Why Change Is So Scary — and How to Unlock Its Potential | Maya Shankar | TED

Summary

The speaker shares a personal story of how an injury ended her dream of becoming a concert violinist, shifting her life's path toward cognitive science. Through this change, she explores how unexpected challenges reshape our capabilities, values, and self-identity. Using examples of others who faced life-altering changes, she offers three reflective questions to help navigate difficult transitions. The message emphasizes that change, though painful, can lead to growth, new possibilities, and an expanded sense of self. Ultimately, the talk encourages embracing change as a path to self-discovery.

Takeaways

• 🎻 The speaker's childhood was centered around the violin, practicing for hours and attending classes at Juilliard.
• 🌟 A key turning point in the speaker's life came when she injured her hand at 15, ending her dream of becoming a concert violinist.
• 🔄 The speaker shares this story to highlight that unexpected change happens to everyone and can lead to transformative growth.
• 🧠 The speaker became a cognitive scientist and now explores how people respond to significant life changes.
• 🎙️ She hosts a podcast called 'A Slight Change of Plans' where she interviews people about their life-altering experiences.
• 🤔 The speaker introduces three key questions to ask during moments of unexpected change: How might this change alter your capabilities? Your values? How you define yourself?
• 👩‍🍳 Christine Ha's story illustrates how an unexpected challenge, like blindness, can lead to discovering new capabilities and even thriving in unforeseen ways.
• ❤️ Florence Williams’ experience of heartbreak shifted her values, showing how change can lead to new perspectives and joy in uncertainty.
• 🎶 The speaker reflects on how losing the violin helped her understand the importance of emotional connection in her identity, rather than specific achievements.
• 🌱 The speaker concludes by sharing her own struggles with becoming a mother, using the three questions to expand her perspective and find hope in her journey.

Q & A

What inspired Maya's early passion for the violin?

Maya's passion for the violin began in childhood, where she practiced for hours every day and even traveled to study at Juilliard on weekends, indicating her deep dedication to becoming a concert violinist.

How did an injury impact Maya's dream of becoming a concert violinist?

When Maya was 15, she overextended her finger during a difficult practice, permanently damaging the tendons in her hand, which ended her dream of becoming a concert violinist.

What lesson does Maya draw from her own experience of unexpected change?

Maya shares that unexpected changes, like her injury, can lead to internal growth and new directions. Despite the loss of her musical career, she became a cognitive scientist, showing how change can inspire new possibilities.

What does research suggest about how people respond to uncertainty?

Research shows that people are more stressed by uncertainty (like a 50% chance of receiving an electric shock) than by the certainty of a bad outcome, as humans tend to fear the unknown more than predictable negative events.

How did Christine Ha’s life change after losing her vision, and what did she achieve?

Christine Ha lost her vision due to an autoimmune disease but went on to challenge herself in the kitchen, eventually winning 'MasterChef.' Her story illustrates how change can push people to discover new capabilities.

What is the first question Maya suggests people ask themselves when facing unexpected change?

Maya suggests asking, 'How might this change change what you're capable of?' to encourage people to consider how they might grow and develop new skills in response to change.

How did Florence Williams's divorce change her approach to life and values?

After her 25-year marriage ended, Florence struggled to find closure but eventually embraced a more open and flexible approach to life, finding joy in uncertainty and valuing serendipity over rigid goal-setting.

What is the second question Maya proposes for handling unexpected change?

Maya recommends asking, 'How might this change change what you value?' as a way to reflect on how a difficult experience might shift personal priorities and perspectives on life.

What does Maya mean by 'identity paralysis,' and how did she overcome it?

Maya experienced 'identity paralysis' after her violin injury, feeling lost without her previous identity as a musician. She overcame it by shifting her focus from specific roles to the deeper motivations behind those roles, like her love of human connection.

What are the three key questions Maya suggests for navigating unexpected life changes?

The three questions are: 1) How might this change change what you're capable of? 2) How might this change change what you value? 3) How might this change change how you define yourself?

Outlines

00:00

🎻 The Beginning of a Passion

The speaker reminisces about her childhood love for the violin, which was the center of her life. She practiced diligently and even studied at Juilliard. However, her dream of becoming a concert violinist was shattered when a tendon injury permanently damaged her hand. This moment of unexpected change became a pivotal point in her life.

05:02

👩‍🍳 Overcoming Blindness to Become a Master Chef

The speaker introduces Christine Ha, a woman who lost her vision due to a rare autoimmune disease. Despite her struggles in the kitchen, Christine persisted, and over time, her love for cooking grew. She eventually won the cooking competition 'Master Chef,' proving her newfound abilities and changing her perspective on life. Christine now enjoys various challenging activities and would not restore her vision if given the choice.

10:06

💔 The Unexpected End of a Marriage

The speaker recounts a conversation with Florence Williams, a journalist who discovered her husband's infidelity. Florence's 25-year marriage ended, and she tried numerous ways to heal, but ultimately realized that seeking closure wasn't necessary. Embracing uncertainty allowed Florence to appreciate the beauty and joy in life, transforming her values and perspective.

🎶 Redefining Identity After Loss

The speaker reflects on her own identity crisis after losing her ability to play the violin. The violin had defined her for so long that she struggled to understand who she was without it. Eventually, she realized that her passion for human connection was the core of her identity, rather than her specific pursuits, like music or science.

🌿 Navigating Personal Heartbreak

The speaker shares her own recent struggles with pregnancy loss and the uncertainty of becoming a mother. She reflects on how this change is altering her understanding of what it means to parent and how it is shaping her identity. She encourages others to embrace change and view it as an opportunity for growth and expansion.

Keywords

💡Unexpected Change

Unexpected change refers to sudden or unforeseen shifts in one's life that force a re-evaluation of plans and identity. In the video, the speaker shares how a tendon injury changed her path from being a concert violinist to a cognitive scientist. The theme emphasizes how we react and adapt to life-altering events that we didn't plan for.

💡Identity

Identity is how individuals define themselves and the roles they play in life. The speaker talks about 'identity paralysis,' a feeling of loss and confusion when an unexpected change, like her inability to play the violin, challenged her self-perception. She suggests that our identity can evolve and shift in response to life’s changes, and we shouldn't limit it to specific roles or achievements.

💡Capability

Capability refers to the skills and abilities that people develop, particularly in response to challenges. The video emphasizes how, after a life-altering event, we might discover new strengths. The story of Christine Ha, who lost her sight but went on to win 'MasterChef,' illustrates how capabilities can expand in unexpected ways when faced with adversity.

💡Loss

Loss in this context refers to the emotional or physical absence of something one values, often accompanied by grief or a sense of limitation. The speaker discusses the loss of her dream to become a concert violinist and how Florence Williams lost her marriage. Both examples show how loss can shift our perspective and challenge our identity.

💡Resilience

Resilience is the capacity to recover from difficulties or adapt to challenging situations. Throughout the video, the speaker and others, like Christine Ha and Florence Williams, show resilience by finding new paths and re-discovering what matters to them after experiencing significant setbacks.

💡Uncertainty

Uncertainty refers to the state of not knowing what the future holds, which can cause stress and anxiety. The speaker mentions research showing that people find uncertainty more stressful than certainty of a negative outcome. This idea underscores the fear many people feel when facing life changes because they don't know what comes next.

💡Values

Values are the principles or standards that individuals hold important in their lives. The speaker discusses how change can shift what we value. Florence Williams, for example, moved away from a goal-oriented approach to life after her divorce, choosing instead to embrace unpredictability and discovery as new values.

💡Self-Discovery

Self-discovery refers to the process of learning more about oneself, particularly in the face of challenges or changes. The speaker emphasizes that unexpected changes, like losing her ability to play the violin, pushed her to explore new passions and re-define her identity beyond a specific skill or career.

💡Adaptation

Adaptation is the process of adjusting to new conditions or challenges. The speaker and others she discusses, like Christine Ha and Florence Williams, had to adapt to life-altering changes—whether through learning to cook blind or rethinking life after a divorce—and these adaptations led to personal growth and new possibilities.

💡Emotional Connection

Emotional connection refers to the bond or shared experience that arises through music, conversation, or other forms of expression. The speaker talks about her love for the violin not because of the instrument itself, but because it allowed her to connect emotionally with others. This drive for connection later informed her other pursuits, including her podcast.

Highlights

Maya shares how the violin was the center of her life as a child, and she practiced for hours every day.

Maya recalls waking up at 4 a.m. every Saturday to travel to New York for lessons at Juilliard.

At 15, Maya permanently damaged the tendons in her hand, ending her dream of becoming a concert violinist.

Maya emphasizes that unexpected changes, like her injury, can happen to anyone, altering their life's path.

She is now a cognitive scientist studying how people respond to life-altering changes.

Maya hosts a podcast called 'A Slight Change of Plans,' where she interviews people about their transformative experiences.

She explains that humans are more stressed by uncertainty than by known negative outcomes.

Maya introduces the concept that unexpected changes can inspire internal growth and expansion.

Christine Ha's story is shared, a blind woman who eventually won 'MasterChef' and became a world-renowned chef.

The first key question Maya encourages asking during change is, 'How might this change change what you're capable of?'

Maya highlights research by Dan Gilbert showing we underestimate how much we'll change in the future.

The second question to ask is, 'How might this change change what you value?' inspired by the story of Florence Williams' heartbreak.

Florence Williams shifted her mindset from solving heartbreak to embracing uncertainty and serendipity.

Maya shares her personal story of identity loss after her violin injury and how she redefined herself beyond being a violinist.

The final question Maya asks is, 'How might this change change how you define yourself?' emphasizing self-identity beyond specific roles or labels.

Transcripts

When I was a kid,

the violin was the center of my life.

I'd run home from the bus stop after school and practice for hours.

Every Saturday, my mom and I would wake up at four in the morning

to catch a train to New York so I could study at Juliard.

Here's a throwback to eight-year-old me performing the violin.

Some questionable fashion choices from young Maya here,

not going to lie.

But anyway, when I was a teenager, my musical idol, Itzhak Perlman,

invited me to be his private student.

And my big dream of becoming a concert violinist felt within reach.

But then one morning when I was 15,

I was practicing this tricky technical passage.

I struggled to get it right,

and I overextended my finger on a single note.

I heard a popping sound.

I’d permanently damaged the tendons in my hand,

and my dream was over.

I share this story

because unexpected change happens to all of us.

An accident or an illness,

a relationship that suddenly ends.

Today, I'm not a violinist, but I'm a cognitive scientist.

And I'm interested in how we respond to exactly this kind of change.

I spent the past two decades studying the science of human behavior.

And today I host a podcast called "A Slight Change of Plans" --

(Audience cheers)

glad you guys like it --

where I interview people from all over the world

about their life-altering experiences.

I started this podcast because change is scary for a lot of us, am I right?

For one, it is filled with uncertainty,

and we hate uncertainty.

Research shows that we're more stressed

when we're told we have a 50 percent chance of getting an electric shock

than when we're told we have a 100 percent chance.

It's wild, right?

I mean, we'd rather be sure that a bad thing is going to happen

than to have to deal with any uncertainty.

Change is also scary because it involves loss of some kind.

By definition, we're departing from an old way of being

and entering a new one.

And when we experience a change

that we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves,

it's easy to feel that our lives are contracting,

that were more limited than before.

But when we take this perspective,

we fail to account for an important fact.

That when an unexpected change happens to us,

it can also inspire lasting change within us.

We become different people on the other side of change.

What we're capable of, what we value and how we define ourselves,

these things can all shift.

And if we can learn to pay close attention to these internal shifts,

we may just find that rather than limiting us,

change can actually expand us.

Alright, today I'm going to share with you three questions you can ask yourself

the next time life throws you that dreaded curveball.

In the moment, I know it's so easy to focus on what you've lost.

And so I'm really hoping that you can use these questions as tools

to discover all that you might gain.

Alright, let’s start with question number one.

This is inspired by a conversation I had on my podcast

with a woman named Christine Ha,

and it's about our capabilities.

Christine was 24 when a rare autoimmune disease left her permanently blind.

At the time, she was learning to cook the Vietnamese dishes

that she had loved in childhood.

But now cooking even simple meals was tough.

She told me that her frustration peaked one day

when she was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

She struggled to align the two slices of bread

and sticky jelly dripped all over her hands and onto the counter.

She threw the sandwich into the trash,

and she felt really defeated by the limited future

that she imagined for herself.

Since Christine lived alone though,

she had no choice but to keep at it.

She remembers her delight when she successfully cut an orange

for the first time

and when she scrambled an egg without burning it.

As she spent more hours in the kitchen,

she realized that cooking was far more multi-sensory than she had thought.

While she couldn't see if the garlic had browned,

she could rely on the smell and the sizzling sounds in the pan.

But Christine also realized something bigger.

Something new was emerging within her.

At the start of her vision loss she had cooked just to get by.

I mean, it was really just a practical thing.

But now she was thrilled by the challenge of it all.

She tackled harder and harder recipes over the years

and eventually became the first-ever blind contestant

on the TV show "Master Chef."

And guess what?

She won the entire damn thing.

(Laughs)

Christine's a rock star.

She's an amazing, amazing person.

This brings us to the first question that you can ask yourself

the next time you face something unexpected.

"How might this change change what you're capable of?"

When we predict how we'll respond to any given change,

we tend to imagine what our present-day selves will be like in that new situation.

Research by the psychologist Dan Gilbert shows that we greatly underestimate

how much we'll change in the future,

even though we fully acknowledge we've changed considerably in the past.

Our psychology continually tricks us into believing

that who we are, right now, in this very moment,

is the person that's here to stay.

But the person meeting the challenges after an unexpected change

will be different.

You will be different.

Today, Christine is a world-renowned chef.

She goes by the nickname The Blind Cook,

and she owns three restaurants in Texas.

And importantly,

she's really curious about what else she can achieve without vision.

These days, you can find her snowboarding and rock climbing

on the weekends.

Christine shared with me something

that she could never have imagined thinking before all this.

That if given the choice today,

she would choose not to have her vision restored.

Though she did tell me she'd like it back for a moment

because she really wants to know what Justin Bieber looks like.

(Laughter)

Alright, let's move on to the second question.

This one is about our values,

and it's inspired by a conversation I had

with a science journalist named Florence Williams.

One evening about five years ago,

Florence and her husband were hosting a dinner party for their friends.

As she was preparing the salad, her husband handed her his phone

so that she could read an email from a relative.

But he'd mistakenly pulled up the wrong email.

What Florence saw instead

was a lengthy note from her husband,

confessing his love to another woman.

I know.

Florence’s 25-year marriage came to an end,

and she told me that she was taken aback

by the physical and emotional intensity of her heartbreak.

She said it felt like she'd been plugged into a faulty electrical socket.

Since Florence is a problem solver by nature,

she instinctively saw her heartbreak as a problem to solve

and develop a year-long, systematic plan to try and fix it.

Florence tried a bunch of things.

She took solo trips into the wilderness,

she tried a range of experimental therapies,

She even went to the Museum of Broken Relationships,

which I promise is the thing.

You name it, she tried it.

But by the end of the year,

none of these remedies had healed her broken heart.

And so Florence had no choice

but to entertain a new philosophy altogether.

Maybe a broken heart was not a problem to solve.

And maybe closure wasn't the answer.

Research by the psychologist Dacher Keltner shows

that when we reduce our need for what's called cognitive closure,

the desire to arrive at clear and definitive answers,

our capacity to feel joy and beauty expands.

Florence told me that when she freed herself from this goal-oriented mindset,

a mindset, by the way, that she had valued

for so much of her life up until this point,

she began to find unexpected delight in the unknown.

This leads us to the second question you can ask yourself

the next time you face something unexpected.

How might this change change what you value?

The unexpected implosion of Florence's marriage

has permanently shifted the way that she sees her life.

From a puzzle in need of solutions

to a more serendipitous path of discovery.

Now, when Florence goes hiking,

she's just as likely to sit still, feeling the breeze,

as she is to try and make the summit.

She no longer makes five-year plans.

And she's comfortable not knowing all the answers around her heartbreak.

By the way, I was texting with Florence the other day,

and she's currently in a very happy relationship.

If her ex-husband is listening to this, I just want him to know

she's doing great, buddy.

(Laughter)

Alright, now on to question number three.

This one is about how we define ourselves.

It's about our self-identities.

And it comes from my personal story of change with the violin.

When my injury took the violin away from me,

I found myself grieving not just the loss of the instrument,

but also the loss of myself.

For so long, the violin had defined me,

that without it, I wasn't sure who I was or who I could be.

I felt stuck.

I'd later learned that this phenomenon is known as identity paralysis.

It happens to a lot of us when we face the unexpected.

Who we think we are and what we're about is suddenly called into question.

But I since realized that there was something different,

something more stable that I could have anchored my identity to.

And this brings us to that third and final question.

How might this change change how you define yourself?

When I re-examine my relationship with the violin,

I discovered that what I really missed wasn't the instrument itself,

but the fact that music had given me a vehicle

for connecting emotionally with others.

I remember as a little kid playing for people

and feeling kind of awestruck

that we might all feel something new together.

What this means for me today

is that I no longer anchor my identity to specific pursuits

like being a violinist or a cognitive scientist

or a podcaster.

Instead, I anchor my identity to what lights me up about those pursuits,

what really energizes me.

And for me, it's a love of human connection and understanding.

I now define myself not by what I do,

but why I do it.

Look, unexpected change comes for us all, whether we like it or not.

And when it does, it can really suck.

But I'm hoping that if we can stay open to how we might internally change,

how we might expand,

it can help us weather the storm.

Life recently threw me a new slight change of plans.

I've always wanted to be a mom,

but becoming one has been difficult

and my husband and I have had to navigate pregnancy losses

and other heartbreaks over the years.

And now I'm not sure what will happen.

But I'm using these three questions to help me during this tough time.

I'm asking myself how this unexpected challenge

might change what I'm capable of,

what I value, and how I define myself.

I'm still figuring things out.

But what I can tell you right now

is that I'm imagining a future me

who is expanding her definition of what it means to parent.

Who's perhaps finding what she craved from motherhood in other places.

At a minimum,

this exploration has allowed me

to loosen my grip on the identity of Mom just a bit.

And I found it freeing.

I'm beginning to see change with more possibility.

And I'm hoping you can, too.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)