So often, life does not go as planned: a difficult diagnosis, a breakup, or an unexpected job loss. It can be unsettling and threaten our very identity. Who are we without those abilities, relationships, or titles? Maya Shankar, the creator of the award-winning podcast “A Slight Change of Plans” and author of the New York Times Bestseller “The Other Side of Change,” has asked herself these questions, dug into the research, and built a following by helping people find answers.
When Change Threatens Identity
Maya Shankar knows firsthand how, in a split second, the trajectory of your life can change.
At 15, she was studying violin at Juilliard under Itzhak Perlman with dreams of becoming a professional musician. One day, while practicing, she overextended her finger and heard an alarming popping sound.
Just like that, her identity as a violinist and plans for her future were taken from her.
“I didn’t just feel like I was grieving the instrument,” she explains. “I felt like I was grieving the loss of myself in this much more foundational way.”
Shankar has since come upon a helpful approach to navigating life’s curveballs. “We can be far more resilient in the face of change if we can learn to define our identities, not simply by what we do, but by why we do that thing.”
She asked herself what she loved about the violin. Her answer: creating an emotional connection with others. “Just because I lost the violin didn’t mean that I lost what led me to love it in the first place,” she realized.
She would just need to figure out what that new way of connecting looked like.
Creating A New Path
Shankar pivoted, studied cognitive science at Yale and Oxford, and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford. She then joined the Obama White House as a Senior Policy Advisor before moving on to become Google’s Senior Director of Behavioral Economics.
But her fascination with how people adapt to change stayed with her. In 2021, Shankar launched her side gig, the podcast, “A Slight Change of Plans.” She wanted to use her own experience to engage in a larger conversation about change and who we can become because of it.
For the podcast, Shankar interviews famous and not-so-famous people about their own life-altering experiences, including illness, addictions, betrayal, incarceration, career pivots, and more.
That work led to her latest project, the book “The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans.” Not only did she interview more people who’d experienced major life upheavals, but she also researched what tools could be helpful.
Tools for Navigating Change: Discovering Awe & Moral Beauty
Shankar encourages her followers to embrace awe and wonder while processing change. She describes this as being in the “presence of anything that is vast and that transcends our understanding of the world.” It’s things like taking a walk in nature, listening to beautiful music, and experiencing art.
Similarly, Shankar encourages people experiencing change to seek out what she called “moral beauty.” Those are inspirational acts of others, like “kindness, or self-sacrifice, or courage and resilience” in the face of something difficult.
Shankar says both awe and moral beauty allow us to step outside of ourselves, gain perspective, and expand our understanding of what’s possible.
A Self-Affirmation Exercise
Shankar is also a big believer in “self-affirmation exercises.” That’s where you write down all the parts of your life that you find deep meaning in that are not impacted by the change.
“So, if you’re in a rough patch in your relationship, you might focus on your spiritual life. If you’re having a tough go at it at work, you might focus on the amazing community that you have,” Shakar says.
What it does is remind “you that you have this multifaceted, multidimensional existence, and it kind of takes the pressure off of this one identity that you were really laser focused on.”
She knows firsthand how this can help. She and her husband Jimmy, had been trying for some time to have children. After a particularly devastating loss, Shankar’s husband suggested she do the exercise.
“I was like, dude, I do not want to do this right now. This is so annoying. I feel like crap,” Shankar recalls. But he insisted.
“And as I did this, I felt something really meaningful shift within me,” Shankar recalls. “I had been so laser-focused on achieving this goal… And what the affirmation exercise did for me is it allowed me to zoom out on my life and see that there was so much that brought my life richness even in the face of this news.”
It’s not an instant fix, but it helps pave the road for the future. “Did I go to bed thrilled that night? Of course not. But did I go to bed feeling more whole? And like Maya was still intact?” she recalls. “I absolutely did.”
And for that, she is thankful for her husband.
“He’s so wonderful. Love you, Jimmy. Shout out to Jimmy.”
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