0:14

Pushkin hey

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Slight Changers. This week, I wanted

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to share with you an episode of Ted Talks

0:23

Daily, which features my Ted talk about

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how we can make change less scary and

0:27

some strategies we can use to embrace it.

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If you want to hear more talks like this, check

0:32

out ted talks Daily. Each day

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the show brings you a new idea that

0:36

just might change your future, all in under

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fifteen minutes. You can find Ted

0:40

Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

0:43

Okay, now onto my talk. When

0:46

I was a kid, the violin was

0:48

the center of my life.

0:50

I'd run home from the bus stop after school

0:52

and practice for hours. Every

0:55

Saturday, my mom and I would wake up at four

0:57

in the morning to catch a train to New York

0:59

so I could study at Juilliard. When

1:02

I was a teenager, my musical

1:04

idol Issac Pearlman, invited

1:06

me to be his private student, and

1:08

my big dream of becoming a concert violinist.

1:11

Felt within reach.

1:13

But then one morning, when I was fifteen,

1:17

I was practicing this tricky technical

1:19

passage. I struggled to

1:21

get it right, and I overextended my finger

1:23

on a single note. I heard a popping

1:25

sound. I permanently

1:28

damaged the tenons in my hand, and my

1:30

dream was over.

1:32

I share this.

1:32

Story because unexpected change

1:34

happens to all of us, an

1:37

accident or an illness, a relationship

1:39

that suddenly ends.

1:41

Today.

1:41

I'm not a violinist, but I'm a cognitive

1:43

scientist, and I'm interested in

1:45

how we respond to exactly this kind

1:48

of change. I've spent

1:50

the past two decades studying the science of human

1:52

behavior, and today I host

1:54

a podcast called A Slight Change

1:56

of Plans

1:59

Glad you guys like it, where I interview

2:01

people from all over the world about their

2:03

life altering experiences. I

2:06

started this podcast because change,

2:09

which is scary for a lot of us, am I right?

2:12

For one, it is filled with uncertainty,

2:15

and we hate uncertainty.

2:17

Research shows that we're more stressed

2:20

when we're told we have a fifty percent

2:22

chance of getting an electric shock than

2:24

when we're told we have a one hundred

2:26

percent chance. It's

2:28

wild, right, I mean, we'd rather be sure

2:31

that a bad thing is going to happen than to

2:33

have to deal with any uncertainty. Change

2:37

is also scary because it involves loss

2:39

of some kind. By definition,

2:41

we're departing from an old way of being and

2:44

entering a new one. And

2:46

when we experience a change that we wouldn't

2:48

have chosen for ourselves, it's easy

2:50

to feel that our lives are contracting

2:53

that were more limited than before. But

2:56

when we take this perspective, we fail

2:59

to account for an important fact that

3:01

when an unexpected change happens

3:03

to us, it can also inspire

3:06

lasting change within us. We

3:09

become different people on the other side of change.

3:12

What we're capable of, what we value,

3:14

and how we define ourselves. These

3:17

things can all shift. And

3:19

if we can learn to pay close attention to

3:22

these internal shifts, we may just

3:24

find that, rather than limiting us,

3:27

change can actually expand us. All

3:31

Right, today, I'm going to share with you three questions

3:33

you can ask yourself the next time life

3:35

throws you that dreaded curve wall in

3:38

the moment, I know, it's so easy to focus

3:40

on what you've lost, and so I'm really hoping

3:43

that you can use these questions as tools

3:45

to discover all that you might gain. All

3:49

right, let's start with question number one.

3:51

This is inspired by a conversation I had on

3:53

my podcast with a woman named Christine

3:55

ha and it's about our capabilities.

4:00

Christine was twenty four when a rare

4:02

autoimmune disease left her permanently

4:04

blind. At the time,

4:06

she was learning to cook the Vietnamese dishes

4:08

that she had loved in childhood, but

4:11

now cooking even simple meals

4:13

was tough. She

4:15

told me that her frustration peeked one day

4:17

when she was making a peanut, butter and jelly

4:20

sandwich. She struggled

4:22

to align the two slices of bread,

4:24

and sticky jelly dripped all over her

4:26

hands and onto the counter. She

4:29

threw the sandwich into the trash, and

4:31

she felt really defeated by the limited future

4:33

that she imagined for herself. Since

4:37

Christine lived alone, though she had

4:39

no choice but to keep at it. She

4:42

remembers her delight when she's successfully

4:44

cut an orange for the first time, and

4:47

when she scrambled.

4:47

An egg without burning it.

4:50

As she spent more hours in the kitchen,

4:53

she realized that cooking was

4:55

far more multisensory than she had thought.

4:58

While she couldn't see if the.

5:00

Garlic had browned, she could rely

5:02

on the smell and the sizzling sounds

5:05

in the pan. But

5:07

Christine also realized something something

5:11

new was emerging within her.

5:14

At the start of her vision laws she had cooked

5:16

just to get by. I mean, it was really just a practical

5:18

thing, but now she was thrilled

5:20

by the challenge of it all. She

5:23

tackled harder and harder recipes

5:25

over the years and eventually

5:27

became the first ever blind contestant

5:29

on the TV show Master Chef and

5:32

guess what she won the entire damn

5:35

thing.

5:37

Christine's a rock.

5:38

Star, but she's an amazing

5:40

person. This brings

5:42

us to the first question that you can ask yourself

5:45

the next time you face something unexpected,

5:49

How might this change change

5:52

what you're capable of? When

5:55

we predict how we'll respond to any given

5:57

change, we tend to imagine

6:00

what our present day selves will be like in

6:02

that new situation. Research

6:04

by the psychologist Dan Gilbert show is that

6:07

we greatly underestimate how much will chane

6:09

in the future, even though we fully

6:11

acknowledge if we've changed considerably in the past.

6:14

Our psychology continually tricks

6:17

us into believing that who we are

6:19

right now, in this very moment is

6:22

the person that's here to stay. But

6:25

the person meeting the challenges after an unexpected

6:28

change will be different. You

6:30

will be different today.

6:33

Christine is a world renowned chef.

6:36

She goes by the nickname the Blind Cook,

6:38

and she owns three restaurants in Texas.

6:42

And importantly, she's

6:44

really curious about what else

6:46

she can achieve without vision. These

6:49

days, you can find her snowboarding

6:51

and rock climbing on the weekends. Christine

6:56

shared with me something that she could

6:58

never have imagined thinking before all this, that

7:02

if given the choice today, she

7:04

would choose not to have her vision

7:06

restored. So

7:08

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

7:10

she really wants to know what Justin Bieaver looks

7:13

like. All

7:15

right, let's move on to the second question. This

7:18

one is about our values, and it's

7:20

inspired by a conversation I had with a science

7:22

journalist named Florence Williams one

7:26

evening about five years ago. Florence

7:28

and her husband were hosting a dinner party for their

7:30

friends. As she was

7:32

preparing the salad, her husband handed

7:34

her his phone so that she could read an email from

7:36

a relative, but he'd

7:38

mistakenly pulled.

7:39

Up the wrong email.

7:41

What Florence saw instead was

7:43

a lengthy note from her husband confessing

7:46

his.

7:46

Love to another woman. I

7:49

know.

7:52

Florence's twenty five year marriage

7:54

came to an end, and she told me

7:56

that she was taken aback by the physical

7:59

and emotional intensity of her heartbreak.

8:02

She said it felt like she'd been plugged into a

8:04

faulty electrical socket.

8:07

Since Florence is a problem solver by nature,

8:10

she instinctively saw her heartbreak as

8:12

a problem to solve and develop

8:14

a year long, systematic

8:16

plan to try and fix it. Florence

8:19

tried a bunch of things. She

8:22

took solo trips into the wilderness. She

8:24

tried a range of experimental therapies.

8:27

She even went to the Museum of Broken

8:29

Relationships, which I promise

8:32

is a thing.

8:34

You name it. She tried it.

8:37

But by the end of the year, none of these

8:39

remedies had healed her broken heart, and

8:42

so Florence had no choice but to

8:45

entertain a new philosophy altogether.

8:49

Maybe a broken heart was not a

8:51

problem to solve, and maybe

8:53

closure wasn't the answer. Research

8:58

by the psychologist Dacher Keltner shows

9:00

that when we reduce our need for what's called

9:02

cognitive closure, the desire

9:04

to arrive at clear and definitive answers,

9:07

our capacity to feel joy and

9:10

beauty expands. Florence

9:13

told me that when she freed herself from this goal

9:15

oriented mindset, a mindset

9:17

by the way that she had valued for so much

9:20

of her life up until this point, she

9:22

began to find unexpected delight

9:24

in the unknown.

9:26

This leads us to the second question.

9:28

You can ask yourself the next time you face

9:30

something unexpected, how

9:33

might this change change

9:35

what you value?

9:37

The unexpected implosion of Florence's

9:40

marriage has permanently shifted

9:42

the way that she sees her life from

9:44

a puzzle in need of solutions to

9:47

a more serendifitous path of discovery.

9:50

Now, when Florence goes hiking, she's

9:52

just as likely to sit still feeling

9:54

the breeze as she is to try

9:57

and make the summit. She

9:59

no longer makes five year plans, and

10:03

she's comfortable not knowing

10:05

all the answers around her heartbreak.

10:09

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

10:12

she's currently in a very happy relationship.

10:15

All right, now, onto question number three.

10:18

This one is about how we define ourselves.

10:20

It's about our self identities,

10:23

and it comes from my personal story of change

10:25

with the violin. When

10:28

my injury took the violin away from

10:30

me, I found myself grieving, not

10:33

just the loss of the instrument, but

10:35

also the loss of myself. For

10:38

so long the violin had defined me that without

10:40

it, I wasn't sure who I was or who I could

10:42

be.

10:43

I felt stuck.

10:46

I'd later learn that this phenomenon is known

10:48

as identity paralysis. It happens

10:50

to a lot of us when we face the unexpected. Who

10:53

we think we are and what we're about is

10:56

suddenly called into question. But

11:00

I since realized that there was something different,

11:03

something more stable, that I could have

11:05

anchored my identity to, and

11:07

this brings us to that stuff and final question,

11:11

how might this change change

11:14

how you define yourself? When

11:18

I re examined my relationship with the violin,

11:20

I discovered that what I really missed

11:23

wasn't the instrument itself, but

11:25

the fact that music had given me a vehicle for

11:27

connecting.

11:28

Emotionally with others.

11:30

I remember as a little kid playing

11:32

for people and feeling kind of awestruck

11:35

that we might all feel something new together.

11:40

What this means for me today is that

11:42

I no longer anchor my identity

11:44

to specific pursuits like

11:47

being a violinist, or a cognitive scientist

11:49

or a podcaster. Instead,

11:52

I anchor my identity to what lights

11:55

me up about those pursuits What

11:57

really energizes me and

11:59

for me, it's a love of human connection

12:01

and understanding. I

12:04

now define myself not by what

12:06

I do, but why I

12:09

do it. Look

12:13

unexpected change comes for us

12:15

all, whether we like it or not, and

12:18

when it does, it can really suck.

12:21

But I'm hoping that if we can stay

12:23

open to how we

12:25

might internally change, how

12:27

we might expand, it

12:29

can help us weather the storm. Life

12:33

recently threw me a new slight

12:36

change of plans. I've

12:39

always wanted to be a mom, but becoming

12:41

one has been difficult, and my husband

12:43

and I have had to navigate pregnancy losses

12:46

and other heartbreaks over the years. And

12:49

now I'm not sure what will happen. But

12:53

I'm using these three questions to help

12:55

me during this tough time. I'm

12:58

asking myself how this unexpected

13:01

challenge might change what

13:03

I'm capable of, what I

13:05

value, and how I define

13:07

myself. I'm

13:11

still figuring things out, but

13:14

what I can tell you right now is that I'm

13:17

imagining a future me who is

13:19

expanding her definition of what it means

13:21

to parent, who's

13:24

perhaps finding what she craved from.

13:25

Motherhood in other places. At

13:29

a minimum.

13:30

This exploration has allowed me to

13:32

loosen my grip on the identity

13:34

of mom just a bit, and

13:37

I found it freeing. I'm

13:40

beginning to see change with more possibility,

13:43

and I'm hoping you can too. Thank

13:45

you so much