The mindbodygreen Podcast
633: The psychology of uncertainty, growth & hope | Maya Shankar, Ph.D.
18 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the My Buddy Green podcast.
Chapter 2: How can unexpected change serve as a revelation?
I'm Jason Wachub, founder and co-CEO of My Buddy Green and your host. What do you do when life doesn't just throw you a curveball, but completely changes the path you thought you were on? Because sooner or later, all of us face a moment when that plan falls apart. A diagnosis we didn't see coming, a dream that quietly ends, a future that suddenly looks like nothing what we imagined.
Today's guest is someone who spent her career studying exactly what happens next.
Chapter 3: What is the illusion of control in our lives?
Dr. Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist, former founder and chair of the White House Behavioral Science Team, and the creator and host of the award-winning podcast, A Slight Change of Plans. And now she's the author of a powerful new book, The Other Side of Change, Who Will Become When Life Makes Other Plans.
In today's show, we dive into what science and lived experience can teach us about navigating upheaval.
Chapter 4: What strategies can help us navigate through change?
We'll explore how unexpected change can act as a form of revelation, why our sense of control shatters during life's hardest moments, and how to rebuild an identity that's resilient when roles, labels, or dreams fall away. If you've ever asked yourself, why did this happen to me? Or wondered who you might become on the other side of a major life shift, this show is for you.
So in chapter one, the story of Olivia, wow, you really know how to start a book. You've captured my attention fully with the story of Olivia. Can you walk us through?
Chapter 5: How can we cultivate faith without religion?
First of all, thanks so much for having me, Jason. Olivia was a early 20-something college student when she experienced a severe brainstem stroke that left her with a condition called locked-in syndrome.
Chapter 6: What does it mean when we ask if everything happens for a reason?
And when you have locked-in syndrome, it means that your consciousness is fully preserved, you think and feel the same thoughts and have the same emotions as before, and But you have no voluntary muscle control over any of the muscles in your body except for the muscles that control your eyes.
Chapter 7: How can we handle rumination and denial during difficult times?
So the only way that you can communicate with the outside world is by blinking.
Diving Belle and the Butterfly. There was a film. The real story.
Exactly. Jean-Dominique Boby. Yeah, exactly. That is what she experienced as a... It's torture.
It's torture. If I think about torture, that would be it.
this is a lot of people's worst nightmare. It would be my worst nightmare. You are in a literal prison because, again, it's not like the consciousness is compromised in any way.
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Chapter 8: What is moral elevation and how does it influence our lives?
You are fully Jason. I'm fully Maya. But I don't have any portals for communicating with the world around me other than my eyes. And so Olivia wakes up in this state. And what I found so shocking about her story is what being locked in revealed to her about who she was and mental states and perspectives that were potentially holding her back.
So one of the themes that emerges in my book, The Other Side of Change, is that change can serve as revelation. So when a bad thing happens to us, it can feel like a personal apocalypse, right? Like the world that we knew and had grown comfortable with is no longer available to us. And there's something interesting about the word apocalypse, which is that it comes from the Greek word apocalypsis.
And apocalypsis does mean revelation. And so I share this etymology because it is instructive. Change can upend us, but it can also reveal things to us. Sometimes, or most of the time, we go about our lives sort of thinking we have a good understanding of who we are.
But at the end of the day, it's based on a pretty limited set of data points that we've happened to collect over the course of our lives based on the random arbitrary experiences that we've happened to undergo. And it is sometimes a massive change, right?
The anvil falling out of the deep blue sky that reveals something to us that had previously been hidden from view, or it's the new stresses or constraints of our new environment that allows us to see something in us that was not that visible to us before. And so for Olivia, she actually only really registers the gravity of her situation when her boyfriend's family comes to visit.
And that's because for much of Olivia's life, she was a pathological people pleaser, okay? She desperately wanted the approval and affection of others. Growing up, she went to a wealthy private school. Her parents were very middle class. She never really fit in. She was bullied a lot. And she never felt like she had her boyfriend's family's approval.
And when she comes in, she has to confront for the first time that she cannot curate a version of herself for these people in order to gain their approval. And by the way, like Olivia's story is extreme, but most of us can resonate with this, right? Most of us want to create a version of ourselves for other people that is palatable, that is lovable, that is likable, that wins us favor, right?
With other human beings. And almost by brute force, Olivia, because she cannot curate an image of her, she has a ventilator strapped to her face. She can't be poised. She can't be charming. She can't make funny jokes. She has to confront... the version of herself that is the most raw and authentic and vulnerable version of her in this new state.
And the details are what obviously make her story so incredible. But over time, as she witnesses her care team fall in love with her for who she really is, She has to engage in a kind of self-acceptance that she never thought was possible and to start to love herself.
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