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