How to Bounce Back from Life’s Curveballs (with Dr. Maya Shankar)
The Happiness Lab: Getting Unstuck
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 14.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Life has a way of upending even our best-laid plans. Breakups, job losses, scary health diagnoses — these unexpected changes can leave us feeling stuck and uncertain about what comes next.
Dr. Laurie speaks with her dear friend and former student, Dr. Maya Shankar, author of The Other Side of Change and host of A Slight Change of Plans, about how to navigate these major shifts, including practical tips for leaning into change instead of resisting it and reimagining the possible selves we can become in the new year.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.7 | Especially in the new year, we tend to associate feeling happier with making changes. |
| 0:21.6 | Sometimes little changes, moving a bit more or connecting more with friends, |
| 0:25.6 | and sometimes big changes, leaving a toxic job or starting a new creative project. |
| 0:30.6 | But when we fantasize about the change we'll experience in 2026, |
| 0:34.6 | we're usually thinking about the changes that we choose. |
| 0:38.4 | But life can also hit us with changes that we don't see coming, being dumped, getting laid off, |
| 0:44.0 | or even receiving a frightening health diagnosis. |
| 0:46.7 | When unexpected changes like these happen, they can often leave us feeling very stuck. |
| 0:51.8 | We feel like who we are and who we can become is no longer clear. We don't |
| 0:56.6 | have a firm grip on ourselves anymore. So in the second episode in our season about getting |
| 1:01.4 | unstuck in the new year, we're going to explore how we can work with change in 2026 rather |
| 1:06.7 | than fighting it. And we have the perfect guest to guide us, though I admit I might be a little biased. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, and I'm host of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, and the author of The Other Side of Change, who we become when life makes other plans. And you're also my former student. I am. 17, man. That's how long I've known you. No, it wasn't when you were 17. |
| 1:29.1 | You must have been like three because I can't possibly be that old. Since her time is my student, |
| 1:33.8 | Maya has become an expert on how to tackle unexpected change. And one of her biggest insights is that |
| 1:39.2 | unexpected change is terrifying. We are afraid of change for at least two reasons. The first is that change is often |
| 1:47.6 | accompanied by a lot of uncertainty, and our brains are not wired to enjoy uncertainty. So there's |
| 1:54.7 | this fascinating research study which shows that people are more stressed when they're told |
| 2:00.1 | they have a 50% chance of receiving an electric shock than when they're told they have a 50% chance of receiving an |
| 2:02.7 | electric shock than when they're told they have a 100% chance of receiving an electric shock. |
| 2:08.2 | So we would rather be certain that a bad thing is going to happen than to have to grapple |
... |
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