Cognitive Scientist Maya Shankar On Navigating Unexpected Life Changes, The Neuroscience Of Identity, & How To Unlock Your Next Self

What It Covers

Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar explains the neuroscience behind involuntary life changes, why humans resist uncertainty, and provides research-backed strategies to navigate identity crises, pregnancy loss, career shifts, and unexpected setbacks through acceptance, curiosity, and psychological distancing techniques.

Key Questions Answered

• •Self-Affirmation Exercise: When facing unwanted change, spend 5-10 minutes writing down all aspects of your identity not threatened by the change—your values, relationships, skills beyond the crisis. This zooms out perspective, reduces denial, and prevents catastrophizing by revealing your multifaceted identity beyond one threatened domain.
• •Expand Identity Beyond Actions: Define yourself by why you do things, not what you do. If you love athletics for improvement and connection, losing physical ability doesn't eliminate those core drives. This why-based identity serves as a compass for finding new outlets when circumstances force pivots from familiar activities or careers.
• •Moral Elevation Rewires Possibility: Witnessing extraordinary human acts—forgiveness, courage, resilience—literally changes brain wiring by violating assumptions about human capacity. This cracks open imagination about your own capabilities across unrelated domains, planting seeds that may not germinate until encountering future opportunities requiring similar traits.
• •Mental Time Travel Stops Rumination: When stuck in worry loops at 3AM, deliberately travel forward 15 hours or 15 years to recognize problem transience, or backward to recall past certainties you were wrong about. This psychological distancing technique bursts the balloon of catastrophic thinking by contextualizing current concerns within broader timescales.
• •Challenge Belief Origins: Ask yourself: Would I hold this belief if delivered by a different messenger, in a different emotional state, or if born in another time or place? Most beliefs form through unconscious absorption, not rational deliberation. Probing their arbitrary origins reveals which ones unnecessarily constrain your self-concept and future possibilities.