Maya Shankar

speaker

1,518 appearances 8 recordings 7 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 5 Jul

Maya Shankar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 5.

Appearances

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Something You Should Know · How to Adapt When Life Throws a Curveball & Understanding the Flow of Time · 19 Jan 2026 podcast

So psychologists have this concept.

If you have a really strong internal locus of control, you believe that you dictate outcomes, that you're in control of how your life turns out.

If you have a strong external locus of control, you believe that there's a lot of external factors that are determining how your life turns out.

So one mentality involves a very firm grip on the steering wheel in which you are the one

that is dictating things, and the other is a slightly more open-minded posture of, yes, I can control certain things, but the universe is actually controlling a lot of other things.

It turns out that when you have a stronger internal locus of control, when you feel that you're the one in charge, it can be associated with higher well-being because your life is filled with maybe more purpose or more meaning because you do feel like your inputs matter.

The downside of having that relationship with control is that when a really unexpected negative thing happens, your brain naturally thinks, well, this must be my fault.

If I was responsible for the good stuff, I must be responsible for the bad stuff.

And there's a huge freedom, actually, in adopting a more balanced view of how any person's life turns out.

I think by nature, we tend to define ourselves by what we do, by our labels, by our roles, right?

I'm a teacher, I'm a doctor, I'm a mother, I'm a member of my community.

The challenge is that when a big change happens, it can actually threaten that self-identity.

And this can leave you in a very paralyzed state because you feel not simply that you've lost the thing in this change moment, but you've also lost a fundamental sense of who you are.

I remember having this experience as a little kid.

So I was an aspiring concert violinist.

When I was young, I was studying at Juilliard under Itzhak Perlman.

My big dreams were coming true.

I was soloing with orchestras and everything was looking bright.

And then I had my own slight change of plans when I overstretched my finger on a single note and had a career ending injury.

And I remember in that moment, Mike, not just grieving the loss of the instrument, but also the loss of myself on this more fundamental level.

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