How To Better Navigate Unexpected & Undesired Change w/ Cognitive Scientist Maya Shankar

The Kevin Miller Podcast

Kevin Miller

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Social Sciences, Education, How To, Society & Culture, Science, Medicine, Life Sciences, Spirituality, Nutrition, Self-improvement, Mental Health, Relationships

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I experience our culture growing more and more fearful of unexpected and undesired change. If you were to look back on your life and make a list of all the unexpected and undesired changes you have experienced in your life, I bet it’s fairly long. I would ask you to consider why you think many more unexpected and undesired changes aren’t ahead of you. But what I see is that when you have anxiety about the possible, and I’d say probable changes ahead of you, you are taking away from your ability to have joy and fulfillment today. I find myself looking at two perspectives. One, none of the unexpected and undesired changes in my past have killed me. They haven’t ruined me. And two, I amaze myself to think of how many of those unexpected and undesired changes actually turned out to be great, great gifts to my life. To unpack the psychology around change, in this episode I have Maya Shankar back on the podcast. I first had Maya on for the launch of her podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, which Apple awarded as the Best Show of the Year 2021. After four years of the podcast, Maya has now culminated her findings and experience in a book, The Other Side Of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans. Maya says, "I’ve written this for anyone who is currently in the choppy waters of a change, is trying to make sense of a past change, or is anxious about a future change." Maya is a cognitive scientist and was a Senior Advisor in 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. Maya has a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience from Stanford, a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a B.A. from Yale. She's been profiled by The New Yorker and been the featured guest on NPR's All Things Considered, Freakonomics, and Hidden Brain. All that to say, she knows the psychology behind change and is here to help us, help ourselves. Sign up for your $1/month trial period at shopify.com/kevin Go to shipstation.com and use code KEVIN to start your free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome. I'm Kevin Miller and this is a podcast for your personal evolution. In this episode,
0:07.7	How to Better Navigate Unexpected and Undesired Change. I experience our culture growing more and more
0:17.3	fearful of unexpected and undesired change.
0:22.2	If you were to look back on your life, though, and make a list of all the unexpected and
0:28.0	undesired changes you've experienced in your life, I bet it's fairly long.
0:32.8	Mine is.
0:34.2	And I'd ask you to consider, why would you think that many more unexpected and undesired changes aren't ahead of you?
0:41.6	But what I see then is that when we've got anxiety about these possible, and I'd say probable changes ahead of us,
0:49.8	we're taking away from our ability to have joy and fulfillment today to the fullest.
0:56.0	I mean, I find myself looking at two perspectives. One, none of the unexpected and undesired
1:02.0	changes in my past have killed me. And in the past year, I've had maybe the most I've ever had.
1:09.9	They also, they haven't ruined me.
1:12.5	But two, I amaze myself to think about how many of the unexpected and undesired seemingly
1:18.1	changes actually turned out to be great, great gifts to my life.
1:23.1	So to unpack the psychology around change and how we perceive it and how we can better navigate
1:28.9	it going forward, in this episode, I have Maya Shanker back on the podcast. I first had Maya on
1:35.5	for the launch of her podcast, a slight change of plans, which Apple awarded as the best show
1:41.6	of the year in 2021, and it is now grown to be a gigantic podcast.
1:47.0	Well, after four years of her hosting and producing the show, Maya has now culminated her
1:53.3	findings and experience in a book called The Other Side of Change, Who We Become, When Life
1:59.4	Makes Other Plans.
2:03.5	Maya says, I've written this book for anyone who's currently in the choppy waters of a change, is trying to make sense of a past change,
	...

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