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A | Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is doctor Maya Shankar. Doctor Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist who did her undergradua... |
B | Thanks, Andrew. It's great to be here. |
A | I have a lot of questions about identity, about goals and motivation, and about change in general. But I'd like to start off with identity, and I'd like to divide it into two segments. The first is how we form an identity. And we'll get into your story in, I hope, a bit or more of detail. But when we're younger, we ten... |
B | Yeah, it's a great question. I think a lot of it is based on what we see around us and what we see is deemed successful and society privileges. And there's a concept called identity foreclosure, where actually, when you're young, right, it's not just that you're observing what your parents are doing or what your peer g... |
A | I love that. So many questions. The first one relates back to childhood identities and how we often can project onto children what they are likely to become. I see that as mostly benevolent. You observe a child playing with trucks in the sandbox, and we say, oh, they're going to become a contractor. We tend to project ... |
B | Yeah, that's really interesting, and it's also something I'm very curious about. I mean, we know from neuroscience research that there are significant changes that the brain undergoes during puberty and other periods of adolescence. And the primary change that we see is a desire for independence. And so one reason why ... |
A | Yeah, I use the word essence without thinking too carefully about exactly what I meant. But what I trying to say when I said essence is as a child, I did certain things, and I enjoyed some of them, didn't enjoy others, and I really disliked others. A very famous neuroscientist who's at Caltech named Marcus Meister peop... |
B | Do you think what you're describing, in part, is the feeling of awe? Like, when you talk about delight, do you think part of it is a feeling of awe? |
A | Yeah. The first time I went to New York City as a six year old, kidde, I. I remember thinking, and I still feel every time I'm there. I can't believe this place exists. It's like a human tropical reef. Like everywhere you look, there's life. So that was awe and delight. Although I saw some things. This was New York in ... |
B | Yeah. |
A | So it wasn't always odd, but the delight for me was in learning and certain animals and certain things for you as the violin. And I want to make sure that I. |
B | And odd, by the way, I mean, it can be aversive. Right? So awe isn't necessarily, I think, in the western world, we think of awe inspiring experiences as having a positive emotional valence, but they can also have a negative emotional valence. So the two criteria for a satisfying and awe inspiring experience, and a lot... |
A | Yeah, I'm so glad you described it that way. You know, this isn't a discussion about my experience, but for me, I realize now that New York was awe inspiring. Prior to that, the only thing similar was discovering animal specialization, something I'm still fascinated by, the sensory systems of animals and how they exper... |
B | Before you move on from that, I love that you said that, because you're helping me realize something really important about how I saw my role as a violinist. And in addition, I'm never going to modify the notes on the page because obviously I'm going to be faithful to what Beethoven wrote. |
A | This is what made you a great musician and me, by the way, I was a failed violinist. They pulled me out of it because the neighbor's dogs howled. I was in Suzuki method. I was so terrible at it that they literally made me stop playing music just to protect the neighborhood. |
B | That's adorable. And, I mean, we'll talk about the science of quitting, maybe later, but that was a great choice for you. But what I'm realizing is that there was that element of defining self through the pursuit of the instrument. And I saw a place for myself exactly like you did, where I thought, I decide how this ph... |
A | Yeah. When we see ourselves entering the sphere of experience that is evoking awe, I do think something about it converts to this delight. Although I have to acknowledge that language is insufficient to describe a lot of what we're referring to. Right. Even the most reductionist language of biology can't grab the highe... |
B | Yeah. So I'm the youngest of four kids, and kind of stereotypically, my three older siblings were total math whizzes. They were taking the sat when they were very young. Cause they were so talented. But I think one antagonist to some of those cultural forces is that my mom, when she had grown up in India, had felt very... |
A | I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic greens. Athletic greens, now called ag one, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking athletic greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The rea... |
B | That's a high bar, man. |
A | It's a high bar. It's a high bar. |
B | I didn't have any such role models that I was trying to be like in my family. |
A | Yeah, it turns out I'm. |
B | But. |
A | Exactly. And so I think that there's actually more opportunity in kids leaning into, or in adults probably leaning into the sensory experience of what they're doing and not putting that up against some benchmark. I worry about that today so much with social media and with video games, where in a video game or on social... |
B | Yeah, I was still enjoying myself around the time when I auditioned for Juilliard, in particular, because of exactly what you said, which was everything was kind of beating my expectations and my parents expectations up until this point. Right. Which is that we didn't really have any, and so it all just felt like icing... |
A | Wild. |
B | Yeah. He tells me he has what I refer to as a muted enthusiasm about my playing. Doesn't think I'm great, but, see, something he told me later, he liked my personality, my enthusiasm. So I got the personality card coming out of that music audition. Great. And what he did is, he said, look, I'm with you. I don't think t... |
A | And so let's all express some thanks to your mom for barging in the door and to you, because you also had the agency to. To do the audition on the spot. I think a lot of kids and adults would have thought, you know, I'm not ready. I'm not going to do this, but it takes a certain gumption to just do it right and also to... |
B | Oh, yeah. Rachel Lee. |
A | There you go. Isn't this incredible? |
B | Oh, my God. |
A | We remember these names. |
B | Yeah. Total prodigy. I bristle when people say, like, oh, my. Like, I. Maya was a young violin prodigy. I'm like, no, I wasn't. And there's no false humility in my saying that. I just actually saw what prodigies were like, and I was not one of them. I mean, truly, just talk about awe inspiring. I'm like, how is it that... |
A | I think a lot of kids feel that way. I think at that age, and this sometimes extends into adulthood. We have this tendency to try and find benchmarks of where we are. And sometimes that spell turns into a hierarchical, sometimes very lateralized. But trying to figure out where you are in the landscape of things, it jus... |
B | The universe shrinks, too, right? So you're no longer getting access to what the average kid violinist sounds like. I mean, you're in the elite of the elite. And so it's so intimidating. And I often felt. I felt like what happened is, especially when I became a teenager. So two things happened when I became a teenager.... |
A | Yeah, there's so many things to extrapolate from that. I really feel that when we get into a mode of trying to hit milestones that are extrinsic, that it really can undermine our love of what we're doing. But if we keep going and we can reframe what those external rewards are, in part by just realizing that they're so ... |
B | Yes, the source, as it were. Exactly. |
A | And that's a word that I stole from a former guest on this podcast and a good friend of mine who's the great Rick Rubin, one of the most successful music producer, rock and roll music producer. He talks about the source. So there are so many different trails we could go down here. Just one thing briefly, is I, again, c... |
B | One thing to your point, one reflection I've had, and this kind of goes back to this question of identity, right? Which is when you are in these very competitive environments. And again, I'm sure a lot of people listening are in very competitive environments. You feel that so much can be taken away from you just in ter... |
A | Yeah, well, those things are intrinsic to you, and they are, I guess, now we're using nomenclature, but they're not what we would call domain specific, like the curiosity, the desire for progress through effort and through focus. Those are music. They're not music irrelevant, but they're music independent. And that act... |
B | Absolutely. |
A | And that happened when you were how old? |
B | I was 15. |
A | So given how much of your identity and energy was put into violin, that must have been devastating. And yet you've obviously, I don't want to say recreated yourself, because I like the idea that this essence within you has many opportunities and forms. And I like it as an example for everybody having some essence of ma... |
B | Work and human connection. Yeah. Yeah. In the days and weeks and months and year after, I felt terrible. It was awful, because I don't. I think in my case, also, you just. When you're a kid who's really, like, bubbly and energetic, you just kind of move forward. And you don't always think about how identity defining th... |
A | I'm gonna interrupt you on purpose. I apologize, but at the same time, I'm not apologizing. Cause there was something that you said in a prior discussion that just keeps ringing in my mind, which is that your body and your nervous system actually grew up around the violin. |
B | Yes. |
A | Like, that, to me, was just. I will never forget that statement. I wanna also thank you for it. That, to me, is perhaps the most profound way to describe an experience of identity, is that your nervous system and your body isn't growing up with something or alongside it, but that much like a relationship of a human kin... |
B | It absolutely developed around the ergonomics of playing the violin. To this day, my right shoulder is slightly elevated relative to my left because of all the hours I spent doing this. It makes strength training really annoying because I always have the slight imbalance, and I have a light scoliosis in my spine as wel... |
A | Thank you for saying that. And, you know, and here I'll just thank you, because I think that many of my colleagues in academic science at Stanford and elsewhere feel that way, but I think many don't. They think of it as, quote, dumbing down of things. But I'll tell you, rarely, if ever, does somebody just wander into a... |
B | Yeah, 100%. And I think it was also role modeled for me because my dad, despite being in a very, very technical field, spent a large part of his career actually working on the translation of complex subjects and trying to convey them to general audiences. And I loved witnessing this because it's like, if you can figure... |
A | Well, Feynman. Richard Feynman. |
B | Yeah, Richard Feynman. Exactly. |
A | No one really knows what Feynman did for his Nobel Prize work, except physicists. You know that most people, you ask them, what was Feynman's Nobel for? And they're like, I don't know. I don't know. He said something about birds and taxonomy and how it's less interesting than quantum mechanics. Yeah. |
B | And one of the reasons that I love Huberman lab and I just love the work you do, is that you are taking concepts that might have been inaccessible to the average person, and you're making science accessible. And I feel so much gratitude to every scientist out there, every researcher out there who thinks that it's worth... |
A | Yeah, I do, too, and right back at you, because you're doing it as well. And so we were all better off for it. So thank you. So I want to go back to this injury, to summer at home, to discovery of something new. Was it at that point that you realized, ah, the feeling of excitement that I'm getting from learning about n... |
B | Yeah, I wouldn't say that it's superseded the excitement that I had with the violin. I would say the quality of the excitement felt very different. And that's actually important to convey, because I think when someone loses the ability to have a passion, they're seeking exactly the same sensory experience, exactly the ... |
A | I love your description of curiosity because it makes me think that in some way, it has something to do with a deep motivation and desire to figure out what's next or what's around the corner without an emotional attachment to the outcome. Curiosity is really just trying to figure out what's there as opposed to hoping ... |
B | Oh, that's awesome. I hadn't heard that. |
A | Yeah, I believe it was Dorothy Parker, sometimes misattributed to Agatha Christie, but I think it was Dorothy Parker. And what I love about it is that there's something about curiosity, that when it's genuine, it's self amplifying. It's an upward spiral, because there is no end point. Right. I mean, that's one of the. ... |
B | Yeah, it took me a really long time. It's actually only been in the last few years that I've discovered this. I discovered this as a result of creating a slight change of plans. So my desire to create the show came from a very personal place, which is that I'm terrified of change. So even though I've had these formativ... |
A | How's that working for you? |
B | Very well, even today. Okay. I'm a good disciple. |
A | Well, there should. I like to think that. I like to think that people afford themselves some flexibility. If you got to run to the airport, 60 to 90, or the occasional, you know, you know, within 30 minutes, if you. If you have to. But nobody's perfect, nor should we strive. |
B | Students. I'm willing to update my habits, but I'm a creature of habit, and I. There's a couple reasons why we, as humans, are scared of change. And I think one of them, which is incredibly relatable, is that I. Change is filled with a lot of uncertainty, and we hate uncertainty. We will go to irrational lengths to avo... |
A | That result. I love that you brought up that result. It still is bewildering to me, because if you think about it, 100% trial to trial shock means you just. You have to take on the okay, bring it. Just bring it on kind of mentality. But if you did that for every trial and then half of the trials, you don't get shocked.... |
B | Yeah, we just. We don't like uncertainty, even though, again, the uncertainty is what drives that dopamine first. Right. And yet we bristle, certainly, at that uncertainty. And so I definitely am like, please, status quo. Everyone would love the status quo, even when the status quo has been suboptimal. Andrew, I've bee... |
A | And if I'm not mistaken, there's a salience to the negative experiences, often for reasons that make sense according to nervous systems that want to keep us safe, et cetera. But for instance, you remember the name of this child prodigy, Rachel Lee. Rachel Lee, my sister still talks about. I won't say their names becaus... |
B | You mean Helen Lindsay? |
A | Yeah. Perhaps not kind to her, right, exactly. Perhaps. |
B | Were they nice to me? Not super nice, but it's okay. |
A | Yeah. There's a lot of web searching nowadays for what these people are up to now anyway. Not by me. This is why I have a sister. We occasionally touch into this. She's doing great, fortunately. So, yeah, there's a salience to the negative experiences. But I think what I'm hearing, and I totally agree with, is that we'... |
B | Yeah. So there's two information asymmetries, let's say that we're trying to solve for. Right. So two areas where we might not have full knowledge of who we are for one of two reasons. So, one is that we have an incomplete understanding of who we are just based on the random set of experiences and the second is that go... |
A | I love, love, love what you said about deliberately placing oneself into environments where we receive critical feedback from people that we view as quite disparate from us, at least in terms of our experience of them. It was the great Carl Dyseroth. Another incredibly accomplished neuroscientist, happens to be a colle... |
B | I just want to say one other point on this, which is, I think getting feedback from others almost gets a bad rap these days in society, because it's like you should only care about who you are inside, who you know yourself to be. And I'm like, dude, we are social creatures. It absolutely matters how I come off to other... |
A | Yeah, I agree. This is one of the reasons why I say at the end of every episode that I do read all the comments on YouTube. You know, I think I was raised in a culture, an academic culture, where feedback on lectures, you know, student feedback was critical. I mean, it is important, I believe, to be a selective filter ... |
B | Yeah. |
A | And a classroom is but one environment. I think the online environment is where this gets tricky because of the way that we all differ in our capacity to receive critical feedback. And sometimes the harshness of one form of feedback sends people feeling back on their heels or feeling even ego or emotionally injured in ... |
B | That is true. |
A | I grew up in the culture of skateboarding, where, like, nothing's good enough, and then occasionally something's good. And in the landscape of podcasting, I think the comment section is a great way to get feedback, and that's why I continue to encourage feedback. It sounds like you do as well. |
B | Yeah, I think, you know, I try to. Just, every endeavor that I pursue, I try to approach with a lot of humility. And I think if I were to describe, you know, at work, right, I lead this team, and I think if you were to ask people what my defining trait is as a leader, it's actually not like, strong convictions. It's ac... |
A | I am nodding for those that are listening. I'm just nodding and thinking yes, yes and more yes. Because I think that we all need more of that as individuals. And if we can't get it from our work setting or group setting, sometimes asking a friend can be extremely useful. I have a friend. He happens to be a professor at... |
B | And that reminds me of some research by Ethan Cross. So he looks at how we can tame our mental chatter. And if you don't have the friend available to you, there is a really easy distancing technique that you can use when you're in the throes of a problem or you are trying to actively reframe something or maybe see wher... |
A | I love these examples because especially the one where one does it on their own, it truly doesn't require anything. |
B | You can be the introverted Andrew and still do this. You don't even have to go to the party and then ghost everyone. |
A | Yeah, well, I don't. Yeah, back then, it would have been there were no cell phones, but there were smartphones, rather. But, yeah, it was a bit of ghosting. It was just, I can reset with small numbers of people that I'm close to. But, you know, I found at that time a need to go into an isolated space to do what I need ... |
B | Her poor mother, Andrew. |
A | I know, I know. |
B | Just call her a bit more. Come on. |
A | Still working on it. I'm just teasing. It is a work in progress venting. I'm so glad that you brought this up. I think that there are these buzzwords now. Authenticity. I do think that there are certain forms of communication that can be injurious to people, and yet I think having some internal buffers to all that inco... |
B | And like you said, you know, you were talking about memory and how we tend to overweight negative experiences. And I did find myself, like, so I gave this speech and it was posted, and I was looking at the comments, and I literally, like, anytime my brain coded a comment as positive, I just skipped right past it. I was... |
A | Negative stuff, as if the positive is generic and the negative is somehow genuine. |
B | Yes. And I had to make it a mental. I had to make a mental note. Hey, it's okay to marinate in the messages that are saying that this really helped them in some way and they really enjoyed the thing. Again, for self critical people, I think it takes an extra step to remind yourself to also read the good stuff and to al... |
A | Well, we did an episode on gratitude, and one of the big surprises that came to me in researching for that episode was that the best evidence for gratitude having positive effects on neural circuitry, neurochemistry comes from when we receive gratitude as opposed to give gratitude. This is what's often lost in the disc... |
B | Yeah. So when it comes to goals, I mean, it's first important to recognize that there's two parts of a goal, okay? So there's the way that we define the goal, and then there's the way that we pursue the goal. And I think we tend to overlook the first category, how we define the goal, because oftentimes our goals seem l... |
A | Back to neutral. |
B | Yeah, exactly. And so it is fine to frame goals in terms of avoidance. And actually, sometimes it's just personality dependent. Like, some people are more driven by fear or they need a lot more urgency to drive them. But it is important to know that the approach orientation is, on average, more motivating. And so you m... |
A | I'm fascinated by that result. Some people hearing it might think, okay, 9%. Is that really that great? But we're talking about a one word change. |
B | And the scale of the federal government. Right? |
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