Dr. Maya Shankar

Oh, all sorts of things.

So I think one misconception we have is that most of the values we have in our minds and our beliefs and our ideas about the world are the results of really conscious, deliberate reasoning.

And that we put so much thought into all of the beliefs that we have.

No, we haven't.

Most of them we absorb subconsciously through societal messaging, from messages from our caregivers growing up.

And those are particularly powerful because...

When we're children, those messages are wrapped up in our sense of love and belonging.

So we don't want to challenge the beliefs that are passed down to us.

And then there's pop culture and teachers and classmates.

And so we are absorbing ideas all the time.

And most of them are worth revisiting at some point.

But because we're all so busy, it's not like, Hala, every morning I wake up and I'm like, what value would I like to revisit today?

Like, none of us have time for that, right?

We don't have time to interrogate everything we believe.

But when we go through a change, we can then reflect after the fact.

Or if we're anxious and nervous about a future change, we can reflect on what it is that's making us so nervous about it, right?

That will reveal to us what our values are.

And

There's this incredible story that I write about in the book featuring a woman named Ingrid.

She felt so much shame around her Colombian heritage and some of the indigenous practices that her family engaged in over the years.