0:14

Pushkin.

0:26

Hi everyone, I'm Brene Brown and this is Dare

0:28

to Lead. I have a really

0:32

beautiful, powerful conversation

0:34

for you on this episode. I

0:37

am talking to doctor Maya Schunker,

0:40

a cognitive scientist, and

0:42

we are talking about everything from

0:44

the science of change, what

0:46

it means to lead, We're talking about love,

0:49

and what we're really digging into is

0:52

what happens when we are

0:55

so surefooted on our path. We're

0:57

so surefooted in fact, that we've built

1:00

identities around what we're accomplishing

1:02

and what we're doing, and all of a

1:04

sudden life happens and we're

1:07

not just noted down on the

1:09

path, were knocked completely off the path.

1:13

How do we get back up, how do we

1:15

figure out who we are

1:18

without that path? And how

1:21

do we start building a new way

1:23

to walk through the world. It is just

1:26

truly a meaningful

1:28

conversation. I'm so glad you're here

1:31

to be a part of it. Before

1:36

we jump in, I want to tell you a little bit about

1:39

Maya. Doctor Maya Schunker

1:41

is a cognitive scientist who

1:44

is the creator, executive producer, and host

1:46

of the Pushkin podcast show A

1:49

Slight Change of Plans Beautiful

1:51

Conversations. Maya was

1:54

a senior advisor in the Obama White House,

1:56

where she founded and served as chair of the White

1:58

House Behavioral Science Team. Just the

2:00

story of how she landed there is basically

2:03

the lesson from our conversation in a nutshell.

2:07

She also served as the first behavioral

2:09

science Advisor to the United Nations. Maya

2:12

has a post doctoral fellowship in cognitive

2:14

neuroscience from Stanford, a PhD

2:16

from Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, and

2:18

a BA from Yale. This woman's

2:21

gone to school, y'alle. She is a

2:23

graduate of the Juilliard School of Music's

2:25

pre college program, where she was a private

2:27

violin student of Ishtac Pearlman's

2:30

and performed alongside of him

2:33

at Carnegie Hall, which is another

2:35

story that'll just This

2:37

is a podcast about mastery,

2:42

love and courage. Let's

2:44

jump in. I

2:48

have to say Maya that you have been on

2:50

our podcast list since

2:52

we imagined the podcast, so welcome

2:55

to dare to lead.

2:56

Oh my gosh, that's such an honor to hear. I'm a

2:58

huge fan, so thanks for saying that.

3:01

We're very grateful that you're here. And

3:03

we always start our podcast with the same question,

3:06

will you tell us your story.

3:08

So I would start my story at the age

3:10

of six, when my mom

3:12

went up to our attic and brought down

3:15

my grandmother's violin that she had

3:18

brought with her all the way from India when she immigrated

3:20

to this country in the nineteen seventies. My grandmother

3:23

had played Eastern classical music

3:25

in the very traditional Southern Indian style,

3:28

and my mom just opened the violin

3:30

case, just eager to show her young

3:32

daughter the instrument. She had shown my older

3:34

three siblings the instrument and they were like, this isn't cool.

3:37

But I thought it was very cool.

3:39

And I was enraptured by the instrument

3:42

so quickly, and it was stunning

3:44

for my mom because I so quickly

3:47

asked for a pint sized violin

3:49

of my own. It was a quarter sized instrument, and

3:52

she never had to tell me to practice. It's like

3:54

even as a six year old, And I assure you, Brene,

3:56

there were many things I did not want to do as a six year

3:58

old, but violin just felt

4:01

like it was such a core part

4:03

of me, like it spoke to me in an important

4:05

way. And it's overwhelming to

4:07

think about how emotionally

4:09

close I felt with something so quickly you

4:12

know that's incredible.

4:14

I mean, was it ancestral? Was it you

4:17

just saw it and thought, yeah, this

4:19

is me.

4:20

Yeah. I loved the way that it sounded,

4:22

I love the way that it felt, and I

4:26

loved the process of getting better at something.

4:29

It was just so motivating for me

4:32

to feel like there was an input

4:34

output model of sorts, which we don't always get

4:36

handed in life, right, but I always felt like, oh,

4:39

by and large, the more I practice, the

4:41

better I get. And when

4:43

I was nine years old, I had big dreams

4:46

really early on forney, and my parents did

4:48

not know how to translate their daughter's

4:50

dreams because my dad is a theoretical

4:52

physics professor and my mom

4:55

helps immigrants get green cards

4:57

to study in this country, and so they had no inns

5:00

in the western classical music

5:02

space. I was always telling my mom,

5:04

oh, I want to go to Juilliard. You know, Juilliard's

5:06

the pinnacle for me, and she's like, well,

5:09

I don't quite know how to make this happen.

5:11

So one day

5:13

my mom and I were just on a trip to New York, and I happened

5:16

to have my violin with me, and

5:18

we were walking by the Juilliard schools

5:20

building, and my mom said,

5:23

why don't we just go in? I was like, what

5:25

do you mean to just go in? She's like, what's

5:27

the worst thing that can happen? And I'm

5:29

thinking, I'll tell you the worst thing, security

5:32

cards escorting us out of the building.

5:34

That's the one thing that can happen.

5:36

And she's like, Okay, let's just go in and see what happened.

5:38

So we walk in unannounced.

5:40

My mom strikes up a conversation with

5:43

a fellow musician and says, oh, do you mind if my daughter

5:45

meets your teacher after your lesson? And

5:48

they very generously said yes. I continue

5:50

to be in all of how many times people are willing to just say

5:53

yes if.

5:53

You ask right?

5:54

Oh my god, it's incredible.

5:55

And I auditioned for this teacher on the spot.

5:58

He accepted me into a summer music

6:00

program basically a boot camp, and I

6:02

ended up auditioning and getting accepted into

6:04

Juilliard in the fall. And that was

6:07

such a critical learning ex experience

6:09

for me because it taught me life

6:11

might not always hand opportunities to

6:13

you on a silver plate. Sometimes you have to

6:15

make the damn plate, you know, you just have to walk

6:17

into the building or cold call

6:19

or cold email or whatever it is. And

6:23

that fearlessness is ultimately what got

6:25

me to a point where I was even good enough to get

6:27

into this school, and it really changed

6:29

my life forever. That began an

6:31

extremely intense violin life

6:34

for me. So, starting when I was nine, every

6:36

Saturday, I lived in Connecticut. So every Saturday, my

6:38

mom and I would get up at four thirty in the morning,

6:41

take the train from Connecticut to New

6:43

York, and I would engage in ten hours

6:45

of classes.

6:46

And again this was the

6:48

remarkable part.

6:49

She'd wake me up at four thirty and she says, I would just

6:51

jump out of bed, and she didn't

6:53

have to be like, Maya, come on, get ready,

6:55

it's time, Like I just couldn't wait. I felt

6:58

like those were my people. Musicians were my

7:00

people. And then the

7:02

greatest honor came when I was a

7:04

teenager. When I was thirteen, and it's

7:07

a Pearlman, my violin idol

7:09

asked me to be his private violin student.

7:11

Okay, let's just pause for a minute here, Let's

7:15

just let that soak in for a second. How

7:19

many people in the world do you think

7:21

can say when ishtak Pearlman

7:24

asked me to be his private violin

7:26

student.

7:27

It does feel remarkable to say, and

7:29

I still pinch myself about it, and I still question

7:31

it. I actually I asked Pearlman's

7:34

wife recently. We were just hanging out having

7:36

coffee, and I said, Toby,

7:40

we both know I was not as technically gifted

7:42

as my peers. Why the hell

7:44

did he take me on as his student? And

7:47

she said because he felt you

7:49

had something to say.

7:51

Wow.

7:53

And that moved me so much because it is so

7:55

true. I had so many insecurities about

7:57

my technique. As I mentioned, my parents

8:00

were not steeped in the classical music world. They

8:02

were having me work with graduate students

8:04

who had never taught someone before. I didn't even know how

8:06

to read sheet music when I got accepted into

8:08

Juilliard. That was a big secret, Like I

8:10

was just makeshifting my way into

8:13

this world. And I loved

8:15

that he felt like I

8:17

had these emotions that he wanted to tap into

8:19

through my music.

8:20

You know.

8:21

I love that he did feel I had something to say,

8:23

because I felt like I had something to

8:25

say. That was in large part why I

8:27

loved the violin. Reflecting back

8:29

and trying to figure out, like, what is it? That I loved about

8:31

the violin. As a kid of you had asked me,

8:33

I would have said, I feel like I

8:35

loved how it sounded, and I loved the.

8:37

Phrases I could produce.

8:38

But I think actually what I loved about the violin

8:40

is that I could go on

8:42

stage and within

8:45

moments, I can make a

8:47

room full of thousands of strangers feel

8:50

something that they may never have felt before,

8:52

Like we could forge this deep emotional connection,

8:55

and that was intoxicating, you know, And

8:58

so that's really what made me tick. And so I felt

9:01

like Pearlman saw that he saw

9:03

the craving that I had within me to connect

9:06

with other people, and he saw that thirst

9:09

and that desire. And I felt

9:11

so heard hearing Toby tell me that, because

9:14

I never really quite understood why it is

9:16

that he gave me his vote of confidence.

9:19

Yeah, it's just so beautiful. I just want to

9:21

sit in it for a second. It's just I

9:24

don't know what that unnameable thing

9:27

is that makes you pop

9:29

up at four thirty. It's like love. It's

9:31

like you loved what you were doing, and

9:34

he had to have seen that, you know, it's just incredible.

9:36

So you become his student.

9:38

I do, and I'm on the fast track.

9:40

Like I'm convincing my Indian

9:43

American parents that I'm not going to the

9:45

liberal arts college that they'd hoped i'd

9:47

go to and have a well rounded education,

9:49

but instead, I'm going to go to a music conservatory.

9:52

And so finally everyone's on board

9:55

with this whole plan. My older three siblings

9:57

had gone to normal colleges.

10:00

My parents, I think it always hoped that I would have that path,

10:02

But Peerlman taking me on, I think, was that

10:04

vote that everyone in the family needed

10:06

to get behind this. So when I was f

10:09

fifteen, I was studying at Pearlman's

10:11

music camp and it was, oh

10:13

gosh, these moments you never forget.

10:15

So I woke up.

10:15

It was a July morning, it was very

10:17

cold, it was on Shelter Island, and

10:20

I woke up and went to my practice room and

10:23

I was playing a very challenging piece. It's

10:25

by Paganini, Paganini Caprice number

10:27

thirteen for any musicians out there, they

10:29

know Paganini stuff. And I

10:32

just overstretched my finger on a single

10:34

note and I heard a popping sound

10:38

and I knew in that moment that something

10:40

was terribly wrong. But I was also fifteen

10:42

Forney. So I entered denial mode

10:44

immediately. I was like, I can

10:46

play through the pain. There's no issues

10:48

here, ignore it. And

10:51

I kept resisting doctors

10:53

telling me, sorry, kid, you're

10:56

not going to be able to play the violin anymore.

10:58

And oh my god.

11:00

Yeah, and my dreams just ended like that

11:03

in a moment. And like I said, I resisted

11:05

it. I played through pain, I kept performing in concerts,

11:07

and suddenly I had to confront

11:09

the harsh truth that everybody else

11:12

had accepted before I did, which is this

11:15

huge dream that I had that I poured

11:18

everything into. Like to this day,

11:20

Brene, my right shoulder is slightly

11:22

higher than my left because of all the years

11:24

that I spent in the violin position,

11:27

Like my spine is slightly curved,

11:29

Like my body literally grew

11:32

around the ergonomics of this instrument. It was

11:34

an extension of my body. And

11:36

now suddenly it was no longer

11:38

a part of my life. And

11:42

I think the best way to describe it is I was

11:44

thrown into this existential spiral

11:47

where I was asking myself all sorts

11:49

of questions like who am I?

11:51

Who am I without this instrument? And

11:55

I think as kids, sometimes we can live,

11:57

at least for me. Maybe precocious kids aren't like

11:59

that, But we can live in this unreflective mode

12:01

where we just go about our business

12:03

and we do the things that we love, and we don't

12:05

take the time to ask ourselves

12:08

what to finds us, what makes

12:10

me Maya? And suddenly

12:13

I was forced to ask myself the question. And

12:15

it's like I didn't like what I found because

12:18

every answer didn't involve the violin.

12:20

Were you just untethered? Was it an untethered

12:22

feeling? Was it a like you

12:24

had lost your mooring? Like what I

12:26

mean? You're young too, You're in the

12:28

height of adolescence.

12:30

Yeah, I think I was despondent. I

12:32

was impatient. I'm an extremely

12:34

impatient person. I was listening to you and Angela

12:37

duckworths, she and I share this dream, deeply

12:39

impatient. I want to ask yeah, yeah, and you too.

12:42

I want things to have happened yesterday. So I

12:44

felt this huge urgency to

12:47

find the next thing. And of course

12:49

you've already picked up on the depth of my love for

12:52

the instrument, right it's hard to even put into words.

12:54

You're not going to find that right away. And

12:56

it was just like push and pull in my mind

12:59

of acceptance, acceptance of the

13:01

loss, and then

13:03

also trying to figure out I

13:05

need to move on, I need to find something

13:07

else, not wanting to and

13:10

that's what created this tension in my mind.

13:13

So then what happens? Do you stay at Juilliard?

13:16

So oh yeah, this is a little known story,

13:18

but it's that Pearlman actually continued

13:21

to teach me and I would play open

13:23

strings in my lessons. That's

13:25

how dedicated a teacher he is. I could

13:27

not use my left hand, so I

13:30

just rested on the instrument and we would just

13:32

focus on making a beautiful

13:34

sound for lesson

13:36

upon lesson.

13:38

Nice is.

13:39

It was remarkable, right, And then finally he

13:41

also had to accept that my violent dreams

13:43

were over.

13:44

We both did.

13:45

It was a joint process of acceptance, and

13:48

I stopped playing entirely. And

13:51

then there was another turning point. I was helping

13:54

my parents clean out their basement the

13:56

summer before college, as a

13:59

dutiful daughter does per day. In

14:01

the counterfactual world, I was supposed to be in China

14:03

touring with my musical classmates. So like,

14:05

equally cool summer situation going on here,

14:08

and I'm just exploring their bookshelf

14:10

and I come across a book by Stephen Pinker

14:12

called The Language Instinct, and

14:16

it detailed our remarkable

14:19

ability to comprehend

14:22

and produce language. And up

14:24

until that point, I had completely taken my

14:26

language abilities for granted, right, I never

14:29

even really thought about them. And

14:31

what Pinker did is he pulled the curtain back for me, and

14:33

he revealed the complex

14:36

cognitive machinery that's at work behind

14:38

the scenes fueling this

14:41

mental ability. And

14:43

I felt in awe. Awe is the

14:45

best word to use to describe that. I thought to

14:47

myself, Oh my gosh, if

14:50

this is what's behind language, what

14:52

is behind the ability

14:54

to do complex mathematics.

14:57

I can't do complex math, but my dad can't write.

15:00

Or like falling in love or high level

15:02

decision making or pondering about

15:04

philosophical questions, like what's

15:07

behind all that? I

15:10

just became insatiable. I wanted

15:12

to read every book there was on the mind.

15:15

And I ended up

15:17

studying cognitive science and undergrad

15:19

and I was really lucky because my undergrad institution

15:22

had a cognitive science program. It's

15:25

more common now that back in the day, it was a relatively

15:27

new program, and it's an interdisciplinary

15:30

program that blends psychology,

15:32

neuroscience, philosophy, computer

15:35

science, anthropology, basic

15:37

biology. Like you're studying the mind

15:40

from multiple different angles to try

15:42

to arrive at some conclusion. And

15:45

that's where I studied non human primates

15:47

and nonverbal abilities and language

15:49

and visual perception. Like again,

15:52

I just had the time of my life, right, I was for

15:54

doing research in all of these labs, and

15:56

I ultimately got my PhD in

15:59

cognitive science and ended

16:01

up getting a post doc in cognitive neuroscience.

16:04

So it was very much on the academic path at

16:06

that point.

16:07

I love the threat of

16:11

passion and purpose. I bet if you

16:13

had to go study cognitive science at

16:15

four point thirty in the morning on a Saturday,

16:17

you would have popped right back up too, just like

16:19

maybe four forty five.

16:20

I thought, yeah, yeah, I'd gotten older by this

16:22

point.

16:23

Okay, so then

16:25

tell us what happens. You finish your postdoc and you're

16:27

on your trajectory. Is probably an academic

16:30

position.

16:30

Absolutely, Yeah, I'm gonning to be a professor, right,

16:33

That's what you do when you've just spent ten years studying

16:35

something, and I

16:37

think is so common. Sometimes I felt like,

16:39

finally I've got it. All figured out.

16:41

That's that as a feeling that we all, you

16:44

know, we all aspire for it. It's

16:46

a fiction.

16:46

I'm like, I finally got it all figured out. My dad's

16:49

a professor. I've always wanted to be a professor. I admired

16:51

professors. And then there's

16:53

this again turning point

16:55

where I'm sitting in the

16:57

basement of an E. Fhor Marie laboratory,

16:59

so I'm doing brain scans. It's

17:02

at Stanford, That's where I was doing my POSTOC and

17:05

I've been scanning people's brains all morning in this

17:07

windowless laboratory and this guy

17:09

comes in and within moments I'm

17:12

like looking at as amygdala and

17:14

I.

17:14

Don't know so personal so

17:17

quickly I mean yes, I

17:20

mean, are you happy to see me? Or is that your amygdalah?

17:22

I mean, it's God's kind of funny, but

17:25

it's probably funny for you and me, like party

17:27

of two, we're laughing, the nerds are laughing, but

17:30

it is kind of oh absolutely.

17:32

I mean your point.

17:33

That was exactly the challenge for me, which is

17:35

it felt like the order of operations was

17:37

off given my personality, because

17:40

I wanted to know, what does this person love

17:42

to do do they have a family, do they have kids?

17:45

What's their favorite ice cream flavor, what's

17:47

their favorite book that they've read? Like, those

17:50

were the questions that I was so excited, how do they make

17:52

decisions? And instead it felt like a

17:54

depersonalized version of the process.

17:56

Now, kudos

17:58

to neuroscientists everywhere, we need them out

18:00

there, but I just knew in that moment, this

18:03

is not a good match for me. This

18:05

is not a good match for my personality. I want

18:07

to be working on teas. I

18:10

need to be in a window windowed

18:13

office, not

18:15

in.

18:15

A dark Stanford laboratory office.

18:17

And so there were just things like that where I

18:20

just realized this is not quite right. But

18:22

I felt so much inertia because

18:24

again I poured it was similar

18:27

in some sense to the violin. I mean, this was on my own

18:29

polition. Maybe that was departing, but you still

18:31

feel that same poll like, oh my gosh,

18:33

I've just spent so many years doing this thing and

18:35

now I'm not sure that I want to do it anymore.

18:38

God, You're like, it's like sunk cost.

18:40

Hell absolutely, oh my gosh.

18:43

And I was studying the sunk cost fallacy

18:45

at the time, but man, I fell prey

18:47

to it for Nay.

18:48

None of us are reviewed.

18:49

None of us are Yeah,

18:51

it's a really certain you would explain it real quick

18:53

for everyone that's listening that doesn't know it.

18:55

Yeah, I mean, we tend to overvalue

18:59

the investments we've made in stuff, and we cling

19:01

onto that stuff far beyond when it's rational

19:03

too, And it's deeply painful to incur

19:05

losses, right for the things that we've poured

19:07

so much time and energy, but

19:10

when actually we should just cut our.

19:11

Losses and move forward, right totally.

19:13

Yeah, And so I at this moment, I think this was around

19:15

yeah, twenty twelve, So behavioral

19:18

science was just kind of like a burgeoning field at

19:20

that time, and I didn't

19:22

know what my options were, right, I thought,

19:24

well, what does a cognitive neuroscience postdoc

19:26

do? They either become a professor or

19:29

they become a general management consultant.

19:31

Like those are the only two options that I knew

19:33

about.

19:34

So that sounds right.

19:35

Yeah.

19:35

So I called it my undergrad advisor, Laurie

19:38

Santos, who's known me since

19:40

I was seventeen, And I

19:42

said, Laurie, so you

19:44

know that thing I've been doing for like a

19:47

long time, don't want

19:49

to do that anymore. I'm thinking of trying

19:51

to apply for a general management position consulting

19:54

position, and she's like, Okay,

19:56

Maya, before you do that. I can see her like clinging

19:58

on to the student that she's coached for so long,

20:00

being like, I don't want to lose you in the field. She

20:03

tells me about this remarkable

20:05

work that's happening in the federal

20:07

government at the time. So this was in the Obama White House

20:10

where they were leveraging

20:12

insights from the field of behavioral economics

20:15

from the stuff that I was studying in real time to

20:17

help feed hungry children. So,

20:20

long story short, the government offers

20:22

what's called the National School Lunch Program,

20:24

and despite the fact that millions

20:27

of kids are eligible for the program,

20:30

millions of kids were still going hungry at

20:32

school every day because their

20:35

parents hadn't filled out the application form for

20:37

the program, and a

20:39

behavioral audit of the program revealed

20:41

that the reason for this is the

20:44

application process was extremely

20:46

burdensome. It required referencing

20:49

multiple tax documents, it required going

20:51

to the post office at a certain moment

20:53

in the time, moment in time, and oh,

20:55

if you fill out something wrong, there's a potential penalty

20:58

that you might incur and put yourself

21:00

in the shoes of a single mom who's

21:03

working three shifts to make ends meet,

21:06

who's trying to make sure that her children thrive

21:08

at school, and we're putting these demands

21:10

on her just to make sure that they gave access

21:12

to lunch. That's unreasonable, right. And

21:14

then another barrier was that there was

21:16

a stigma associated with signing up

21:19

your kids for a public benefits program. Or later

21:21

on, when I was at the White House, I talked to principles

21:23

and parents who said, look, I work really

21:25

hard for a living. I don't want my kids depending on the government.

21:29

So what they did, in turn was they leveraged

21:31

the power of the default option, and

21:33

basically what that means is they turned

21:35

the program from an opt in program

21:38

to an opt out program. So

21:40

now all eligible kids

21:43

were automatically enrolled in the school

21:45

lunch program and parents had to only

21:47

take a step if they actively wanted

21:49

to unenroll their children. And

21:52

as a result of this very elegant change

21:54

in the behavioral design of the program, twelve

21:57

and a half million more kids were now eating

21:59

lunch at school every day, and

22:02

I.

22:02

Was blown away.

22:04

The emotional resonance of this example just

22:07

oh my gosh. It lit me up, and I think out

22:09

to myself, this is what I want

22:11

to be doing with my life.

22:12

I actually want to be.

22:12

A practitioner of behavioral science.

22:15

I didn't even know that was a thing, but if I can make

22:17

that into a thing, that would be awesome.

22:20

Right, And so.

22:22

I have to trust off you here because I'm looking

22:25

at my sister who's sitting across and it's like every

22:27

time I want to do something, I always I am always

22:29

like, hey, can you google if this is a thing

22:31

or not? Like am I allowed to be doing this? Like

22:34

I want to be a social worker with a PhD, But

22:36

I really want to do this kind of Is that a thing? Is

22:38

anyone else? Where's the blueprint for this? And

22:41

sometimes there's not a blueprint? Right?

22:43

Yeah?

22:43

There had been the seminal book written by Cass

22:45

Sunstein and Richard Thaler called Nudge, and

22:48

some work that was happening overseas, but the federal

22:50

government was not hiring for a behavioral scientist.

22:52

And so I so desperately wanted

22:54

to this role that the role didn't exist.

22:57

And so what do I do?

22:59

I recruit my mom's Juilliard

23:01

method the cold I.

23:04

Was going to guess that you pulled your mom's

23:06

Juilliard.

23:07

I pulled the mom's Juilliard methods.

23:08

So what I did is I ended up sending Cass

23:11

Sunstein, right author of this book Nudge, and a

23:13

former Obama official, a cold

23:15

email in which I basically

23:17

said, Hey, I'm Maya. I

23:19

am a postdoc who's published nothing of

23:22

significance, and I have no public policy

23:24

experience, but I'd love to work

23:26

in government at the intersection of behavioral science

23:28

and policy. It was just like seeping

23:30

with insecurities.

23:31

Brene.

23:32

I even wrote, I know I'm not cool

23:34

enough to work with the likes of Obama, but if there's

23:36

a state or local government opportunity,

23:39

please do let me know. And thankfully

23:42

for me like pass ignored

23:44

all the insecurity and he

23:47

wrote back within minutes saying, so

23:49

great to hear from you, Maya. I'm connecting you with

23:52

President Obama's science advisor. Let

23:54

them know I passed you along. And

23:57

within days two days later, I'm

23:59

buying a business suit because I had an interview

24:02

with White House officials where

24:05

I'm pitching them on this idea of creating

24:08

a new role for me, a role that

24:10

is dedicated to the translation of

24:12

behavioral science into improvements in

24:15

public policy. And I remember

24:17

I had the meeting, you know, I had this interview,

24:19

right, and can I just share there was like

24:21

a Michelle Obama moment, just.

24:23

Like totally coming away.

24:25

So I had been waxing poetic for some time

24:27

about the potential

24:30

virtues of applying behavioral science to policy,

24:32

right. It had been mapped out by many researchers.

24:34

We were all kind of getting excited about the translation

24:37

space. And I remember

24:39

I was pitching the

24:41

person who would become my future boss on some

24:44

changes I would love to see in the messaging around

24:46

Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative, and

24:50

his response was, oh, yeah, I know

24:52

Michelle Obama and or her team, we can make that happen.

24:56

And I was like, you want shit,

24:58

Oh shit, Okay, I guess

25:01

this is like a real thing now, you know. And

25:03

it was in that moment that I was filled

25:06

kind of with that same excitement and adrenaline

25:09

and enjoy that I felt when I was playing

25:11

the violin. I was like, Wow,

25:13

this sky it felt like a sky's the limit situation.

25:15

And so at the end of the interview,

25:18

he said, Mamaya loved talking to you. I

25:20

love to stay in touch, and I'm like, why

25:23

stays touched? Do you mean like, don't call

25:25

me, I'll call you. Like we're going

25:28

to be besties, hang out on the weekends,

25:30

we're going to work together. Do you mind just

25:32

clarifying? And so he says,

25:34

well, there's just a couple things that need to happen. One, Obama

25:37

needs to get reelected in a few weeks. This was in October

25:39

of twenty twelve.

25:40

Two.

25:41

I need to run this up the chain and make

25:43

sure that everyone's on board. In three,

25:46

we need to make sure there's a desk for you. And that's

25:48

also when like my West Wing dreams

25:50

were kind of shattered. I'd imagined the White House

25:52

as this like resource rich

25:55

environment, and it turns out everyone's really

25:57

scrappy in there.

25:58

We're all just trying to.

25:59

Make ends meet. And so I end up moving

26:01

to DC with

26:04

a very informal verbal offer.

26:06

So before I even have a formal offered

26:09

at my bags, I've sold everything in California

26:11

except for my bike, just in case, and

26:14

I move across the country. I sign

26:16

a one year lease in DC, and I essentially

26:18

just show up on the doorsteps of the White

26:20

House and I'm like, I'm here, let's

26:23

make this happen. And sure

26:26

enough the job gets secured and

26:28

I started at the beginning of Abam the second term.

26:32

So one of the things I want to do because I want

26:34

to know the rest of the story. We're in it, but I know there

26:36

are Yeah, no, it's

26:39

great, but I want to pause for a second and

26:41

say something. I

26:43

want to share a thought and then get

26:45

your feedback on it. The walking

26:48

into Juilliard kind of uninvited,

26:50

unannounced, the calling

26:54

folks and saying, hey, I'd really love to do

26:56

this. I've

26:58

had some real slighting door of moments like that in my

27:01

career, Like moments that I just were

27:03

not supposed to work, but they did. But

27:06

there was a shit ton of work. It's

27:08

not like you picked up a violin on Monday

27:11

and on Friday you thought you should be at Juilliard.

27:14

How many hours do you think you had practiced

27:17

from the time you first picked it up to the time your

27:19

mom said let's just go in.

27:21

I mean thousands, right,

27:23

yeah, right.

27:24

You raise an extremely important point that

27:26

I think is sometimes easy to overlook,

27:28

Like these moments only work

27:31

when you come immensely prepared. So

27:34

the minute that I get this potential

27:37

White House interview, I mean, I'm

27:39

spending forty eight hours in the

27:43

most intense prep mode of my life, right

27:45

Like, every minute is

27:48

accounted for in terms of prepping

27:50

for this interview. And of course, now I don't want to make it seem

27:52

like I did all the prep in two days. I had done years

27:55

of work as an actual cognitive scientist,

27:57

so I obviously knew all the research stuff, but

27:59

certainly with the violin, it wasn't enough

28:02

to just show up and have the audition.

28:04

I had to do a good job in the audition. I had

28:06

to show up having done the hard work.

28:09

Yeah, there's just a super powerful

28:12

combination of

28:17

competency and

28:21

just ballsiness and love and

28:23

passion that is just the swirl of

28:25

it is so

28:28

powerful. But it all has to

28:30

be there. There has to be a passion and love for what we're

28:32

doing. There has to be the work, the competency,

28:34

the mastery, and then there has to

28:36

be some really courageous

28:40

Anyone seeing what I'm doing right now would think

28:42

I'm nuts to even ask moments,

28:44

but I think it's very easy

28:48

to kind of become

28:51

magnetized to

28:53

an idea without understanding

28:56

every variable that's at play. Well

28:59

said, it's

29:01

complicated for people to I

29:03

think sometimes I'm thinking. I just

29:05

interviewed James Clear for the Dare to Lead podcast

29:08

which will air in December, and talking about habits

29:10

and change, and we

29:12

were talking about this thing of consistency

29:15

over intensity, and

29:17

I'm thinking about the consistency in your

29:19

violin plane, the consistency in

29:22

your academic preparedness.

29:25

It's there, right, It's not just the intense

29:27

moments of reaching out and trying something ballsy.

29:30

Yeah, And in many ways, there's

29:32

this positive feedback loop, which is when you put

29:34

in the hard work, it fuels

29:37

you to make these courageous decisions because

29:39

they actually feel less courageous

29:42

because you think you deserve it. You

29:44

think that there could be a chance because

29:47

you have put in the hard work.

29:48

Yeah, that's really interesting.

29:50

So I almost see them as really interconnected.

29:52

People will say sometimes why did you

29:54

and your mom walk into that building? And it's like, because

29:56

I felt like I

29:59

could have what it takes. I

30:01

didn't feel I had it, but I felt

30:03

like I could because I'd put it in so much

30:05

hard work and I had seen progress.

30:09

It's funny that you say that, because one

30:11

of the things that's been really important

30:13

for me is

30:15

this idea of mastery over success,

30:18

kind of always learning. And one

30:22

of the questions I ask when I'm getting ready to do something

30:24

really may

30:26

feel outrageous in an

30:28

area of mastery for me is if

30:30

not me, whom you

30:33

know? Why not? It's not like I'm going to

30:35

I'm walking into Juilliard, never having held

30:38

a violin in my life. It's just the

30:40

relationship between the two things, between mastery

30:43

and courage is really

30:45

interesting that you think absolutely.

30:47

It actually reminds me.

30:48

You know, one of my favorite movies is Free

30:51

Solo because I don't know if you're.

30:52

Familiar with this movie, but oh god, yeah, Alex

30:54

Hunneled.

30:55

Just for listeners who haven't seen the movie,

30:57

but Alex hunneled Free

30:59

solos El Capitan in Yosemite

31:03

Park, and free soloing means literally

31:05

no gear, no ropes, You're on your

31:07

own. And the

31:10

reason that I loved the movie

31:13

is that I think it's I

31:16

think it taught so many viewers that

31:18

they were laboring under a false understanding

31:22

of what it is that Alex does so

31:24

a lot of people say, oh my gosh, do you have a

31:26

death wish? Why are you willing to

31:28

put yourself in these insanely high risk

31:30

situations?

31:31

Are you out of your mind? But what

31:33

the movie does is.

31:34

It teaches you that Alex

31:36

saw his climbing essentially like a choreograph

31:39

dance. Every single

31:42

move was mapped out

31:44

in his head with incredible

31:46

detail and precision and

31:49

practice. He had redone all

31:51

of these moves with ropes countless

31:54

times, such that by

31:57

the time he decided to actually make

31:59

the ascent, it

32:02

no longer felt risky to him.

32:04

Now, granted, there are exogynous variables that play

32:06

a role in humpy free solo. You can't saw

32:09

for the rock falling from you know whatever?

32:12

Yeah, of course, so yeah, I mean I'm never

32:14

going to be a free solo er. Also,

32:16

I probably don't have the athletic ability, but that's another

32:19

that's an aside, But that

32:21

illustrates to me. I think what you're getting at and what

32:23

I felt with Juilliard, right,

32:25

which is you get to the point

32:28

where you have such mastery

32:31

it no longer feels as risky to

32:34

do.

32:36

The outrageous thing.

32:39

And what's interesting too, there's something

32:41

beletic about it for me as well,

32:43

because sometimes

32:48

true mastery is perceived as

32:50

easy, and that's because it looks

32:52

easy because of the level of mastery. Does

32:55

that make sense?

32:55

Absolutely? Yeah.

32:56

I mean I was talking with Angela Duckworth about this,

32:59

right, We were talking about grit and deliberated

33:01

practice and all these things, and exactly

33:04

those same themes were emerging from

33:06

our conversation. Which is in the same

33:08

way that you see only

33:10

the success stories and not the failures.

33:12

Right when you see the mastery, it's really hard to see all

33:15

that went into it.

33:17

So interesting, all right, So

33:19

tell us, I've got, as you can

33:21

imagine, I've got five gagillion

33:24

questions. What

33:26

have you learned about

33:29

change and how we change,

33:32

how we resist change, how we approach

33:34

change. What have you learned about

33:37

change that still shocks

33:39

you?

33:41

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm having

33:43

a new thought in this moment, which is I

33:46

think the reason why we can have so much discomfort

33:49

in the face of change is because it

33:51

threatens our sense of self identity. Say

33:54

that again, I think the

33:57

reason why we can have so much anxiety

34:00

or trepidation in the face of change is

34:02

because it can threaten

34:04

our sense of self. It can threaten

34:06

our self identity.

34:09

So if change is threatening

34:12

our sense of self or our identity,

34:14

what is the what's it whispering? What is

34:17

change telling us that feels threatening?

34:19

Yeah? Let me's a messaging.

34:20

Let me call upon my own experience right

34:23

to help unpack this a bit, which is, as

34:26

you and I know from my story, I lose the violin

34:29

and I don't know who I am. I don't know what my value

34:32

is in this world. I don't know what I'm going to attach myself

34:34

to next. And what

34:38

that taught me. The lesson that I learned from

34:40

that experience is that it's

34:43

much more sustainable to attach

34:45

my identity to the features

34:48

of pursuits that light me up

34:50

and make me tick, rather than

34:53

a very specific activity

34:55

or thing. And as I mentioned

34:57

to you, what I learned is that the actual

34:59

thing that made me light up about

35:02

the violin wasn't necessarily the

35:04

violin itself. It was an instrument,

35:06

uh there with the puns, but it was an instrument

35:09

and for forging emotional

35:11

connections with other people. So I learned,

35:13

ah, okay, that's a trait of the violin that I

35:15

loved. Let me see if I can

35:17

now find that trait in other things,

35:20

because life will present barriers

35:23

and obstacles and twists and turns that many

35:25

of which are out of my control, that deny

35:27

me the ability to pursue certain

35:29

things that I love. Let me see if I can find

35:31

it elsewhere. And I

35:34

was able to find it elsewhere. So I found

35:36

that same desire for human connection in

35:38

studying cognitive science. I literally study

35:41

how it is that we relate to

35:43

other human beings and we make decisions and

35:45

move about in this world. I found

35:48

that kind of same connection when I was working in

35:50

the Obama White House and I was on

35:52

the ground in Flint, Michigan, working

35:54

on the Leaden water crisis and talking with residents

35:57

of Flint about how decades of disenfranchisement

35:59

and racism led to this problem in the first

36:02

place and they needed help. And I

36:04

feel that human connection today

36:07

with my podcast, The Slight Chain Plans, which

36:10

is all about connecting

36:12

with other people who have gone through extraordinary changes

36:15

in their lives. And I feel like I have

36:17

licensed through this podcast to go into a room

36:19

with you know, Hillary Rodham Clinton,

36:21

or Tiffany Hattish or Tommy

36:24

Caldwell or Casey Musgraves or Riz Ahmed

36:27

and to say, hey, so I

36:29

know we just met, but what was the most challenging

36:32

moment of your life? Like, what's your deepest, darkest secret.

36:34

You know, it's another way of forging intimacy.

36:36

And so for those people

36:38

who are listening, who are struggling because

36:41

life has thrown them a change of

36:43

plans and they feel

36:45

this loss of control and they feel like they've lost

36:47

the thing that they love near and dear,

36:50

just do an assessment. Ask yourself, Okay,

36:53

I know I can't have that thing, but what about

36:55

that thing did I love? And

36:57

then mine the world

37:00

for other places where you might

37:02

find that.

37:05

I'm really just taking it all in. I just I

37:10

just have to warn you that we call this the pause cast.

37:12

Sometimes. I know, I love that I feel

37:15

no need to fill in just open air

37:17

sometimes because I think you've just said a lot

37:19

of really important things that I

37:21

think is worth sitting with and

37:24

also worth kind of unpacking a little bit.

37:29

What you're saying to me reminds

37:33

me very much of some purpose

37:35

work that I've done before, where every

37:39

time I tried to figure out, like in

37:41

these exercises, what's my purpose? What's my purpose?

37:45

The question was always deeper, deeper, deeper,

37:48

And then I got to this really core

37:50

thing of using

37:56

images and words to

37:59

connect the seemingly

38:01

unconnectable to help

38:04

people live braver lives. And

38:07

then it's so weird because

38:10

that what you're talking

38:12

about, that thing that

38:14

is just part of me is

38:19

can survive unwelcome

38:22

change because I can

38:24

find that and express that through a myriad

38:27

of things. And

38:30

when I choose to do things

38:34

that are only surface level connected

38:36

to that bigger thing for me, that purpose

38:38

for me, I freaking

38:40

hate them. I end up hating them. I end

38:42

up having no passion for

38:45

them.

38:45

Can you give an example?

38:46

I can? I mean weekly examples, like

38:49

I have a team of thirty people

38:51

and we go through a lot

38:53

of incoming request to do

38:55

things, and there are a lot of bright

38:58

and shiny things, and

39:02

we ask a simple question of

39:04

everything I do, does it serve

39:06

the work? And for me, work

39:09

is using words

39:11

and images to connect the seemingly unconnectable

39:14

to help people better understand their lives and

39:16

be braver. And so if

39:18

it's do you know? So when

39:22

we ask does this serve the

39:24

work? And the answer

39:26

is no, I normally don't

39:28

do it. You know, does

39:30

it serve the ego. Maybe I'll

39:33

do something that doesn't really serve the work because it sounds

39:35

fun. But I

39:38

don't think in the past five years I've

39:40

done anything mistakingly

39:43

thinking it would serve the work and it wouldn't. Just because

39:45

we're so to use your word about

39:47

free solo, there's so much precision

39:50

in our vetting of those things. When

39:53

I think about the violin and

39:56

being on stage and connecting

39:58

to people yourself, and there's something

40:00

that just makes sense to me, just intuitively about

40:03

the violin and the free lunch program. It's

40:05

about inextricable

40:07

human connection. Music does

40:09

that, and

40:13

making sure that

40:15

kids are eating does that. It

40:18

says no one's full until we're all fed,

40:21

you know, And what are the barriers do that? So let

40:24

me throw something at you, just kind of going so

40:28

like you, I go into organizations a lot, and

40:31

we work with leadership teams, and we work with teams

40:33

to better understand what's going on in culture, what's

40:35

getting in the way of innovation,

40:37

what's getting the way of productivity. And

40:40

I want you to diagnose something from

40:43

your lens that we have found in our research.

40:46

The greatest shame trigger

40:49

at work is

40:51

the threat of being irrelevant,

40:56

and in the midst of change, whether

40:59

it's a merger and acquisition, digital transformation,

41:02

reductions, in the midst

41:04

of change, people get very

41:07

scared. They double down,

41:10

and irrelevance

41:12

almost becomes a self fulfilling

41:14

prophecy for them, because

41:16

instead of leaning in and learning what's new and

41:19

how are we changing, they

41:22

get territorial shut down. This

41:24

is bullshit, This is not the way we've always done it.

41:27

What's happening in that situation?

41:31

Yeah, I mean it's so interesting you share this story

41:33

because I think it really does trace back

41:35

to back to identity and

41:37

self worth and how much people are

41:40

defining their identity and self worth

41:42

in their particular jobs right,

41:45

which is very understandable. We have lots

41:47

of research in labor economics showing what a

41:49

morale boost just being in work gives you.

41:51

I think that's a beautiful thing. I

41:54

will say that, by

41:57

and large, even

41:59

though I've had guests on a slight change

42:01

of plans with so many diverse stories,

42:05

the connective tissue between all of them is

42:08

that they've been able to see their identities

42:11

as far more malleable than they

42:13

otherwise would have.

42:15

Say more about that, So.

42:16

What I mean by that is, they

42:19

have allowed themselves

42:21

to embody new

42:24

ways of being, new ways

42:26

of moving about in the world

42:29

in the face of a big change, which

42:31

has allowed them to navigate that change

42:34

with less anxiety and less

42:36

fear or you're in the specific case

42:38

of the work like less fear of quote irrelevance.

42:41

So the story that's screaming out to

42:43

me is around this notion

42:45

of like identity. Specifically, there's this guy

42:47

named Scott who I interviewed. He's actually just a

42:49

colleague of my husband's. He

42:52

is in his early thirties, he's a cancer researcher,

42:55

he builds breast cancer detection tools,

42:58

and he's a self proclaimed health nut. So he's spent

43:00

the last decade of his life trying to optimize

43:02

his life. So I'm talking intermittent fasting,

43:05

high intensity interval training, chi

43:07

as seeds, turmeric, the whole shebang. And

43:11

last year in twenty twenty,

43:13

he gets a stage four bone cancer

43:15

diagnosis Jesus that within weeks

43:18

leads him to have to amputate

43:20

his right leg, move

43:24

to M d Anderson in Texas, receive

43:26

eighteen administrations of chemotherapy

43:29

and remove a vertebra from a spine and

43:32

multiple other surgeries.

43:34

Oh God.

43:36

Now Scott is telling me I

43:40

have this identity as

43:42

a fit person, right as someone who

43:44

is super healthy and can conquer the

43:46

world, and who's got all the potential

43:49

in the world. And

43:51

he said, And I'm sitting here now, six months

43:54

into my chemotherapy, having

43:56

a cup of coffee,

43:58

and I'm realizing that

44:02

maybe these parts of my identity are

44:05

more negotiable than

44:07

I thought. That's the word that he used.

44:09

Negotiable's the word negotiable.

44:10

Negotiable.

44:11

Wow, Okay, I say more that I'm still.

44:13

Scott at the end

44:15

of the day, that the things that I find joy

44:18

in, I can still find joy in. I

44:20

still love that bite of food,

44:22

I still love that sound of music. At

44:24

the moment, I can't walk, I can't run a marathon.

44:28

But I'm realizing that

44:30

Scott in

44:32

many ways he was telling me, Brene, that Scott

44:34

was bigger, was more

44:37

robust than maybe the Scott he had thought

44:39

he was before. You know that

44:43

Scott inhabits a much broader array

44:46

of wonderful traits and characteristics

44:49

and ability.

44:51

He's transcended a very small identity.

44:54

He's transcending. So I do want to pay

44:56

amens to the fact that he's in the middle of this process

44:58

and it's not complete, but he's in the

45:00

throes of it, and he's realizing

45:03

for the first time ever that he needs to start

45:06

seeing his identity in this way. And an

45:09

another thing that really surprised him is

45:11

this guy's worst nightmare came true,

45:14

right, And he's

45:16

also sitting there having this cup of coffee, telling me,

45:20

I feel like the

45:23

psychological thermostat has prevailed,

45:26

my psychological immune system has prevailed,

45:28

because I more or

45:30

less feel as happy as I did before.

45:33

And he said, sure, the lows are lower,

45:36

you know, the treatments are deeply

45:38

uncomfortable. He described having Civil War pain

45:40

with the amputation. But I, Scott,

45:44

feel whole and I

45:46

feel more or less again

45:49

just as happy. And I am

45:51

stunned by that because

45:54

this completely ran counter to

45:57

his old model of himself. How

45:59

Scott would respond to this experience.

46:02

And so, look, this is not everyone's experience

46:04

with illness or disease or any kind of change,

46:06

but it is Scott's experience.

46:09

What a beautiful story. I'm going to send

46:11

all my good prayers and just

46:15

thoughts to Scott in this process,

46:17

because what an incredible story of

46:20

I love how you caught me and said he's transcending,

46:23

like he's in process. Yeah, and sometimes

46:26

that lasts three days and

46:28

sometimes at last thirty years. Sometimes

46:30

every morning we recommit to transcending, I

46:32

think after a big change.

46:38

So let me ask you this question. The

46:40

podcast is fascinating, and

46:43

you know I can't help, but as a qualitative researcher

46:45

or think, what are the themes and patterns that

46:47

I'm hearing here that are saturating across the interviews

46:49

which you're sharing with us.

46:52

Help me reverse engineer into

46:57

what we can do or think about

47:01

on a daily basis to

47:04

become more malleable, to

47:06

become bigger than the identities that we

47:08

rest in all often, how

47:10

can we what's

47:12

the word I'm looking for, build

47:15

resilience to change now

47:17

as opposed to trying to build it in the midst of

47:20

it.

47:21

Yeah, it's a great question.

47:23

I think it is to appreciate what

47:26

complex ecosystems we are

47:29

just by virtue of being

47:31

human. And the reason I say

47:33

that is any

47:37

given change in our life doesn't happen in a

47:39

vacuum. So I think we

47:41

tend to think, oh, I'm just going to be I'm

47:43

going to be me Maya. But it's as though I'm going

47:45

to walk through this magic mirror and this

47:47

one thing will have changed about me. But

47:50

that's not actually a human's word, no, right,

47:53

there's all sorts of unexpected

47:56

spillover effects on other parts of our

47:58

lives and our sense of self that

48:00

we simply can't predict. And

48:04

again we do fall prey to this cognitive fallacy

48:06

like, oh, you know, I'm going to change

48:08

this one thing, but like everything else is going to stay

48:10

firmly intact and constant. And

48:14

I think when we appreciate that,

48:20

we won't have the whole equation figured

48:22

out. Kind of ironically,

48:26

it might lead us to embrace change more

48:28

than we otherwise would have, because we're

48:31

constantly going to surprise ourselves, and

48:34

we might surprise ourselves in the wrong direction. So,

48:36

for example, there was a woman I interviewed

48:38

named Elna, and her

48:40

lifelong dream was to become thin. She

48:42

really felt that if she could lose

48:44

the weight, all of her big dreams would

48:47

come true, and she achieved

48:49

that goal through very unhealthy means.

48:51

In five and a half months, she lost over one hundred

48:53

pounds, and for a while there

48:55

she did think that she was leaving her dream life

48:58

until she started to

49:00

realize that she was becoming a worse person.

49:03

She was actually losing her self confidence.

49:05

She felt less emboldened in situations,

49:07

she felt more judgmental,

49:09

she felt more superficial. She was losing

49:12

these core parts of Elna again that she

49:14

felt would almost certainly stay intact. Right

49:16

again, she's walking through the magic mirror where

49:18

she's Elna through and through, who was before

49:20

this transition, extremely

49:23

bold, audacious, outspoken, and

49:25

all of a sudden, she feels like she's losing these parts

49:27

of herself. And so that's an example

49:30

where she was willing

49:32

what she thought would be a positive change and

49:34

then all of a sudden, it turned out to be a negative

49:37

one. But then you take Scott's story,

49:40

which is he so anticipated

49:42

that this was going to be the worst change of his life, and

49:45

he's now realizing there's all these positive

49:47

spillover effects in terms of how he's

49:49

developing as a person and how he's seeing himself.

49:52

And so that unexpected

49:55

element, the richness of

49:57

the change experience, the multifaceted

49:59

nature of the change experience, is

50:02

hopefully more appealing to people than

50:05

the black and white model of change they may

50:07

be carrying in their minds. It's going to be hard,

50:10

but it is going to be transformative and

50:12

filled with growth of some kind, and

50:14

you can always hold on to that.

50:17

It's powerful. Yeah, I

50:20

think people don't think

50:22

about the physics of systems once

50:24

small change reverberates in places

50:27

you can never even anticipate.

50:29

Absolutely, And look, we know from research,

50:31

right Brene, like we are, we're typically very

50:33

bad cognitive forecasters. We

50:36

are terrible at predicting how we will respond

50:38

emotionally to things. And look,

50:40

change circumstances are no different. They're

50:43

falling into the same camp.

50:46

Yeah, it's interesting. Just it's really

50:48

interesting, like change is coming. Maybe the best

50:50

thing you can do is get an emotional, spiritual,

50:52

physical shape for reverberation.

50:55

Yeah.

50:56

You know, another thing that you're making me think of, just in terms

50:58

of advice for embracing change, is to

51:01

share a personal experience. So in

51:03

twenty twenty, I was feeling

51:06

absolutely overwhelmed by the

51:08

change that was happening. I mean, there

51:11

was the pandemic, there was racial

51:13

injustice upheaval, there were

51:15

personal losses I was experiencing in my own

51:17

life, miscarriage, and

51:21

I just felt overwhelmed and disoriented.

51:25

I felt like, all of this is so new,

51:28

and I don't know how to manage any of it. But

51:31

then I put on my cognitive science hat, and I

51:33

realized, while the specifics

51:35

of what twenty twenty is throwing my way and throwing

51:37

our way may be unprecedented,

51:40

our human ability to navigate change is

51:44

absolutely not unprecedented. We've

51:46

done this rodeo so many times before

51:48

as a civilization, as individuals,

51:51

our minds are wired

51:53

for change because it's such a core part of

51:55

the human experience.

51:57

And so.

51:59

What that taught me is

52:02

it is possi it is possible

52:04

for us to recruit learnings

52:07

and insights from our prior change

52:09

experiences from other people's change

52:11

experiences. I mean, in many ways, this was the genesis

52:13

for a slight change of plans. I'm like searching

52:15

the world for people with the most fascinating

52:18

change stories so that I can learn as much as I can,

52:20

so listeners can benefit as much as they can.

52:23

And to see that.

52:26

While you might be intimidated by the specific

52:29

nature of the change, don't forget that

52:31

human psychology can often transcend

52:34

those specifics. There are many

52:36

episodes where people have reached

52:38

out to me, and the recent

52:41

divorcee is finding more resonance

52:43

in the cancer patient's story than they are

52:46

in a story about someone who's recently divorced,

52:48

Because again, it's all about

52:51

human psychology, it's about how we respond

52:53

to change, and so that fills

52:55

me with optimism at hope for a few

52:57

reasons. One, when I'm confronted with a change,

53:00

I build my confidence by saying, Maya,

53:03

you've done this change thing before, like

53:05

fear not right. But number

53:07

two, try to

53:09

dissociate yourselves from yourself

53:11

from the specifics of the change for just a moment.

53:13

Try to see it with some distance and try

53:16

to figure out what are the psychological

53:18

strategies that you can recruit that you've learned

53:20

from your own guests on a slight change of plans

53:22

to help you navigate this moment. I'm

53:26

sorry, I'm gonna

53:28

get emotional for a second. This

53:30

played out in my own life recently,

53:34

where my husband and I

53:36

lost identical twin girls to a

53:38

miscarriage via surrogacy. So it's

53:41

our third pregnancy

53:43

loss, and it

53:46

happened recently. It happened like two months

53:48

ago. It happened in September, and I

53:50

was so overwhelmed again, and

53:56

I started feeling those things like well,

53:58

I haven't gone through this before, you

54:00

know. And then

54:02

I called it my producer and I said, I

54:06

need this show right now, like I need

54:08

a slight change of plans for me right now.

54:11

And so he turned on the mic, and two days later

54:13

he interviewed me about my change story, and

54:16

I shared that with everyone, and I processed

54:18

out loud. I did the thing that I'd asked

54:20

my guests to do so many times with me, to be

54:23

raw and vulnerable and to process

54:25

their own change experiences out loud, but

54:27

I had never done myself. And

54:29

as I was doing that exercise, I was realizing

54:33

I have learned so much about

54:35

the psychology of change from people who

54:37

have gone through wildly different

54:39

experiences from my own than I'm

54:41

using right now. And

54:43

one of those had come from a close

54:45

friend of mine, Michael Lewis. He's

54:48

obviously a extremely famous author

54:50

and podcaster. He has a heart of gold,

54:52

He's an incredible human being, and the

54:55

Lewis family tragically lost their

54:58

daughter. Michael lost his nineteen

55:00

year old daughter in a car crash earlier

55:02

this year, and

55:04

Michael and I talk off and but when

55:06

this happened, we were talking about

55:09

grief and he was telling me, Maya,

55:12

no one knows sit about grief. Everyone's

55:15

telling me, you know, I was visiting his house

55:17

shortly after the passing of his daughter.

55:20

Everyone's telling me how to feel

55:22

and what to read and which therapist

55:24

to see. And then I should journal this and I should

55:26

journal. No, that

55:29

shit's not working for me. I need to figure out the Michael

55:32

Lewis plan. And he figured

55:34

out his own plan. He figured out

55:36

what brings him joy, he figured out what brings him

55:38

healing, and he structured his own

55:40

plan because he was realizing that a one size

55:42

fits model does not work. And so

55:44

Renee, when I was going through this traumatic experience

55:47

of my own, I called

55:49

upon that wisdom. I said,

55:51

I have to create a Maya plan. What

55:53

does healing look like for me specifically?

55:56

And it turned out healing

55:59

for me looked like trying to turn

56:02

my pain into something good, and

56:05

that meant sharing my experience with

56:08

all my listeners so

56:10

that the person out there who has felt

56:12

stigma around a miscarriage, the person out

56:14

there who has felt the

56:16

pain of loss, can

56:19

feel less alone. And

56:21

so I just feel like

56:23

we have so much to learn from one another.

56:26

It is a brave

56:29

and breathtaking episode.

56:31

Oh wow, I didn't know you'd heard it. Thank you for that.

56:34

First of all, let me say I'm incredibly

56:37

deeply sorry for your miscarriages.

56:39

That is a huge

56:41

loss. Was it hard

56:43

to be vulnerable and share on the kind of the

56:45

quote unquote other side of the microphone.

56:48

It was, and it wasn't.

56:49

In many ways, I saw this

56:52

sharing as almost

56:54

the love letter to my surrogate Haley.

56:58

We can't work with her anymore, as

57:00

I describe in my interview, but sometimes

57:04

surrogates can get kind of relegated to the footnotes

57:07

of these sorts of experiences. Creating

57:09

families is complicated and hard, and

57:12

sometimes you have the gift of having an

57:14

amazingly generous, magnificent

57:17

woman enter your life who tries to help you make your

57:19

dreams happen. And so

57:22

much of this episode is about her and how much

57:24

I love and admire her, And so that

57:27

part felt easy, That part felt joyful.

57:29

I was sharing with the world about

57:31

this special person that I'd gotten to know in

57:33

this extremely intimate way, and I

57:35

wanted everyone to recognize how wonderful

57:38

she was. But

57:40

the parts that were really hard, where

57:42

that I was processing several

57:44

grief layers all at once, and I

57:47

myself didn't know what my conclusions were.

57:50

It's scary to go into an interview when you don't

57:52

know what You don't even know, you know.

57:54

It's like when I go to interview my

57:56

guests, I do my homework Renee, you know, I

57:58

spend hours practicing the violin. I'm spreading

58:01

hours studying my guests, listening

58:03

to every interview they'd done. Like I come prepared,

58:05

and I did not come to this

58:07

interview prepared. I came a total

58:10

mess. And one

58:12

thing that was beautiful about it is I

58:15

had this really important insight

58:18

in real time that I love to

58:20

share right now because I do hope it

58:22

can help others, which is I

58:24

think we tend to see

58:27

life as an outcome oriented process.

58:30

I do. I have.

58:31

I often see things as achieve

58:34

the goal. And to summarize my experience

58:36

for listeners, we had a surrogate, Haley,

58:38

and she was pregnant with our baby and miscarried,

58:41

and then she was pregnant with our identical

58:43

twins and miscarried, and so we had these

58:45

losses and we did

58:47

not get the outcome that

58:50

the three of us wanted in this relationship,

58:55

and I think the insight that I gleaned was

58:57

that life

58:59

is about more than just achieving

59:01

outcomes. It's about

59:05

creating space that invites

59:08

these unexpected gifts into your life.

59:11

And that gift for me was Haley.

59:14

And all I needed to do is just make room for

59:16

that and to see that in and of itself

59:19

is value. You can not

59:21

get the end goal, but you can get

59:23

so much love and growth

59:26

in enrichment and humanity from

59:28

an experience, and

59:31

that is enough. And

59:34

I just want people to hear that like

59:36

that, that is enough. That can

59:38

be the finish line sometimes

59:42

and it's really hard for me to say that sort of

59:44

thing. I'm that type a personality,

59:46

you know, As I mentioned, I'm impatient. I want the thing

59:48

to have happened. But this experience

59:51

taught me that, like that

59:53

beautiful relationship that my husband and I

59:55

formed with Haley was enough, and

59:57

it was beautiful. It was something

1:00:00

that I will cherish forever.

1:00:03

The Maya Plan for

1:00:07

grief, it sounds like, is

1:00:09

a love base plan.

1:00:12

Yeah, I guess that's right. Never thought about it like.

1:00:14

That, And I don't think there's anything more

1:00:17

different than an outcome based plan than a love

1:00:19

base plan.

1:00:20

Yeah, I mean the and and the love.

1:00:23

I was, of course scared like anyone

1:00:25

when this was going out into the world. I didn't know how

1:00:27

people would respond. And Brenee,

1:00:30

I have been overwhelmed

1:00:34

by the outpouring

1:00:37

of love and care and virtual

1:00:39

hugs from all over the world and

1:00:41

people sharing their experiences

1:00:44

of loss with me. And it's a

1:00:46

loss, a wide ranging loss, you

1:00:48

know, to our earlier point that our

1:00:50

circumstances can be very different, but the same psychology

1:00:53

might come into play. And that

1:00:56

is felt like a true silver lining in all this,

1:00:59

to feel in some way like I have helped people

1:01:01

heal. So many

1:01:03

people heal, it's been all came Yeah

1:01:07

what came back? Wow, well said what came

1:01:09

back with love? And I guess I

1:01:11

just didn't know that I could expect that. And

1:01:14

I'm so glad that that's what came back.

1:01:16

There's so much wisdom

1:01:19

that you've shared with us today. It's really

1:01:21

interesting. It's I

1:01:23

bet you were really good in that lab

1:01:26

at Stanford, but I'm so glad you're

1:01:28

not there anymore, you

1:01:31

know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I just

1:01:34

there's got to be something core to you

1:01:38

that's about connection

1:01:41

and love between people. There's just got

1:01:43

to be something there because that's what radiates. I

1:01:45

guess, you

1:01:47

know, maybe that's that thing that you were describing that Ishtuk

1:01:49

Pehlman saw.

1:01:52

I love that. I think that's

1:01:55

so true. I think that's so true.

1:01:57

I mean, I'm the one who's like writing

1:02:00

these a fusive love letters to the people that I love in

1:02:02

my life all the time.

1:02:03

They don't get back.

1:02:05

That doesn't surprise me.

1:02:07

They don't hear it enough. I can't

1:02:09

hear it enough because I do feel

1:02:11

that effusiveness. I've always wanted

1:02:13

to share that. So I think you nailed

1:02:15

it.

1:02:16

Are you ready for some rapid fires?

1:02:18

Oh yeah, okay, let me pivot.

1:02:22

Well, bring your love with you's freeing

1:02:24

love? Yeah,

1:02:27

fill in the blank for me. Vulnerability is.

1:02:31

Okay.

1:02:32

I'm saying this from the vantage point of being a woman in

1:02:34

particular, but being willing

1:02:36

to admit when you're good at something.

1:02:39

Hmmm? Does

1:02:43

that for everything? Yes? It

1:02:45

does. I don't like

1:02:48

it, but it's true. Okay.

1:02:50

What's one thing that people often get wrong

1:02:53

about you?

1:02:55

M Okay?

1:02:58

So I'm a petite woman, like five

1:03:00

to four in a good day, five

1:03:02

three and three quarters. I mean you probably

1:03:04

talking an abundance of enthusiasm.

1:03:07

Like I tend to have a.

1:03:07

Very cheerful, exuberant, smiley

1:03:10

disposition, and I love that about myself,

1:03:13

but I also think it can lead people to underestimate

1:03:16

just how much I'm willing to fight for things and

1:03:18

how much I'm willing to stand

1:03:20

up for other people and to stand up for

1:03:22

myself, you know, like I

1:03:25

may be small, but I'm fierce inside for Nay,

1:03:28

oh.

1:03:28

Yeah, I mean I yeah, yeah, no,

1:03:31

I'm clear on that.

1:03:32

Yeah.

1:03:33

There are many times in government where these

1:03:36

older dudes would kind

1:03:38

of be like, oh, Maya the bright

1:03:40

eyed, bushy tailed, energetic

1:03:43

woman or girl or whatever they use,

1:03:45

and you know it, say, you

1:03:47

know, I could tell she has big dreams, but I'm not really

1:03:49

sure if she can really make it happen, you know that sort

1:03:51

of thing. And I have resisted

1:03:53

dampening the enthusiasm. I won't do it

1:03:55

because that is so core to who I am. So

1:03:58

instead I listen, but

1:04:01

then I really show it to them. On the other

1:04:03

side, I'm like, Nope, actually,

1:04:05

you can't talk to me like that. Because bullied as

1:04:07

a kid, not willing to be bullied as an adult.

1:04:10

My problem. I

1:04:12

would love to observe this just once with

1:04:15

an old white guy, especially just yeah,

1:04:18

Okay, what is one

1:04:20

piece of leadership advice that you've been given

1:04:22

that so remarkable you need to share it with us?

1:04:25

Are so shitty you need to warn us?

1:04:29

Oh?

1:04:29

I love these questions. Okay, all right,

1:04:31

this one's coming from my White House boss. Uh,

1:04:35

always think like an entrepreneur, no

1:04:38

matter what circumstance you're in. So

1:04:40

quick aside, when I was in the White House, so

1:04:43

you know, the challenge just didn't stop just in getting

1:04:45

the job. I'd made it my goal to build

1:04:47

out a whole team of behavioral scientists, and

1:04:49

I didn't have a mandate and I didn't have a budget

1:04:52

to do so. So I couldn't just be like Obama says

1:04:54

we should do this. It was Maya says

1:04:56

we should do this. And it was a really hard, scrappy

1:04:58

process moving forward where I felt like I was building

1:05:01

a startup in my parents' basement. But

1:05:04

I really tried He called this policy

1:05:06

entrepreneur, So I really tried to see

1:05:08

this job as though I

1:05:10

was creating my own company within the federal government,

1:05:13

and I was trying to like do the equivalent of fundraising

1:05:15

and getting quick wins here and there, and it

1:05:17

was a crucial change in mindset.

1:05:21

Yeah, scrappy, hungry. Yeah,

1:05:24

I think that's great advice. What

1:05:27

is the hard lesson for you?

1:05:29

That the universe just keeps putting in front of

1:05:31

you over and over and you just have to keep

1:05:33

unlearning and relearning.

1:05:36

Oh wow, okay, yeah, okay,

1:05:38

I've got one. This is also recently

1:05:40

relevant. So I

1:05:43

have like intermittent I have intermittent

1:05:45

vocal strain issues, and

1:05:48

it apparently emerges from a

1:05:50

condition in which I get so excited

1:05:52

when I talk I forget to breathe. This

1:05:54

is literally what a doctor told me once. And

1:05:56

so what that means is that I can

1:05:59

very easily strain my vocal cords.

1:06:01

And there have been long stretches of time

1:06:04

where I have had to be on complete vocal

1:06:06

rest. I'm talking like Adell Celendi

1:06:09

style vocal rest. Geez hard,

1:06:12

It's very hard. I felt like this

1:06:14

news and meditative maya came out.

1:06:17

But what I learned from that experience

1:06:19

was so valuable, Renee,

1:06:21

because you

1:06:23

really do learn how to

1:06:25

be a good listener in

1:06:28

those moments, and because

1:06:32

there are moments there were times where I could talk a little

1:06:34

bit but not a lot. For the first

1:06:36

time ever, you could tell them a total chatterbox,

1:06:38

right. I had to be so judicious

1:06:41

about what it is that I chose

1:06:44

to say in meetings,

1:06:46

in conversations, and it

1:06:49

made me, I think, just a

1:06:51

better human being because I tend to talk

1:06:53

in this kind of unfiltered way a lot. I just say

1:06:56

everything that I'm thinking, and it

1:06:59

was just, Yeah, it was

1:07:01

just a very different experience for me to have

1:07:03

to really be thought like, is

1:07:05

this worth saying? That's

1:07:08

a question we should all ask ourselves as leaders.

1:07:10

I can't tell me.

1:07:12

It's like I can say it. I mean,

1:07:14

I lead this team. I can technically

1:07:16

say it, But is it worth saying?

1:07:20

I think that's such an important question that

1:07:22

we should ask ourselves.

1:07:24

WHOA, that's a good one.

1:07:27

All right, what's one thing you're really excited about

1:07:29

right now?

1:07:31

Okay?

1:07:31

Well, I'm all about the small stuff. So

1:07:34

I'm a vegetarian and this

1:07:37

local ramin place that my husband

1:07:39

loves now has a vegetarian

1:07:42

faced broth and it

1:07:44

will knock your socks off. In

1:07:46

fact, my meat eating husband,

1:07:48

well, he's kind of trying to be vegetarian, but he's like a pseudo

1:07:50

vegetarian. He opts for the vegetarian

1:07:53

version over the meat version. That's how

1:07:55

good it is.

1:07:56

That's impressive.

1:07:58

Like I love just I mean, you can tell

1:08:00

from my answer, like I love food. I

1:08:02

feel like it was in my it was implicit in my marriage contract

1:08:04

that like I loved food and then I love my husband

1:08:06

second. So that's a well

1:08:09

greed upon understanding

1:08:11

of their home.

1:08:11

Yeah.

1:08:12

Absolutely, what's

1:08:14

one thing you're deeply grateful for right now?

1:08:18

Oh?

1:08:18

Wow, you know, I'm honestly

1:08:20

really grateful for a slight change of plans

1:08:23

that I've created because it

1:08:25

was there for me when I needed it most, Like

1:08:28

I need it as much as it needs me, if that makes

1:08:30

sense. And yes, it is

1:08:32

such a gift to have this

1:08:35

artistic endeavor that fuels

1:08:37

you on an emotional level. It's like

1:08:39

feeding all the parts of my brain from various

1:08:41

parts of my life. It's like there's

1:08:44

the musical side of my brain that's

1:08:46

like working on the soundtrack

1:08:48

and actually recorded and I've picked up my violin

1:08:51

for the first time and forever recently, I actually recorded

1:08:53

music for the soundtrack, and just

1:08:55

like the artistic qualities of piecing together

1:08:57

an episode. And then there's the cognitive science

1:08:59

part of my brain that's weighing in with questions

1:09:01

and insights and everything. And then

1:09:03

there's the the human

1:09:05

emotion connection part, which is

1:09:07

just like through the roof because I get

1:09:09

to meet these incredible people and so I just

1:09:12

it's hard for me to remember something

1:09:15

that I love as much as

1:09:17

this thing. I would wake up as

1:09:19

the thirty five year old that I am

1:09:21

at four thirty in the morning on Saturdays

1:09:23

for a slight change of plans, and it's been a while

1:09:26

since I felt that way. It's been Yeah, it's

1:09:28

been an utter joy.

1:09:30

I love how you light up when you talk about it. That's

1:09:33

that's that's what we need, all

1:09:36

right. We make mini mixtapes

1:09:38

for all of our guests, and we ask you for five

1:09:40

songs you can't live without. This

1:09:42

is what you gave us. The

1:09:45

Leaves that are Green My Simon and Garfunkle,

1:09:48

Blinding Lights by Weekend, Forever

1:09:50

and Always, Shania Twain, slow

1:09:53

Burn, Casey Musgraves, and

1:09:55

Halo by Beyonce. In

1:09:58

one sentence, what does this mini

1:10:00

mixtape say about you?

1:10:01

Maya one sentence, mm

1:10:04

hmm, I'm all about a good hook,

1:10:11

says.

1:10:11

The cognitive behavoralist that

1:10:17

you gotta tell me that you thought of this before. Did you come

1:10:19

up with this line right now, sitting right here?

1:10:21

I did. I didn't know this was a question. I

1:10:24

just thought you were gonna load up the mixtape.

1:10:27

Oh my god, that was the

1:10:29

best answer. This has been such

1:10:31

a just a joy. Thank you so much for joining

1:10:34

us on Dear to Luis Well.

1:10:34

Thanks for having me, Brene. I love it when an interview

1:10:37

is just a conversation, and that's what this felt like. So

1:10:39

thank you so much for having me.

1:10:41

Yeah, you really radiate love and

1:10:43

joy and it's so powerful.

1:10:45

Thank you for saying that. That's the highest

1:10:47

compliment that I can receive. So if I'm giving

1:10:49

that off, awesome.

1:10:51

You're giving it off and I'm receiving

1:10:54

you can see my migdala anytime. Let

1:10:56

me just say that I

1:11:06

hope y'all enjoyed this conversation

1:11:08

as much as I did, and again,

1:11:10

thank you so much for being a part of it. You

1:11:12

can find Maya's podcast, A Slight Change

1:11:14

of Plans wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

1:11:17

We'll also post a link to it on the dare to

1:11:19

lead episode page on Brene Brown dot

1:11:21

com and if you haven't visited, we have a

1:11:23

brand new Brene Brown dot com. H It

1:11:26

is so beautiful and so many people

1:11:28

worked their asses off. I can't

1:11:30

even tell you months and months and months

1:11:32

of sprints and designs and redesigns and

1:11:35

testing and it's just it's

1:11:37

gorgeous, and I hope y'all love it as much as I do.

1:11:40

You can find Maya at m A

1:11:43

y A s h A n k R

1:11:45

dot com. She's also on Twitter,

1:11:47

Instagram and LinkedIn, and we'll have

1:11:49

all those links on the episode page as well.

1:11:53

Really appreciate you being here very

1:11:56

much. Appreciate you being a part of Dare to Lead.

1:11:59

I just learning by ourselves

1:12:02

is not as effective as learning together and having conversations

1:12:04

about what we're trying to learn and learn

1:12:07

and relearn. Thank you,

1:12:09

stay awkward, brave and kind, y'all. Dear

1:12:17

to Lead is produced by Brene Brown Education

1:12:19

and Research Group. Music is by

1:12:22

the Sufferers. Get new episodes

1:12:24

as soon as they're published by following Dear to Lead

1:12:26

on your favorite podcast app. We

1:12:29

are part of the Voxmedia podcast Network.

1:12:31

Discover more award winning shows at

1:12:33

podcasts dot voxmedia

1:12:36

dot com.

1:12:37

I just got to get out most days.

1:12:39

You see, I like it's

1:12:41

good for me. Well

1:12:43

we go ahead, take me to the

1:12:46

towns.

1:12:47

I just got to get out those days.

1:12:49

You see this work

1:12:51

for me