[MUSIC FADES IN]
Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, we kick off our "Think Again" series all about life's big transitions.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[PENSIVE MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: Over the past few years, I've gone through a lot of transitions. Some of the major ones. I got married. I had really close loved ones die. I started a new job, this one, remotely and in a pandemic. I moved a few times. And I've got some big transitions coming up too. I'm pregnant, and excited, and suddenly feeling this rush of momentum into the next chapter of my life.
The thing about moments of transition is they can feel challenging, destabilizing, even scary. But they can also be really clarifying. They're a chance to take stock of where you are, what matters to you, and who you want to be moving forward.
That's why this year, for our "Think Again" series, which is all about how to rethink your deeply held notions and rewire your brain, we're focusing on the big pivot points in life. Starting with figuring out your purpose as a young adult, with psychotherapist Satya Doyle Byock…
[START APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Satya Doyle Byock: The tricky thing about being in quarter life is we are doing this dance all the time to both find ourselves and to survive day by day.
[END APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Basu, Narrating: All the changes that come with parenthood, with journalist Jessica Grose…
[START APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Jessica Grose: I never want to look at these massive changes as all bad or all good.
[END APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Basu, Narrating: Anderson Cooper on the surprising comfort he's found talking to people about grief and death…
[START APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Anderson Cooper: All around us, there are hearts that are broken and there are hearts that are mending and there are people who feel alone.
[END APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Basu, Narrating: And we'll revisit my conversation from earlier this year with "L.A. Times" columnist Steve Lopez about retirement…
[START APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Steve Lopez: If you are in that transition and thinking of retiring, find out whether what you think you want to do is really gonna work. Sample the dream.
[END APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Basu, Narrating: Each of these episodes has tangible things for you to do, to try, to apply in your own life and maybe even revisit when you're going through a tough transition to remind yourself there is a way through.
I wanted to kick off this series by talking to Shankar Vedantam. He's the host of "Hidden Brain," a podcast that explores human psychology and behavior and is expanding with even more exclusive content for their Hidden Brain Plus subscribers on Apple Podcasts.
I asked Shankar to describe for us what happens to our brain when we're going through big life transitions, why these moments feel so mentally and emotionally challenging, and how to override our worst impulses to think through them in a better way.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Shankar Vedantam: Some time ago, I was talking with Rick Potts, he's a paleoanthropologist, and I was asking him what makes humans different from other species on the planet. You know, there are lots of ways in which we're different, of course, but one of the things he said that was so interesting to me, was that humans distinguish themselves by being extraordinarily adaptable. If you look at our long history on the planet, you know, humans live in desert climates, we live near oceans, we live near rivers, we live at altitude. Some of us have learned to live underwater for extended periods of time or in outer space for extended periods of time. You know, no other species comes close to humans in terms of our adaptability. And in some ways, it's our secret weapon, that we are able to adapt to circumstances far better than any other species that has ever been on the planet. At the same time, periods of adaptation and change often feel incredibly stressful for us, and many of us recoil from making those changes. And this is the paradox that I think is at the heart of how our brains process change, which is on the one hand, we're extraordinarily capable of great change. We're very adaptable. And on the other hand, we're very reluctant to make change. We're often very fearful about it.
Basu: Mm. Yeah, I guess that makes me wonder, why then, if we are, in fact, so adaptable, do we not see ourselves that way?
Vedantam: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think some of this has to do with the fact that, in our evolutionary past, we have strong triggers that tell us, "If something is working, don't change it." If you figured out how to live in a particular ecosystem, you have a niche that's working well for you, think carefully before you try and change anything because if something's going great, why fix it when it's not broken? And so, I think it's right that we are cautious about change, and it's a good thing that we're cautious about change. But I think in the world that we live in today, in some ways, this is an evolutionary mismatch, if you will. The researchers Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson and Jordi Quoidbach ran some very interesting studies some years ago, where they asked people at different stages of their lives, how much do you think you have changed in the last 10 years? And how much do you think you're going to change in the next 10 years? And what they found, remarkably, was at every life stage, people who are 20 would tell you, "I've changed a lot since I was 10, but I mostly expect to stay the same over the next 10 years." People who are 30 will tell you, "Oh, my God. I've changed enormously since I was 20. But surely at this point now, I'm more or less fixed in terms of who I am." People who are 60 and 70 and 80, at every life stage, the same thing happened. When they looked back, they could see enormous changes over the past decade. When they look forward, they imagined that they were not going to change very much. Dan Gilbert and his colleagues call this the "end-of-history illusion." I sometimes call this the "illusion of continuity." But it's basically the same idea, which is we underestimate both our capacity to change and how much we are going to change. And I think that's true regardless of the life stage we're in.
Basu: That's really interesting. I think that's a point about, I guess, our resilience or our ability to just keep moving, which I suppose should sound reassuring to most people, right?
Vedantam: Absolutely. And in some ways, it's helpful to remind ourselves of that. It's important to remind ourselves that, in fact, we are not fragile, that we are resilient, that we have the capacity to adapt. And in some ways, bringing what psychologists call the "locus of control," where you feel like you're not just being buffeted by outside forces, but you have some control over what you're doing in your life, turns out to be very, very effective in terms of improving our satisfaction with the choices that we make.
Basu: Can I tell you the imagery I've always had around this?
Vedantam: Sure.
Basu: And I don't know why I've thought of it in this way for so many years now, but I've always imagined that I'm just vine swinging [CHUCKLES] through the forest. And at any given point, I have so many vines available to me to make my next move, but it's my choice which of them I grab onto. But it's going to take me swinging in some direction where, at the end of that swing, I'll have a totally different set of decisions I'll need to make.
Vedantam: Yes. Now I cannot get the image out of my mind of you, Shumita, swinging through the forest here.
[BASU CHUCKLES]
Vedantam: I think this is going stay with us for the rest of the conversation. But I think it is such a wonderful image because that's, I think, exactly how we all lead our lives, which is, it is a dynamic process. We are making choices. And perhaps the worst thing that you can do is to sit on top of a tree and say, "Which vine should I pick? Which choice is the best choice?" In some ways, the act of movement, choosing action over indecision, might be the most important choice of all.
[HAND DRUM MUSIC]
So, how do you decide which vine to swing to? Shankar offered some advice in the form of a thought exercise. He says there are three simple questions you can ask yourself.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Vedantam: The first question is, am I doing something that I love, or am I contemplating something that I would love to do? The second question is, am I going to be good at doing it? And the third question is, does the world need what it is I'm going to be doing? So, do I love it? Am I good at it? Does the world need it? Very simple questions. You'll see that if you try and answer those questions, at the intersection of the answers to those three questions often lies a clue to what you should be doing with your life. Imagine someone who is an accountant, and let's say they're a very good accountant. Now, they've checked box number two, they're good at it. They've probably checked box number three because the world needs accountants. But let's say the person doesn't enjoy being an accountant. Now, you found a job, you found a profession, but that profession can seem like drudgery to you because you're good at it, the world needs it, you get a paycheck, but you're not happy doing it. I think when you try and think of activities that you can do - and in some ways you might not get to the ultimate activity as you're making that initial choice, again, going back to that wonderful image of swinging through the vines - the question to really ask is, among the choices that are right before me right now, what is the choice that would allow me to most do what I love to do, what I'm good at doing, and what the world needs? Now, the thing that makes this really tricky, Shumita, is that what you love to do is going to change over time. What you love today is not going to be what you love 10 years from now or 20 years from now.
Basu: Sure.
Vedantam: What you're good at doing is also going to change over time because as we practice things and as we learn from others, our skill sets change. And in fact, we can get better at doing things over time. And finally, what the world needs is also going to change. What the world needs today is not going to be what the world needs tomorrow. So all these things are dynamic. But the fact that you don't know what the answer is going to be 20 years from now should not be a reason for paralysis today.
Having a good sense of what your goal is, what your purpose is, can be like a North Star in times of transition. It can help guide you.
Vedantam: Now the question is, how do you get purpose and meaning? Right? So sometimes people say, "I'm going to sit around and wait for purpose and meaning to find me," or "I need to discover my purpose and meaning." We had a wonderful episode on "Hidden Brains" some months ago, featuring a researcher named Anthony Burrow. It was part of a series called "Happiness 2.0." And in that podcast episode, Anthony Burrow makes the wonderful point that purpose and meaning are not things to be discovered, but they are things to be cultivated. They are things that you have to grow. They are things that you can generate on your own. As you ask yourself, "What am I good at? What do I love? What does the world need?" you will start to pay attention to the things that work very well for you, but also the things that actually make you feel, "I am doing something that is bigger than myself." And this is, in some ways, the hallmark of purpose and meaning, which is it's not finally about you. When we do that, when we feel like we are part of a cause that is bigger than us, whether that cause is a child, or an organization, or a country, or an idea, there is something very powerful that that unlocks within us, and then all of the other things, in some ways, fall into place.
Basu: Mm. So when you say that purpose is something to be cultivated, what does that look like in practice?
Vedantam: I think in practice, again, it looks like taking the next step. Even if you're not sure what the next step is, take the next step. Action above thinking. You know, so our minds are such sophisticated machines that very often as we are contemplating what we should be doing, we ask ourselves, "What should I do?" And we're not sure what to do. And we say, "Okay, let me think about it." And I'm not saying that we shouldn't think about things. It's a good idea to think about things. But I think many of us think about it, don't come up with a satisfying answer, and say, "Okay, let me think about it some more tomorrow, and I'll think about it some more next week, and I'll think about it some more next month." What we're failing to see is that it's in the action, it's in the doing of the things, that we actually discover what it is that we actually want to do. Right? So it's very much… Think about the analogy with parenting. Having the child is what suddenly generates a sense of purpose and meaning for many people around the world. It's exactly the same with a job. You don't know that a job is going to be a calling until you're actually in the job, until you're actually seeing all the elements of the job, until you're seeing the impact that the job has on the world. And so, if you wait to say, "I need to know what my calling is before I can decide which job to take," you're going to end up waiting forever.
[MELLOW MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: We asked you, our listeners, to tell us about your moments of big life transitions, how you handled them, and how you were changed by them.
Listener: Hey there, Apple News. I'm Kendeyl Johansen from Park City, Utah.
Listener 2: My name is Eric Blaser. I'm from Lopez Island, Washington.
Listener 3: This is Bridget Boland. I live in Nevada City, California.
Listener 4: My name is Simcha Shtull. I'm 67 years old. I live in Seattle.
Listener 5: And I'm going to talk about the major life transition and how it changed me.
Listener 6: When I was about 19 years old, I decided to completely uproot myself.
Listener 7: I moved to the U.S. when I married my husband.
Listener 8: Having to learn a different language shaped me in different ways.
Listener 4: Left the community I was affiliated with, changed careers.
Listener 9: I made the radical decide to suspend my surgical career.
Listener 5: One of those big ones they talk about: getting divorced from a man who wasn't treating me well.
Listener: After my divorce, my life felt unmanageable.
Listener 3: I decided to leave my very lucrative litigation career as an attorney.
Listener 5: And I did a 180.
Listener 2: I wanted to stop trying to fit into the world, but instead find my place in it.
Listener 4: It was not an easy transition.
Listener 3: It was a huge leap of faith. I didn't know how I was going necessarily to pay the bills.
Listener 9: This change came with a huge financial cost.
Listener 6: All of the relationships that I had grown up with were gone.
Basu, Narrating: As so many of you told us, transitions are not just about facing something new ahead, but also about leaving something behind, something that's familiar and maybe comfortable. And so I asked Shankar, how do you know when to make a drastic change, a big break from the track you were already on? It's not so easy to decide to quit something or let something go.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Vedantam: Many people struggle with this. And we struggle with it for a variety of reasons, one of the most important being that once we have invested time and effort in a certain course of action, let's say you've spent four years getting an education in something and you've decided, you know, I want to become an economist. And so you've studied economics in college. Maybe you've even gone to graduate school. And at the end of this process, you suddenly realize, you know, economics is not really for me. What I really care about is anthropology or public service or some other kind of activity. Now, to give up what you have already spent a lot of time doing feels very, very painful for us. Economists sometimes call these "sunk costs." Sunk costs and the fear of sunk costs is a very powerful motivator for people not to reach for the next vine, not to make the next change. Just as in economics, it doesn't make sense if you've made a bad investment - you bought a house that you shouldn't have bought or you bought some stocks that you shouldn't have bought - it doesn't make sense to say, "Because I have spent money in the past on this bad investment, I should continue to pour more money into the bad investment because I can't bear the thought that, in some ways, I made a mistake, and if I just pulled out, I would have to take a loss." Right? So exactly as it is in economics, knowing that it's time to actually step away might involve saying, "I'm willing to accept a loss because, in fact, the future holds some promise to me." Now, we can't make this choice willy nilly, right? So you probably want to bring in other people into that decision. Bring in friends, bring in family, bring in advisors and teachers, have them give you feedback. Because sometimes we confuse temporary setbacks and difficulties in an activity with the idea that we are not suited for that activity at all. But, if in fact we are at a point where multiple people tell us, "Look, it looks like you're really not happy doing what you're doing," even if you've invested eight years of your time doing something, does it really make sense to spend the next 40 years of your life defending the choices you've made over the last eight? Almost surely not.
[CONTEMPLATIVE MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: Okay, so far, Shankar has given us a couple of solid tools and exercises. There's the three questions to ask yourself to evaluate your purpose, your North Star. Keep in mind that you change over time, and so will your purpose. And remember the sunk cost fallacy, and don't get trapped into thinking you can't decide to make a big change. There's another bias to be aware of. Again, we're retraining our brains here. The bias toward certainty. Sometimes when we're at a crossroads and feeling unsure about the paths to choose from, that can feel like a bad thing. It's unsettling. But Shankar says, fight that urge. Ambivalence isn't necessarily bad.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Vedantam: We want to make sense of the world, you know. We want to make sense of our choices. The world needs to make sense to us, because when the world doesn't make sense to us, it can feel destabilizing, right? So we spend a lot of time, in some ways, trying to simplify the world so that the world makes sense to us. The problem here is that the world often is messy. The choices we make are often messy. And sometimes, because we're looking for this kind of cognitive closure, we want to sort of simplify things and feel like we can tie a bow on it, we reach prematurely for an answer, and that answer turns out to actually not be the right answer or a good answer. And so, in some ways, being able to sit with uncertainty, to sit with ambivalence, to thrive, in some ways, in the face of contradiction. This is the title of the episode we did with the researcher Wendy Smith. To be able to thrive in the face of contradiction turns out to be a very powerful life skill. The more we're able to sit with uncertainty, the less uncertainty feels threatening to us. And when you think about life transitions, Shumita, that is the challenge with life transitions, which is they feel uncertain. You're not sure. Should I move to Chicago or should I not move to Chicago? Should I marry this person? Should I not marry this person? Should I divorce someone or should I not divorce someone? These choices have uncertainties to them. And the uncertainty is unpleasant, which is why we're often looking to simplify the decision, shut the decision down, and reach cognitive closure. Sometimes, however, it's really important to be able to sit with that uncertainty, to sit with the paradox and the contradictions. Because sometimes when you sit with those contradictions, new ideas and insights can emerge. But that requires a certain amount of inner metal, if you will, the spine, in some ways, to say, "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I should be doing. It's possible I'm not going to know what I should be doing, and I'm okay with that. The future will reveal itself to me in due course of time."
Basu: Now, of course, we should also talk about big transitions that don't really involve a choice, but they sort of just happen. And maybe they feel like they're happening to you, but they're just happening in the world. Maybe you lose your job. Maybe you lose your home. Maybe you lose a loved one. These are all big transitions that require you to leave a certain reality behind and enter a new one, whether you want to or not. What are some of the ways that we can better manage the negative emotions that come with these kind of transitions?
Vedantam: Yeah, I mean, negative emotions are not in and of themselves a bad thing, right? So when you're sad or you're upset about a choice that you've made, or a choice that's been thrust on you, the emotion itself is not the problem. The emotion is basically telling you you're unhappy about something, and it's a valuable signal. I think where it becomes problematic is where we are doing our best to change the way we feel, rather than thinking about the feeling as being a signal. So the simplest analogy, of course, is that the smoke alarm in your home keeps going off, and because you find the sound irritating or annoying, you disable the smoke alarm. Right? That's what many of us do with our emotions. Our emotions are upsetting, destabilizing. We don't like the way we feel, and we ask, "How can we turn off the signal that is making me unhappy?" Now, that's going to be a dangerous thing, just like with a smoke alarm. When you turn off the smoke alarm in your home, yes, you no longer have the alarm going off, it's no longer annoying, but you're not going to be warned that something bad is actually happening inside your home. So it's a very bad idea to turn off the alarm. On the other hand, again, if we can sit with a signal, if we can say, "I'm hearing a signal that I am upset." And in some ways, this is the idea of emotional intelligence that Peter Salovey and others developed many years ago. When an emotion affects you, are you able to identify what that emotion is? Are you able to identify the cause of that emotion? And are you able to sit with that emotion to sort of say, "I'm recognizing that I'm unhappy"? People who are able to do that, who are able to think about their emotions as signals, turn out to be far more successful at navigating life than people who are merely reactive to their emotions.
Basu, Narrating: Another suggestion Shankar has for managing difficult emotions is exercising self-compassion.
Vedantam: Many of us are so hard on ourselves. You know, we fail at something, we make a mistake, we make a choice, and the choice turns out badly. You know, maybe we decide to go to medical school, and we decide after four years or eight years that it's a mistake. We're not just dealing with the fact that we have spent eight years of our life on something that we shouldn't have spent eight years of our life. We're now so angry with ourselves. We're so upset with ourselves. We tell ourselves, "There were all these signals. I should have seen six months into the medical program that I was not suited for this." And we spend so much time beating up on ourselves that now we have two problems. We have the fact that we don't quite know what we should be doing with our lives. We need to find a new career, a new set of options. But we're also so upset with ourselves that we're constantly hammering at our own sense of self-esteem. We did an episode some time ago featuring a researcher named Kristin Neff. The episode was titled "Being Kind to Yourself," and she talked about the power of self-compassion and a very curious thing that I think is especially true in the United States, which is we believe that if we are kind to ourselves, we will not hold ourselves to a high standard. I think many people tell themselves, "If I'm easy on myself, if I'm compassionate or I'm understanding to the mistakes I make, I'm just going to go out and keep making more mistakes in the future." This turns out to be a profoundly destructive idea because it turns out that when you actually exercise self-compassion… Self-compassion is not the same thing as self-justification. It's not just saying, "Fine. Everything was good. I didn't make any mistakes." That's self-justification. Self-compassion says, "I did make a mistake. I'm human. It's understandable why I made the mistake. I'm going to be kind to myself and I'm going to look for ways in which we can do better in the future."
[INTRIGUING MUSIC]
Basu, Narrating: A common piece of advice around self-compassion is the old "Would you say that to a friend?" test. Shankar has a variation on that: Would you say that to a child? Would you tell a child they are bad or a failure when they make a mistake? No, right? You wouldn't say that.
Vedantam: We say, "Tomorrow is going to be better, and I'll help you make tomorrow better." We should exercise that same compassion and turn that spotlight of compassion inward as well, to tell ourselves when we're upset, "I understand that you're upset. I want to understand more deeply why it is that you're upset. But I'm going to envelop myself in self-love and compassion, and that's going to help me tomorrow, you know, turn a brighter face to the world."
Basu, Narrating: Transitions are hard, even the good ones. But you do turn a corner. And a lot of you told us, on the other side of your divorce, your loss, your moment of transition, you came out stronger, more evolved.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[LIVELY MUSIC]
Listener 8: There is definitely some grief for the versions of myself that I have left behind. However, it has always made me a more empathetic and humble person.
Listener 3: People in my life came forward and supported me.
Listener 2: I was finally able to see and accept my artistic self and be connected to my true purpose of sharing my inspiration and creativity with others.
Listener 4: Coming out at the other end, what I learned was humility.
Listener 9: It has afforded me the extraordinary opportunity to closely participate in the upbringing of our two daughters and to lead a healthier, happier, and more intentional and fulfilling life.
Listener 2: I stepped into a life that was waiting for me.
Listener 5: Thanks so much. Bye.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Basu: So, we've talked a lot today about how big transitions are inevitable, and they happen actually quite often in our lives. But what I'm also hearing you saying is that we are always in transition. We are always changing. And this takes me back to a recent TED Talk that you gave that I really enjoyed. One thing that you said that stuck with me was, "When we make promises to other people, what we're really doing is making a promise that a stranger is going to have to keep." Which is to say that your future self is unknown to you, in some ways, and may not agree with what your current self thinks, believes, upholds. I think that can be a kind of scary idea for some people, but how can people think about that in a way that is empowering, that can help them make it through transitions?
Vedantam: Yeah. I think it is, in some ways, a scary idea. You know, we think of ourselves as being one person who moves through life. But again, if you look at all of the psychological research that shows how much we change over the course of our lives, it really is worth asking the question, "Am I the same person at age 52 that I was at age 12? And am I going to be the same person at age 82 that I am at 52?" And if we're not the same person, but we're making commitments, we're making promises to love someone till death do us part, that's a promise that we are not going to be able to keep. Our future self is going to have to keep that promise, and that future self might be a stranger to us, might have different values, different preferences, different thoughts, different views on the matter. In the course of that TED Talk, I offered three pieces of advice. I said, the three engines that can shape your life are curiosity, humility and bravery. Which is that curiosity tells us, "Let me look for what the next option is. I might not be able to peer very far into the undergrowth of the forest, but I can see what's in front of me. And by getting to that next step, I will be able to see a little bit more." Curiosity, in some ways, is an engine that drives us forward as we move through life. Humility is very important, because once you recognize that your future self might not agree with you on something, it gives you some pause. It gives you some pause in terms of the confidence with which you make life choices or the confidence with which you make pronouncements because, in some ways, your future self might have very different views than you do today. So as we engage with one another, and as we think about our own lives, it's important to acknowledge that there are things that we don't know and that there are things that we cannot know, and to bring a certain amount of humility to our interactions with other people, to our colleagues, to our co-workers, on social media, and even to the choices that we're making in our own lives. And the last idea that I tried to bring across in the Ted Talk is that, while it's true that our future selves might be weaker or frailer than us or might have preferences that are very different from us, it's also the case that our future selves are going to have capacities that we don't have today. They're going to have strengths and wisdom that we don't have today. So if a choice emerges before us, and that choice could be to start your own company or to look after a disabled child or to take up a social cause that is important to you, and there's a voice inside your head that says, "But I don't think I'm up for it. I don't think I have it in me to be able to do this difficult thing," it's important to remind ourselves that, even though we don't have those capacities today, our future selves might in fact have those capacities, which is why it's important to be brave today.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Basu: Shankar, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much.
Vedantam: It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
You can find "Hidden Brain" and subscribe to hear exclusive content from Hidden Brain Plus on Apple Podcasts.
Next week, on this show, we'll be talking about the transition into adulthood.
[START APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Satya Doyle Byock: I think we put so much effort into talking to quarter lifers, young adults, about career paths and these questions of security and setting them up for linear goals, and we don't really attend the fact that these are actually whole people that are coming of age, they're not just parts of the economy.
[END APPLE NEWS IN CONVERSATION CLIP]
Basu, Narrating: We'll cover how to avoid some of the common mental roadblocks that come up at this age or how you can support some of the young adults in your life. That's next in our "Think Again" series. Don't miss that episode. Follow "Apple News In Conversation" on Apple Podcasts.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]