in a tough
Speaker 1: spot in your relationship, you might focus on the fact
Speaker 1: you really value your spiritual life. Right, I love that
Speaker 1: I meditate every day or I do yoga. By the way,
Speaker 1: I don't do these things. Yeah, you're all hypothetical. I
Speaker 1: wish I could tell you and Jay, but I, you know,
Speaker 1: a daily meditator, but I'm not. And so what this
Speaker 1: does is, first of all, it allows people to see
Speaker 1: their identities more expansively. So let me share the personal
Speaker 1: story of I used to be like I don't know,
Speaker 1: so after the violin is in particular, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't have an identity. What's my identity? And I
Speaker 1: remember taking a walk with a friend in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: this is right before the pandemic, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I have no passions, Like what do I even love
Speaker 1: to do? And he's like, Maya, you love people. And
Speaker 1: I was like, that's not an identity and he's like,
Speaker 1: take it from someone who doesn't love people yet and
Speaker 1: he's not endlessly curious about people. And that really got
Speaker 1: me thinking we can sometimes take the things that define
Speaker 1: us for granted because we forget that other people don't
Speaker 1: have those strengths.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, for example, this friend of mine, he loves wood shopping,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he had integrated that into his identity.
Speaker 1: But I was like, we'll take it from someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't like love wood shopping. That is actually incredible that
Speaker 1: you love building things from scratch, right, And So I
Speaker 1: think we think too narrowly when we think about self identity,
Speaker 1: and the affirmation exercise broadens the aperture. It allows you
Speaker 1: to zoom out on your life and to see how
Speaker 1: rich and multi faceted it is. And then once you've
Speaker 1: got all of those identities now on the piece of paper,
Speaker 1: you can say, well, which ones do I want to
Speaker 1: lean into more? Right? Oh, well, it's kind of clear
Speaker 1: I could see connective tissue between these three. I really
Speaker 1: do love being a part of my community. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: I can actually volunteer for the upcoming New Year's party
Speaker 1: or the whatever Valentine's Day, whatever it is. And so
Speaker 1: it just it gives you a little bit more food
Speaker 1: for thought.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good place to start with people. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I think sometimes you don't even
Speaker 2: realize the incredible skills and qualities that you have because
Speaker 2: they're so normal to you, like they're so organic to
Speaker 2: who you are.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And actually it's reminding me too that
Speaker 1: I think one mistake our brains can make is when
Speaker 1: there is a seismic shift in our life. So, for example,
Speaker 1: when you moved to New York and you had done
Speaker 1: all of this training right to be a dietitian and
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden, you're coming to the US
Speaker 1: and you don't have your license anymore and you can't practice.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to think that it was all for
Speaker 1: nought and you lost everything. But you need to remember
Speaker 1: that all of the skills that you honed, all of
Speaker 1: your talents, all of the knowledge you accrued, all of
Speaker 1: your life experiences and the wisdom that you gained as
Speaker 1: a result of those experiences are still fully there and
Speaker 1: are still fully intact and will service you in whatever
Speaker 1: you do next. So when it came to my life
Speaker 1: as a violinist, like, yes, none of the technical skills
Speaker 1: of playing the violin were particularly helpful for me, but
Speaker 1: all the softer skills I built, like grit, discipline, discipline,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, so much discipline, routine, responding well to failure,
Speaker 1: you know, like I was criticized all the time for
Speaker 1: every little micro note that I got wrong, and so
Speaker 1: was I built thicker skin over my fear of performance
Speaker 1: and being on stage. Those have all been so helpful
Speaker 1: to me in my role as a cognitive scientist, as
Speaker 1: a podcaster, as a writer. Like these are all useful
Speaker 1: general skills. So when you're at an inflection point, ask yourself,
Speaker 1: who else can this person be? This person who has
Speaker 1: had these broad, wonderfully rich life experiences, Like imagine that
Speaker 1: you are an employer who's looking at your own CB,
Speaker 1: but don't just include the jobs you've had, include the
Speaker 1: trips that you've taken and the vantage points you've gained
Speaker 1: from traveling the world or the experiences you've had caring
Speaker 1: for an elderly member of your family, or babysitting the
Speaker 1: kids next door, Like, these are all things that you
Speaker 1: still have with you that will aid you as you
Speaker 1: go next. It's not like a it's not like there's
Speaker 1: a blank slate and you just have to work from nothing.
Speaker 2: Right, tell me more about you speak about this concept
Speaker 2: of mental time travel, and I really like that. Is
Speaker 2: there a part to play in mental time travel with
Speaker 2: trying to figure out who you are? As well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I should share that one reason. So we
Speaker 1: talked about one reason that change is scary, which is
Speaker 1: that it threatens our identity. Another reason why it's scary
Speaker 1: for people like me anyway, is that it's filled with
Speaker 1: so much uncertainty, and our brains are not wired to
Speaker 1: like uncertainty. So one of my favorite research studies shows
Speaker 1: that we're more stressed when we're told we have a
Speaker 1: fifty percent chance of getting an electric shock than when
Speaker 1: we're told we have a one hundred percent chance, which
Speaker 1: is it's so wild, right, We would rather be sure
Speaker 1: rabi that a negative thing is going to happen than
Speaker 1: to have to grapple with any uncertainty. But I feel
Speaker 1: this deeply right. I want to know how my story ends.
Speaker 1: I want to have a firm grip of the steering wheel.
Speaker 1: And so many of us fall prey to what's called
Speaker 1: the illusion of control, which basically just means we grossly
Speaker 1: overestimate the degree to which we dictate how our lives
Speaker 1: turn out. I mean, so much of like Buddhist philosophy
Speaker 1: is all about, you know, creating that distance and that
Speaker 1: detachment so that we aren't so anchored on outcomes. But
Speaker 1: our brains naturally want to make us feel like we
Speaker 1: are in control and that we are in the driver's seat, definitely,
Speaker 1: And so mental time travel is one way of helping
Speaker 1: to tame those negative mental spirals that often emerge in
Speaker 1: the face of uncertainty. And so let's say you're navigating
Speaker 1: a breakup. It's not like, well again, if you're like
Speaker 1: most people, you're not just like Okay, now that relationship
Speaker 1: has ended, you've gone to the next one. Folks, you're
Speaker 1: sitting there ruminating what did I do wrong? Why did
Speaker 1: they stop loving me? Why did I stop loving them?
Speaker 1: Could I have been better? Why did I say that?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that was so embarrassing. I should never
Speaker 1: have said that I'm never going to be able to
Speaker 1: date again, and if I do date, I'm never going
Speaker 1: to find anyone like them. Should I not have ended
Speaker 1: the relation? We can go crazy in these spirals, right,
Speaker 1: Or if you are a people pleaser like I am,
Speaker 1: you have a benign but awkward interaction with a coworker
Speaker 1: and suddenly at three in the morning, you wake up
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, I was so embarrassing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what did I say?
Speaker 2: I should text them? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do they hate me? Or if they didn't write back
Speaker 1: to me, are they mad at me? And it's like, Maya,
Speaker 1: you texted them thirty minutes ago. You need to chill out, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so our brains can just they just can really
Speaker 1: run away from us when we are in the throes
Speaker 1: of change. And so mental time travel simply refers to
Speaker 1: the fact that our brains, through the wonderful process of evolution,
Speaker 1: have the capacity to both travel forward in time and
Speaker 1: backward in time, and we can use this to our
Speaker 1: advantage when it comes to taming these mental spirals. So
Speaker 1: we can travel back in time to remind ourselves of
Speaker 1: moments where we were very resilient in the face of adversity.
Speaker 1: Right when we're feeling really weak and like the moments unprecedented,
Speaker 1: we can be like, well, you know, five years ago,
Speaker 1: I went through this really hard thing. I'm hoping one
Speaker 1: day I look back and I remember, well, remember in
Speaker 1: your late thirties when you're navigating all this fertility stuff,
Speaker 1: or actually not even late thirties, Remember in your thirties
Speaker 1: when you're navigating all this fertility stuff, you know you
Speaker 1: were able to overcome that. And so we can do that.
Speaker 1: We can also look back in time to remember moments
Speaker 1: where we were fixated on something and it turned out
Speaker 1: not to be a concern for us many years later.
Speaker 1: We can also move forward in time to remind ourselves
Speaker 1: that the current moment and our current preoccupations are transient.
Speaker 1: So you can ask yourself at three in the morning,
Speaker 1: how am I going to feel about this five hours
Speaker 1: from now, five days from now, five years from now,
Speaker 1: fifteen years from now. Chances are the awkward interaction with
Speaker 1: the coworker is going to be less meaningful and less
Speaker 1: significant to you. Five years from now, you might not
Speaker 1: even have them as a coworker. Okay, unless you're in
Speaker 1: business with your husband like you've been read your teap
Speaker 1: business and then actually, yeah, I used to give you
Speaker 1: a different strategy for that one.
Speaker 2: I didn't like his idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. In addition to the mental time travel thing
Speaker 1: of being like, Okay, this is a transient situation. This
Speaker 1: is probably you know, when you think about yourself five
Speaker 1: or fifteen years in the future, you adopt more of
Speaker 1: a bird's eye view and you can kind of look
Speaker 1: back and see, oh, this was just a moment in time,
Speaker 1: and almost certainly you know I would have entered another
Speaker 1: relationship since then, or at least found peace or some
Speaker 1: degree of closure. The other thing that you can do
Speaker 1: when you are in the throes of those really icky, annoying,
Speaker 1: maddening mental spirals is to coach yourself like you would
Speaker 1: a friend. So oftentimes when we take a first person
Speaker 1: view on our problems, we don't give ourselves any self compassion.
Speaker 1: We brate, we are filled with regret, and because of
Speaker 1: all the heightened emotions, we can't see our situation clearly.
Speaker 1: But if you pretend that you are just a third
Speaker 1: party observing the situation, you will be able to poke
Speaker 1: holes in your narrative, be able to point out, hey, maya,
Speaker 1: maybe you're not really seeing this exactly as you should.
Speaker 1: And then most importantly, you will be able to extend
Speaker 1: yourself the compassion you need to actually move forward in
Speaker 1: a productive way, because if you don't give your self compassion,
Speaker 1: you don't think, oh, I wasn't great in that situation.
Speaker 1: You think I am bad and there's no redemption in
Speaker 1: I am bad. But you would never say that to
Speaker 1: a friend. You would never tell your friend, well, there's
Speaker 1: no redemption for you, you're bad. You would say you just
Speaker 1: acted out of character in that moment. And so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of research showing that again, treating yourself like
Speaker 1: someone that you're coaching, and even using this like very
Speaker 1: small tweak and framing. So rather than talking yourself in
Speaker 1: the first person like I need to get a grip,
Speaker 1: you instead use a third person maya, you need to
Speaker 1: get a grip. That can also forge really helpful emotional
Speaker 1: distance between you and your problems.
Speaker 2: Like calling yourself out, saying your actual name and be like, hey,
Speaker 2: you need to do something about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it's like, oh, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: different person, but I'm coaching and actually, sorry to share
Speaker 1: yet another one, but this is one of my favorite ones.
Speaker 1: Which is when we feel negatively. We're often feeling a
Speaker 1: range of sometimes conflicting and often confusing emotions, and all
Speaker 1: our brains really do is just take a snapshot of
Speaker 1: that feeling and say, like, we feel like craft.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that can be very helpful is to label
Speaker 1: your specific emotions with as much granularity as you can,
Speaker 1: so you can say, I'm feeling envy right now, I'm
Speaker 1: feeling frustration, I'm feeling anger, and feeling grief. And what
Speaker 1: research shows is that when we label our emotions, we
Speaker 1: shift our focus away from being the emotion to simply
Speaker 1: having the emotion, and that is another helpful way of
Speaker 1: forging the kind of psychological distance that we need to
Speaker 1: move forward productively.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess being the emotion feels very permanent and
Speaker 2: then having the emotion feels very.
Speaker 1: Temporary, exactly. It's not identity based exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this idea of certainty in the shop,
Speaker 2: and it's really interesting because I feel like us as humans,
Speaker 2: we confuse certainty for safety, and then even if we're
Speaker 2: in a situation that is miserable or limiting, because it's
Speaker 2: certain and because it's obviously familiar, it makes us feel
Speaker 2: better about the unfamiliar. Could you give me a little
Speaker 2: bit more around the science around that and how people
Speaker 2: can push themselves out of this Even if they're in
Speaker 2: a cycle of something that's terrible, it feels comfortable and
Speaker 2: it feels certain, so they stay in it. How can
Speaker 2: someone get themselves up it, whether it's a relationship or
Speaker 2: whether it's a job. And we'll be above.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I one hundred percent affiliate having clarity and certainty
Speaker 1: with psychological safety. And I feel, I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons, and I should mention that I wrote the
Speaker 1: other side of Change because I'm afraid of change and
Speaker 1: I have not done a great job managing changes in
Speaker 1: my life because I am a creature of habit. I
Speaker 1: like having routines. I'm not super exploratory. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just my genetic nature to just like comfort, and so
Speaker 1: I don't like it when the page turns and I
Speaker 1: don't know what's coming up next. I like to know
Speaker 1: how the story is.
Speaker 2: I want to get to the end first. I want
Speaker 2: to read everything that happens, and then I'll read the
Speaker 2: rest of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly. And what I'm referring to is what
Speaker 1: psychologists call cognitive closure. So we really love having black
Speaker 1: and white answers, clear definitive answers. And the problem, of course,
Speaker 1: is that when we climb out of the rubble of
Speaker 1: a big change, all we see around us is gray.
Speaker 1: It's just gray space, it's ambiguity. One of the women
Speaker 1: that I write about in my book, which who I
Speaker 1: think gives us a very good solution, is named Florence,
Speaker 1: and she found out decades into her marriage that her
Speaker 1: husband had been having an affair with another woman, and
Speaker 1: she was, of course totally gutted, totally heartbroken. She had
Speaker 1: thought he was her soulmate and he had not felt
Speaker 1: the same. So it's just a crushing blow. And her instinct,
Speaker 1: because she's a science journalist, is to do exactly what
Speaker 1: I would want to do in that situation and maybe
Speaker 1: you would want to do, which is to figure it out,
Speaker 1: to crack the code on her heartbreak right, to get
Speaker 1: all the clear answers. So she goes on this solo
Speaker 1: canoe trip and she's like, Okay, I'm going to figure
Speaker 1: this out, and we trick our brain into believing that
Speaker 1: if we can just figure out, if we just understand it,
Speaker 1: then I can get over it.
Speaker 2: If we can always say that, I'm like, I just
Speaker 2: need to understand it. If I can understand, like if
Speaker 2: someone doesn't like them, but I just need to understand it.
Speaker 2: If I know the reason, yep, then that's fine. But
Speaker 2: if I don't know, I really struggle to let it go,
Speaker 2: and I really struggled to work out with it.
Speaker 1: Okay, Like, just tell me why kindred spirits. The worst
Speaker 1: thing someone can do if I've accidentally upset them or
Speaker 1: fund them is to tell me it's just it's like
Speaker 1: a prison.
Speaker 2: And I finally like, well, I was having let it
Speaker 2: go because I'm thinking about it, but like.
Speaker 1: Yes, Raby, can we make a promise right now? If
Speaker 1: one of us ever upsets the other, we are going
Speaker 1: to let the definitely, okay, so you'll never put each
Speaker 1: other through that torture. So exactly, so we it's almost
Speaker 1: like fool's gold though we think, Okay, if I can
Speaker 1: just identify all the things that could hurt my family,
Speaker 1: I'll be able to keep them safe. If I can
Speaker 1: just identify why he stopped loving me, I'll never experience
Speaker 1: this kind of betrayal again. If I can just figure
Speaker 1: out what I did wrong and make amends for it
Speaker 1: then I'll never make mistakes again. It's just not true,
Speaker 1: and it's a false sense of closure and clarity. So
Speaker 1: Florence ends this solo canoe trip in a far worse
Speaker 1: place than she started. She's spiraling, She vacillates between thinking
Speaker 1: it's all her husband's fault and it's all her fault,
Speaker 1: and she's just going between two you know, extremes on
Speaker 1: the pendulum. Sorry, and she's just swinging between two extremes.
Speaker 1: And she actually only finds that safety in lack of
Speaker 1: clarity in community with others. So she stumbles upon a museum,
Speaker 1: which I believe it or not, is a real thing
Speaker 1: called the Museum of Broken Relationships.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm not surprised. It's a museum everything these days.
Speaker 1: It's a museum in Croatia. And she's walking through the
Speaker 1: museum and she's going to all these different exhibits, and
Speaker 1: she's seeing herself and her plight and all of her
Speaker 1: desire for closure and clarity and unmended hearts and the
Speaker 1: lack of clarity that these people in the exhibits, or
Speaker 1: these people's narratives are conveying through the exhibits shine through
Speaker 1: to her, and in that moment. She says, just the
Speaker 1: recognition that something that felt so singular and so idiosyncratic
Speaker 1: was actually universal was a comfort in its own right.
Speaker 1: And I think, to your question of certainty feels safe, Well,
Speaker 1: we're never going to get the certainty we want, so
Speaker 1: we have to find safety elsewhere. And Florence says that
Speaker 1: by connecting with others who had been through a similar
Speaker 1: experience to her and feeling close to them, she was
Speaker 1: able to open herself up to the lessons that they
Speaker 1: could teach her. And one thing I want to share
Speaker 1: on top of that is, again, this is my vantage
Speaker 1: point as a cognitive scientist who believes in the unity
Speaker 1: of humanity. We don't just have to seek out people
Speaker 1: whose stories look like ours. So one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that I wrote The Other Side of Change is because
Speaker 1: I felt like these conversations that I was having with
Speaker 1: people revealed that there were so much that united people's
Speaker 1: stories that didn't look at all the same on their surface.
Speaker 1: So the young man who received a stage four cancer
Speaker 1: diagnosis and then the woman who found out after her
Speaker 1: husband's passing that he had cheated on her were both
Speaker 1: grappling with a feeling of betrayal right, and they would
Speaker 1: never have sought one another out right. In our society,
Speaker 1: we're told, oh, you've just lost a job. Oh, I
Speaker 1: have a friend who lost a job, Let me connect
Speaker 1: you with them. Oh, you've just ended a relationship. Okay.
Speaker 1: In the bookstore, there's a section for people who are
Speaker 1: navigating the end of a relationship, and we're taught to
Speaker 1: seek out people who have endured exactly the same type
Speaker 1: of change that we're going through. And my argument is
Speaker 1: that because of our shared psychology, because we're all grappling
Speaker 1: with the same stuff of change, and by that I
Speaker 1: mean bristling at the world's unfairness, grieving the futures that
Speaker 1: we once thought were available to us, worrying about what
Speaker 1: our self identity can be now that we've lost a
Speaker 1: person who actually really defined us, being concerned about our
Speaker 1: past because now a secret's been revealed to us and
Speaker 1: it changes our understanding of our family. Whatever it is.
Speaker 1: The problem statements are the same, so you can easily
Speaker 1: expect that the solution set's going to be the same too.
Speaker 1: And so the joy of writing this book is that
Speaker 1: even though the people who I interviewed have stories that
Speaker 1: don't look like the stories I've been through that. I
Speaker 1: found that I had so much in common with them
Speaker 1: and that the strategies they used to overcome their change
Speaker 1: were relevant to my own life.
Speaker 2: I love that you explored so many people's lives, Like
Speaker 2: I think that's such a beautiful thing to be so
Speaker 2: curious about others. And often we lack that because we're
Speaker 2: so obsessed with our own self and our own life
Speaker 2: and so narrow. We have such a narrow perspective and
Speaker 2: it is so easy to say this person doesn't look
Speaker 2: like I mean, this person doesn't have the same life
Speaker 2: as me, and so all of that's irrelevant. But how
Speaker 2: much we miss out on these experiences, these perspectives that
Speaker 2: can rich in our lives, if that's a word. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that can make our lives so much richer just by
Speaker 2: having a different perspective, just by having a different story
Speaker 2: that we can't relate to but we can learn from.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what we have to differentiate between
Speaker 2: you me and we have to relate to it or
Speaker 2: you might but you definitely can learn something from it.
Speaker 2: And there's always something you can pull that can be
Speaker 2: relative to your life.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And you know, when I think about so one
Speaker 1: of the people that I interviewed when when they were
Speaker 1: a college student, they had a brainstem stroke and it
Speaker 1: left them locked in with locked in syndrome. That's when
Speaker 1: you lose voluntary control over all the muscles in your
Speaker 1: body except for the muscles that control your eyes. So
Speaker 1: you're literally in a prison because your consciousness is preserved,
Speaker 1: all of your thoughts and feelings are preserved, but you
Speaker 1: can only communicate with the world or your winnings. And
Speaker 1: I mean her Olivia's story is so unbelievable, and she
Speaker 1: has an astonishing recovery. But what was so interesting about
Speaker 1: our story rally and what was so unexpected about it?
Speaker 1: Because I'm always interested in what's happening in here. I
Speaker 1: am care I care less about the external beats of
Speaker 1: a person's narrative and more about what's shifting within their brains.
Speaker 1: Her story is actually one about a recovering people pleaser,
Speaker 1: someone who learns from this experience how beholden they were
Speaker 1: to other opinions of her, and then she loses the
Speaker 1: ability to curate a version of herself that she feels
Speaker 1: will be palatable to others because she literally cannot control
Speaker 1: her body and she cannot even speak to her boyfriend
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend's family, or impress them in the ways
Speaker 1: that she hoped to impress them, and through that process
Speaker 1: establishes a kind of self love in her twenties that
Speaker 1: I look at with such admiration and envy, because if
Speaker 1: only we could all achieve that level of self assuredness
Speaker 1: and love. And so who would have thought that I
Speaker 1: would feel so close to Olivia because we shared this
Speaker 1: thing in common that I wouldn't even have known had
Speaker 1: I just heard about the elements of her stroke and
Speaker 1: her physical recovery.
Speaker 2: You know, it's incredible. Yeah, I really, I definitely have
Speaker 2: taken that away from you in this comversation of how
Speaker 2: important it is to hear people's stories and how much
Speaker 2: we can get from that and talk about humanity as
Speaker 2: a whole. And one thing I really struggle with is
Speaker 2: the idea of I feel like we seem like a
Speaker 2: society that is getting more and more open. We're more accepting,
Speaker 2: We're more like, Yeah, you know, if you look at
Speaker 2: the timeline and what history has shown, we seem like
Speaker 2: as a human race, we're getting more progressive and being
Speaker 2: more open minded. But at the same time, it also
Speaker 2: feels like the world's becoming a lot more judgmental, And
Speaker 2: when I think about judgment in my own life, I
Speaker 2: always notice that I'm more judgment It correlates with the
Speaker 2: less happy I am, the more judgmental I am of
Speaker 2: other people, the less content I am in The moments
Speaker 2: where I'm feeling more insecure and the moments where I'm
Speaker 2: feeling unhappy about my own circumstance is when I will
Speaker 2: have a lot more to say and a lot more
Speaker 2: to think about somebody else. I would love your perspective
Speaker 2: on that, And why judging people gives us this feeling
Speaker 2: of superiority like it gives us hurting other people, or
Speaker 2: judging other people makes us feel better about ourselves. How
Speaker 2: of the two relations and how do we separate that
Speaker 2: relationship to not being not being connected? Because your pain
Speaker 2: doesn't shouldn't make me feel any better?
Speaker 1: Resolutely? Yeah, I mean, look, we all have tribalism baked
Speaker 1: into our brains, and the group out group mentality is
Speaker 1: just a part of our wiring, and I do think
Speaker 1: it takes deliberate effort to try to break down those walls,
Speaker 1: in those boundaries. I also think that when we are
Speaker 1: judging someone else, what we're really doing is trying to
Speaker 1: reaffirm our own values and what we actually care about,
Speaker 1: and to remind ourselves that, oh, we're good people, right,
Speaker 1: because we're not like that person over there. Right. But
Speaker 1: I will tell you one thing, which is having been
Speaker 1: a cognitive scientist for decades has been the greatest empathy
Speaker 1: builder of my life. Because when you understand the root
Speaker 1: causes for why people believe certain things, why they believe
Speaker 1: that things they believe, why they've come to have the
Speaker 1: attitudes and the orientation to the world that they've come
Speaker 1: to have, you will naturally dislike them less.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's so I know this sounds crazy, but it's like
Speaker 1: very very hard for me to hate someone when I
Speaker 1: understand their full story.
Speaker 2: It's because you've taken the time. I think the more
Speaker 2: time if you choose to take a little bit more
Speaker 2: time to understand the person that you're judging, or the
Speaker 2: person that you think you hate, or the person that
Speaker 2: you dislike online. Yeah, the thing is you have to
Speaker 2: be willing to give them the opportunity. And I think
Speaker 2: most of us when we decide we don't like this person,
Speaker 2: I don't want to talk to this person. This person
Speaker 2: nothing like me, it's because a part of us wants
Speaker 2: to feel that way. But if you chose that you
Speaker 2: actually didn't want to feel that way, and you wanted
Speaker 2: to give the person benefit of doubt, which is what
Speaker 2: it usually is. Yeah, you probably will end up liking them,
Speaker 2: but a part of you doesn't want to. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: part of you doesn't want to believe it.
Speaker 1: It threatens your own tribal identity. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what's so hard and what you learn. I think with
Speaker 1: a lot of people is they're like, how could you
Speaker 1: possibly believe the things that you believe? And it turns
Speaker 1: out that for them, that part of their belief system
Speaker 1: is entangled with their social identity. It's how they relate
Speaker 1: to their family members, it's how they feel a sense
Speaker 1: of belonging. It's the community that they are a part
Speaker 1: of within their lives. And so for me, when I
Speaker 1: think about the origin story of belief systems, it just
Speaker 1: takes the temperature down because, of course, like everyone else,
Speaker 1: I'll be watching TV and I'm like, how could this
Speaker 1: person say this vile stuff? It's disgusting. I still have
Speaker 1: that same visceral reaction, and then I try to remind myself,
Speaker 1: like You can vehemently disagree with what they're saying, and
Speaker 1: you can think that what they're saying is so so
Speaker 1: harmful and you should do everything you can to advocate
Speaker 1: against that, but there probably is humanity deep within them.
Speaker 2: Yes, I want to try and end with a hopeful question,
Speaker 2: and that is what's the most hopeful thing. Your research
Speaker 2: as being a cognitive scientist taught you about human nature
Speaker 2: and our capacity to just be nice people.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So one of my favorite concepts that actually I
Speaker 1: discovered when writing The Other Side of Change is called
Speaker 1: moral elevation. Moral elevation is that warm, fuzzy feeling we
Speaker 1: get in our chest when we witness someone else's moral beauty.
Speaker 1: So moral beauty can be defined as any extraordinary behavior.
Speaker 1: So it can be someone's self sacrifice or their courage,
Speaker 1: or their resilience or their ability to forgive someone or
Speaker 1: their resilience whatever.
Speaker 2: Even when I see a young person stand up for
Speaker 2: an elderly person on the train, I'm like, thank God,
Speaker 2: these people exist.
Speaker 1: And we're going to all be those people talking about
Speaker 1: a failure of entity. That's all of our destiny.
Speaker 2: That's great, Okay, we are still good people.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, No, I feel that too, And so it turns
Speaker 1: out moral beauty is everywhere around us if we're just
Speaker 1: willing to be keen observers. And what I love about
Speaker 1: the experience of moral elevation is that it doesn't just
Speaker 1: feel good. It doesn't just restore our faith in humanity.
Speaker 1: It actually changes our brains. So research shows that when
Speaker 1: we witness someone defy our understanding of what humans are
Speaker 1: capable of, it actually cracks open our own imagination about
Speaker 1: what we are capable of, which is especially helpful when
Speaker 1: we're in the throes of change and we don't know
Speaker 1: what the other side looks like. And I had an
Speaker 1: experience of moral elevation back in twenty fifteen. I remember
Speaker 1: after the horrific shooting at Mother Emmanuel Church, the daughter
Speaker 1: of one of the victims extended forgiveness publicly to the
Speaker 1: racist killer inside the courtroom, and Robbie I was stunned
Speaker 1: by this. Okay, I mean I was working at the time.
Speaker 1: I was working in the Obama White House, and I
Speaker 1: was in this policy sphere, and I just remember my
Speaker 1: colleagues and I because I think President Obama had gone
Speaker 1: to the church and we were all just stunned by this.
Speaker 1: And what do Collier taught me, which was the daughter,
Speaker 1: was that humans have a capacity a depth of forgiveness
Speaker 1: that I did not think was possible. And the beauty
Speaker 1: of moral elevation is that it's not even like I
Speaker 1: was looking to forgive anyone in particular, but that impact
Speaker 1: transcends domain, because it led me to ask myself, how
Speaker 1: kind am I capable of being to others? How much
Speaker 1: empathy can I show to others? How much resolve can
Speaker 1: I show? How much conviction, how much resilience? And it
Speaker 1: just makes you hopeful about what humans can do. And
Speaker 1: so I would urge everyone who's listening to this moral
Speaker 1: beauty is all around you. It's at the coffee shop
Speaker 1: in the morning when you witness someone being super nice
Speaker 1: to the barista. It's when you're walking down the street
Speaker 1: and you see someone hold an elderly person's hand and gently,
Speaker 1: with no rush at all, walk them across the street.
Speaker 1: It's when you pass by the playground and you see
Speaker 1: a little kid defend their friend from bullying. It's just
Speaker 1: all around us.
Speaker 2: It's when people you in in a line that you're
Speaker 2: cutting into on like a motorway, or yeah, thank you so.
Speaker 1: Much, you're drive Caday. How grateful I am to you
Speaker 1: in this moment because I'm almost going to miss my flight,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, and you didn't even know that. But you're
Speaker 1: so nice. And because the world can feel so divisive,
Speaker 1: and because we feel so disconnected from one one another,
Speaker 1: inviting moments of moral beauty into your life every day
Speaker 1: will remind you that actually there are good There are
Speaker 1: good humans everywhere, and we think about these people in
Speaker 1: groups as like masses, but on an individual level, there's
Speaker 1: so much humanity to be inspired by.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. So many other questions that I
Speaker 2: didn't even ask, because we had a way better conversation
Speaker 2: than than what my what my questions even were, but
Speaker 2: we went.
Speaker 1: In so many unexpected directions.
Speaker 2: We really did, and they're the best type of conversations.
Speaker 2: I love it when I don't even have to look
Speaker 2: at my cards hardly and I just get to have
Speaker 2: a beautiful conversation with you to us exactly what we
Speaker 2: got to do. So thank you so much. Thank everybody.
Speaker 1: Go out.
Speaker 2: If this conversation didn't inspire you, then I don't know
Speaker 2: what will. To be honest, go get the other side
Speaker 2: of change. By Maya Shanka It is such an incredible book,
Speaker 2: and it's filled with all these stories and these lessons
Speaker 2: and wisdom that we've spoken about. I feel like we've
Speaker 2: just kind of hit the surface in this conversation, and
Speaker 2: there's so much more in this book. So thank you
Speaker 2: for listening, and thank you so much, Thanks so much,
Speaker 2: rather amazing