Maya Shankar

And then there are our expected selves, which reflect just what we think is most likely to happen.

So yes, I would love to be a singer-songwriter like Taylor Swift, but most likely in five years, I will still be a cognitive neuroscientist.

Okay, great.

So what happens when a big change occurs is that often like a big unexpected negative change is that all these hoped for cells disappear from sight and a lot of feared cells start to emerge, right?

Based on expectations we have, stereotypes, our own experiences that we've had.

So we might believe that there are

Certain futures that are destiny for people who have been in prison, for people who are college dropouts, for people who are full-time caregivers, for widows, right?

We just have our minds go to places and we think, this is the kind of future I'm going to have now that I am X.

But we know from research that our brains can needlessly constrain ourselves in terms of what's actually available to us.

And one way to crack open our imagination about futures that are available to us at these inflection points is to experience what's called moral elevation.

So moral elevation is that warm, fuzzy feeling in our chest that we get when we witness someone else's extraordinary actions, their moral beauty.

So that might be someone's amazing selflessness or courage or resilience or kindness or ability to forgive, you name it.

If it's an amazing human trait, it will inspire moral elevation.

But importantly,

Moral elevation doesn't just make us feel good, it actually rewires our brains.

It changes our brains because when we witness someone else doing something that defies our understanding of what humans are capable of, it cracks open our own imagination about what we might be capable of.

And that opens up all of these possibilities of future selves that we didn't think were on the table.

Another way, so for example, in the book, I talk about this guy, Dwayne, who was sentenced to nine years in adult prison for carjacking he committed when he was 16.

And he was super fearful of who he might become behind bars.

And it's only through an encounter of moral elevation that he has in prison with a fellow prisoner where he sees him violating all these stereotypes he had around what a prisoner is like.