Book Review | The Other Side of Change: Who we become when life makes other plans

This is not another breezy self-help manual promising resilience in easy steps. Nor is it an abstract psychological treatise written for academic comfort. Instead, Shankar, a cognitive scientist and former behavioural science adviser in the Obama White House and at the United Nations, builds a careful bridge between rigorous research and lived human experience.

Change is universally acknowledged as constant. Yet its emotional arithmetic rarely feels intuitive when it arrives at our own doorstep. We may speak fluently about volatility in the abstract, even admire resilience in others, but the moment life veers off our carefully drawn script, the ground beneath us shifts in deeply personal ways. Plans that once felt sturdy begin to look provisional. Certainties turn negotiable. Even the most self aware among us can find ourselves quietly disoriented by how disruptive the experience of change truly feels.

In a world that appears permanently in motion yet often feels psychologically unsteady, Shankar’s argument carries unusual urgency. Careers pivot without warning, relationships evolve faster than our emotional vocabulary can keep pace, and technological acceleration routinely outruns human adaptation. What makes her intervention timely is the way she illuminates the complicated, often private ways in which people actually experience disruption. Her deeper caution is both quiet and sharp. If we treat upheaval only as a problem to be solved, we risk overlooking its developmental signal. In an age defined by chronic uncertainty, that may prove to be our most expensive blind spot.

Paradox of Choice

Shankar addresses this paradox with a crisp insight. It is not change itself that most disturbs us, but uncertainty. She draws on research showing that individuals report higher stress when facing a 50% chance of an electric shock than when the shock is guaranteed. The finding is counterintuitive, yet immediately recognisable to anyone who has lived through prolonged ambiguity.

Change feels hard because it disrupts the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. When familiar routines, roles or expectations fracture, the journey forward can feel not just difficult but, at moments, impossible. The mind searches for continuity even when life refuses to cooperate.

Reimagining the Self

To her credit, Shankar neither romanticises this discomfort nor rushes to neutralise it. She acknowledges a difficult truth. Periods of transition can be confusing, painful and deeply unfair. Yet it is often within this turbulence that new capabilities and perspectives begin to surface.

At the heart of the book lies Shankar’s most compelling idea. Major life disruptions divide our lives into a before and an after. The real psychological work unfolds in the uncertain space between the two.

Following a deeply personal experience, Shankar sought out people who had navigated similarly destabilising moments. The narrative texture that follows is among the book’s most engaging features. We meet Olivia Lewis, a college student rebuilding her identity after a catastrophic stroke. Dwayne Betts discovers poetry while incarcerated. Journalist Matt Gutman recovers professional crisis by deliberately zooming out from his failure. And many more journeys, which are uneven, sometimes uncomfortable journeys. That is precisely why they resonate.

From these lives emerges Shankar’s core thesis. The pressures of upheaval can uncover abilities, values and perspectives that might otherwise have remained dormant. Change, in her telling, is less an interruption and more an identity laboratory.

There is also an uncomfortable mirror embedded in Shankar’s thesis. Much of what we describe as resistance to change is, in truth, a quiet attachment to familiar versions of ourselves. We prefer the predictability of known dissatisfaction over the ambiguity of possible growth. The modern world has made this instinct more visible, not less. We curate stability, optimise routines and speak fluently about agility, yet remain privately unsettled when life refuses to honour our timelines. Shankar’s work gently but firmly exposes this contradiction. The real friction is rarely the change outside us. It is the identity inside us that is reluctant to evolve.

What distinguishes this book from much of the self-improvement genre is its refusal to oversimplify suffering. Shankar does not promise quick healing or guaranteed reinvention. She does not imply that every disruption carries a neat silver lining. Instead, she invites readers to sit with discomfort, examine their internal narratives and gradually redefine what meaning and fulfillment might look like after disruption.

The first half of the book turns inward, examining how individuals wrestle with loss of certainty, health, direction or identity. The second half widens the lens to explore how embracing change reshapes relationships and one’s place in the wider world. The movement feels organic rather than formulaic.

We are living through what might be called an era of continuous transition. Personal lives, careers, technologies and social norms are evolving at a pace that leaves many people quietly disoriented. In such a climate, the most valuable capability may not be control but adaptability of identity. The capacity to revise one’s sense of self without losing coherence or purpose is becoming an essential life skill.

Shankar’s writing achieves a notable tonal balance. She brings the authority of a cognitive scientist but the empathy of a careful listener. Her experience hosting the award winning podcast A Slight Change of Plans clearly shapes her narrative instincts, giving the book a conversational ease that broadens its reach. Readers well versed in behavioural psychology may find certain concepts familiar. Ideas around reframing and emotional resilience are not entirely new. A few passages revisit ground already covered earlier. Shankar’s strength lies in bringing together science, story and lived experience with unusual coherence. Her closing chapters offer practical, research grounded strategies for navigating upheaval.

For anyone navigating unexpected turns, which is to say almost everyone, Maya Shankar offers something both bracing and reassuring. The Other Side of Change is best read slowly. Psychologically serious, narratively warm and intellectually respectful of the reader. The moments that fracture our plans often expand our possibilities. We spend our lives insulating ourselves from disruption, only to realise it was the only honest teacher we had.

Srinath Sridharan is an author, corporate adviser & independent director on corporate boards

Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.