TED Talks Daily - Why you fear the unknown — and what it can teach you | Maya Shankar, Simone Stolzoff

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

Cognitive scientist Maya Shankar and author Simone Stolzoff have each spent years studying how people navigate uncertainty (and why it often feels so difficult). In this conversation, they discuss why your discomfort with not having the answers might be holding you back — and how leaning into life’s unpredictable moments can unlock resilience, growth and new possibilities. (This conversation was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. TED Membership is the best way to support and engage with the big ideas you love from TED. To learn more, visit ted.com/membership.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. We're taught that success means having a plan, knowing where we're headed and how to get there. But what happens when life throws us into the unknown? Even the term embrace uncertainty can feel sort of like gaslighting sometimes. It's like, you know, I'm feeling incredibly scared and uncomfortable and you're telling me to embrace it. Like, no, screw you. Like, I don't want to embrace that.

Exactly. But I think there's something. about understanding that uncertainty doesn't necessarily mean a threat. Even though that's the way that our biology is wired, uncertainty can also be that birthplace of possibility. That's journalist and author Simone Stoltzoff in a recent conversation with cognitive scientist Maya Shankar, who hosts the popular podcast a slight change of plants. The two have spent years thinking about uncertainty and change from different angles, and they're honest enough to admit that sitting with the unknown is still hard, even when you know the science. In this conversation, they draw from

their new books, Simone's How to Not Know, and Maya's the other side of change, to explore why our discomfort with not having the answers might actually be holding us back and what we might find if we stopped running from it. Because what if uncertainty in life's unpredictable moments aren't the obstacles, but the door to resilience, growth, and a world of new possibilities. That conversation is coming right up after a short break. And now our TED Conversation of the day. There was a study that was done in the University of College London where researchers split participants into two groups. And in one group, they were given an 100% chance of receiving a really painful electric shock. And in the other group, they were given a 50% chance

of receiving a painful electric shock. And fascinatingly, they found, that people in the second group, people who had a 50% chance, were far more anxious and stressed than people in the 100% chance group. So somehow we would rather a certain bad thing happen to us than have to deal with the ambiguity of not being sure. I'm curious from your perspective, what are the implications of a study like this? What does it say about our societal or our individual ability

to navigate what we don't know? Yeah, I mean, I think it makes so much. sense that we as humans, you know, evolved to be this way. It's very helpful for us to be prediction machines that are constantly trying to anticipate future risks and trying to get ahead of them and solve for the future. The downside to that is that there are lots of changes that are truly outside of our control and no amount of planning will rescue us from those situations. And in those moments, our brains can kind of short circuit. I definitely feel like that study describes me to a I would rather know how the story ends.

I would rather have clarity on the outcome. I was just actually reading a book for an upcoming podcast interview on a slight change of plans. And this woman cited a study. She's a physician. And she was talking about how people are way more stressed during that intervening period when they're not sure what the medical result is when they're waiting on a test result than they are when they actually find out what the disease is. And that was really interesting to me because when I reflect back on my life at the moments when I felt the most deeply anxious, the most unsure my life and when my well-being has been most compromised, it is in those periods where there is some uncertainty.

And I wonder someone if it's because we lack that agency in those moments, we're just grasping to try to figure out how we might be able to change the situation. And in moments of uncertainty, we have the illusion that our involvement could actually move the needle. But after we receive the actual information, it feels more set in stone. Yeah, I think this is very relatable for anyone who is dealing with maybe professional uncertainty or uncertainty about what decisions they want to make about their future lives. I think we can think about this from an evolutionary perspective. So if you imagine an ancestor of ours in the jungle, if they hear a rustle in the bushes and they're not sure the source of that noise, that uncertainty could potentially be fatal. And so our brains are wired to feel safe and secure when we are certain and to feel incredibly uncomfortable when we are uncertain. And in general, this is, you know, a survival instinct.

It can steer us well. It can incentivize us to say, put on a seatbelt before we end. or a car ride, there's been similar studies for breast cancer patients who have found that the period between getting a biopsy and getting the diagnosis is often the hardest part of the entire process, harder than chemo or surgery, because once we know what we're dealing with, then we know where to direct our energy. But before we have that certainty, we can't necessarily plan. We can't necessarily know where we should be spending our resources. But I think there's also a cost to this discomfort we have with uncertainty, which is that we might close our minds off to new possibilities. I think we all probably have a friend who is maybe in a job or in a relationship

that they know isn't quite working for them, but they're so uncomfortable with the uncertainty of leaving that they sort of grit their teeth and just maintain the status quo. And in my mind, that is sort of the main downside of our intolerance of uncertainty. It's that when we are certain it has a narrowing effect. It closes our minds when we think we know exactly who's going to win the election or exactly how the market is going to react in the future. But when we're able to maintain a state of not knowing, we're able to see the possibilities that may be sitting on the other side of our discomfort.

There's one other element to this that I think you are particularly primed to speak on, which is the relationship between identity and uncertainty or identity and change. What do you think is so hard about change when it comes to our self-conception? Yeah, it's so interesting. There was a moment in hosting a slight change of plans where I remember I was going on a walk and I realized for the first time, oh my God, this is not even really a show about change. It's a show about identity. And that insight was born from the fact that so many of the stories I was hearing revealed that one of the biggest reasons why change is so scary.

is because it can threaten our self-identity in these really potent ways that are very uncomfortable. Now, let's think about self-identity for a moment. It's very helpful for us to carry them, to have these identities, these labels, these roles we give ourselves, right? If I identify, for example, as an athlete, it's funny I've chosen that because I so don't identify. It's actually the last thing I'm qualified to identify as.

But while we're in this magical world together on a Thursday, Let's just pretend that I'm an athlete. It gives me an immediate feeling of camaraderie with my fellow athletes, right? So I feel a sense of community and group membership. I feel meaning and purpose in everyday life, right? Each day is imbued with a mission, which can help stave off existential dread and feelings of nihilism. So there's a lot of advantages to carrying these identities. The problem is that when an unexpected change happens,

to us, it can threaten that identity. And we can feel very unmoored. So I experienced this actually when I was a little kid. I was an aspiring concert violinist. I started playing when I was six. And I studied at the Juilliard School of Music under I Tsuk Perlman. And I had really big dreams of one day becoming a professional. And then my slight change of plans was that I had a career ending injury. And I remember that there was something so curious about my grief when it came to the loss of the violin, which is that I found myself grieving not just the loss of the instrument, but also the loss of myself in this much deeper way. I think many of us don't realize sometimes how much something has come to define us until we lose that very thing. And I realized that

so much of who I was had become entangled with this identity of violinist. My sense of belonging. I was bullied a lot in my school. I was one of a few brown kids in a predominantly Caucasian school. So I found refuge in the more international community of my music school. A lot of myself confidence was tied up in it. And so when I lost the violin, all of that kind of went away. And I felt myself feeling really untethered from anything meaningful. And it's taken me decades to learn a valuable lesson from. that that I'm so excited to share with all of you today because had I known it at the time, I think I would have had an easier transition point for myself. And that is, it can be quite precarious for us to anchor our self-identity too tightly to what we do. Instead, we can learn to anchor our identities to why we do the things we do. So when I asked myself this question, when it came to the violin, I realized, oh, human connection was at the core of of my love for music. I love connecting with my peers. I love connecting with the audience.

And importantly, just because I lost the violin did not mean that I lost what led me to love it in the first place. That part of Maya was still very much intact, even as a 15-year-old who could no longer play her instrument. And when you anchor your identity in your why, then you have a path forward because the thought experiment becomes, well, through what other means, through what other outlets can I express this part of who I am? And it turns out I kind of subconsciously gravitated towards those spaces. I became a cognitive scientist who studies the science of human connection in hosting a slight change of plans.

It's all about forging deep emotional connections of the people that I'm interviewing. This is the same for writing the other side of change where I spent years interviewing people on repeated occasions and really going deep and deep and deep when it came to their stories. And so I had been able to actually still express this huge part of what makes Maya Maya and to hold on to that as kind of a North Star, a compass of sorts that can guide me towards my next steps. And I feel like that has helped me, that why part of my self-identity has helped me weather more recent changes with a bit more equanimity, a bit more ease. And that's because I know that the world can't take that passion away. It's still very much there.

And so I would urge people who are tuning in today to ask themselves what their why is. Maybe it's service. Maybe it's getting better at a skill. Maybe it's having a creative outlet. Whatever your why is, that can be a soft landing when life makes other plans for you and can help you steer yourself towards what comes next. I love that so much. I mean, I think there's an element to it that is right in line with the topic of my first book, which is called The Good Enough Job. And the argument there was about the value of diversifying our identities, of not seeing ourselves as just one thing. And one thing that anchoring your identity to your why as opposed to your what does is it is much more robust in the face of the changing winds around you. So in the pandemic, for example, I spoke to so many workers who completely identified with their job,

maybe being a Googler or working for this particular organization. And then the market changed or there was a series of layoffs or furloughs. And they were left asking themselves, if I don't have my job, who am I? There's two people in particular that I'm thinking about in this conversation. One is this woman named Liz, who I interviewed for my first book, and she was sort of your typical type A overachiever. She was a D1 college athlete. Actually, she was two-sport D-1 college athlete. She was both on a water polo team and a swimmer, exactly.

And then she graduated. She did teach for America. She found a lot of identity through being a public school teacher in Colorado. And she went to law school, found a lot of identity through law and being a lawyer. But in that period of time, she can track. a chronic illness. And so she went from someone who could say swim four to six hours a day to her mom spoon feeding her chicken soup in bed. And she couldn't any longer derive her self-worth or her identity from her external accomplishments. She always prided herself on being

straight A student or getting great performance reviews. But as she started talking to more people with chronic illnesses, she learned this thing about herself, which is you can define yourself based on your evergreen traits as opposed to your accomplishments. And so she started conceiving of herself as a generous friend or someone who really believes in particular causes. And right in line with what you were saying, she connected to her why, a why that no employer or market or boss could ever take away from her. And it became a much more durative identity that could shift along with the changes around her. And that's really stuck with me. It's one of those ideas that even though it came from the chronically ill community, it's something we can all apply to our own lives of thinking

about what are our traits, our evergreen characteristics. And rather than seeing ourselves as just a accountant or a lawyer or someone who is very impressive. in this way or that way? What are some of those values or virtues that will remain constant and that's all of the change? I love that story so much. I think the argument from both of our books is that there is so much possibility that sits within uncertainty, that sits within change. And one of the reasons that I wanted to write the other side of change is that in moments of inflection, at moments of inflection in my life, whether it was losing the violin or struggling to start a family with my husband and facing pregnancy losses with our surrogate and other

disappointments and obstacles. I would hear so often this popular refrain that while you can't change what happens to you, you can change your response to what happens. You can change your reaction to what happens. And it's meant to be empowering. Simone, but I felt frustrated when I would hear that. I would almost bristle at that advice. Like, okay, if it's so easy, why don't you do it? You know what I mean? How the heck am I supposed to get from point A to point B? I don't actually know how to change my reaction. And so in many ways, the other side of change was a response to this personal need I had, which is I'm convinced that it would be beneficial for me to have a different reaction to what I'm going through. But I don't know

what the science-based techniques are, what the right questions I'm supposed to ask myself are, or what wisdom I can glean from other people's stories. So like, please give that to me. And so that was sort of the goal of the other side of change. And I think one of the overarching messages of hope outside of the change survival kit, which I give to each reader at the end of the book, right, which is the distillation of all those strategies, is to remind people that when a big change happens to you, it also leads to lasting change within you. We often forget that we are works in progress, that we are constantly changing ourselves. And so when we're feeling really daunted at the outset of a change, like we can't possibly navigate what's up ahead. We have to remind ourselves

that we are constrained by our current abilities and values and perspectives and that we can undergo a huge transformation as a result of the big changes that happen in our our lives. And one, I think, universal message I heard from the cast of characters that I interviewed for the other side of change is that while they weren't necessarily grateful for the changes they went through, right? They were very hard, like illness and loss and heartbreak. They were deeply grateful for the person they became as a result of what they went through. You know, the new environment they were thrust into created this rich, fertile environment for growth and allowed them to see themselves in the world in really new ways that ultimately unlocked freedom or a new way of seeing themselves or seeing their families or seeing their self identities that propelled them forward and led to a better version of themselves. And I'm curious to know if you found something similar in all the research that you did for the book.

our books are similar in the focus on both science and stories, right? And obviously, you spent a lot of time interviewing people about their experiences of navigating uncertainty. I think one thing that I found is that when we are willing to turn toward what we don't know, when we're willing to withstand some of the stress and anxiety and fear that comes from facing uncertainty, we can get to a place that is greater than what we could have otherwise imagined before doing so. So one just sort of example from the business world. In the early 2010s, there was this startup called Tiny Speck, and it was sort of the bell of the ball.

They built this massive online multiplayer game called Glitch, and they had raised $17 million before they had launched, and their launch was covered in the New York Times, and they had tens of thousands of active players from the get-go. And yet the founder of the company, felt in his heart of hearts that they weren't on a sustainable path. There was something that wasn't quite right with the business. And so he decided to do something that other people thought was insane. Less than two years into founding the company, he decided to shut the game

down, sort of at the peak of its success. And he offered to make his investors whole. He gave employees that wanted to leave the opportunity to leave. And then he decided to pivot the organization around this internal communications tool that they had built so that they can collaborate across different locations. And you're talking to the founder at the time, he said, you know, at the moment I didn't know exactly what the possibility or the opportunity was, but through making this change, we were able to discover it. And that internal communications tool is what you and I both know today as Slack. And that founder's name is Stuart Butterfield, and Slack became one of the most successful software companies of all time.

I think what that story shows is that when we are able to torn towards the fog, when we were able to maybe descend the peak that we thought we were standing on the top of the world from, we can discover a higher peak that's waiting just around the corner or discover an element of ourselves, an opportunity, a possibility that comes at the threshold of what we know. Nearly every scientific breakthrough or genre-busting piece of art or generational company began with someone's willingness to get to a point of uncertainty. And then rather than turn back or turn towards the safe option or turn towards something that was derivative of something that they've done before, they persisted.

One of my favorite quotes from How to Not Know is from this psychologist named Rollo May. And he says, commitment is healthiest, not in the absence of doubt, but in spite of doubt. And so if we're able to press forward, make decisions, commit to things, even though we're not sure, we can discover possibilities waiting on the other side. For those of us who have that gut level discomfort with uncertainty, right? It sounds good to hear you say, oh, there's possibility on the other side of uncertainty. But what is your advice for how to actually embrace it? Because I think for many of us, It's very challenging to just overcome the physical feelings of nausea that we have when we are up against the unknown.

Yeah. And even, you know, the term embrace uncertainty can feel sort of like gaslighting sometimes. You know, it's like, you know, I'm feeling incredibly scared and uncomfortable and you're telling me to embrace it. Like, no, screw you. Like, I don't want to embrace that. But I think there's something about understanding that uncertainty that uncertainty. doesn't necessarily mean a threat. Even though that's the way that our biology is wired, uncertainty can also be that birthplace of possibility. So one thing I often tell people is, step one is to find your anchors. When we are certain about some elements of our life, it makes it easier to hold uncertainty in others. So Maya, for you, for example, that knowledge about your why, that knowledge about wanting to connect is something,

that will be steady amidst all of the change of your future. Maybe that anchor for you is a commitment to live in a particular place or a commitment to a spouse or commitment to a set of values. But when we can get clear on those anchors, it makes it easier to hold uncertainty in other realms of our life. The other thing that I'll say is that you have to have some element of faith. I don't mean this necessarily in a religious or dogmatic sense, but I used to work at this design firm IDEO, as I mentioned,

and we used to have this metaphor, which is facing uncertainty, being a leader in spite of uncertainty, feels like you're on a boat, on a lake that's shrouded in really heavy fog. You might not be able to see very far in front of you or know exactly where you'll end up, but you have two jobs. One is to maintain faith that you'll live.

eventually reach land. Remember, you're on a lake. And the second is to keep rowing. And I think that second part is the key, is that through action, clarity can begin to emerge. Because I think one of the most paralyzing things about change or transition or uncertainty or doubt is that it keeps us stuck. It keeps us not wanting to leave the house or go outside or reach out to a friend. but that action can absorb our anxiety. We wrote a chapter about dealing with climate uncertainty, dealing with the sort of foreboding cloud on the horizon. And I spoke to this psychologist who specializes in helping people deal with climate anxiety.

And she said the same thing that will help your anxiety is the thing that we need to make a difference in the climate crisis, which is to think about this tapestry or this huge problem and find that one string to pull. Find that one action that you can take. And that's where you can find a sense of agency of autonomy to feel like you're moving toward a solution. Because I think one thing that is so hard

when people are in the midst of this change of knowing where to put their feet, where to direct their energy. And in the words of Martin Luther King, you can take one step and hopefully the staircase will emerge. One of the most meaningful stories that I wrote about in the book concerns a guy named Dwayne Betts, Reginald Dwayne Betts. I love the story.

And yeah, he was sentenced to nine years in adult prison as a 16-year-old for a carjacking he committed. And Dwayne had been a very promising student. He was class treasurer. He had his sights set on going to Georgia Tech. He had been IDed as talented and gifted. He was a wonderfully loving and devoted son to his mom. He had so much promise.

And in a moment in an effort to try to prove his machismo to the boys in his neighborhood to prove his toughness, he did this terrible thing and then got this incredibly long prison sentence as a result. And what was so fascinating for me in writing the other. side of change was to probe people's interior lives and figure out what it was about the change that was scariest for it for them. And what was so interesting is Dwayne told me, you know, I certainly was grieving the life that I could no longer live as a result of this prison sentence, like going to prom and graduating with my friends and studying at college, studying engineering. But I was actually as afraid, I was so concerned about who I might become now that I was behind bars. That cut

through me like a knife. I was like, wow, it actually speaks to a concept in psychology called possible selves. So we have all these possible selves that we construct each and every day just by virtue of living. So we have expected selves, which are the versions of us that we just think are most likely to happen, good or bad. We have hoped for selves, which reflect our dreams and aspirations. And then we have feared selves, which reflect our anxieties and worries about who we might become. And Duane felt possessed by that ladder bucket, right? He was now feeling like all these positive selves, those doors were slammed shut. And now all these doors were a jar open that he didn't want to see open, right? Like, will I develop a gambling habit while I'm in prison?

Will I have to become violent in order to protect myself? Will I get addicted to cigarettes? Like, He had all these concerns about who he might become. And the mechanism that helped unlock this brighter future for him is called moral elevation. And moral elevation is this warm, fuzzy feeling that we get in our chest when we witness someone else's extraordinary behavior. So that could be their kindness or courage or self-sacrifice. Whatever the extraordinary trait, interestingly, moral elevation doesn't simply feel. good, it doesn't just restore our faith in humanity, it actually rewires our brains. And that's because when we witness someone else engage in behaviors that violate our understanding

of what humans are like, what humans are capable of, in the best way possible, it actually cracks open our own imagination about what we are capable of. And for Dwayne, this manifested in the form of this moral elevation, manifests in the form of a fellow prisoner named Bilal, who he came across about one year into his prison sentence. And for Dwayne, Balal violated all of the stereotypes Dwayne had in his head of what it meant to carry the label of prisoner. So in Dwayne's mind, you had to be ruthlessly self-interested. You have to keep your cards close to the chest. You should never build friendships or get close to anyone else or it could be jeopardizing to your health and well-being and overall safety. But Balal was the kind of guy

who made it a point to stand out. You know, his uniform, his prison uniform, was crisply ironed every day, and he was clean-shaven, and he would get up two hours before count time to do 250 push-ups, and he spent his free time coaching the younger men on how to box so that they could protect themselves

from the threat of violence within prison. And so Dwayne would see him teaching these young men how to box in the prison yard. And Dwayne says that Balaal was kind of taking, the stance like, no, this is who I'm choosing to be as a prisoner. And it was a radical experience for Dwayne because he, for the first time, realized that perhaps he wasn't destined to become a certain person, to have a certain future just because he was a prisoner. And it was with that more empowered mindset that when he stumbled upon a book of poetry while in solitary confinement,

a few weeks later and read a poem about a young black man who would experience sexual violence in prison, a 14 or 15 year old in this poem, he realized, well, you know, I can't do for the for the young men here what B'all's doing. I'm not strong. I don't know how to box. But what I can do is dignify their experiences through the written word. Like I know how to write. I can do this. And he started to obsessively write. poems Simone, like day after day after day. And when he would write a sufficient number, he would bind them together using thread from his pillowcase and we create a little book, you know? And I'll save the details for anyone who reads the other side of change because

Dwayne will always say his story better than I will. But fast forward. And today, Dwayne is a law school graduate. He's a MacArthur Genius Prize winner. He writes some of the most stirring poetry I've ever heard on the topic of race and prison. And what's so beautiful to me about a story is that, you know, you talked earlier about how uncertainty can be so constraining. And that's the same for unexpected negative changes, right? We impose our own mental filter onto that situation. And we think, well, I have some expectations, some presumptions about what it means to be a prisoner or a widow or someone who's unemployed or someone who's chronically ill. And we have a very limited imagination as a result about what that can look like. And I love the idea that

moral elevation is actually available to all of us. It's a form of awe in our everyday life as long as we're willing to be present and to receive that inspiration. And when we feel that doors are closing, taking a walk and putting our phone away and just observing how people are, right? Oh, wow, that was so nice the way that person was so kind to that elderly woman. Or you're witnessing, say, your kids on the playground. Oh, my God, look at the way that little kid stood up to the bully. Like, that's another form of moral elevation. It's everywhere we look.

It's so beautiful and empowering because we know of its ability to rewire the brain. But I was thinking, based on the comment you made and the emerald. M. LK quote that it's actually just as important that we be a moment of moral elevation for someone else, that we be the moral beauty that can inspire other people. And I think that can be, you know, so many of us are feeling helpless in this moment in time. Like, can I change the world at all? Do I matter at all? Is there anything I can do in this moment of total disconnection and seeming chaos? And by being our best selves, actually, we can have these beautiful effects on other human beings in ways that we might never even perceive,

but they're happening. Yeah, I love that. And I think we can also think about moral elevation in the context of our past lives as well and thinking about moments in our past where we have stood up, where we have been that aspirational self that we want to be in the future as well. I think it's one of the best things we can do to build our tolerance for uncertainty is to remind ourselves that we have likely been through uncertain moments, before. We have navigated change and transition and moments where we think we don't know exactly

what the future will hold. And maybe that can help build the case, the conviction, the evidence that we can continue to do so again. So maybe let's transition into some questions from members. There's so many good ones here. Yeah, do you want to ask this first one from Michelle? Yes, I'll ask this one for you. From Michelle M. In a world that demands answers, what's the one question we can ask ourselves in the exact moment we don't know when uncertainty feels physically uncomfortable that reliably turns that discomfort into curiosity and a clear next step. Oh, I love this so much. Yeah, deep question. A brief aside before I answer it more directly, which is I spoke to this ethicist for the book. And I was asking him specifically about how to make decisions when we

don't know. And his name is Ira Bredzow, and he works at Emory University. He both works as a rabbi, an ethicist in a hospital, and as a college counselor. So he's constantly advising people through these murky, foggy situations. And he says when he works with students in particular, he always asks them the same three questions when they're unsure. The first is, what do you want? And the idea here is to try and get out of our thinking brain and more into sort of our embodied wisdom. what does maybe your gut tell you. The second is, do you want to want that? Which is an attempt to get into what philosophers sometimes call our second order selves.

So our reflection on our ego, do I want a cigarette? Maybe yes. Do I want to want a cigarette? Maybe no. But the third question is the one that I think is the most important, which is what does this choice say about who you are as a person? And I think this is maybe the best answer I have to Michelle's question. When you're in a moment of uncertainty, when you're having to decide between multiple paths,

you can't know exactly how each of them will turn out. But what you can do is try to connect your choice, your decision, to your values and your identity. And then if you're able to make a decision that's in alignment with your values, hopefully you can stand by that decision even if you don't get the outcome that you desire. And so that's what I think a lot about in terms of what to do when we're at these crossroads and life. In the moment before we make a decision, sometimes it's so hard because all of these possibilities are available to us and therefore making any choice feels like foreclosing on all these other

choices. It can feel like a loss more than a gain. But if we're able to connect our decision to who we want to be, to that aspirate, racial self to our identities and values, then hopefully we can stand by them. Thanks for that question. Okay, I'll ask Linda Maya. This is from Kim Kay. She says, the Chinese symbol for chaos is also the symbol for opportunity.

Care to elucidate? Yeah, I was obsessed with this question, in part because my husband is Chinese American, and so I spent years trying to learn Mandarin. And so, yeah, let's just say my speaking abilities are much greater than the writing of characters' abilities. One thing that was so interesting because I actually think this speaks to what Kim has asked about that I learned in researching the book is that the word apocalypse, which is often what we feel is happening to us in the throes of a massive change, right? It's like I'm in a personal apocalypse where I no longer have access to this prior world. The world that I am currently living in is a foreign one, right? The word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apocalypsis, which actually means revelation.

And I find that etymology so instructive because, yes, change can upend us, but it can also reveal things to us about who we are and what our values are and what our perspectives. are and what our abilities are. And that revelation brings into the light parts of us that parts of who we are that were previously hidden from sight. I think it's very easy for us to believe in everyday life that we have a fairly good command of who we are as human beings. But the reality is that we've only had access to the parts of us that were revealed to the world, revealed to us, in response to the seemingly random set of life experiences we've had. It's a set of data points that aren't comprehensive. And so one thing that's beautiful about change is that in being a creating tension or creating pressure in some way, you start to see parts of you that you just

didn't ever think to evaluate or investigate or even really acknowledged in the first place. And Simo, I know both of us and our books on more personal notes, right? I have a whole, I didn't expect for the last chapter of my book to be more memoir. than anything else because I had spent the earlier chapters interviewing other people. But as I was writing the book, I was navigating these own changes and losses in my own life. I alluded to this earlier, but my husband and I were not having success in starting a family. And one of the many things that these experiences of loss and despair revealed to me was I had placed a lot of my self-worth as a woman in having children.

And it might have been from cultural influences. I think society also tells us that that can be our primary value in this world. And in revealing a belief that I had, I was able to realize like, hey, just because I have this belief doesn't mean that it was developed on this sturdy foundation of thoughtful reasoning, right? Most of the beliefs we had, we just inherited through, you. you know, teachers and messages from pop culture and a lot of them entered subconsciously without are even realizing it. And we never thought to interrogate them or challenge those beliefs, right? And it's not like any of us have time to wake up every day and say, hmm, let me think from the, you know, hundreds of thousands of beliefs that I carry, which one should I investigate

today? Like, that's not reasonable to actually do. And it's uncomfortable as well because a lot A lot of times our beliefs are entangled with our sense of self-identity, right? So it can be a very uncomfortable process. And so for me, change in serving as a moment of revelation also gives you a chance to revisit the story you're telling yourself about who you are and where your worth is, where your worth is coming from. And I had to do a lot of unwinding in that process of like, why do I feel that in the absence of children my life would be stripped of all of its color and meaning and purpose and that my values, you as a human being would be less and slowly work through all that stuff. And, you know, as I write at the

end of the chapter, you know, in this moment, I am child-free and kind of unexpectedly, I am the happiest, most hopeful, most grateful person. And I never saw that coming. You know, we talked earlier about how change can transform us, but I wouldn't have believed that message. I would have just thought of it as a platitude unless I had felt that similar transformation within me. Because if you had asked me on the night where we found out we had lost identical twin girls, I would have been like, nope, nothing positive will ever come from this. This is like a non-redemptive story. And yet it inspired so much thinking and reflection and growth within me that I couldn't

have anticipated. And so all of this is to say, like I love Kim's question because chaos, opportunity, right? Revelation upheaval. Like things are complicated. Experiences are complicated. They are rarely just good or bad. They're often multifold. And if we are, if we are discerning enough to look for the opportunity that sits within the rubble, so much can be unlocked. And I want to go to the next question, but I also just want to hear any reflections you have. And by the way, Seimos is his nickname. So I'm going by that on occasion. I'm, I really, I really, I realize I'm flipping back and forth, in which you talk about the uncertainty that came alongside your journey into becoming parents.

Yeah, I think pregnancy journeys are one of the greatest uncertainties that a lot of people face in their lives. And similarly, you know, my wife and I were trying to conceive for a long time. And we got the news that we were pregnant. We were so excited. We had the little app that said, your baby is the size of a poppy seed. And we started calling this unborn child poppy. And I remember going to these doctor's appointments

and this feeling so excited. And I had this whole life that I'd canvassed out for this unborn kid. And we went in for a doctor's appointment about three months into the pregnancy. And our doctor said, hey, like at this stage, we'd expect to see a heartbeat

and I don't see one right now. We're not yet ready to declare this a lost pregnancy. Why don't you come back in a week and we can do some more tests? And meanwhile, I'm writing this book about how to not know an uncertainty, and therefore it's coming to the fore in my life. And I remember thinking about that electric shock study and being like, just shock me already, you know, say the quiet part out loud. But in addition to the sort of anticipatory grief,

we also had to deal with the waiting of the not knowing. And the other week was really hard. I was just writing about that study about breast cancer patients where the waiting before you get the diagnosis can be the most difficult part. But there were other elements of that week that I think were really beautiful. My wife and I held eye contact in crowded rooms for a little bit longer. We would maybe hug for a little bit longer than we might have otherwise. And we kept repeating this mantra to ourselves, which is we are open.

We are open. We are open. And a week later, we come back to the doctor's office and we got the news that we expected. You know, we had lost Poppy. And it was incredibly sad. But I think one of the things that grief and loss can teach us is what we care about. And I think we can hurt in proportion with how much we care. And long story short, A few months later, we were able to get pregnant again. And now I have a one-year-old named Luca. And he's very cute. I also think I wouldn't appreciate it quite as much if not having gone through this loss. I think there's something that you said, too, about not knowing exactly how this loss in your case would impact your ability to be grateful and present in your life, which is that I think there are tradeoffs. on both sides. So lots of people will ask me questions like, do you think we should have a kid or do you think we should bring a child into this world, given how much potential doom we are headed for? And from our vantage point,

you know, in these chairs in our podcast studio, we can't make those decisions for you on your behalf. You'll never be able to play out the counterfactual. But I love this idea. that comes from Cheryl Stray, one of her advice columns, where she talks about this on the phone last night. Yeah. My favorite quote from your book. Oh, thanks. Yeah.

I mean, she talks about these ghost ships. And when we make a decision in life, it's sort of like we're standing on this pier. And we have to choose to board a ship. And that ship becomes your life, the life that you lead. But in that exact same moment, there is a fleet of other ships that also disembark. and they represent all the other choices that you could have made. I could have married this person or that person. I could have moved here or there, taking this job or that job,

decided to have kids or not have kids. And to be a human being means being willing to wave at those ghost ships, this open sea of the life you have and the life you could have had. And being able to be okay with making friends as those ships fade, into the fog, into the distance. I think that is what it means to live with uncertainty. So maybe we're wrapping up here. We can just give one piece of advice.

Yeah, one of the questions from Anka A was around any specific tools that we would encourage people to use to increase their capacity to embrace uncertainty. I'll share two really quickly and then we can end with you, Simone. The first is to do an exercise called Affect labeling. I have an entire chapter of the other side of change devoted to rumination because I feel like I have a personal PhD in rumination. I am a pro. I can ruminate until the cows come home. And so I have a whole set of strategies that articulate for how to tame that inner chatter critic that can drive us absolutely nuts. Affect labeling is when you simply give your negative emotions specific labels.

So in the aftermath of a negative change, I might feel just a cloud of negativity. but identifying that the primary emotion I'm feeling is, for example, anger, envy, grief, sadness. That can shift our focus away from being the emotion to simply having the emotion. And that breeds what psychologists call psychological distance. So it helps us see our situation from new vantage points and perspectives. The other strategy is to just spend five minutes today engaging in a self-affirmation exercise. This is where you write down all the traits that you, value about yourself, all the identities you value, that are not threatened by the change you're

going through. So if you're having a rough go of it at work, you might mention your membership on the pickleball team in your local community, or if you're struggling in a relationship, you might focus on your spiritual life. The idea behind this exercise is that when you articulate all, you know, as Simo was talking about with anchors, right, when you articulate all the things that define your life, then when a change threatens one area, you don't feel entire, unmoored, you know that there are still so many parts of you that are still very alive and robust and steady during these moments. And it helps you zoom out from whatever loss you're experiencing and to see that you're living a very rich and multi-dimensional life. I did this in the throes

of the pregnancy losses where so much my attention was on trying to become a mom that I lost sight of all these other rich and beautiful identities I had. And so I found that to be a very useful exercise. Semo. Over to you for the last minute. Maybe I'll end with another quick story, which comes from a friend of mine named Emily. And Emily is a therapist, a mental health professional. But in her early 20s, her mom was given a potentially terminal diagnosis. And so she spent weeks by her mom's side sitting in the hospital.

And she was really struggling. She was riding this emotional roller coaster of fear and anticipatory grief. And one day, a family friend of Emily's named Bill came to visit. And Bill is an oncology doctor, so he's lots of experience helping people at the end of their lives. And he asked Emily, how are you doing? And she said, honestly, not very well. I'm terrified. I do not know what I'll do if my mom passes away.

I said something very wise. He said, Emily, the version of you that will deal with that tragic event if or when it ever takes place will be born into existence in that moment. and that version of you will have more context, more information, and be better equipped to deal with it than you are today. You have to trust in your future self to handle your future problems. And I love this idea of trusting in our future selves because so often when faced with uncertainty or change, we rush out to meet our worry. We think of all the things that could go wrong, our minds catastrophes. we spiral through all of this doubt. And yet, that brings us away from the sphere of influence that we have in the present.

It brings us into the future. But how can we stay grounded and be able to trust in our future self? And in Emily's case, she's so glad that she followed Bill's advice because her mom ended up recovering and making it out of the hospital. And she didn't need to needlessly worry about something that never came to pass. So maybe take those three things with you as you go out throughout your day. Think about how you might be able to think about the constants in your life. Think about how you can name the actual feelings that you're feeling and not be those feelings.

And then think about how you might be able to cultivate trust in your future self. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Ted, for having us. Thank you, Maya, for being such a great conversation partner. Thank you so much, Simone. It was such a pleasure. That was Maya Shankar and Simone Stolzoff at a TED membership event in 26. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines.

And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tonzika Sungmar Nivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballerazo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina, Bohan, Ben Ben-Ban-Chang, Brian, and Laney Lott. Learn more at podcasts.com. I am Elise Hupe. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.