Insight
Shankar: Major disruptions inspire lasting internal change people appreciate
“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…”
Insight
Shankar: Innovators must frame tools around partners' existing goals
“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…”
Insight
Shankar: Shared psychological struggles imply shared solutions across life changes
“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.”
Insight
Shankar: Vastly different life disruptions evoke the same psychological states
“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.”
Insight
Shankar: Practicing a habit for one minute a day primes self-reinforcing identity
“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.”
Insight
Shankar: Affirmations in crisis should focus on unthreatened identities
“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.”
Insight
Shankar: Witnessing moral beauty expands what people believe they can achieve
“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.”
Insight
Maya Shankar: Future-proof identity by focusing on 'why' rather than 'what'
“You can future proof yourself and your identity by defining yourself, not simply by what you do, but by why you do that thing.”
Insight
Shankar: The 'end of history illusion' makes us believe we stop changing
“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, …”
Assertion Partly supported
Shankar: Default opt-out gave 12.5M more kids school lunch
“So they changed the school lunch program from an opt-in program to an opt-out program. So now, every kid's automatically enrolled, and parents only have to take an affirmative step if they want to actively unenroll their kid from the school lunch program. As a…”
Assertion Supported
Shankar: Changing 'eligible' to 'earned' increased VA benefit uptake 9%
“And we ended up changing just one word in the email message. Instead of telling veterans that they were eligible for the program, We simply reminded them that they had earned it through their years of service. And this led to a nine percent increase in access …”
Insight
Shankar: Breaking goals into weekly milestones prevents the demotivating 'middle problem'
“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…”
Insight
Shankar: Making task endings enjoyable leverages Kahneman's peak-end rule for consistency
“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.”
Assertion Supported
Shankar: Awe dampens brain activity associated with self-immersion
“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.”
Maya Shankar