Find the Potential in Change || Maya Shankar
The Psychology Podcast
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 31 August 2023
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we welcome Maya Shankar to the podcast. Maya is a cognitive scientist and the creator and host of the podcast, “A Slight Change of Plans”. It was awarded as the Best Show of 2021 by Apple and received an Ambie award from the Podcast Academy in 2022. Maya has a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience from Stanford and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Oxford. She's a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music's pre-college program, where she was a private violin student of Itzhak Perlman.
In this episode, I talk to Maya Shankar about change. Humans have a desire to attach roles to identities. But when events disrupt that, we may feel unsure of who we are. Having gone through huge shifts herself, Maya shares with us ways in which we can reconfigure our identities and pivot to pursue our goals in different ways. Change can be disorienting, but it affords us a deeper understanding of ourselves. Maya also believes it’s also an opportunity to re-examine our long held beliefs and values. We also touch on the topics of cognitive science, mindfulness, awe, and hope.
Website: mayashankar.com
Twitter: @MayaUmaShankar
Topics
02:43 Maya as a violinist
06:00 Identity paralysis
13:02 Reconfiguring identity
18:08 A blind cook becomes a master chef
21:10 Post ecstatic growth
24:07 It’s okay to change values
28:38 Mindfulness and awe
34:15 Re-examining our values
38:29 Embracing a flexible mindset
40:49 Cognitive closure
44:51 Maya’s Slight Change of Plans
48:31 Pivot your goals
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's people who are dealing with chronic illnesses, there's people who are dealing with |
| 0:03.7 | divorce, people who are dealing with a betrayal of some kind, people who are dealing with |
| 0:10.0 | changing their minds about something that they felt total conviction in. And in all of those cases, |
| 0:15.3 | you see this same delightful expression, which is that they deep in their understanding of who |
| 0:20.5 | they were as a result of going through the change. Welcome to the Psychology Podcast. |
| 0:25.2 | Today we welcome Maya Shankara to the show. Maya is a cognitive scientist and the crater |
| 0:30.8 | and host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, which was awarded as the best show of 2021 |
| 0:37.2 | by Apple and received an Ambi Award from the Podcast Academy in 2022. Maya has a postdoctoral |
| 0:44.3 | fellowship in cognitive neuroscience from Stanford and a PhD in cognitive psychology from Oxford. |
| 0:50.2 | She's a graduate of the Julliard School of Music's pre-college program where she was a private |
| 0:54.9 | violin student of Itsak Proman. In this episode, I talked to Maya about change. Humans have a |
| 1:01.4 | desire to attach roles to identities, but when events disrupt that, we may feel unsure of who we are. |
| 1:07.4 | Having gone through huge shifts herself, Maya shares with us ways in which we can reconfigure our |
| 1:12.7 | identities and pivot to pursue our goals in different ways. Change can be disorienting, but it can |
| 1:18.7 | also afford us a deeper understanding of ourselves and afford a lot of potential for growth. Maya |
| 1:24.4 | also believes that growth is an opportunity to re-examine our long-held beliefs and values. |
| 1:30.0 | We also touch on the topics of cognitive science, mindfulness, all, and hope. I really enjoyed |
| 1:36.3 | this chat. Maya and I go way back to Yale with grad school days for me and she was an undergraduate. |
| 1:42.4 | She was always a bright light with so much potential and now she is really realizing her potential. |
| 1:47.7 | I couldn't be more proud of her and more excited to share with you this chat with Maya Shankara. |
| 1:54.6 | Maya Shankara is so unbelievably amazing having you on the psychology podcast. |
| 1:59.4 | It's great to be here, Scott. We go way back. We really do. We're talking decades, decades, |
... |
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