How to Handle Change
Dr. Laurie Santos and Dr. Maya Shankar (host of A Slight Change of Plans) discuss how to navigate and embrace change, highlighting our inherent resilience and the malleability of identity. They explore strategies like reframing pursuits and using growth mindsets to improve well-being.
Deep Dive Analysis
12 Topic Outline
Introduction to Happiness and Navigating Change
Maya Shankar's Personal Story: Identity Derailed by Injury
The Illusion of a Fixed Identity and Malleability
Personality Evolution and Transformative Life Experiences
Unexpected Outcomes of Change and Psychological Resilience
The Human Need for Narrative and Sense-Making
Advice: Identifying Core Values Beyond Specific Pursuits
Advice: Recognizing and Embracing Our Innate Resilience
Advice: Cultivating a Growth Mindset for Well-being
Listener Question: Gauging Happiness from Life Changes
Listener Question: Strategies for Uncertainty and Stress
The Power of Sitting with Negative Emotions
5 Key Concepts
Identity Foreclosure
This phenomenon describes when individuals, particularly adolescents, become deeply settled in a specific identity, which can prevent them from exploring other roles, passions, and aspects of themselves. It limits an exploratory frame of mind.
End of History Illusion
This cognitive bias causes people to believe their core identity is largely fixed and won't change much in the next decade, even though they readily acknowledge significant personal changes from the previous decade. It highlights our tendency to underestimate future personal growth.
Transformative Experiences
These are moments that lead to profound and fundamental shifts in one's identity, preferences, and what they value in life. They often occur during significant but common life events like going to college, getting married, or changing jobs, and one cannot predict their preferences beforehand.
Psychological Immune System
Similar to the body's physical immune system, this mental mechanism helps individuals cope with negative events by rationalizing decisions, finding meaning, or seeking social support. It often makes bad things less awful than we initially forecast them to be.
Growth Mindset
This refers to the belief that our brains, much like our muscles, can grow and strengthen through effort and practice. This mindset is crucial because believing in one's capacity for change directly influences the likelihood of engaging in practices that lead to personal growth and well-being.
7 Questions Answered
Identity foreclosure can prevent individuals from having an exploratory frame of mind, limiting their ability to inhabit other roles, identities, and pursue new passions beyond a single, fixed self-perception.
No, research has disproven this idea; personality traits like conscientiousness and agreeableness continue to change gradually and systematically throughout life, with some traits increasing and others decreasing as we age.
Yes, even negative or traumatic experiences can serve as transformative moments, leading to profound changes in identity, preferences, and values, allowing individuals to grow and emerge as better versions of themselves.
Humans irresistibly build narratives and find meaning in their experiences. If this sense-making doesn't happen naturally, actively journaling about the experience can help fast-forward the process of finding meaning and purpose.
Instead of focusing on the lost activity itself, identify the underlying features or core values that brought joy (e.g., human connection, creativity) and then find ways to reconstruct or apply those traits in other areas of life or new pursuits.
People often mispredict how a change will affect them due to unforeseen consequences. It's important to approach change with humility, audit the experience as it unfolds, and consider asking others who have already gone through similar changes for their insights.
Remind yourself of your psychological immune system and inherent resilience, as humans reliably underestimate their ability to navigate change. Additionally, counterintuitively, take time to accept and sit with negative emotions, as they will eventually crest and subside.
24 Actionable Insights
1. Adopt a Growth Mindset
View your brain like a muscle that can grow stronger with practice; believe in your ability to change, as this belief directly influences your willingness to engage in practices (like mindfulness or gratitude) that build mental strength and lead to actual change.
2. See Identity as Malleable
Recognize that your identity is not fixed to a specific pursuit or role, but is malleable and can extend beyond any single aspect of your life. This prevents identity foreclosure and allows for exploration of other passions and roles.
3. Believe in Positive Change
Cultivate the belief that positive change, leading to more joy, happiness, and flourishing, is always possible, as scientific literature and neuroscience demonstrate the brain’s plasticity and our ability to change more than we often realize.
4. Recognize and Trust Resilience
Overcome change aversion by recognizing and trusting your inherent resilience; understand that you are capable of getting through difficult changes and that even ‘bad’ changes can lead to growth, which can encourage you to pursue beneficial changes you might otherwise fear.
5. Identify Core Joys
When experiencing loss or change, identify the underlying features or traits of the activities that brought you joy (e.g., human connection, creativity) rather than focusing solely on the specific pursuit itself, then seek to construct those features in other areas of your life.
6. Apply Character Strengths
Identify your core character strengths and values (e.g., connecting with people, love of learning, bravery) and actively apply them more in your career, relationships, and daily activities to experience greater joy, as the specific activity matters less than bringing out these traits.
7. Practice Gratitude, Even Reluctantly
Even when feeling resistant or in the midst of a bad change, commit to writing a gratitude list, as this practice can soften your perspective, reframe the event, and help you gain distance and appreciation for your life.
8. Urge Surf Negative Emotions
When dealing with uncertainty and negative emotions (sadness, fear, anxiety), practice ‘urge surfing’ by taking time to notice, accept, and sit with these feelings without trying to run away from them, understanding that emotions, like waves, will crest and then subside.
9. Journal to Make Sense
If you are experiencing a difficult change and sense-making isn’t happening naturally, sit down and journal about it to actively engage in the process of meaning-making and narrative construction, which can fast-forward your understanding and acceptance.
10. Cultivate Positive Traits in Adversity
In the face of significant negative change, actively work on improving your personality traits, such as becoming more empathetic, a better listener, and showing more compassion towards yourself and others, to find meaning and purpose.
11. Approach Change with Humility
Approach any change (positive or negative) with humility, acknowledging that there will be unexpected consequences and surprises; continuously ‘audit’ your experiences to understand how different parts of your life interact with the change and build self-intuition.
12. Seek Advice from Peers
If you are contemplating a significant change, seek out and ask individuals who have already gone through that specific experience for their insights, as they can provide valuable perspectives on the unforeseen pros and cons.
13. Integrate Strengths into Career
Actively look for ways to shape your job description or role to incorporate your core strengths and values, even if it means proposing new contributions or ‘superpowers’ that benefit the role, to increase job satisfaction and well-being.
14. Plan ‘Strengths Dates’
Engage in a ‘strengths date’ with a friend or spouse where you choose a fun activity specifically designed to leverage your shared character strengths and values (e.g., an activity that fosters connection if that’s a strength) to enhance joy and relationships.
15. Embrace Growth from Negative Change
Understand that even negative or traumatic changes can lead to profound personal growth and help you appreciate the full range of your reactions and emotions, rather than solely perceiving them as detrimental.
16. Seek Meaning Through Narrative
Recognize that humans irresistibly build narratives and find ways to make sense of experiences, which can bring comfort during difficult times by helping you find meaning or purpose in whatever happens.
17. Remember Innate Capacity for Change
When faced with a novel or surprising change, remind yourself that while the specifics might be unprecedented, your human psychology is built for navigating change, and you’ve successfully overcome many changes in the past.
18. Understand Lifelong Personality Change
Recognize that personality traits continue to change gradually and systematically throughout your life, with traits like conscientiousness and agreeableness increasing, and neuroticism decreasing, leading to natural personal growth.
19. Leverage Brain Plasticity Knowledge
Understand that the brain is incredibly plastic and capable of change, similar to how muscles respond to exercise; use this scientific knowledge to motivate yourself to invest time and effort into practices that foster positive mental and emotional development.
20. Cultivate Psychological Immune System Belief
Consciously remind yourself, especially during difficult moments, that you possess a psychological immune system that will help you cope with adversity, even if your emotions don’t immediately align; over time, this intellectual understanding can lead to emotional acceptance and reduced volatility.
21. Diminish Emotions by Sitting
Intentionally sitting with and accepting negative emotions, rather than fighting them, can cause them to lose their power over you, leading to a profound shift in your relationship with those feelings.
22. Reinterpret Intrusive Experiences
For persistent, intrusive negative experiences (like chronic pain or unwanted thoughts), consciously reinterpret them not as enemies to fight, but as neutral presences in your life that you can acknowledge and accept, thereby changing your relationship with them.
23. Allow Unwanted Change
Cultivate an attitude of allowing unwanted changes into your life, as this often leads to unexpected growth, increased resilience, and more positive outcomes than you initially anticipate.
24. Find Resonance Across Changes
When facing a unique change and feeling isolated, look for wisdom and insights from people who have gone through vastly different experiences but where the underlying psychological processes or feelings of loss are similar, as their advice can still be highly relevant.
8 Key Quotes
I had to see my identity as more malleable, as extending beyond any specific pursuit.
Maya Shankar
The funny thing is we tend not to notice our own changes, we tend to have this belief that we're like stuck definitely, but the research really shows that we're that we're kind of more malleable than we think.
Laurie Santos
The reassuring thing for those of us who don't want to do psychedelics, myself included, is that you can achieve profound change through other means in your life.
Maya Shankar
We are these intricate ecosystems where change in one area of our lives has these profound spillovers into other parts of our lives and we just can't anticipate like I said before all the ways in which it might impact us.
Maya Shankar
No matter what happens to you, you will try to find some meaning or purpose in it.
Maya Shankar
Violin was a vehicle for me to achieve that desire for human connection.
Maya Shankar
Our human ability to navigate change is not unprecedented. We've done this rodeo so many times before...
Maya Shankar
The more you sit in negative emotions, the more they lose power over you.
Maya Shankar
5 Protocols
Sense-Making Through Journaling
Laurie Santos (referencing Jamie Pennebaker)- Sit down and start journaling about a difficult experience.
- Allow the process of sense-making and meaning-making to take the fore, which can happen surprisingly quickly.
Gratitude List for Perspective
Maya Shankar (describing her husband's recommendation)- Commit to writing a gratitude list, even when feeling begrudging or in the throes of a bad change.
- Continue writing, as perspective will soften your mindset and frame your life differently by the third item on the list.
Strengths Date
Laurie Santos (referencing Marty Seligman)- Pick a friend or spouse.
- Identify your core character strengths or values that bring you joy (e.g., connecting with people, love of learning, bravery).
- Engage in a fun date night activity that allows you to engage more with those specific strengths.
Building Strengths into Your Career
Laurie Santos (referencing Marty Seligman) and Maya Shankar- Identify your 'superpowers' or core strengths and values that bring you joy.
- Shape your job description or role to incorporate more of these strengths, even if it means writing a new job description from scratch.
- Communicate how these strengths can benefit your role to your hiring manager or employer.
Cultivating a Mindset of Resilience
Maya Shankar- In the moment of change, intellectualize that you are resilient and possess a psychological immune system, even if your emotions don't immediately align with this belief.
- Repeat this intellectual affirmation over time until your emotions catch up, leading to changes feeling less volatile and cultivating a more resilient mindset.