This is the 10% happier podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hey, hey, it seems like a design flaw in our species is that we live in a world of constant

change and infinite fluxing gumbo.

And yet most of us are not comfortable at all with uncertainty.

So today we're going to talk about how we can get better at dealing with change, how we

can stop seeking what the scientists call cognitive closure when it's generally not on offer.

My guest is Maya Shankar, a former senior advisor to the Obama White House, where she founded

and served as chair of the White House behavioral science team.

She also served as the first behavioral science advisor to the United Nations and is currently

a senior director of behavioral economics at Google.

And she is the host of the Pushkin Industries podcast called a slight change of plans,

which is so good that it was named best show of the year in 2021 by our friends over at

Apple.

In this conversation, we talked about why humans are so uncomfortable with uncertainty

and change, what a behavioral scientist actually does.

Why even the host of a podcast about change is not immune to the vexations of uncertainty

in her own life.

The benefits of cultivating a more malleable sense of self, why humans are such bad

forecasters, the importance of auditing yourself when you're undergoing a big change,

how to take advantage of big reset moments, and the concept of cognitive closure, and why

encouraging an open mind can make us more resilient.

...