The Other Side of Change

What if change was a chance to reimagine ourselves, rather than as something to just endure? What potential could change unlock within us?

Life has a way of thwarting our best-laid plans. Out of nowhere, you get an unexpected diagnosis, your relationship ends, or you suffer some other trick of fate. In these moments, it can feel like you’re free-falling into the unknown.

Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist, has spent decades researching people’s interior lives. When an incident in her own life left her reeling, she sought out others who had gone through extraordinary disruption to see if their experiences could help us rethink our relationship with change.

This book pairs intimate, illuminating stories with the latest science of human behaviour, offering wisdom and practical strategies to help us better navigate these pivotal moments. We see how the unique stresses and demands of our situation can help us tap into new abilities, perspectives and values, and how the hardest moments in our lives might allow us to more deeply discover who we are and who we can become.