Maya Shankar

“You can future proof yourself and your identity by defining yourself, not simply by what you do, but by why you do that thing.”

“So the phenomenon you're describing is called the end of history illusion. And it basically says that we, Fully acknowledge that we've changed considerably in the past. So if you were to show me footage of ten-year-old Maya or twenty-year-old Maya, oh my god, …”

“When big changes happen to us, they also inspire lasting change within us. And by and large, the people that I've interviewed over the years for The Other Side of Change, but also for my podcast, they haven't been happy, necessarily, that the change happened t…”

“Now you framed what you're doing as actually complementary to their efforts rather than sitting as like a tangential thing or like something that might be at odds with their thing, right? And so in every conversation, I try to first do my research and understa…”

“Like, if the problem statement's the same for those of us going through change, then probably the solution set's gonna be the same, too.”

“The cancer patient and the woman who finds out that her husband has had an affair, they both are grappling with a feeling of betrayal. They're both having to deal with that same psychological state.”

“The difference between writing zero minutes a day, and writing one minute a day, is that in the one minute world, you're a writer. And when you prime that identity, it's self-reinforcing. It leads to a virtuous cycle.”

“We get a huge boost in motivation at the beginning, and then we get a huge boost in motivation at the end, but there's this middle period where there's a nadir, there's a drop in motivation, because kind of in no man's land, it's like a little painful, you jus…”

“What this means functionally is that we can shape the end of our experiences to be slightly more enjoyable so that we just remember them more fondly and are more likely to return to the activity at hand.”

“You just take five or 10 minutes, and you write down all the identities, all the things you really value in your life that give your life great meaning, but that importantly are not threatened by the change you're going through.”

“We know from neuroscience studies that when we feel awe, it dampens neural activity in regions of the brain that are associated with self-immersion.”

“When we witness people behaving in ways that defy our understanding of what humans are capable of, That changes our own understanding of what we're capable of. It cracks open our imagination about what we're capable of.”

“The challenge becomes, though, when you anchor yourself to something that is precarious in some way, and that's what I found with the violin. What I strive to do, because it's very much a works in progress, but I hope this resonates for your listeners, is to a…”

“What I'm proposing is having multifaceted identities. So you have multiple layers of abstraction when it comes to where you derive meaning and how you define yourself. And so at one level, you can absolutely say, okay, I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor, a stay at hom…”

“So I really don't, I'm not okay with people telling themselves stories that are simply advantageous or promote psychological well-being, right? They have to be rooted in reality. They have to be to some degree vetted by the people in your life.”

“Research has shown that can be as effective, and there's some research showing that when people are in the process of quitting, and let's say they're offered a cigarette, there is a difference in terms of expressed behavior. If you frame a Your current state a…”

“Facts and science and evidence don't surface as much as they should in some of our debates, and it's because when we look at how it is that people form their attitudes and beliefs about the world, they're not simply basing it on What the data says. They're bas…”

“And if you feel too strong tribal membership, it can impede you from updating your point of view, because in that moment, You're not just asking yourself, do I believe in that X virus is real? What you're really asking is, do I belong to X group or not? Becaus…”

“The other thing, and this relates to this curiosity point, is you want to increase your question-to-statement ratio. So one thing that we can often do in these contexts is simply just Tell people what we think they should think, right? We just come out the gat…”

“There is some research showing that you do want to frame your goals in terms of do behaviors versus don't behaviors, so you would kind of acknowledge this before. It's much more easy to measure progress when we're engaging in proactive decisions or proactive b…”

“And so there is research showing that when we introduce what are known as emergency reserves into our goal setting, basically get out of jail free cards, into the process of goal setting, we're much more likely to stay the course and to reach those goals.”

“What they find in research is that very quickly after you say, read the public service announcement, or you listen to the commercial, people forget whether there was a not or not in that sentence.”

“What research has found is that we should actually just make more affirmative statements that are correct. So in order to have safe water, you should use a water filter, and you should install it in this particular way, and you should, you know, you try to go …”

“We do find that people are definitely better at achieving them when we are the ones who feel like we set our own targets. And that's because we're really tapping into intrinsic motivation.”

“No semantic shift is gonna be that powerful to eliminate the willpower issues. I know Angela Duckworth focuses a lot on this. So that we don't have to employ willpower, we should really focus on the way that we design our lives and the choice architecture of o…”

“The only way in which this temptation bundling works is if you Actively deny yourself that rewarding activity in all other domains of life so that it really feels special and it feels coupled with the undesirable activity.”