Mona Sobhani: Reinventing Self-identity Through Life’s Big Transitions

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Have you ever felt stuck in a rut defined by your job or your past? Do you have clients who had trouble making the shift from a career identity to a retirement identity? Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. My guest today is Mona Sabani. Mona used to be a strict scientist convinced that logic and reason were the keys to understanding everything. But then a series of events shattered her identity and forced her to confront the limitations of her worldview. In this fascinating conversation, Mona shares her journey of transformation. She talks about how she opened herself up to new possibilities, to follow her curiosity, and is a powerful reminder that we are not limited by our labels. But this isn't just Mona's story. It's a story that resonates with all of us. We all face challenges that force us to question our beliefs, our identities, and grow in unexpected ways. With that, please enjoy my conversation with Mona Sabani. The Mona of today is dramatically different than the Mona of just a few years ago. So I'd love to hear about who Mona used to be, what happened, and who Mona is today.

I'm a cognitive neuroscientist by training, and I think I used to be what that stereotypical image that people conjure in their head of scientists. Science was my religion because when I went into it, it was my way of understanding nature and the world and reality and why we behave the way that we do. And so it was just such a huge part of my identity. It's all I was. And I got my PhD in cognitive neuroscience, and so it was a hard-earned identity, like very hard-earned identity. So that's how I was. And I wasn't open, I wasn't spiritual. I was anti-spirituality, anti-religion, basically, you know, anything that science couldn't explain or I just wasn't interested in it. And I just had a time in my life when I started to have an existential crisis where I started to ask, what's the point of life? Like, is this all we do? We wake up, go to work and come home and don't have time on the weekends. And I think part of it was because when you're doing a PhD, you have a very clear goal and you almost can't focus on anything but that. And so it's purpose-driven. And then once that ends and you join the working world, the purpose isn't as clear. But it was a number of other things too. I had a few events over a few years which were the tipping point. And one of them was one of my professors was murdered by one of our students. It was someone who had helped me with one of my experiments, and he was so beloved. And it was really shocking because it was a really violent crime. And then a few years later, a relationship ended. And so that really shook me. I already had lost my purpose. I was like, why are we here? Then I felt despair for the first time cuz I was so confused and heartbroken over all the things that had happened. I started to wonder. And so then I got interested and I was like, maybe I don't understand the universe. And so I started this personal project to start interviewing intuitives and mystics and other scientists. Who do research into edge science. I started to expand my understanding of what we know and what we don't know, and my identity started to shift or started to feel threatened. So old me was like, I'm a strict scientist. And then all this stuff happened to me and I did start doing research and I was like, oh my God, there is evidence for a lot of stuff. I was like, why don't we know about any of this? And so when that started to pile up, my identity started to feel threatened. So what I came back to, I was like, I'm a scientist, I follow the evidence. If there's evidence that points to something we don't understand, I still have to follow the evidence. You can't delete data. It would've been easier to ignore it and to go back to old me, but I just couldn't.

What you have just gone through and are continuing to go through, I think, is an extreme example of what a lot of folks go through at different points in their life. And in particular, as it relates to what financial advisors do, I did a poll here recently with several hundred financial advisors, and the question that I asked was to describe which of these three statements best fits how your clients have experienced retirement. And the first statement was, it was great, no problem, they loved it. And about 35% of the clients fit into that bucket according to these advisors. The second statement was, it was okay. They struggled for a while, but they eventually got through it. And that was 60% of the respondents. And then the third statement was, it was a disaster. They really struggled. They're still struggling. They're trying to figure it out. And that was about 5% of the respondents. And we all, a lot of us go through these types of identity changes. And I'd love if you have any perspective here on, as you think about the identity change that you went through. I think you said earlier that it would have been easier just to ignore it and just stay this scientific materialist person and not go through this metamorphosis or this transformation. But now that you've come out on the other side, how do you think about, as humans, when we're faced with these crises, when we're faced with these big life transitions, we can ignore it, that's an option, probably not the best option, or we can go through it like you did. So what thoughts do you have on embracing what's happening, moving with it, and coming out on the other end okay?

So one pro tip I would say is to define yourself from the beginning as more than just one thing. And I think our society also does a really terrible job at that. It's like we're— a lot of us are just defined by the work that we do. That was my story. I was a scientist. I spoke to a lot of psychologists and healers, and I remember one of them said to me, you have more to offer the world than your intellect and your productivity. And I was like, like what? I genuinely didn't know. And he's like, your heart, like compassion, like your time to listen to somebody else. It was a valuable lesson for me because I started over the months to see what he'd meant and how true it was. And then suddenly I started to see also when you write, if you take a piece of paper and you say like, I am, and you wanna write down all the things you are like, and really do it, you're a lot of things, right? You're not just your job and not even in relation to other people, like just within yourself. You're, you're creative, you're competent, you're brilliant, you're sensitive, whatever you're. So we're also multidimensional. And I think that a lot of schools of psychology talk about there's all these parts of ourselves that we just ignore or cut off or we feel shame about. And really, the whole purpose is to bring all those parts back in. And if you do that, it becomes easier to move through identity shifts because you're not attached to one thing.

What I hear coming out here is the ego, in that my ego is attached to this identity of being a cognitive neuroscientist or being this PhD and having papers published and that sort of thing, or my ego is identifying me as a doctor or a teacher or a pharmacist or an author. As we make this identity shift, tell me a little bit about the ego and how you think about that, the impact that the ego has, and what steps or perhaps practices we can take to not be ruled by the ego so that we can be more open to how things are unfolding and not trying to resist those.

The first thing I started to notice was this is where mindfulness comes in. It really does help you to hear your thoughts, whatever your practice may be. For me, it was meditation. One easy way is to keep asking why. If you're self-aware in any way and you reflect on a, let's say, a, your reaction to something that just happened and you just ask yourself, why did I react that way? What did I feel and why did I feel that way? And you have to just keep asking why to get to it. And so sometimes the answers are not immediate and easy. Like sometimes it takes time, but if you ask the question, like your subconscious starts working on it and you'll get the answer eventually. So you start to see your ego and I think sometimes the ego can be seen as like an enemy, but it's not the enemy. So from a biological perspective, the ego's job is to protect you. So it's a caring thing. It's just that what happens is as you grow and change and transform, some of its strategies don't work for you anymore. I was really defensive about my identity. Like if people would talk about things I didn't like when I was a scientist, I would get really angry and defensive and change the topic. And for whatever reason, I needed that probably when I was younger. But as I got older, I don't need that anymore. It's not serving me in a good way. And so you can start to become aware of that. And once you're aware, you can start to try to change your behavior. And of course, all of this takes time and is hard, but you have a lot more peace and ease and calm. So I think that's really important to say. The ego is not the enemy. So it's, it's just come to it with curiosity and say, okay, why do I behave this way? Why am I— just keep asking why, and you'll come to understand your ego. And once you understand your ego, you start to understand a lot of your behaviors.

I heard you say something to the effect of, and this is similar to what Denise Scholl had said to me on an earlier podcast here on Barron's. She said a question that she loves to have her clients ask themselves— and her clients are typically hedge fund managers, traders, people that are in high-stakes situations, high-pressure situations that might be tense or might be ego-driven— to ask themselves, what am I feeling and why am I feeling it? And I think that's similar to something that you had just said here a moment ago. And so you've also said, oh, it's really easy to just try and dismiss this stuff that doesn't fit my current view of who I am. Of who my ego is saying that I am. But if you just consciously take a moment and ask yourself on a regular basis, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? Is that perhaps a good way to start opening up yourself to making this evolution, this transformation?

Yes. So for me, this journey has been a lot of mind and body. And the reason for that is because I think a lot of Westerners or a lot of rationalists like me, are so in our heads and are so ego-driven. Like, I was so ego-driven before that it can actually be hard to even think, to admit to myself mentally what I'm feeling. And we're also very out of touch with our feelings. So sometimes asking yourself that may not get you far if you're one of those people like I was. Like, what am I feeling? I don't know. Like, I wouldn't know. And if I don't know what I'm feeling, then I don't know why I'm feeling it. So one practice that I started using was body awareness. So same thing, if I'm reviewing, I'll say, okay, what was I feeling in the moment? You close your eyes, I scan in and say, where am I feeling this? Oh, it's my stomach. I'm feeling like a pit of something dropped or it's tight or whatever. Or maybe it's my arms or my shoulders. Like I feel like there's a weight on my shoulders. And then you could feel into it and it's sometimes easier to not try to find an emotion, like from a list of emotions or feelings. Sometimes it's easier to do that in your body for some people, and different people are different. So it was easier for me to do that in some instance, to be like, okay, I feel this. And then I would just feel into it and be like, oh yeah. And then I could more easily find the emotion and be like, oh, I feel angry or whatever it was, and then feel into it and let it go. And then I could ask why.

I'm glad you brought up this idea of the body experience, the somatic experience, because I think that is often a piece that we don't pay close attention to. And I'm just like you, at least the way you used to be. I'm all in my head. I'm that guy that is like Mr. Intellectual and thinking about things and trying to solve problems just by thinking about them. And I'm trying to move more toward where you've been, and it's been a long multi-year process for sure. And so that's why, one reason why I really enjoy talking to folks like you that have really been through this. I also had a conversation earlier with Victoria Song, and we talked a lot about this idea of the body and feeling what's going on in the body and letting that process through the body. And she wrote a book called Bending Reality, which is really interesting, went into some depth on these topics. Bessel van der Kolk, who you probably are familiar with, may even know, he wrote a book called The Body Keeps the Score along this idea as well, and how things are kept inside the body if you don't let them and express them. So it sounds like that it could also be a key part of this transformation process.

It absolutely is. And it's actually a shortcut in some ways. So one of the people I interviewed, I think it was maybe a somatic psychologist, talked about this and was like, sometimes you don't— it doesn't even have to be like, you don't have to know your trauma. You don't have to do the psychoanalysis things. Sometimes you really just, you can get a massage, you can get rolfing, you can get myofascial release, you can do emotive dance or bodywork. And sometimes it just releases the emotion and the traumas and you feel lighter after you keep doing it. You just feel lighter and more at ease and less anxious. And you didn't even have to sit in a psychotherapist's office and talk about your childhood and dig into why. I think it's good to do that, like what we're talking about. I think it's good self-practice and self-awareness to understand your behaviors from an intellectual level. But I think it's also, I don't want to understand all of them. If I can just shortcut and release some of them through those practices, then I will. I definitely do that.

In terms of a framework on how people transform, there's an organization that I think you're familiar with called the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and they wrote a book a number of years ago, which I got a long time ago, called Living Deeply. And in the book, they laid out a bit of a framework. Now, of course, not everybody is gonna go through it in the same way, but they interviewed a lot of different people who had gone through personal transformations, identity changes, and they identified 4 steps in a transformation process. And again, not everybody is gonna go through it this way, but I just wanna lay out what might this look like. And the 4 steps that they talked about, the first one was intention, which is I'm actually making a determination or a decision that I do wanna make a change here. Second is attention, where I'm gonna start paying more attention to, I'm gonna start noticing the things that are going on. We talked about somatics here. So noticing like what's going on in my body, What am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? A third is repetition, in that once you start a change and implement a practice, then we want to continue to repeat that. And then the fourth was guidance, which is a lot of other people have been down the road that you've been down. And so oftentimes it helps to work with other people who have been through this and can help guide you along the way. So what are your thoughts on those 4 steps? Was that similar for you as, as you went through your process?

I stumbled onto my transformation, so I can't say there was any kind of intention there. And actually, those are— some of that is like neuroscience principles, actually setting an intention and setting goals for yourself. It's because your brain's kind of like a filter. So based on goals and intentions that you set, your brain adjusts its filters because your attention cannot go to everything. So your intention focuses your attention, and it has to be that way because you cannot process everything. Repetition, which is really important for any kind of behavior Behavior change in general, or not even behavior change, but just changing your neural networks. So like your brain is a system that kind of doesn't want to change cuz it takes energy to change and it wants to conserve energy. So it does take a lot of effort and repetition to change things. I think the guidance was so important. I can't tell you how many people I spoke to and every single one of them said something that resonated in the moment or helped me in a dark night. And I think part of it was because they helped with the practices, not only insights and perspectives, right? That a lot of them gave me a lot of practices and I started to do these practices and meditation and get space between my thoughts for like things to quiet down and calm down and loosen up. And space is good because it allows other things to come in, right? If there's constant chatter in your head, there's no space for transformation. There's no space for change.

There's a thought here that oftentimes in order for someone to make a major change in their life, they have to be experiencing tremendous pain. And so pain is probably the most typical instigator of people making a big change in life. So let's think about that and contrast that with the thought that oftentimes we delude ourselves. In that we believe certain things that may not be true to an objective party, but we believe them to be true because they serve a need that we have. They solve a problem that we have by believing this. And maybe it's not harming other people, maybe it is, but I believe this and it's helping me get through something. Now contrast those two things with, I need pain to make, to instigate a big change, versus I'm Comfortable with This Useful Delusion, which is the title of a book by Shankar Vedantam, who was also on an earlier Barron's podcast. Do you see those two working somehow to foster people making change, or do we need to get— in your case, you had an existential crisis, so that's pretty big. You had a lot of dark nights of the soul. So did you have to go that deep before you were willing to give up that scientific materialist identity?

I think so. I think we're in flow with the universe. I think we talk to each other all the time. I think the universe whispers first. If you're listening, you'll hear it. But if you are not listening, it's not going to whisper next time. And it screams or it shouts or it pulls the rug out from under you. And I think that's what happened to me. And I think that's what happens to a lot of people. I think you like get signs along the way. They should change something or pay attention to something else and you don't listen. And then it just gets to a point where the universe needs to get your attention to get you to change. And so it does everything it can to get you to pay attention. And that's when some sort of crisis comes in. But it is like that for a lot of people. It takes something to go wrong for you to be open because when things are going well, you don't want to change things. You're not like, how do I change things? Like, things are going well, let's just continue this. But when something goes wrong, you're like, this is not working. What do I need to change?

I like your point about how the universe whispers to you. And because things are happening to us all the time, and when we get back to this idea of intention and attention, if we just make a conscious effort to pay more attention to what's going on, and this is one of the things that I've been trying to do here in recent years as well, which is as I'm getting older, I'm trying to listen to what my body is telling me. So if I need to back off on my workouts because my body is telling me that it's sore and my ego is saying, no, keep going, Steve, you gotta gotta get stronger and you gotta get faster and you gotta jump higher and all that good stuff. I'm trying to put the ego aside and say, what's the body telling me? Because I want this body to do well and I want to have a long, healthy lifespan. And so I think if nothing else, if we can just pay closer attention to what is happening, what we're hearing, what we're feeling, and to your point, not wait until the world screams at you and now a crisis has come up, I think we'll all be a lot better off.

Carl Jung talks about it too in some of his work. He talks about, I think it's, there are lessons that you have to learn in your life and every time you don't learn the lesson, I think the universe comes back stronger and stronger until you finally do. He has another great quote that I love that became like my mantra for my healing journey. It was something like, what you don't you make conscious from your subconscious becomes your fate. And it's so true because a lot of our behaviors are subconsciously driven. And that's what all of this work I've been talking about is— what is going on in my subconscious? I need to know because I don't want it to be invisibly driving me anymore. Another practice. So just in case your listeners are interested in this, you don't even have to go into a deep meditative state. You can just do a quick, short body scan meditation or something to just calm your breathing and calm your body down. But the deeper you go, the better it is. You can ask a question of your subconscious and you can either start writing to see if an answer comes through, or you can watch what comes into your mind too. Like sometimes you'll get the answers from your subconscious that way. So there's ways to actively talk with it and get answers.

Like that idea that the best ideas come when you're in the shower and you're not really worrying about other stuff and the mind is at ease and it gives the opportunity for the subconscious to become conscious.

Yes, it works with ease and flow, not pressure. So it's ask the question and then let it go and come back.

As you've gone through this and you experienced a lot of pain throughout this process, looking back on it, is there any other way that you could have gone through this knowing what you know now? And I don't want to say shortcuts because that might suggest that you're not letting the process flow the way that it should. But are there things that people can do that can still get the ultimate outcome, but not necessarily through an extreme level of pain?

If you're talking about like feeling unease in your body, then it would be those practices I mentioned earlier, bodywork, getting massages, dancing, myofascial release, things like that. I'll find a way to let the energy out. And that's how I think of it too, is I'm like, it's energy and you just have to get out of your body. But if it's mental, then it's a helpful exercise to say, who are you beyond all these labels that you've created for yourself? All these labels as cognitive neuroscientist, rationalist, spiritual seeker. Now, who are you beyond that? I do find it useful to keep trying to answer that, because every time I do, I find a new way to answer it. It's like creativity kicks in and I start thinking of like new aspects. And I think that automatically starts to broaden your self-identity, right? The way you think of yourself. And I think that kind of thing really eases the attachment to one identity or one self-concept.

I also like the idea of trying new things. And I think advisors do a pretty decent job of this when they're working with clients that are nearing retirement and the client is trying to figure out, what am I going to do in retirement? How am I going to spend all my time? And so oftentimes we'll have them go through some kind of exercise and just think about how do you envision your retirement? And maybe we've got some pictures that we show of different things and encourage them just to try different things. And I think that's always good. And I was just thinking about Arnold Schwarzenegger, and here's an interesting guy. Starts out as world champion bodybuilder, and then he goes from that to become the world's biggest box office movie star, and then he goes from that to be governor of California. So 3 different, completely different disciplines, yet he's world-class in all 3 of those. Some people may argue not in the politics, but we won't get into that. And yet, so who is Arnold Schwarzenegger? And he's a lot of other things too that we don't need to go into, but here's a guy that has multiple identities, and I suspect he may not be attached to any one of those particular identities, but he tried and did a lot of different things. And I look at it that way too, where I try different things. I'm just learning how to sail. I've never thought of myself as a sailor, but here I am in my early 60s and I'm learning how to sail. So I kind of add that as something else of who I am if I want to put a label on it. You got to decide that I want to do new stuff and be committed to that as well.

Yeah. I think also, actually, if you find resistance, sometimes I can think about old me listening to this interview would have been like, oh, that's nice for other people. I'm good. I know what I like and what I don't like. And that's what we call resistance. And noticing when that comes up for you, and then that's a good place to ask, why am I being resistant? What am I feeling? Why can't I be open?

Let's talk about your book for a minute here. Is there one or two ideas from the book that you would like folks to take away from?

The biggest takeaway is to stay curious. I think that there is enough evidence to at least question some things or to think that there might be a little more to the universe than we're giving it credit for. And the other thing was I talk a lot about altered states of consciousness in the book, which are some of these practices I was mentioning, meditation. I talk a little bit about psychedelics, things like that, that where they, like we said, get your conscious brain outta the way and let your, whatever is underneath to come up. And I just think those are really important practices that a lot of us should embrace a lot more of. So the book talks a lot about that too.

And I think you have a Substack as well. If folks wanna stay in touch with you, what would be the best way?

Yeah, it's called Cosmos Coffee and Science, and I have a website where you can find everything. It's monasobhani.com.

All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms, and for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.