Dr. Maya Shankar

So when I was a little kid, I was this budding concert violinist.

And then a sudden injury derailed my dreams overnight.

And I remember experiencing identity paralysis as a 15-year-old because every version of future Maya had involved being a violinist in some way or another.

And suddenly the universe was telling me,

okay, you've had this career-ending injury.

Now you need to chart a path forward.

But I had no idea what those next steps could look like.

And I think one reason a lot of us experience identity paralysis is that change can really threaten our sense of identity in a really powerful way.

And it's taken me a while to learn this insight.

But

When something is taken away from us, it's often only then that we realize how much that thing had defined us in the first place.

So when I lost the ability to play the violin at 15, I hadn't realized, oh my gosh, I spent nearly a decade of my life

playing this instrument and it is what makes me feel valuable.

And like, I have a lot of worth and like I'm able to contribute to society.

And so when it was ripped away from me, I wasn't just grieving the loss of the violin.

I was also grieving the loss of myself in a much deeper way.

And so I think one way that we can get out of identity paralysis is to do something that I've only learned in my adult life.

And I want to make sure your listeners have this insight so that they don't have to repeat the same mistakes I made.

which is to define yourself not simply by what you do, but by why you do that thing.

So I think naturally, so many of us are used to defining ourselves by the roles we play, right?