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When I was a kid,
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the violin was the center of my life.
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I'd run home from the bus stop
after school and practice for hours.
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Every Saturday, my mom and I
would wake up at four in the morning
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to catch a train to New York
so I could study at Juliard.
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Here's a throwback to eight-year-old me
performing the violin.
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Some questionable fashion choices
from young Maya here,
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not going to lie.
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But anyway, when I was a teenager,
my musical idol, Itzhak Perlman,
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invited me to be his private student.
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And my big dream of becoming
a concert violinist felt within reach.
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But then one morning when I was 15,
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I was practicing this tricky
technical passage.
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I struggled to get it right,
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and I overextended my finger
on a single note.
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I heard a popping sound.
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I’d permanently damaged
the tendons in my hand,
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and my dream was over.
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I share this story
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because unexpected change
happens to all of us.
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An accident or an illness,
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a relationship that suddenly ends.
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Today, I'm not a violinist,
but I'm a cognitive scientist.
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And I'm interested in how we respond
to exactly this kind of change.
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I spent the past two decades
studying the science of human behavior.
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And today I host a podcast called
"A Slight Change of Plans" --
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(Audience cheers)
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glad you guys like it --
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where I interview people
from all over the world
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about their life-altering experiences.
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I started this podcast because change
is scary for a lot of us, am I right?
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For one, it is filled with uncertainty,
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and we hate uncertainty.
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Research shows that we're more stressed
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when we're told we have a 50 percent
chance of getting an electric shock
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than when we're told we have
a 100 percent chance.
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It's wild, right?
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I mean, we'd rather be sure
that a bad thing is going to happen
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than to have to deal with any uncertainty.
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Change is also scary
because it involves loss of some kind.
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By definition, we're departing
from an old way of being
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and entering a new one.
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And when we experience a change
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that we wouldn't
have chosen for ourselves,
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it's easy to feel
that our lives are contracting,
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that were more limited than before.
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But when we take this perspective,
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we fail to account for an important fact.
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That when an unexpected
change happens to us,
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it can also inspire
lasting change within us.
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We become different people
on the other side of change.
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What we're capable of, what we value
and how we define ourselves,
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these things can all shift.
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And if we can learn to pay close attention
to these internal shifts,
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we may just find that rather
than limiting us,
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change can actually expand us.
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Alright, today I'm going to share with you
three questions you can ask yourself
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the next time life throws you
that dreaded curveball.
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In the moment, I know it's so easy
to focus on what you've lost.
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And so I'm really hoping that you can use
these questions as tools
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to discover all that you might gain.
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Alright, let’s start
with question number one.
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This is inspired by a conversation
I had on my podcast
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with a woman named Christine Ha,
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and it's about our capabilities.
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Christine was 24 when a rare autoimmune
disease left her permanently blind.
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At the time, she was learning to cook
the Vietnamese dishes
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that she had loved in childhood.
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But now cooking even simple
meals was tough.
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She told me that her
frustration peaked one day
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when she was making
a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
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She struggled to align
the two slices of bread
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and sticky jelly dripped all over
her hands and onto the counter.
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She threw the sandwich into the trash,
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and she felt really defeated
by the limited future
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that she imagined for herself.
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Since Christine lived alone though,
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she had no choice but to keep at it.
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She remembers her delight
when she successfully cut an orange
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for the first time
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and when she scrambled an egg
without burning it.
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As she spent more hours in the kitchen,
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she realized that cooking was far more
multi-sensory than she had thought.
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While she couldn't see
if the garlic had browned,
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she could rely on the smell
and the sizzling sounds in the pan.
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But Christine also realized
something bigger.
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Something new was emerging within her.
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At the start of her vision loss
she had cooked just to get by.
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I mean, it was really
just a practical thing.
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But now she was thrilled
by the challenge of it all.
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She tackled harder and harder
recipes over the years
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and eventually became
the first-ever blind contestant
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on the TV show "Master Chef."
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And guess what?
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She won the entire damn thing.
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(Laughs)
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Christine's a rock star.
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She's an amazing, amazing person.
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This brings us to the first question
that you can ask yourself
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the next time you face
something unexpected.
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"How might this change
change what you're capable of?"
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When we predict how we'll respond
to any given change,
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we tend to imagine what our present-day
selves will be like in that new situation.
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Research by the psychologist Dan Gilbert
shows that we greatly underestimate
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how much we'll change in the future,
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even though we fully acknowledge
we've changed considerably in the past.
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Our psychology continually
tricks us into believing
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that who we are, right now,
in this very moment,
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is the person that's here to stay.
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But the person meeting the challenges
after an unexpected change
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will be different.
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You will be different.
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Today, Christine is a world-renowned chef.
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She goes by the nickname The Blind Cook,
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and she owns three restaurants in Texas.
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And importantly,
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she's really curious about what else
she can achieve without vision.
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These days, you can find her
snowboarding and rock climbing
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on the weekends.
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Christine shared with me something
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that she could never have imagined
thinking before all this.
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That if given the choice today,
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she would choose not to have
her vision restored.
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Though she did tell me
she'd like it back for a moment
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because she really wants to know
what Justin Bieber looks like.
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(Laughter)
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Alright, let's move on
to the second question.
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This one is about our values,
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and it's inspired by a conversation I had
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with a science journalist
named Florence Williams.
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One evening about five years ago,
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Florence and her husband were hosting
a dinner party for their friends.
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As she was preparing the salad,
her husband handed her his phone
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so that she could read
an email from a relative.
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But he'd mistakenly
pulled up the wrong email.
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What Florence saw instead
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was a lengthy note from her husband,
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confessing his love to another woman.
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I know.
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Florence’s 25-year marriage
came to an end,
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and she told me that she was taken aback
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by the physical and emotional
intensity of her heartbreak.
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She said it felt like she'd been plugged
into a faulty electrical socket.
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Since Florence is a problem
solver by nature,
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she instinctively saw her heartbreak
as a problem to solve
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and develop a year-long,
systematic plan to try and fix it.
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Florence tried a bunch of things.
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She took solo trips into the wilderness,
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she tried a range
of experimental therapies,
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She even went to the Museum
of Broken Relationships,
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which I promise is the thing.
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You name it, she tried it.
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But by the end of the year,
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none of these remedies
had healed her broken heart.
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And so Florence had no choice
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but to entertain
a new philosophy altogether.
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Maybe a broken heart
was not a problem to solve.
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And maybe closure wasn't the answer.
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Research by the psychologist
Dacher Keltner shows
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that when we reduce our need
for what's called cognitive closure,
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the desire to arrive at clear
and definitive answers,
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our capacity to feel joy
and beauty expands.
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Florence told me that when she freed
herself from this goal-oriented mindset,
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a mindset, by the way,
that she had valued
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for so much of her life
up until this point,
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she began to find unexpected
delight in the unknown.
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This leads us to the second question
you can ask yourself
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the next time you face
something unexpected.
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How might this change
change what you value?
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The unexpected implosion
of Florence's marriage
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has permanently shifted the way
that she sees her life.
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From a puzzle in need of solutions
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to a more serendipitous path of discovery.
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Now, when Florence goes hiking,
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she's just as likely to sit still,
feeling the breeze,
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as she is to try and make the summit.
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She no longer makes five-year plans.
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And she's comfortable not knowing
all the answers around her heartbreak.
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By the way, I was texting
with Florence the other day,
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and she's currently in a very
happy relationship.
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If her ex-husband is listening to this,
I just want him to know
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she's doing great, buddy.
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(Laughter)
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Alright, now on to question number three.
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This one is about how we define ourselves.
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It's about our self-identities.
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And it comes from my personal story
of change with the violin.
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When my injury took
the violin away from me,
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I found myself grieving
not just the loss of the instrument,
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but also the loss of myself.
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For so long, the violin had defined me,
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that without it, I wasn't sure
who I was or who I could be.
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I felt stuck.
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I'd later learned that this phenomenon
is known as identity paralysis.
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It happens to a lot of us
when we face the unexpected.
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Who we think we are and what we're about
is suddenly called into question.
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But I since realized
that there was something different,
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something more stable that I could
have anchored my identity to.
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And this brings us to that third
and final question.
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How might this change
change how you define yourself?
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When I re-examine
my relationship with the violin,
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I discovered that what I really missed
wasn't the instrument itself,
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but the fact that music
had given me a vehicle
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for connecting emotionally with others.
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I remember as a little kid
playing for people
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and feeling kind of awestruck
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that we might all feel
something new together.
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What this means for me today
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is that I no longer anchor
my identity to specific pursuits
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like being a violinist
or a cognitive scientist
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or a podcaster.
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Instead, I anchor my identity
to what lights me up about those pursuits,
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what really energizes me.
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And for me, it's a love
of human connection and understanding.
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I now define myself not by what I do,
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but why I do it.
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Look, unexpected change comes for us all,
whether we like it or not.
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And when it does, it can really suck.
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But I'm hoping that if we can stay open
to how we might internally change,
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how we might expand,
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it can help us weather the storm.
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Life recently threw me
a new slight change of plans.
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I've always wanted to be a mom,
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but becoming one has been difficult
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and my husband and I
have had to navigate pregnancy losses
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and other heartbreaks over the years.
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And now I'm not sure what will happen.
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But I'm using these three questions
to help me during this tough time.
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I'm asking myself
how this unexpected challenge
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might change what I'm capable of,
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what I value, and how I define myself.
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I'm still figuring things out.
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But what I can tell you right now
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is that I'm imagining a future me
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who is expanding her definition
of what it means to parent.
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Who's perhaps finding what she craved
from motherhood in other places.
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At a minimum,
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this exploration has allowed me
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to loosen my grip on the identity
of Mom just a bit.
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And I found it freeing.
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I'm beginning to see change
with more possibility.
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And I'm hoping you can, too.
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Thank you so much.
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(Applause)
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