How To Improve Your Inner Voice - Ethan Kross

1. 0:00 – 0:15

   Intro

   1. EKEthan Kross0:00

      Rumination is chatter about the past, worry is chatter about the future. But fundamentally, if you find yourself in a thought loop trying to work through a ... some kind of problem, but not making any progress, that's an indicator that you're experiencing it. (wind blowing)

2. 0:15 – 6:56

   Why Do We Have an Inner Voice?

   1. EKEthan Kross0:15

   2. CWChris Williamson0:15

      Why is it that we have an inner voice at all? Can you explain why it is that we can hear our own thoughts in our heads?

   3. EKEthan Kross0:23

      Yes. It's a great question. Um, so I like to think of the inner voice as a kind of Swiss Army knife of the mind, that it's a tool, lets us do lots of different things. Um, things that I ... Well, you ... Why don't you tell me how essential you think some of these things that it allows us to do are? So first of all, when I use the term inner voice, what I'm talking about is our ability to silently use language to reflect on our lives. And, and, and we silently talk to ourselves for a variety of different reasons. One thing that happens to me quite a bit is I go to the grocery store, and I'm charged by my wife and daughters, um, with picking up various items. Inevitably, I get to that grocery store, I start walking down the aisle. Usually it's the second or third aisle, and I forget what I'm supposed to get. And when that happens, I start talking to myself. I start thinking, "What am I supposed to get?" And then I list off the items: bananas, chocolate, cheese. What I'm doing there is I'm using my inner voice to keep a nugget of information active in my head. Our inner voice is part of what we call our verbal working memory system. This is a system of the human mind that is specialized for allowing us to rehearse information in a loop. Um, nowadays, people don't really memorize phone numbers anymore, but, um, we used to do that. Did you ever do that when you were younger?

   4. CWChris Williamson1:42

      Yeah, I mean, I can ... There's maybe two or three phone numbers that I can remember, my home phone number and my dad's phone number. But by the time that my mum got a mobile phone, I had a phone, so I've never needed to recall hers, but I can remember my dad ... I can remember my business partner's as well. And the reason I can remember that is because of the number of times that I heard the answer machine for him while he was-

   5. EKEthan Kross2:04

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson2:04

      ... while we were at university and he was still asleep or hungover from the night before. So those are the only three numbers that I can remember, but yes.

   7. EKEthan Kross2:10

      See, back in the day, there were, there were many more that we would memorize. But, but, but if you were to repeat a phone number in your head or you meet someone at a party and you wanna not forget their name, you repeat that over and over, that's using your inner voice. So most people rely on their inner voice for that reason. Every single day, we're using it, um, uh, in that capacity. We also use our inner voice to do other things, like simulating and planning stuff. Before people go on interviews, they often rehearse what they're gonna say in response to different questions they imagine. Before I give a presentation, I'll go over the talking points in my head. I'll usually go for a walk around the neighborhood or the hotel I'm staying in, and I'll go from the beginning to the end. I'll go over the whole rigamarole. I'll imagine what a really obnoxious attendee, what question are they gonna ask me. I'll then imagine what I'm gonna say to them. Um, it's usually not very nice things that I say back. Um, I'm much nicer in person than I am in my head. We'll get to that maybe later. But so we use our inner voice to plan, right, to simulate. We use it to control ourselves. When I'm exercising, if I'm in a class with an instructor or working out one-on-one, I'm smiling to that instructor. But in my head, when they're having me do painful things, I am saying all sorts of not-so-sweet things towards them. "You son of a ..." I'm counting down, "Come on, man, you know, seven more reps, seven, six, five." That's me using my inner voice to coach myself along. We can also use our inner voice to critique ourselves. And then, and then finally, and I think this is one of the most special functions of the inner voice, we use it to make sense of our lives. Shit happens, and when that occurs, we try to make sense of that adversity, and we use words w- ... to, to, to create stories that help us understand what we're going through. And those stories we tell ourselves, really, they give shape to our sense of who we are. So your inner voice helps mold your, your identity. So those are four things that our inner voice does. Um, I think we're unique in our capacity to use an inner voice in that way, and I think it is a decided advantage that we possess, um, that, that capacity.

   8. CWChris Williamson4:22

      It seems surprising to me. All of that sounds great. All of those things sound like fantastic advantages. And yet, when you talk about your inner voice, or when people discuss it, for the most part, they see it as an adversary. They don't see it as a, a compadre.

   9. EKEthan Kross4:37

      That's right. Well, one of my favorite findings in psychology, um, can be summed up by the following phrase. It's actually a title of a, a well-known paper: Bad is Stronger than Good. And, and what that means is, the bad stuff tends to stick out a lot more than the good stuff. Uh, and there's a, there's a, there's an evolutionary story about why that is the case. We need to be more attuned to potential threats and losses than, than gains from a survival point of view. Um, and I think the same is true for our inner voice. I think we often take it for granted. I think we're not, um ... We don't always stop and, and savor all of the benefits it provides when it's doing the things it has evolved to do. But when that inner voice runs off track, when it morphs into that kinda negative self-talk or self-dialogue, the inner critic, um, perks up, or, um ... One of my favorite descriptions I write about this in my book is Dan Harris, who describes his inner voice as an asshole. When the inner asshole starts, starts, you know, yammering away, it really grabs our attention, um, in ways that are uncomfortable, makes it hard for us to think and perform, undermines our relationships and health. And, and that really motivates us to, to focus on that, that nasty inner voice and, and often to try do something about it.

   10. CWChris Williamson5:59

       That's interesting, something I'd never thought of before, the negativity bias that we have where we focus on-... uh, threats more than we do, uh, potential advantages. I never thought about that being a selection mechanism for the things that go through our own head.

   11. EKEthan Kross6:14

       Oh, yeah. Totally. I mean-

   12. CWChris Williamson6:16

       That's really, that's really cool.

   13. EKEthan Kross6:18

       Yeah, the negative stuff is, is sticking out there. And, you know, this is a found- as you, as you may know, this is a foundational finding. The first... One of the first Nobel Prizes ever awarded for s- a kind of psychological research was, was, was given to, um, a luminary named Danny Kahneman, and, um, it was for this idea of loss aversion, that we're more sensitive to po- potential losses in our lives than gains. The same basic finding generalizes to our inner world, much more sensitive to the bad stuff happening between our ears than the good stuff. It sticks around long, um, longer.

3. 6:56 – 16:30

   Controlling Our Thoughts

   1. EKEthan Kross6:56

   2. CWChris Williamson6:56

      How is it that we don't have control over our own inner voice? M- my arm doesn't choose to move on its own. It's not, it's not doing things, uh, against my will, it's not continuing to do the same stuff over and over again even if I want it to stop. Why don't we have control over what the voice inside of our head says?

   3. EKEthan Kross7:20

      Well, I think we, I think we can and, and, and do and, um, but you need to know how to engage, um, engage that inner voice. Um, so let's talk about... Let's break down the, the concept of control and what is under our control and what isn't. I think this is, um, uh, often a good place to start. So if you ask me, "Do we have control over the thoughts that pop into our head while we're awake, while we're asleep?" um, the answer to that question is, no, I don't think we do. And if we were responsible for all the thoughts that popped into our head, I think a lot of us would be imprisoned and in big trouble. Like, I don't know why when I'm walking down the street, a thought, a dark thought pops into my head at times. Like, I wish I did, but we don't. So we can't necessarily control the thoughts that pop into our head, but what we do have a lot of control over is how we engage with those thoughts, how we work with them, how we manipulate them, how we control them once they're activated, and that's really the, the territory that I and many other scientists like to play in, right? So once a thought is activated, how do you, how do you change its trajectory, right? So if you find yourself beginning to go down the rabbit hole of worry or rumination or catastrophization, how do you steer that internal dialogue into a different direction? And the good news here is that there are lots and lots of things that scientists have discovered that are useful for helping people do that. Ways of shifting your thinking, stepping back, thinking about your circumstances from a more objective perspective. We call these distancing tools. Lots of different ways you could get distance from your problems to think more rationally about your circ- your circumstances. There are people tools, there are ways of engaging with other people that can help you work through problems in ways that shift your internal dialogues, and, and there are also environmental tools, ways of engaging with our physical spaces that can be really helpful too.

   4. CWChris Williamson9:25

      Going a little bit further back up the, uh, river of thought, I know that when we're talking about chatter itself, right? When it's, uh, manifested and when we've become aware of it, we can then direct its control. But have you got any idea about where thoughts come from in the absolute first place? Their, their pure origin?

   5. EKEthan Kross9:46

      Wow, that's a... I mean, that's a great, great question. Um, they can certainly be triggered from external events that, um, activate different kinds of associations from the past, um, or sometimes external events really demand our attention. Um, and, you know, thoughts, thoughts are often functional in the sense that they are helping us make sense of the world. And so if, you know, you're walking down the street and you see someone suspicious 15 a- feet ahead of you, you're gonna have a certain set of thoughts activated that are designed to help you deal with that circumstance. In that particular instance, you'll also experience an emotional response in all likelihood that is functional, a negative response, right? Threat detected and you're gonna be alerted for dealing with it. Um, we can also, though, activate thoughts through thinking, and this is one of the ways in which chatter really sinks us. Lots of people think, for example, that stress kills, right? I mean, this is like a meme out there. "Avoid stress." That's not actually true. Uh, as I like to point out, you wouldn't wanna live life without being able to experience a stress response. The fact that you have a system, a coordinated system in your body that quickly prepares you to respond to threats in your environment, to either approach or avoid them, super useful system to have. What makes stress truly toxic from a health point of view is when your stress response goes up and then remains chronically activated over time. It's that chronic activation of stress that exerts a wear and tear on your body that leads to things like cardiovascular disease and inflammation and all sorts of boogeyman-like physical disorders. And what accounts for that elevated chronic stress response is chatter, it is thinking, because we are capable of re-simulating the things that are worrying us or bothering us, and when we do, that activates related thoughts and, um, a biological reaction as well. So, so our thoughts can come from lots of different places, including places that we're not certain of, and I think it's important to share that with folks too, that, you know, the human mind is one of the most mysterious, um-... physical structures that are- that is out there, and we are trying to improve our understanding. I think we've made a lot of, um, progress in shedding light on how the human mind works, but, like, there is a lot, a lot that we still don't know.

   6. CWChris Williamson12:30

      What Sam Harris says, "If it wasn't for the fact that we are conscious, we would have no idea that consciousness exists out there in the universe." Right? A- aside from the fact that we're able to experience it firsthand, there is absolutely no, um, evidence that shows that it's something that's occurring. And I- it's interesting what you talk about, the fact that you end up with kind of like a thought cascade. So a thought can trigger a thought through an association, even if you don't know that those two things are associated, and then from there, our ability to ruminate perpetuates that. We are the architects of our own sort of cyclical thinking over and over and over again. When it comes to verbalizing thought, one of the things that I realized was that given the fact that our inner voice uses words, does that mean that different languages can engender different thought patterns? You- I, I think German is one of those wor- one of those languages where they have tons and tons of words for things that we don't perhaps in the West, like schadenfreude and things like that.

   7. EKEthan Kross13:31

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson13:33

      That- that kind of enables a different type of thought almost.

   9. EKEthan Kross13:38

      Yeah. Well, you know, there's, um, lots of interesting connections between, um, language and our experience of emotions. And, uh, it is absolutely true that certain cultures have, um, words to describe emotional responses that we don't have in- in the United States, which, um, raises questions about the universality of certain kinds of emotional experiences and the degree to which emotions are, um ... emotions reflect these innate natural kinds of phenomena as opposed to more constructed experiences that our- our culture helps us, you know, make sense of. Um, so in terms of the inner voice and language and f- and foreign languages or different languages, some of the- the most relevant work here that I- that I really love, this never made it into my book that, um, it got- it got, um, what's the expression, on the chopping room floor. Um, but it's really cool science. It involves asking the question, how does talking to yourself about an emotional experience in a foreign language change your- the way you talk to yourself? How does it change your emotional experience? And what that research shows is that when we think about our emotional circumstances in a second language, we're able to think about them in a more objective way, because our primary languages are- are the languages in which we first learn about emotion, experience emotion. Our second, uh, our- the second languages that we learn are a bit, uh, they're a little bit more clinical and abstract. If you ever tried ... Do you speak more than one language?

   10. CWChris Williamson15:22

       No. No. I'm in Guatemala, and I've- I've pulled every essence of, uh, Spanish that I can out of the half GCSE I did nearly 20 years ago in school, and, uh, it's- it's been terrible.

   11. EKEthan Kross15:34

       It's been tough. Okay. Well, anyone who's listening, I would encourage them to- to try this exercise. Um, try cursing first in- in your primary language, and then try engaging in the same curse words in your second language. Curse words don't have nearly the same sting. They're kinda funny sometimes to even utter them in a second language as compared to the first because they don't have the same associations. I mean, if you wanna get back to this idea of associations, emotional memories are encoded in our primary language. So your primary language is- is really the terrain of very rich emotion, and you can actually leverage this phenomenon to your betterment. If you're trying to work through a problem or some chatter, try to think it through in your second language. And, um, research suggests that you might be a little bit less emotional, more rational in how you do so.

4. 16:30 – 26:15

   How the Mind is a ‘Beautiful Mess’

   1. EKEthan Kross16:30

   2. CWChris Williamson16:30

      Yeah. It's interesting. The- the effortfulness of having to think about what it is that you mean in a language that isn't your first language is probably gonna provide some distancing, which I- I know we'll probably get onto. Another thing that I considered is that as you learn new or more words in- in your primary language, you're recreating the capacity of your inner monologue, right? You- you're actually enabling different ways for you to understand things. And I suppose that you could then roll that forward to concepts. You learn a new concept, like availability bias or Hanlon's razor, or you- you learn about some sort of psychological trait that you may have or something like that. And it makes me think about what- what constitutes us, what constitutes me as a person. If I can learn a new word and then use it, and prior to not having that word, I was still me, and having had this word, I'm still me, but I consider the thoughts that are in my head to somehow be a part of me or a representation of me or something like that, what does it mean to add new words in? What does it mean that I can kind of augment myself with new language? All- all of that together seems like a- a bit of a messy situation.

   3. EKEthan Kross17:44

      Well, i- i- it's- it's a beautiful mess, I would say, and at least in the way I think about it, because, um, the mind is- is very flexible and on our ability to make sense of our experiences in this world. I mean, look, we can- we can create stories to make sense of almost anything. Right? One of my f- a classic study in psychology, have- have you ever heard of, um, the- the- the cognitive dissonance discovery with the UFOs and things like that? Have you ever heard of this story?

   4. CWChris Williamson18:15

      No.

   5. EKEthan Kross18:15

      It's a great story. So, um, Leon Festinger and his student Stanley Schacter, two- two, um-... major players in social psychology. Basically, they wanted to understand what happens if people believe in something really, really strongly and are then presented with evidence that there's no getting around it. The evidence clearly says you are wrong in this belief. And then their question was a simple one. When you're presented with evidence that contradicts your beliefs, what do you do? Do you update your beliefs or do you come up with some creative rationalization to allow yourself to maintain these beliefs? And their prediction was a, a controversial one at the time, which is they said actually when you're presented with undeniable evidence that you're wrong, that's gonna be such a threat to your sense of who you are that you're gonna gotta figure out a way of bending your o- your, your mind to make sense of this new circumstance. And I think that that's one response I have to your, your question about the messiness of the mind. One thing that keeps that messiness in check is that we are motivated to be consistent in how we think about ourselves and the world around us. And so yeah, we can learn new concepts and ways of thinking about things, but usually we're not gonna take those ideas and do a total 180 in terms of how we think about who we are and present ourselves to the world. We are gonna maintain some consistency. Anyway, to bec- get back to the detour of the, of that study I was telling you about. So how does Schachter and Festinger test this idea about whether we take in the new evidence, update our ideas or not? They infiltrate a cult. Um, these are, these are like professors and graduate students. They inf- infiltrate a cult in Minnesota that believes in, um, an alien race that has been visiting the planet for a while to see what's going on. And this alien race has determined that there's gonna be this doomsday event on this particular day. And, um, when this happens, if everyone in the cult ge- comes to this certain place, they'll be saved, go on the spaceships and go to the planet. And I think it was Clarion, which is a little funny because there is a, a chain of hotels here in the United States that is called the Clarion Hotel. It's hard for me to take it seriously. Anyway, they've infiltrated the cult and they're there on the day when the aliens are supposed to come. And guess what happened, Chris?

   6. CWChris Williamson20:48

      No aliens.

   7. EKEthan Kross20:49

      No aliens. Um, I should say, by the way, for anyone who's listening, I'm open to the idea of there being aliens.

   8. CWChris Williamson20:58

      Aliens that run a successful chain of hotels in America.

   9. EKEthan Kross21:00

      Yes, exactly, exactly, exactly. Just not the ones that take this shape. Um, so they don't come and, um, and then they ... What is the, what do the cult members do? Well, turns out they just make excuses for this. And that, "Well, you know, it didn't happen on this day, but it's gonna happen three months from now." They make all s- they're, they're, they're rewriting this internal narrative that has been guiding them for all of this time, leading them to invest money in preparations for the migration and so forth and so on. Um, so this observation was really the, the way we stumbled on this idea of cognitive dissonance, this idea that, um, we really don't like to, um, admit we're wrong and, and, and really update, you know, ideas even when we're presented with information that contradicts them.

   10. CWChris Williamson21:51

       Isn't the part of the explanation for how, uh, consciousness works or how identity works the fact that we commit ourselves to those positions is because ancestrally it would've made a lot of sense for us to try and be someone that looks reliable, um, uh, consistent, like they have control over their sort of conscious processes and what they're going to do? If we were fully verbalizing all of the things that go through our heads or if it was that we weren't actually as committed to the personality that we have, it, it would be chaos. Because the person that was a farmer yesterday has woken up and doesn't want to be a farmer today. He wants to be something else, he wants to be a hunter. And you go, "No, no, no, no, no. You're supposed to be that person." And I, I remember reading about how it was, uh, supposedly adaptive for people to stick to their guns in that sort of a way because it makes their behavior more predictable which actually can cause a tribe to be ... It cohesives together in a more efficient way because there's not constantly tons of flux as people change from one type of person to another.

   11. EKEthan Kross22:55

       Yeah. I mean, it ... That's a, that's a very popular evolutionary theory and it's one that makes a lot of sense. Uh, evolutionary theories are, are always hard to completely, um-

   12. CWChris Williamson23:05

       Everything's just so, right?

   13. EKEthan Kross23:06

       Yeah. It's hard, right, because you can't go back in time necessarily and do this. But, um, but it's a, but it's a theory that does have some support behind it and, and it makes good sense. What we do know is that human beings, we are highly motivated to, um, have a sense of order and control. We like certainty. We like to know that the world is predictable because when the world is predictable it's easier for us to navigate. And that generalizes to our social relationships as well, right? We want to know that people are dependable and so forth and so on. And so, um, so I think that does make sense. And, and look, the things happening in our mind when we're pinballing back and forth, um, that isn't always a very controlled atmosphere inside. And, you know, it's interesting in the age of e- of transparency I think people often ... You could push it to an extreme and say, "I want to know everything you're thinking." In fact some social media applications actually ask you to share what is on your mind. That's the prompt, or was the last time I checked on, um, on Facebook or Meta or whatever it's called. I'm not telling people what I'm thinking all the time. Um, there's a little bit of filtering that I'm gonna do before I share it with someone else. And I think that filtering is, serves a really useful function.

   14. CWChris Williamson24:30

       Can you imagine if we were to go into some Minority Report world in the future where we were actually able to read people's thoughts? First off, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the people who see themselves as the most virtuous would find themselves, uh, uh, pretty close to the bottom of the pile. Um, and, uh, a- and also you're right. The, i- it's strange, the fact that we have this odd cascade of thoughts which can be triggered by thoughts and perpetuated by thoughts means that we end up in, um... Oh, what was that film? There was a film that came out where everyone's inner monologue was verbalized outside of their heads. It had the-

   15. EKEthan Kross25:05

       Uh, the, the, the Jim Carey film? Was that the one?

   16. CWChris Williamson25:07

       No, no.

   17. EKEthan Kross25:08

       The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless-

   18. CWChris Williamson25:10

       No, no. This one came out the last year or the year before. It's a dystopian-

   19. EKEthan Kross25:14

       Oh. Oh, Olivia and Emma with vi- violet. There's a voi... There was one on the inner voice.

   20. CWChris Williamson25:19

       Yeah.

   21. EKEthan Kross25:19

       Is that the one? What's it called?

   22. CWChris Williamson25:19

       Um, yeah, I think so. It's about, uh, dystopian future world where technology's crashed a little bit. It was within the last two years this thing's come out. And they have, uh, what do they call it? I think they might call it The Voice or The Whisper or something like that. And you can hear what everybody says outside of their heads, and there's this, this sort of-

   23. EKEthan Kross25:35

       Oh, really? What happens?

   24. CWChris Williamson25:37

       Um, well, it's a nightmare, obviously, because-

   25. EKEthan Kross25:39

       Oh.

   26. CWChris Williamson25:39

       ... no, no one can hide things. And, um, the chieftain, one of the, this sort of totalitarian guy that looks after one of the, one of the big tribes, he doesn't have a voice. He's been able to control it. And then there's this kid who is the protagonist, and he really struggles. He's trying to talk to girls, and he's always saying how cute she looks and stuff like that, and he just weirds everybody out. Uh, and then over time, the, the, the journey is him learning-

   27. EKEthan Kross26:03

       Sounds, sounds like my childhood.

   28. CWChris Williamson26:04

       (laughs)

   29. EKEthan Kross26:06

       (laughs)

   30. CWChris Williamson26:06

       Yeah, maybe. Dude, you should watch it. It's, it's right up your street.
5. 26:15 – 30:00

   Inner Voices in Different Ages & Genders

   1. CWChris Williamson26:15

      what w- w- how does age and gender influence chatter? Are there correlations there?

   2. EKEthan Kross26:24

      Um, so we know that, um, chatter tends to be higher among women than men. Um, there are, there are two caveats I always like to provide after describing that statistic. Um, number one, there are many things that men, many problems of the mind or problems of living that men score higher on than women, so it all averages out if you look at the full terrain. Um, but second, many of the tools that exist for managing chatter work equally well for men and for women. Um, with age, you know, you could begin to see signs of... So the, the earliest study I was able to find that had some trace of inner voiceness occurring among kids was around 18 months of age. Um, that's probably not the earliest that it occurs, but methodologically, it's hard to do this kind of research when you get much younger. Um, but we see chatter, the harmful version of the inner voice, beginning to occur pretty, pretty early on as, you know, young school-aged kids start to experience worry and rumination, and, um, it oscillates. It changes over the lifespan. It's also important to know that just because, you know, it, it's easy to, to, to bucket people and to, "Hey, you're a worrier," or, "You're a chatterer," and, "You're not," in fact, there are domains of chatter. Some people are really good about not experiencing chatter at all when it comes to relationships, but when it comes to the, to their work life, chatter, chatter, chatter, and vice versa. So there is a profile that characterizes people.

   3. CWChris Williamson27:59

      It's also-

   4. EKEthan Kross27:59

      What, what are, what, what are your chatter triggers? Let me ask you.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:02

      Gods, dude, anything. I, I, I really do struggle to, um, to not think. I've done a lot of mindfulness, you know, five years or something, th- over 1,000 sessions of meditation, and it's definitely made me be more aware and more intentional. Um, so my ability to step into see, hear, or feel whatever it is that's arisen in, in the mind, and then to let it go, is... It feels like a superpower. It genuinely feels like a superpower, especially compared to the person that I was half a decade ago. Um, but I find it very difficult to not notice things. So as, as I'm walking through a hotel, I'll notice that a, a woman has got one sock higher than the other, and I'll have to think about, "Why, why has she got one sock higher?" The, the, another thing to do with socks, it's not always to do with feet. I went to a party a couple of months ago in, in Austin, uh, and people came into this house, this very nice house where the party was, uh, and they were told to take their shoes off at the door. And about 50% of people took their shoes off, and about 50% of people took their shoes and their socks off, and I was obsessed. The rest of the party, almost all that I could think about was, like-

   6. EKEthan Kross29:07

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson29:07

      ... what bound together the sock people and what bound together the bare feet people, and wha- what was it about... W- w- why was I one of the non-sock people, and what... That w- it's so...

   8. EKEthan Kross29:18

      You're just, you're just, you're just a, a lay psychologist, Chris. You just got to come to our PhD program here.

   9. CWChris Williamson29:24

      Fantastic.

   10. EKEthan Kross29:24

       We'll get you trained up.

   11. CWChris Williamson29:25

       I knew that that was the ca... And then we can do some foot analysis. We can find out what the, uh, inner monologue of people that don't wear socks when they go to a party is. So-

   12. EKEthan Kross29:34

       That's great.

   13. CWChris Williamson29:34

       ... talking about that, obviously we can have different sorts of projections inside of our mind, right? We can project visual images. We can also have, uh, a hear, uh, sensation, so that, that verbalizing, inner verbalizing. And then we can have, um, a feel, so sort of emotions, I guess, that are a little bit more ephemeral and probably somewhere between the two. Is it possible to quieten the mind, or is it only possible to

6. 30:00 – 36:08

   Is it Possible to Quieten the Mind?

   1. CWChris Williamson30:00

      change what it's saying?

   2. EKEthan Kross30:02

      Um, well, I think once you... I think they're, they're often related. So, um, when you're struggling with either imagery, um, that is aversive and promoting chatter or a, a nasty internal dialogue, um, changing the, the trajectory of the, that dialogue or imagery is often linked with quieting the mind. And, you know, once you, once you address the negativity, it becomes easier then to just move into, into a kind of autopilot mode. Now, I do think it's really interesting, I'd love your take on this as someone who has experience with meditation/mindfulness, which, which I do as well, and I gen-... um, genuinely, I was about to say generally, it's Friday afternoon, and what, you know, it's that time of the day. I genuinely value mindfulness meditation. I've been doing it on and off, um, since I was five years old, believe it or not. Um, but I do think that it is one tool among many that we can use to manage our minds. And further, I think oftentimes, the way that some of the philosophical ideas that really have given rise to mindfulness, some of those, the way those ideas are promoted, um, actually distort the original intent. And what I mean by that is this. We often hear that the goal should be a quiet mind, the goal should be to be in the now, to be in the moment, to not being, to dip into the future or past. And actually, I think that that is not a realistic goal, nor one that we should all strive for, to be in the moment at all times. And what I mean by that is, the human mind is a time traveler. We evolve the capacity to travel in time in our mind, and this, this is a, a kind of superpower. I think you used that term. But me being able to think back to the last conversation I had, what went right, what went wrong, right? That's a source of self-improvement. Me being able to think about the vacation I recently went on my, with my family, and savor that when I'm not having a great day, that's a huge source of resilience. Me being able to think about the next six months and what I want to accomplish, and the difficulties I may have on the horizon and how I'm gonna deal with them, that's essential to my ability to be productive and successful. So traveling in time in our mind, when I go for a walk in the park, letting my mind go to these different places, I think this is part of the reason, to the degree that I've had any success in this world, it's that capacity that plays an outsize role in predicting that kind of success. Sometimes, of course, the mental time travel machine breaks down and we get stuck in the past or the future, which is essentially chatter. One approach there is to, is to refocus momentarily on the present, but that's only one thing you might want to do in that instance. I think we don't always want to be in the present. So I'm curious what you have to say. You know, what's your take on ... Do you think we should always be striving to be in the moment?

   3. CWChris Williamson33:11

      It's a difficult question because obviously it's not super adaptive for that to be the case. It wouldn't do for us to only ever be in the moment, because we would never learn from things that we did in the past and we would never be able to anticipate challenges that were going to come in, in the future. Um, it's interesting because the sort of bro science mindfulness solution to everything is to just come back to the present moment. Um, and yet I'm going to guess that if you dig into the psychological research, that's not necessarily always the best solution.

   4. EKEthan Kross33:43

      Well, I, I think the ... You know, I'm, I'm a fan of there not being any one-size-fits-all solutions. I think we've evolved the capacity to utilize, you know, probably close to three dozen different tools, at least and counting right now, for managing our m- our chatter, for a reason. Different people, different situations require different kinds of tools. And so I think we get in trouble potentially by giving people what I think is an unattainable goal: It's not possible to always be in the moment. I mean, have you come across anyone who's always in the moment?

   5. CWChris Williamson34:18

      No, I've come across people that say that they're always in the moment, but, uh, I, I don't believe that they are.

   6. EKEthan Kross34:23

      Yeah, I think, you know, just knowing about how the mind works, it's, it, it ... We evolved to not be in the moment, and we've evolved for a reason. So, um, so it's, it's, it's setting people up to have an unattainable goal that is also not something that is functional. And so I'd, I'd rather, I'd love to shift the conversation to get us talking about being in the moment as one kind of tool we use to manage our chatter. But hey, there's a whole big toolbox out there of other skills that we, we can also activate.

   7. CWChris Williamson34:55

      Is it true that some people don't have an inner monologue?

   8. EKEthan Kross34:58

      No.

   9. CWChris Williamson35:00

      I thought so. I thought that-

   10. EKEthan Kross35:02

       Uh, I, I-

   11. CWChris Williamson35:02

       I thought that was bullshit.

   12. EKEthan Kross35:03

       ... I get this question a lot, and, and, um, because every, every few months, someone usually writes on the internet that they don't have an inner, inner voice. So, this is where I think it's really important to be clear about what we mean when we use the phrase "inner voice." And when I use that phrase, I'm talking about silently using language. And as I mentioned earlier, there are many, many contexts in which we call upon that tool, ranging from reminding ourselves of what's on our grocery list and memorizing a phone number to having a, a full-blown back and forth dialogue with ourselves. Are there some people who may only, um, only resort to that inner voice to keep in mind what they have to buy in the grocery store and don't ever talk to themselves? Sure. I think we lean on these different functions for, to different degrees. But in terms of do we have an in- do we all have an inner voice? Yes. That working memory system that I mentioned before, that is a basic feature of the human mind. All well-functioning human minds have it.

7. 36:08 – 40:46

   Impact of Trauma on Inner Voices

   1. EKEthan Kross36:08

   2. CWChris Williamson36:08

      There must be people that you've come across in your research who've had some sort of brain trauma or some-

   3. EKEthan Kross36:14

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson36:15

      ... sort of genetic, uh, uh, d- disformation, d- disformity that's caused them to not have it though?

   5. EKEthan Kross36:21

      Yes. Um, those are no more- no longer well-functioning minds. And, and they're fascinating. Um, there's this one story I'm particularly fond of, a woman who suffered a stroke, um, that was localized in the left hemisphere of her brain, um, and a, a, a vein popped right around the parts of her brain or parts of her brain that were involved in speech production. And so she temporarily lost the ability-... not only talk to other people, but also to use words to talk to herself. And what's fascinating about her story is this is a woman who was very well-accomplished, she was a Harvard neuroanatomist, and she would often, before the stroke, complain about all of the chatter she was experiencing. She described it as tremendously debilitating. She wished, she wished she could just get rid of her inner voice. Well, the wish unfortunately came true.

   6. CWChris Williamson37:13

      (laughs)

   7. EKEthan Kross37:13

      But what's astounding to me about her story, um, is she, she ended up describing her experience in a book. Um, when you a- when asked how did she feel after, after she could no longer talk to other people and herself, the wor- she, she described it as euphoric. She described herself as going to La La Land. So, you've just had someone who has had a massive stroke, can't communicate anymore to other people or herself, and she's blissfully happy. Why? Because although words escaped her, so did all of the chatter, and she found that incredibly liberating. Right? No more obnoxious roommate in her head chirping away all the time, leading her to self-censor self and focus on, you know, the people who wore socks versus didn't at the party.I and, and so she found that really liberating. Um, now she goes on to say that it actually was an impairment because, although it was really nice to not have the chatter for a while, she, she couldn't do basic things like keep information active in her head or make sense of what was happening to her in the world. And so, um, so her experience is always a great reminder to me of how the goal shouldn't be to silence the inner voice. It should be to figure out how to, how to manage it more effectively.

   8. CWChris Williamson38:29

      I like that. Are you familiar with Iain McGilchrist's work? Master and His Emissary and The, The Matter With Things?

   9. EKEthan Kross38:35

      No, tell me more.

   10. CWChris Williamson38:36

       So, he, he, the thing that came up for me there was to do with the strokes, and he mentioned how, so he's a, a philosopher and a neuroscientist, and he looked at, uh, strokes that affect the left hemisphere and strokes that affect the right hemisphere, and he said that for a long time, uh, doctors had thought that strokes affecting the right hemisphere were, um, preferable because you still retain speech, language, all that stuff, so communication's super easy. But what you don't retain is empathy or the ability to understand why other people aren't happy with the things that you're doing, or motivation and intention and stuff like that. And it seems now that, given the choice, if you were to pick the two, it seems significantly easier to retrain language and to retrain forms of communication with a left hemisphere stroke than it is for the people who are around the person that's had the stroke to overcome the pretty difficult to deal with total lack of empathy, total lack of emotion. You lose more of who you are as a person and that in- those interpersonal skills. Bizarrely, when you can't speak, you are in a better position than when you can't sort of feel feelings anymore.Uh, and I just thought that was, that was a really interesting way to look at things, that speech is less central to our personhoods than the, the, the emotions that drive that speech.

   11. EKEthan Kross40:05

       Well, I mean, it's a fascinating question, and it sounds like having to choose between the lesser of two evils. If I have my choice, I'll choose neither. Um, but, but, you know, eh, eh, I mean, empathy, for example, and the ability to relate to others, I mean, the- some have described that as the, as a social glue that binds our species together. And when it goes away, um, you know, you don't always need a stroke in the right hemisphere to get a lack of empathy. There are some people who, for reasons we're still trying to figure out, don't have it. Um, we, we call them so- sociopaths and, um, things don't always work out very well for them.

8. 40:46 – 47:28

   Speaking in Third Person

   1. EKEthan Kross40:46

   2. CWChris Williamson40:46

      Should people speak to themselves in the third person if they want to motivate themselves?

   3. EKEthan Kross40:51

      Absolutely, provided they don't do it while walking down the streets of London without AirPods in their ears. Um, so, um, you know, one, one thing that we know from lots of research is that people are much better at giving advice to others than they are giving advice to themselves when sh- when they're struggling with something really emotional. I find it striking that whenever I give a presentation on this work and I ask people, "Hey, have you ever been in a situation where a friend or a loved one comes to you with a problem they're ruminating about? They don't know what to do. They present the situation to you and it's relatively easy for you to coach them through the situation. Has this ever happened?" Every single in the hand- hand in the audience goes up. Um, there's actually a name for this phenomenon. We call it Solomon's Paradox, named after the Bible's King Solomon, who, as you probably know, was world-renowned, um, for being a, a sage, for being a wise leader. But if you dig into his personal history, turns out he made a rash of terrible decisions that ultimately led to his demise as, as a leader. Um, he got caught up in not only love triangles but love octagons and, and got into, you know, a, a, a huge hot mess. So, so there's this finding, right? We can coach other people better than we can coach ourselves. What we've learned over the years is that what we call distant self-talk, trying to coach yourself through a problem using your name or the second-person pronoun use, so, "Come on, Ethan, you can do this," that's a tool that plays off this mechanism because if you think about when do we use names or words like you, we use names and second-person pronouns when we think about and refer to other people. So, the links in the mind between using a word like you and thinking about someone else is super strong. So, when you use that word to refer to yourself, it's essentially turning on the, the brain machinery for thinking about others, and that, that, that alters our perspective. It puts us in a position to start giving ourselves much, much wiser advice. So, this is actually the first thing that I personally do if I detect some chatter, br- I, "Come on, Ethan."... how are you gonna manage the situation? What are you gonna do? Um, and, and it often, it often does make a difference. And there's a lot of science to back that up. Have you ever done it?

   4. CWChris Williamson43:09

      Yeah, I have. I ha- I mean, you know, one of Jordan Peterson's rules is, "Treat yourself like you are someone you are responsible for helping." And, uh, I wrote a newsletter about it in, probably two years ago now, that said exactly what you went through. Like, how many times has someone come to you with a problem and you've given them this really sort of wonderful blend of, eh, eh, sympathy, with firmness, with support, where you ju- it, it's this gorgeous blend and you sort of really, sort of get them on their way. And a lot of the time, that's a situation that you yourself could n- do with that same advice for.

   5. EKEthan Kross43:45

      That's exactly right. (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson43:46

      And, and you'll g- you'll kick yourself in the dick as you push yourself out the door. Your equivalent is so much more ugly. (laughs)

   7. EKEthan Kross43:53

      That's right. I mean, we say things to ourselves, eh, that we would never dare say to, um, a friend, let alone a, a worst enemy. And, and this is where distant self-talk I think really helps. It, it greases the wheels for providing that kind of friend-oriented advice, giving that to ourself. It's leveraging the structure of language to put us in a position where we start doing that relatively effortlessly and automatically. So, we don't have to stop and think, "Hey, what would I tell Matthew in this situation?" That's right. "Ethan, here's what you're gonna do." It just flips a switch. And we've actually done neuroscience studies on this. In one study we find that the emotional regulatory benefits of this tool kicks in, um, in about a second, actually. Um, the switch is-

   8. CWChris Williamson44:42

      No way.

   9. EKEthan Kross44:43

      ... really, really quick. And you know, just try doing it yourself. "I," you know, "I, Chris," like, it's a visceral feeling that many people have. Um, you know, this, this tool has been around for quite a while. Um, I think it often gets ridiculed because we see it pop up in television sitcoms where people are being made fun of for talking to themselves out loud about themselves. But, um, Julius Caesar, Henry Adams, um-

   10. CWChris Williamson45:11

       Didn't Julius Caesar write a whole book in-

   11. EKEthan Kross45:13

       Yeah, he wrote a whole book in the third person.

   12. CWChris Williamson45:15

       ... third person, yeah. Yeah, I thought so.

   13. EKEthan Kross45:16

       Um, a, a book about a difficult military exploit. Um, Henry Adams wrote his autobiography in the third person. Um, (clears throat) Malala Yousafzai, you know, the youngest person to ever win the Nobel's Peace Prize, when, um, Jon Stewart, um, uh, uh, hosted a television show here in the States, or previously was, when he had her on the show to talk to her about, "Hey," eh, "What was going through in her head when she discovered that the Taliban were plotting to kill her?" She, she does this wonderful s- she tells this wonderful, I mean, terrible, but also the way she tells it is wonderful story about discovering the, the news that the Taliban were coming to get her. And then, the moment where she, she simulates what's gonna happen when they get to the front door, she switches into coaching herself using her own name. "Well, I used to say to myself, 'What would you do, Malala, if they come and get you?' Well, then I would reply, 'Just take a shoe and hit him.'" So, she's, she's contemplating this tremendously stressful circumstance, and she switches into using her name to coach herself through it. There's something, we, w- some people stumble on this tool. And I think the value, um, associated with knowing about the science surrounding is now, now you and anyone who's listening can just be more deliberate in how they incorporate it, it into their lives.

   14. CWChris Williamson46:38

       Matt Fraser, world CrossFit champion, won the CrossFit games five times, most dominant athlete ever in its history. Eh, I, I saw an interview with him and he said that he always refers to himself in the third person. Um, and, you know, a lot of the time when we're doing stuff that we require sort of acute motivation for, "I, I have three more reps to go. I have two more reps to go. I have one more rep to go," um, or you're running, it's, uh, Memorial Day MRF is a workout that c- often gets done. And, um, people will need that because it's a one-mile run followed by hell of, sort of body weight exercises, and then another one-mile run. So, as you're going through this run with a weighted vest and you're like, "Oh, just get to the next lamppost," for him it would be, "Right, Matt, just get to the next lamppost. Just get to the next lamppost." Um, it is bizarre that

9. 47:28 – 52:02

   Why Are We Harsher to Ourselves?

   1. CWChris Williamson47:28

      we have this, it's not a negativity bias, although it is negative language. It's like a, a callousness bias or a lack of empathy bias that we have toward ourselves. Have you got any idea why that is?

   2. EKEthan Kross47:44

      Um, why do we say things to ourselves that we would never say to someone else?

   3. CWChris Williamson47:47

      Yes.

   4. EKEthan Kross47:47

      Um, ah, it, it, you know, it's a great question. Well, we don't have to stand on ceremony with ourselves. Um, there are lots of norms. I mean, this is one hypothesis, um, idea.

   5. CWChris Williamson47:59

      Bro-science it, Ethan. Come on.

   6. EKEthan Kross48:00

      Yeah. Okay. Um, you know, there are social norms that dictate how we speak to other people, and those norms are, are taught to us at a very, very young age, right? So, we, we don't act in ugly ways. Um, we don't necessarily even always speak the absolute truth about how we feel about someone else, um, all the time. Sometimes we kinda dress it up to, to, to ease the, the, the, the blow or the burden that what we're gonna say is gonna have on someone. We don't have those norms for talking about ourselves. I mean, there's an interesting question here. Can you change the norms associated with how you talk to yourself? Um, now that's a really interesting question that I would love to see some research address. Like, can you teach people to be kinder and more constructive to themselves chronically over time? Not just to be corrective about it when you find yourself being nasty, to remember to switch into this more compassionate mode, but can you actually train that?

   7. CWChris Williamson49:05

      It's like self-personal resocialization.

   8. EKEthan Kross49:09

      Yeah. Yeah. It's really f- I mean, I- I haven't ever really thought about it. I think it's a, a really fascinating question. Now, uh, uh, there is, of course, something to be said about being honest with ourself as well. Um, so the ... You know, when you describe, for example, what you wrote in your newsletter about that blend of compassionate, but also honest and stern feedback, that's not typically the way that people often describe certain types of self-compassion. Um, self-compassion is often described as more genuinely accepting of, of yourself as a human being. And, and i- it's great, great data associated with it, but I do think there is a case for the, the tough coach, so to speak, right? The, the, the drill sergeant that's gonna also, when necessary, be straight with you about something that isn't working out. And there's a question of how to balance that.

   9. CWChris Williamson50:07

      Isn't it the case that anything that you are exposed to a lot, you become desensitized to, right? Like, when everything's racist, nothing's racist, but when everything that you do sucks, nothing that you do su- It's ... You need to balance that. You know, if we have this super negative mindset and you're never happy with any of the outcomes or the outputs that you've done, it's very, very difficult for you to then ... Uh, where do you go from there?

   10. EKEthan Kross50:29

       Well, i- it doesn't always happen. The, the, the, uh, the, the habituation, I think, is what you were saying. You just kinda get ... You know, if you, if you seen once ... If you see a snake 100 times, it's not like the first time. In fact, though, um, sometimes where we get stuck is we don't actually habituate. We, we, we remain sensitive to the negative stuff. And, and that's in part, I think, where people get in trouble, right, is because we are so adept at finding new ways to freak ourselves out-

   11. CWChris Williamson51:01

       (laughs)

   12. EKEthan Kross51:01

       Like, we're really, really good at it, right? Like, you'd think ... Chris, how many times have you worried or ruminated about something in your life and learned that that outcome didn't happen?

   13. CWChris Williamson51:11

       Oh, it's 99% of the time.

   14. EKEthan Kross51:14

       Yet, you've continued to do it, and that speaks-

   15. CWChris Williamson51:17

       And it continues to trigger me.

   16. EKEthan Kross51:19

       And it continues to trigger. Exactly. That speaks to the flexibility (laughs) of the mind and our ability to just keep on making ourselves, um-

   17. CWChris Williamson51:27

       It's resilient against learning. Yes.

   18. EKEthan Kross51:29

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson51:29

       It's impressively resilient against learning.

   20. EKEthan Kross51:31

       And that's where the ability to take that step back and look at what we're going through from a different point of view can be really, really helpful, right? Because we just go down these scripts of churning stuff over and over and over again. Not productive. But when you step back and look at the bigger picture, think about it like, you know, you'd tell someone else, or, you know, um, write a story or talk to someone who can help you put it in perspective. Those are different ways of attacking a problem that can change a trajectory.

10. 52:02 – 1:01:45

    Tips to Control the Inner Voice

    1. EKEthan Kross52:02

    2. CWChris Williamson52:02

       That, uh, third-person language distancing, is there anything else to add onto that, to augment with that? Is there anything we haven't said so that people can use that strategy?

    3. EKEthan Kross52:11

       Yeah, there are lots. Let me give you a rapid fire. Um, so there's no one distancing strategy that exists. Turns out, there are many, many different ways of, um, stepping back, looking at the bigger picture, and thinking about ourselves from a less immersed, more detached point of view. Uh, another common distancing strategy that, uh, has a lot of science behind it, I use it myself, is called temporal distancing. Distancing through time. So, this is a tool I use, um, every time I wake up in the middle of the night with some chatter. It happens every four to six weeks. It's like, I'm wide awake. "Oh my god. How is that gonna ha- Uh, what am I gonna do?" You know, three seconds later, I'm visualing myself, visualizing myself either in jail or the hospital.

    4. CWChris Williamson52:55

       (laughs)

    5. EKEthan Kross52:56

       It's not good. Temporal distancing. Think about how you're gonna feel about whatever you're struggling with the next day or the next week or six months from now. What we have ... What we all know from just living life is that lots of emotional experiences, they come, but they eventually go. They subside. But when you are in the midst of, of, of experiencing chatter, we lose sight of that. So, reminding yourself of the fact that, "Hey, I'm gonna feel better about this in the morning. I'm gonna be able to manage this in the morning," that, that does something really powerful for a chatter-prone mind. It, it highlights the instability of what we're going through. It's saying, "Hey, there is, there is hope." And that, that takes the edge off in a way that can be quite, quite helpful. Super simple thing to do. I mean, this is another thing that excites me so much about a lot of the tools I talk about. There ... A lot of complex science went into their identification and validation, but they're easy to implement. And, and the reason that I like that is, the easier things are to do, the more likely people are gonna be to do them. So, I have made a plan in my head, if I wake up at 2:00 AM, then I'm gonna use temporal distancing. I've rehearsed that plan, and now it's on autopilot. I do it instantly and I don't freak out as a result. So, that's another distancing strategy. Another one that plays on the visual modality is, if you're seeing a sce- if you're replaying a, um, a scene over and over in your head, uh, adopt a fly-on-the-wall perspective. See yourself in the event, like you were looking at someone else, and try to make sense of why that person you're looking ... Why are they acting the way they are? That's another distancing tool. Um, journaling, that, that can also help. That also activates distance. Talking to other people can be really helpful if you choose the right people to talk to, someone who's adept at not only connecting with you empathically using, you know, hopefully not the stroke victims you were referring to before, um, but then also people who don't just get you to rehash what you're going through, but people who then ...... help you broaden your perspective, right? A lot of us think that the way to give good support, to get good support and give it, is to just vent our emotions. What we know about venting is venting, venting can be really good for strengthening the friendship or relational bonds between people. It's good to know that, you know, Chris, we're connected now and you're here for me. But if all I do is vent to you about something, I leave that conversation, I feel good about our relationship, but I'm just as upset as I was when I started talking.

    6. CWChris Williamson55:39

       How- how do you define venting?

    7. EKEthan Kross55:41

       Just unloading, rehearsing what happened to you and what f- what you felt without trying to shift towards some cognitive change what- some way of making sense of the experience.

    8. CWChris Williamson55:51

       What's the step to go from then? Someone catches themselves venting, what do they do?

    9. EKEthan Kross55:56

       So what- if you're- let's say you're in the role of being my chatter advisor, my coach. What you want to do is you wanna, you wanna learn about what I'm going through. Um, well, let's back up a second. People have two needs that they're trying to fulfill when they go to someone else for support. They have social/emotional needs. They want to feel validated and connected with someone else. But they also have cognitive needs. They need to make sense of this problem they're dealing with in a way that lets them move on with their lives. And ideally, the person you're talking to helps address both of those needs. How do they do that? First thing you do is you genuinely, empathically learn about what happened to the other person. "So Chris, tell me what happened with that last podcast guest." "Really?" They- they say, "That sounds terrible." "How did you feel?" You know, learn a little bit about it. And then when you sense that the time is right, then you want to start shifting the conversation to move towards solutions and alternative ways of thinking. So, "Well, you've dealt with that kind of guest before, Chris, how have you dealt with it in the past? What have you done?" Or, "I've been in that situation. Here's what I've done." Or, "Well, you know what? Big picture, this is what I'm guesstimate." So lots of different ways you can broaden the person's perspective. Now, there is an art to doing this well, and what I mean by that is, depending on the person you're talking to and what they're dealing with, some people will need to spend more time sharing their emotions before they're ready to transition into having their perspective being broadened. So you, you wanna feel that out. So if my wife comes to me with some chatter she wants to talk about, I'll stop, I'll listen, and then I'll ask her, "Hey, I totally get it. I have a thought. Can I share it?" Sometimes she'll say, "No, keep listening." Other times she'll be like, "Please tell me." So, so that's the art of being a good chatter advisor.

    10. CWChris Williamson57:46

        I like the fact that you have asked the question, um, what kind of, what do you want from me at this stage? Like, are you done feeling validated by me hearing what you have to say? Or do you want a solution? I had a, a psychotherapist on the show last year, Adam Lane-Smith, and he was talking about the fact that, um, men and women deal with their problems in two completely different languages. That women, he said, on average, appear to want to feel like they have been heard, like they've been validated, like their emotions are understood. And- and what men are trying to do from the second that this begins is, "What's the problem? How can I fix it?" Like, men are interested in things, women are interested in people. And the reverse happens as well. You mentioned about how male and female depression gets treated too, that female depression is treated by making them feel safe, like they belong, like they're loved. And, and he's like, men don't necessarily want that. They want to feel like they have a purpose and the ability to achieve it.

    11. EKEthan Kross58:41

        Well, you know, I would say that there is some variability. Um, so there is some research which shows that, so both of these needs, these social and cognitive needs, um, these are, these are needs that both men and women possess. But, um, but there is, you know, so, so actually some of this research, this was groundbreaking research done by a, um, a Dutch psychologist. No, a Belgian psychologist. I'm in big trouble now. Um, we'll scrap that. A Belgian psychologist named Bernard Rimait and, um, and he actually tackled this question of, is it the case that women just want the emotional stuff and men the cognitive? And in fact, he found that there was much more similarity than, than differences. So I think there's certainly those archetypes that exist. But I can tell you, I've got, I've got, you know, buddies call me all the time, men, and they often want to vent a little bit. And I have to remind them, "All right, venting, you ready for the cognitive stuff or you want to keep..." And so, so I think there's a lot of variability there.

    12. CWChris Williamson59:44

        I think you're right.

    13. EKEthan Kross59:45

        Um, but, um, so other people can be a remarkable tool, but I think a lot of us get it wrong. Um, this is myself included before I knew about this work. I think a lot of us think the way to help is to just do one or the other. Just listen or just advise. In fact, it's a blend. But you asked me about other distancing tools. Let me tell you about one more. Um, it comes from the environment. I think it's super cool. It involves experiencing the emotion of awe, which is an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something vast and indescribable. And you can get this awe experience from lots of places. Like, some people get it from, um, exerc- exercising outside or like going for a walk in the park. Some people get it from imagining their, you know, witnessing their kids doing some amazing thing. Um, I get it from, um, well, I get it from many places, but the last big one for me was watching the spaceship land on Mars. Like just contemplating, back to aliens, right? Like my god, we figured out how to travel between planets. Like that's amazing. And so what happens to your chatter when you experience awe is something equally remarkable. Awe leads to something called a shrinking of the self. We feel smaller when we're contemplating something vast and indescribable. And when we feel smaller, so does our chatter. So to make that concrete-... you know, I could have... I, I wrote an email earlier today that might have been interpreted the wrong way, and I could be lost in that thought loop about, "Oh, my God, what if they thought about this email?" Or I could be thinking about the fact that there are people who've figured out how to land a spa- a, a, an SUV-sized vehicle on another planet, and then have a livestream back to us. Like, come on, man. Put your problems in perspective. And I did a little distance self-talk there, just to slip it in as well.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:01:42

        Very nice. I like that.

    15. EKEthan Kross1:01:44

        Yeah. Yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:01:44

        Is there any science

11. 1:01:45 – 1:04:00

    Positive Affirmations

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

       behind positive affirmations?

    2. EKEthan Kross1:01:48

       There's a lot of science between- behind positive affirmations, and it turns out that it is, um, it's complicated. Um, positive-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:01:56

       Were you about to say bullshit? (laughs)

    4. EKEthan Kross1:01:58

       No. No, no, no, no.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:01:59

       Okay. (laughs) Okay, okay.

    6. EKEthan Kross1:01:59

       No. No. No, self-affirmations can be, can be useful in certain contexts, but, but they're not a panacea. Um, and so they're not going to, um, be... You know, I, I, I think in general, one theme of my book, of my work, is there are no magic pills. And, and I don't think that's something to be, um, upset about. I think it is doing us, as a, a species, a disservice to think that these complex minds that we possess can all be just turned on or off, if you will, with respect to chatter, by doing one thing or another. It's a lot more complicated than that, and I think, you know, self-affirmations can help along with other tools.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:02:44

       What situation is positive affirmations useful for?

    8. EKEthan Kross1:02:50

       Um, that's a good question. Um, if it's a temporary kind of stressor that you're experiencing, something that is not gonna be a recurrent source of distress, somewhere where you need a little bit of ego in- inflation, that would be, uh, a good, a good instance to try that out.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:03:10

       Rose Namajunas, who is, or was, the, uh, UFC f- strawweight females champion up until Saturday, when she had the most boring fight in the history of the UFC, uh, she walks out to the, um, octagon saying, "I'm the best, I'm the best, I'm the best." She says that over and over.

    10. EKEthan Kross1:03:28

        Hmm.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:03:28

        And sadly, that absolutely didn't come through in her performance, uh, on Saturday. But that, that I was interested by would it be better if she was saying, "Rose is the best"? Um, that would have been an interesting, an interesting ...

    12. EKEthan Kross1:03:41

        You want some? Well, I mean, I, I, I def- I will say e- every... Before I do any, um, you know, big, big high stakes presentation, it's, "You've got this, man. You've got this." It's third person. It's, it's me channeling my high school wrestling coach and what he would say to me before a big match.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:03:58

        Dope. I love that. So

12. 1:04:00 – 1:10:46

    Ethan’s Highest Impact Strategies

    1. CWChris Williamson1:04:00

       there's a ton of different strategies that you've got. We've gone through some of the distancing ones. What are, in your opinion, the highest impact strategies that people can do, that we haven't gone through so far?

    2. EKEthan Kross1:04:12

       That we haven't gone through? Um, rituals, those are really useful ones. So many people report engaging in rituals, which are these rigid sequences of behaviors that are infused with meaning when they're stressed out, uh, or in high-performance contexts. And there's research showing that they can be very beneficial. They provide people with, um, a sense of order and control, which is often lacking when we're experiencing chatter. They're often o- um, intentionally demanding, so they draw our, our attention away from our chatter. Um, so try a ritual. It can be something your culture gives you or something you make up yourself. You just don't want to become too beholden to the ritual, where a ritual can get out of hand, is when-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:04:54

       Rolls into superstition, doesn't it?

    4. EKEthan Kross1:04:56

       Well, yeah. You know, and a little bit of superstition's okay also, a little bit, but when it becomes something that you can't... that, that interferes with, with your ability to, like, live a, quote-unquote, "relatively normal life" in the sense that if you don't do this, you need to stop and go back to do it, because things... then it's becoming more problematic. Um, so rituals are another good one. Um, creating order around you, uh, operates by a similar principle. I tend not to be very organized. Um, in my home, you wouldn't know it from the background, but typically, if you... if I turn my computer to the side, you would see mountains of papers and books. And, um... but when I have chatter, uh, this place is just in tip-top perfect shape. Same principle here. When you're experiencing chatter, you feel like things are out of control. They're not ordered in your mind. Your thoughts are racing, pinballing back and forth. You can compensate for the lack of order you feel in your mind by creating order around you. And so that's another tool, very easy to use.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:06:01

       Is that compensatory control? Is that what that is?

    6. EKEthan Kross1:06:03

       Yes, that's compen- comp- compensatory control. It's, uh, it's one way that, uh, rituals as well as organizing, uh, can help people. Um, uh, nature, exposure to green spaces. Um, lots of compelling data showing that that can have restorative effects. So we know chatter consumes our attention. Try reading a book when you're worried about something. Good luck. Right? You read the pa- the words, but you don't remember anything you've read. It's because the chatter's consuming your attention. Um, turns out nature, green spaces, uh, are like an Energizer battery for your attention. They help restore it. And the way this works is, when you go for a walk in a green space, you're surrounded by... Well, I should say, a safe green space, not a place where, um, either people or animals are gonna come and get you. But if you go for a walk in a nice park or a tree-lined street, you're surrounded by really interesting, pleasant-looking things that gently draw your attention, ah, the, the trees and the shrubs. And you're not really carefully studying the geometrical structure of the leaves. Maybe you are, but-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:07:13

       Oh, one second, mate. Uh, can you come back in about one hour, please?One hour, uno. Hora. Gracias. Okay. (Spanish) Just what... Yeah, no. No, no, no. If you- (Spanish) One hour? One hora?

    8. EKEthan Kross1:07:28

       Una, una hora.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:07:29

       Una hora? Okay. (Spanish) Gracias. See, that, that is repurposing you through me through the headphones into Guatemala. Cheers, mate. What were you saying? We're in nature.

    10. EKEthan Kross1:07:40

        Um, nature can, can help restore our attention. And the way it works is, uh, when you're in nature, you're surrounded by interesting things that, that gently draw your attention away, and... (laughs) And, uh, so funny. (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:07:59

        (laughs) For the people that are just listening, the, um, the lady that's come to try and clean my, um, hotel room has decided that not only did I want her in one hour to come back and do the room, but I also wanted one agua, una agua.

    12. EKEthan Kross1:08:12

        (laughs)

    13. CWChris Williamson1:08:12

        So, she's just delivered me a bottle of water right to the desk. (laughs)

    14. EKEthan Kross1:08:19

        Hey, you asked for it, man.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:08:20

        O- I... Yeah, but I didn't mean to.

    16. EKEthan Kross1:08:22

        Yeah, it's funny.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:08:22

        Bloody hell. Okay. Yeah. Nature... Um, another thing. Here's something that I learned about actually the other day. Um, I, I read that looking at the sky through a tree, through tree branches, there's some, um, restorative effect for our brain because of the, the crisscrossing pattern of the branches, that typically in nature we wouldn't see straight lines, you know, like the edges of buildings-

    18. EKEthan Kross1:08:48

        Yeah.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:08:48

        ... and stuff like that.

    20. EKEthan Kross1:08:49

        Yeah. There's some fas- So, there's this- some fascinating work. This is, um-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:08:51

        Is that... No, bro. I haven't, I haven't pulled that out of my ass? Is that, is that legit?

    22. EKEthan Kross1:08:54

        No, there's actually, there's actually work that's looked at-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:08:57

        Yes! Yes! I knew it.

    24. EKEthan Kross1:08:59

        ... um, that, um... So some of this work actually has really tried to drill down into the ingredients that explain how nature helps us and looking at, does it have to do with the irregular... There, there are few straight lines in nature, so there are curved edges and, uh, ragged, you know, jagged edges. And all of that kind of gently draws our attention towards it in ways that, that can be helpful. So, no, very, very good find. You're reading widely. Uh, interestingly enough, it's not just res- these... The way that nature helps us isn't restricted to the visual modality. There's also work showing that natural sounds, like hearing the chirping and the, you know, the, the leaves crinkling in the fall, all of that also has that restorative, um, benefit as well. So-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:09:49

        What do you, what do you mean when you say restorative?

    26. EKEthan Kross1:09:52

        Restorative. So, attention is limited. We only have so much of it. And oftentimes, we need our attention in order to manage our chatter, right? We've gotta think, like, think differently about what we're going through, reroute the, the, the dialogue. Well, if we have no attention, it could be hard with the no energy, if you will, mental energy, to engage in those cognitive exercises. It's, it's, it's really challenging. I mean, that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to deal with chatter in the middle of the night, because your brain or parts of your brain are effectively asleep being recharged, right? So, you don't have access to those attentional resources that you would during the day. So, if chatter is wiping out your attention, then it stands to reason that if you could get some replenishment, that should help you. And that's what the nature work shows.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:10:45

        What are some of the

13. 1:10:46 – 1:15:21

    How to Know if You’re Lost in ‘Chatter’

    1. CWChris Williamson1:10:46

       triggers that you use or that you advise so that people can become aware when they've been lost in chatter? This to me seems like sort of the, the first mover. It's like the first step in this.

    2. EKEthan Kross1:10:58

       Yeah. Step one is, um, knowing what chatter is. Having a vocabulary for understanding what's happening to you, I, I think is incredibly important. Rumination is chatter about the past, worry is chatter about the future. But fundamentally, if you find yourself in a thought loop trying to work through a- some kind of problem, but not making any progress, that's an indicator that you're experiencing it. Step two is to recognize that there's actually things you can do to manage that chatter. I, I find it remarkable how many people think... don't realize that they have agency in this situation, that there are actually things they can do. There's this one study looked at, um, teens and asked teens how much, um, you know, are you able to control your emotions as- essentially. 40% thought that they couldn't. 40%. So, what happens if you don't think you can control something? You're not gonna take any steps to actually try to do it. So, having the expectation that you can in fact manage your chatter, I think is enormously important. That's step two. Uh, step three is familiarizing yourself with the tools. Um, there are lots of them. And, um, you gotta know what they are if, if, you know, to give them a shot. It's like if you wanna train your physique, you gotta know what are the exercises that you use to get in shape, right? Y- you can just stare at the machines all you want. If you don't know how to use them, nothing is gonna happen. And then the final step is to start doing some experimenting with the tools. What science has done a really good job at doing is identifying the tools, profiling how they work in a very careful, fine-grained way. What we have not yet done, we're s- we're starting to do it now. We... It's gonna be a while. We haven't figured out how to prescribe sets of tools to different people. Like, Chris, you come to me with a problem, the sock dilemma, it could be the chapter of my next book, the opening story. I don't know how to give you si- the... Like, I can't give you six tools to deal with the sock fiasco and then give my buddy Fred three different ones for the, you know-... flower episode that they're dealing with, right? We don't have that level of understanding of how different tools interact for different people in different situations. So while we're waiting to do that science, the invitation I like to give everyone is to start self-experimenting on your own. I've identified, like, four to six tools that work really well for me. Like, the moment I detect The Chatter brewing, I implement those tools usually, it nips it in the bud. But those, those sets of tools that work well for me, they're different from the ones my wife uses. She uses three or four other ones, and that's okay. So start that self-experimentation process.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:13:46

       How can people deal with the frustration when someone falls prey to chatter that they think that they've supposedly been working on and trying to improve? There's this sort of second order self-referential, "You were supposed to be past this. You shouldn't be at the mercy of this," blah, blah, blah.

    4. EKEthan Kross1:14:07

       Well, um, that's a good question. Um, what I would suggest is, is remind yourself that you're not alone. I think normalizing these experiences can often be really powerful. And what's, what's, uh, been really astounding to me over the past couple of years, having a chance to talk about this work, um, with lots of people who have achieved some level of success is the remarkable frequency with which they all struggle with these kinds of experiences at times in their lives. Like, I have yet to meet someone who doesn't struggle with chatter to some degree in their lives. I think it's part of being human, and so if your chatter happens to deal with the same thing that you thought you've conquered before, so what? You know, give it another go and, uh, and, and, you know, try to get it under control. I think beating ourselves up excessively about things doesn't do much good. Being a little critical with ourselves for short periods of time when we screw up, that can be useful, but beyond that initial, "Hey, you messed up. Now, let's figure out how to do better," beyond that, you don't want to get stuck there.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:15:19

       Eathan Kross, ladies and gentlemen. If people

14. 1:15:21 – 1:16:13

    Where to Find Ethan

    1. CWChris Williamson1:15:21

       want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do, where should they find you online?

    2. EKEthan Kross1:15:25

       Www.ethankross, with a K-R-O-S-S, .com is the best way to find me, and I'm on social media, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:15:35

       Dude, I really appreciate your work. I think it's great. I think the, um, defeating the learned helplessness that people have inside of their own minds is, is a really important piece of work, and I'm, I'm super excited to see what you come up with over the next few years.

    4. EKEthan Kross1:15:48

       Thanks so much for having me. Really fun, stimulating conversation and, uh, looking forward to having some more down the road.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:15:54

       What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks, and don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:16:13