Speaker 1: Pushkin hey Slight Changers. This week, I wanted to share
Speaker 1: with you an episode of Ted Talks Daily, which features
Speaker 1: my Ted talk about how we can make change less
Speaker 1: scary and some strategies we can use to embrace it.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more talks like this, check
Speaker 1: out ted talks Daily. Each day the show brings you
Speaker 1: a new idea that just might change your future, all
Speaker 1: in under fifteen minutes. You can find Ted Talks Daily
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, now onto my talk.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, the violin was the center
Speaker 1: of my life. I'd run home from the bus stop
Speaker 1: after school and practice for hours. Every Saturday, my mom
Speaker 1: and I would wake up at four in the morning
Speaker 1: to catch a train to New York so I could
Speaker 1: study at Juilliard. When I was a teenager, my musical
Speaker 1: idol Issac Pearlman, invited me to be his private student,
Speaker 1: and my big dream of becoming a concert violinist.
Speaker 2: Felt within reach.
Speaker 1: But then one morning, when I was fifteen, I was
Speaker 1: practicing this tricky technical passage. I struggled to get it right,
Speaker 1: and I overextended my finger on a single note. I
Speaker 1: heard a popping sound. I permanently damaged the tenons in
Speaker 1: my hand, and my dream was over.
Speaker 2: I share this.
Speaker 1: Story because unexpected change happens to all of us, an
Speaker 1: accident or an illness, a relationship that suddenly ends.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: I'm not a violinist, but I'm a cognitive scientist, and
Speaker 1: I'm interested in how we respond to exactly this kind
Speaker 1: of change. I've spent the past two decades studying the
Speaker 1: science of human behavior, and today I host a podcast
Speaker 1: called A Slight Change of Plans Glad you guys like it,
Speaker 1: where I interview people from all over the world about
Speaker 1: their life altering experiences. I started this podcast because change,
Speaker 1: which is scary for a lot of us, am I right?
Speaker 1: For one, it is filled with uncertainty, and we hate uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Research shows that we're more stressed when we're told we
Speaker 1: have a fifty percent chance of getting an electric shock
Speaker 1: than when we're told we have a one hundred percent chance.
Speaker 1: It's wild, right, I mean, we'd rather be sure that
Speaker 1: a bad thing is going to happen than to have
Speaker 1: to deal with any uncertainty. Change is also scary because
Speaker 1: it involves loss of some kind. By definition, we're departing
Speaker 1: from an old way of being and entering a new one.
Speaker 1: And when we experience a change that we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: chosen for ourselves, it's easy to feel that our lives
Speaker 1: are contracting that were more limited than before. But when
Speaker 1: we take this perspective, we fail to account for an
Speaker 1: important fact that when an unexpected change happens to us,
Speaker 1: it can also inspire lasting change within us. We become
Speaker 1: different people on the other side of change. What we're
Speaker 1: capable of, what we value, and how we define ourselves.
Speaker 1: These things can all shift. And if we can learn
Speaker 1: to pay close attention to these internal shifts, we may
Speaker 1: just find that, rather than limiting us, change can actually
Speaker 1: expand us. All Right, today, I'm going to share with
Speaker 1: you three questions you can ask yourself the next time
Speaker 1: life throws you that dreaded curve wall in the moment,
Speaker 1: I know, it's so easy to focus on what you've lost,
Speaker 1: and so I'm really hoping that you can use these
Speaker 1: questions as tools to discover all that you might gain.
Speaker 1: All right, let's start with question number one. This is
Speaker 1: inspired by a conversation I had on my podcast with
Speaker 1: a woman named Christine ha and it's about our capabilities.
Speaker 1: Christine was twenty four when a rare autoimmune disease left
Speaker 1: her permanently blind. At the time, she was learning to
Speaker 1: cook the Vietnamese dishes that she had loved in childhood,
Speaker 1: but now cooking even simple meals was tough. She told
Speaker 1: me that her frustration peeked one day when she was
Speaker 1: making a peanut, butter and jelly sandwich. She struggled to
Speaker 1: align the two slices of bread, and sticky jelly dripped
Speaker 1: all over her hands and onto the counter. She threw
Speaker 1: the sandwich into the trash, and she felt really defeated
Speaker 1: by the limited future that she imagined for herself. Since
Speaker 1: Christine lived alone, though she had no choice but to
Speaker 1: keep at it. She remembers her delight when she's successfully
Speaker 1: cut an orange for the first time, and when she scrambled.
Speaker 2: An egg without burning it.
Speaker 1: As she spent more hours in the kitchen, she realized
Speaker 1: that cooking was far more multisensory than she had thought.
Speaker 2: While she couldn't see if the.
Speaker 1: Garlic had browned, she could rely on the smell and
Speaker 1: the sizzling sounds in the pan. But Christine also realized
Speaker 1: something something new was emerging within her. At the start
Speaker 1: of her vision laws she had cooked just to get by.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really just a practical thing, but
Speaker 1: now she was thrilled by the challenge of it all.
Speaker 1: She tackled harder and harder recipes over the years and
Speaker 1: eventually became the first ever blind contestant on the TV
Speaker 1: show Master Chef and guess what she won the entire
Speaker 1: damn thing.
Speaker 2: Christine's a rock.
Speaker 1: Star, but she's an amazing person. This brings us to
Speaker 1: the first question that you can ask yourself the next
Speaker 1: time you face something unexpected, How might this change change
Speaker 1: what you're capable of? When we predict how we'll respond
Speaker 1: to any given change, we tend to imagine what our
Speaker 1: present day selves will be like in that new situation.
Speaker 1: Research by the psychologist Dan Gilbert show is that we
Speaker 1: greatly underestimate how much will chane in the future, even
Speaker 1: though we fully acknowledge if we've changed considerably in the past.
Speaker 1: Our psychology continually tricks us into believing that who we
Speaker 1: are right now, in this very moment is the person
Speaker 1: that's here to stay. But the person meeting the challenges
Speaker 1: after an unexpected change will be different. You will be
Speaker 1: different today. Christine is a world renowned chef. She goes
Speaker 1: by the nickname the Blind Cook, and she owns three
Speaker 1: restaurants in Texas. And importantly, she's really curious about what
Speaker 1: else she can achieve without vision. These days, you can
Speaker 1: find her snowboarding and rock climbing on the weekends. Christine
Speaker 1: shared with me something that she could never have imagined
Speaker 1: thinking before all this, that if given the choice today,
Speaker 1: she would choose not to have her vision restored. So
Speaker 1: she did tell me she'd like it back for a moment,
Speaker 1: because she really wants to know what Justin Bieaver looks like.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to the second question. This
Speaker 1: one is about our values, and it's inspired by a
Speaker 1: conversation I had with a science journalist named Florence Williams
Speaker 1: one evening about five years ago. Florence and her husband
Speaker 1: were hosting a dinner party for their friends. As she
Speaker 1: was preparing the salad, her husband handed her his phone
Speaker 1: so that she could read an email from a relative,
Speaker 1: but he'd mistakenly pulled.
Speaker 2: Up the wrong email.
Speaker 1: What Florence saw instead was a lengthy note from her
Speaker 1: husband confessing his.
Speaker 2: Love to another woman. I know.
Speaker 1: Florence's twenty five year marriage came to an end, and
Speaker 1: she told me that she was taken aback by the
Speaker 1: physical and emotional intensity of her heartbreak. She said it
Speaker 1: felt like she'd been plugged into a faulty electrical socket.
Speaker 1: Since Florence is a problem solver by nature, she instinctively
Speaker 1: saw her heartbreak as a problem to solve and develop
Speaker 1: a year long, systematic plan to try and fix it.
Speaker 1: Florence tried a bunch of things. She took solo trips
Speaker 1: into the wilderness. She tried a range of experimental therapies.
Speaker 1: She even went to the Museum of Broken Relationships, which
Speaker 1: I promise is a thing.
Speaker 2: You name it. She tried it.
Speaker 1: But by the end of the year, none of these
Speaker 1: remedies had healed her broken heart, and so Florence had
Speaker 1: no choice but to entertain a new philosophy altogether. Maybe
Speaker 1: a broken heart was not a problem to solve, and
Speaker 1: maybe closure wasn't the answer. Research by the psychologist Dacher
Speaker 1: Keltner shows that when we reduce our need for what's
Speaker 1: called cognitive closure, the desire to arrive at clear and
Speaker 1: definitive answers, our capacity to feel joy and beauty expands.
Speaker 1: Florence told me that when she freed herself from this
Speaker 1: goal oriented mindset, a mindset by the way that she
Speaker 1: had valued for so much of her life up until
Speaker 1: this point, she began to find unexpected delight in the unknown.
Speaker 2: This leads us to the second question.
Speaker 1: You can ask yourself the next time you face something unexpected,
Speaker 1: how might this change change what you value? The unexpected
Speaker 1: implosion of Florence's marriage has permanently shifted the way that
Speaker 1: she sees her life from a puzzle in need of
Speaker 1: solutions to a more serendifitous path of discovery. Now, when
Speaker 1: Florence goes hiking, she's just as likely to sit still
Speaker 1: feeling the breeze as she is to try and make
Speaker 1: the summit. She no longer makes five year plans, and
Speaker 1: she's comfortable not knowing all the answers around her heartbreak.
Speaker 1: By the way, I was texting with Florence the other
Speaker 1: day and she's currently in a very happy relationship. All right, now,
Speaker 1: onto question number three. This one is about how we
Speaker 1: define ourselves. It's about our self identities, and it comes
Speaker 1: from my personal story of change with the violin. When
Speaker 1: my injury took the violin away from me, I found
Speaker 1: myself grieving, not just the loss of the instrument, but
Speaker 1: also the loss of myself. For so long the violin
Speaker 1: had defined me that without it, I wasn't sure who
Speaker 1: I was or who I could be.
Speaker 2: I felt stuck.
Speaker 1: I'd later learn that this phenomenon is known as identity paralysis.
Speaker 1: It happens to a lot of us when we face
Speaker 1: the unexpected. Who we think we are and what we're
Speaker 1: about is suddenly called into question. But I since realized
Speaker 1: that there was something different, something more stable, that I
Speaker 1: could have anchored my identity to, and this brings us
Speaker 1: to that stuff and final question, how might this change
Speaker 1: change how you define yourself? When I re examined my
Speaker 1: relationship with the violin, I discovered that what I really
Speaker 1: missed wasn't the instrument itself, but the fact that music
Speaker 1: had given me a vehicle for connecting.
Speaker 2: Emotionally with others.
Speaker 1: I remember as a little kid playing for people and
Speaker 1: feeling kind of awestruck that we might all feel something
Speaker 1: new together. What this means for me today is that
Speaker 1: I no longer anchor my identity to specific pursuits like
Speaker 1: being a violinist, or a cognitive scientist or a podcaster. Instead,
Speaker 1: I anchor my identity to what lights me up about
Speaker 1: those pursuits What really energizes me and for me, it's
Speaker 1: a love of human connection and understanding. I now define
Speaker 1: myself not by what I do, but why I do it.
Speaker 1: Look unexpected change comes for us all, whether we like
Speaker 1: it or not, and when it does, it can really suck.
Speaker 1: But I'm hoping that if we can stay open to
Speaker 1: how we might internally change, how we might expand, it
Speaker 1: can help us weather the storm. Life recently threw me
Speaker 1: a new slight change of plans. I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: be a mom, but becoming one has been difficult, and
Speaker 1: my husband and I have had to navigate pregnancy losses
Speaker 1: and other heartbreaks over the years. And now I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what will happen. But I'm using these three questions
Speaker 1: to help me during this tough time. I'm asking myself
Speaker 1: how this unexpected challenge might change what I'm capable of,
Speaker 1: what I value, and how I define myself. I'm still
Speaker 1: figuring things out, but what I can tell you right
Speaker 1: now is that I'm imagining a future me who is
Speaker 1: expanding her definition of what it means to parent, who's
Speaker 1: perhaps finding what she craved from.
Speaker 2: Motherhood in other places. At a minimum.
Speaker 1: This exploration has allowed me to loosen my grip on
Speaker 1: the identity of mom just a bit, and I found
Speaker 1: it freeing. I'm beginning to see change with more possibility,
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping you can too. Thank you so much