Dr. Maya Shankar

And I remember having a personal experience with this.

I write about it in the final chapter of my book, The Other Side of Change, which is more memoir.

The other chapters are devoted to other characters, but I felt like, okay, I got to walk the walk here.

I've just done this study on all these other people.

Now I have to turn the mirror towards myself and do some deep reflecting.

But long story short, my husband and I were on this multi-year journey to try to start a family and were unsuccessful.

And I remember that when we found out we had had a second miscarriage with our surrogate and had lost identical twin girls, one of the things that disoriented me the most about that was...

the feeling that I was not in control.

I'm so used to, and I'm sure your audience of all audiences will relate to this.

We outwork challenges, right?

We figure out a way to hustle, to find creative solutions, to overcome barriers.

I mean, that is the entrepreneurial spirit in a nutshell is how do I still get to yes, even though I have all these barriers in my way.

And that is sort of the approach that I've always had in my life, which is, okay, when I'm facing a failure or a setback,

I'm just going to work harder and I'm going to be more creative and I'm going to figure it out.

And one of the things that this change did for me was it humbled me in this regard.

There's no such thing as trying harder in the context of fertility and starting a family.

The universe doesn't care how much you want something or how hard you worked at it.

And so I think that's another reason why

I was so eager to write this book is that I felt like that loss of control is so dispiriting.

And in my own life, I've been advised by lots of people, and there's this well-known mantra out there all over the internet, you can't control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction.