Maya Shankar

It's wonderful that you have your faith to fall back on.

For me personally, I don't have that if I'm just being honest, right?

And so I think my spiritual life is defined by my love for others and the love that I receive back.

Like that's my working model of existence and what brings life meaning, right?

And I do find a lot of strength in those spaces

And I also think that my soft landing is human psychology.

I feel very empowered by the fact that we can have control over the way that our minds process information.

There are these mantras, right?

You can't control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction.

And it can sound like a platitude.

And actually, I write in my book that when I heard that after the second miscarriage, I was like, this is not helpful to me.

Someone give me a roadmap.

How do I actually think and feel differently about my situation?

And that's why I took this more empirical approach.

But

You'll notice, Jason, in my book, I don't just call upon research from psychology or neuroscience.

I also call upon wisdom from the ancients and from philosophers and from more spiritual spaces, because I do think having a well-rounded approach to confronting change is often helpful.

At the same time, there is...

There's a story actually towards the end of the book where a woman gets fixated on the idea of this negative unexpected event in her life happening for a reason.

She's just convinced that it happened.