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Why Change Is So Scary — and How to Unlock Its Potential | Maya Shankar | TED
Why Change Is So Scary — and How to Unlock Its Potential | Maya Shankar | TED
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13:32 · Jul 25, 2023
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When
I
was
a
kid,
the
violin
was
the
center
of
my
life.
Translating…
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1
/228
0:04
When I was a kid, the violin was the center of my life.
0:08
I'd run home from the bus stop after school and practice for hours.
0:13
Every Saturday, my mom
0:14
and I would wake up at four in the morning to catch a train
0:17
to New York so I could study at Juliard.
0:20
Here's a throwback to eight-year-old me performing the violin.
0:24
Some questionable fashion choices from young Maya here, not going to lie.
0:29
But anyway, when I was a teenager, my musical idol, Itzhak Perlman,
0:35
invited me to be his private student.
0:37
And my big dream of becoming a concert violinist felt within reach.
0:42
But then one morning when I was 15,
0:45
I was practicing this tricky technical passage.
0:49
I struggled to get it right,
0:50
and I overextended my finger on a single note.
0:53
I heard a popping sound.
0:56
I’d permanently damaged the tendons in my hand, and my dream was over.
1:01
I share this story because unexpected change happens to all of us.
1:05
An accident or an illness, a relationship that suddenly ends.
1:10
Today, I'm not a violinist, but I'm a cognitive scientist.
1:13
And I'm interested in how we respond to exactly this kind of change.
1:18
I spent the past two decades studying the science of human behavior.
1:22
And today I host a podcast called "A Slight Change of Plans" -- (Audience
1:28
cheers) glad you guys like it -- where I interview people from all over
1:31
the world about their life-altering experiences.
1:35
I started this podcast because change is scary for a lot of us,
1:39
am I right?
1:41
For one, it is filled with uncertainty, and we hate uncertainty.
1:46
Research shows that we're more stressed
1:49
when we're told we have a 50 percent chance of getting an electric shock
1:53
than when we're told we have a 100 percent chance.
1:57
It's wild, right?
1:58
I mean, we'd rather be sure
2:00
that a bad thing is going to happen than to have to deal with
2:03
any uncertainty.
2:05
Change is also scary because it involves loss of some kind.
2:09
By definition, we're departing from an old way of being
2:12
and entering a new one.
2:15
And when we experience a change that we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves,
2:18
it's easy to feel that our lives are contracting,
2:22
that were more limited than before.
2:25
But when we take this perspective, we fail to account for an important fact.
2:30
That when an unexpected change happens to us,
2:33
it can also inspire lasting change within us.
2:37
We become different people on the other side of change.
2:40
What we're capable of, what we value and how we define ourselves,
2:45
these things can all shift.
2:48
And if we can learn to pay close attention to these internal shifts,
2:52
we may just find that rather than limiting us, change can actually expand us.
2:59
Alright, today I'm going to share with you three questions you can ask yourself
3:03
the next time life throws you
3:05
that dreaded curveball.
3:07
In the moment, I know it's so easy to focus on what you've lost.
3:10
And so I'm really hoping
3:12
that you can use these questions
3:13
as tools to discover all
3:15
that you might gain.
3:17
Alright, let’s start with question number one.
3:20
This is inspired by a conversation I had on my podcast with a woman
3:24
named Christine Ha,
3:25
and it's about our capabilities.
3:29
Christine was 24 when a rare autoimmune disease left her permanently blind.
3:35
At the time, she was learning to cook the Vietnamese dishes
3:37
that she had loved in childhood.
3:40
But now cooking even simple meals was tough.
3:44
She told me that her frustration peaked one day
3:47
when she was making a peanut butter
3:48
and jelly sandwich.
3:50
She struggled to align the two slices of bread
3:52
and sticky jelly dripped all over her hands
3:56
and onto the counter.
3:57
She threw the sandwich into the trash,
3:59
and she felt really defeated by the limited future that she imagined for herself.
4:06
Since Christine lived alone though, she had no choice but to keep at it.
4:10
She remembers her delight
4:12
when she successfully cut an orange for the first time
4:15
and when she scrambled an egg without burning it.
4:19
As she spent more hours in the kitchen,
4:21
she realized that cooking was far more multi-sensory than she had thought.
4:27
While she couldn't see if the garlic had browned,
4:30
she could rely on the smell and the sizzling sounds in the pan.
4:36
But Christine also realized something bigger.
4:39
Something new was emerging within her.
4:43
At the start of her vision loss she had cooked just to get by.
4:45
I mean, it was really just a practical thing.
4:48
But now she was thrilled by the challenge of it all.
4:51
She tackled harder and harder recipes over the years
4:55
and eventually became the first-ever blind contestant on the TV show "Master Chef."
5:01
And guess what?
5:02
She won the entire damn thing.
5:06
(Laughs) Christine's a rock star.
5:08
She's an amazing, amazing person.
5:11
This brings us to the first question
5:12
that you can ask yourself the next time you face something unexpected.
5:18
"How might this change change what you're capable of?"
5:24
When we predict how we'll respond to any given change,
5:27
we tend to imagine what our present-day selves will be like in
5:31
that new situation.
5:33
Research by the psychologist Dan Gilbert shows
5:36
that we greatly underestimate how much we'll change in the future,
5:38
even though we fully acknowledge we've changed considerably in the past.
5:43
Our psychology continually tricks us into believing that who we are, right now,
5:49
in this very moment, is the person that's here to stay.
5:54
But the person meeting the challenges after an unexpected change will be different.
5:59
You will be different.
6:02
Today, Christine is a world-renowned chef.
6:05
She goes by the nickname The Blind Cook,
6:07
and she owns three restaurants in Texas.
6:10
And importantly, she's really curious about what else she can achieve without vision.
6:17
These days, you can find her snowboarding and rock climbing on the weekends.
6:25
Christine shared with me something
6:26
that she could never have imagined thinking before all this.
6:30
That if given the choice today,
6:32
she would choose not to have her vision restored.
6:37
Though she did tell me she'd like it back for a moment
6:39
because she really wants to know what Justin Bieber looks like.
6:44
(Laughter) Alright, let's move on to the second question.
6:47
This one is about our values,
6:49
and it's inspired by a conversation I had with a science journalist named Florence
6:55
Williams.
6:55
One evening about five years ago,
6:57
Florence and her husband were hosting a dinner party for their friends.
7:01
As she was preparing the salad,
7:02
her husband handed her his phone
7:04
so that she could read an email from a relative.
7:07
But he'd mistakenly pulled up the wrong email.
7:10
What Florence saw instead was a lengthy note from her husband,
7:14
confessing his love to another woman.
7:18
I know.
7:21
Florence’s 25-year marriage came to an end,
7:24
and she told me
7:25
that she was taken aback by the physical
7:28
and emotional intensity of her heartbreak.
7:31
She said it felt like she'd been plugged into a faulty electrical socket.
7:36
Since Florence is a problem solver by nature,
7:38
she instinctively saw her heartbreak
7:41
as a problem to solve
7:42
and develop a year-long,
7:44
systematic plan to try and fix it.
7:48
Florence tried a bunch of things.
7:51
She took solo trips into the wilderness, she tried a range of experimental therapies,
7:56
She even went to the Museum of Broken Relationships,
7:59
which I promise is the thing.
8:02
You name it, she tried it.
8:06
But by the end of the year,
8:07
none of these remedies had healed her broken heart.
8:11
And so Florence had no choice but to entertain a new philosophy altogether.
8:18
Maybe a broken heart was not a problem to solve.
8:22
And maybe closure wasn't the answer.
8:26
Research by the psychologist Dacher Keltner shows
8:29
that when we reduce our need for what's called cognitive closure,
8:32
the desire to arrive at clear and definitive answers,
8:36
our capacity to feel joy and beauty expands.
8:41
Florence told me that when she freed herself from this goal-oriented mindset,
8:45
a mindset, by the way,
8:47
that she had valued for so much of her life up until this point,
8:51
she began to find unexpected delight in the unknown.
8:56
This leads us to the second question you can ask yourself the next time
8:58
you face something unexpected.
9:01
How might this change change what you value?
9:06
The unexpected implosion of Florence's marriage has permanently shifted the way
9:11
that she sees her life.
9:13
From a puzzle in need of solutions to a more serendipitous path of discovery.
9:19
Now, when Florence goes hiking, she's just as likely to sit still,
9:23
feeling the breeze, as she is to try and make the summit.
9:28
She no longer makes five-year plans.
9:32
And she's comfortable not knowing all the answers around her heartbreak.
9:38
By the way, I was texting with Florence the other day,
9:40
and she's currently in a very happy relationship.
9:45
If her ex-husband is listening to this,
9:46
I just want him to know she's doing great, buddy.
9:53
(Laughter) Alright, now on to question number three.
9:56
This one is about how we define ourselves.
9:58
It's about our self-identities.
10:00
And it comes from my personal story of change with the violin.
10:05
When my injury took the violin away from me,
10:08
I found myself grieving not just the loss of the instrument,
10:12
but also the loss of myself.
10:16
For so long, the violin had defined me, that without it,
10:19
I wasn't sure who I was or who I could be.
10:22
I felt stuck.
10:24
I'd later learned that this phenomenon is known as identity paralysis.
10:28
It happens to a lot of us when we face the unexpected.
10:31
Who we think we are and what we're about is suddenly called into question.
10:38
But I since realized that there was something different,
10:41
something more stable that I could have anchored my identity to.
10:45
And this brings us to that third and final question.
10:49
How might this change change how you define yourself?
10:56
When I re-examine my relationship with the violin,
10:58
I discovered that what I really missed wasn't the instrument itself,
11:03
but the fact that music had given me a vehicle for connecting emotionally with
11:08
others.
11:08
I remember as a little kid playing for people
11:11
and feeling kind of awestruck
11:13
that we might all feel something new together.
11:18
What this means for me today is
11:20
that I no longer anchor my identity to specific pursuits like being a violinist
11:26
or a cognitive scientist
11:27
or a podcaster.
11:29
Instead, I anchor my identity to what lights me up about those pursuits,
11:35
what really energizes me.
11:37
And for me, it's a love of human connection and understanding.
11:42
I now define myself not by what I do, but why I do it.
11:50
Look, unexpected change comes for us all, whether we like it or not.
11:55
And when it does, it can really suck.
11:59
But I'm hoping that
12:01
if we can stay open to how we might internally change,
12:05
how we might expand, it can help us weather the storm.
12:11
Life recently threw me a new slight change of plans.
12:17
I've always wanted to be a mom,
12:18
but becoming one has been difficult
12:20
and my husband and I have had to navigate pregnancy losses
12:24
and other heartbreaks over the years.
12:27
And now I'm not sure what will happen.
12:31
But I'm using these three questions to help me during this tough time.
12:36
I'm asking myself how this unexpected challenge might change what I'm capable of,
12:43
what I value, and how I define myself.
12:49
I'm still figuring things out.
12:52
But what I can tell you right now is
12:55
that I'm imagining a future me who is expanding her definition of what it
13:00
means to parent.
13:02
Who's perhaps finding what she craved from motherhood in other places.
13:07
At a minimum, this exploration has allowed me to loosen my grip on the
13:12
identity of Mom just a bit.
13:15
And I found it freeing.
13:18
I'm beginning to see change with more possibility.
13:20
And I'm hoping you can, too.
13:23
Thank you so much.
13:24
(Applause)
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