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  • I think chatter is one of the big problems we face as a species.

  • We spend between one-third and one-half of our waking hours not living in the present.

  • And what do we do during that time?

  • We're talking to ourselves.

  • Your inner voice is your ability to silently use language to reflect on your life.

  • Chatter refers to the dark side of the inner voice.

  • When we turn our attention inward to make sense of our problems, we don't end up finding solutions.

  • We end up ruminating, worrying, catastrophizing.

  • We get stuck in a negative cycle that takes this remarkable tool that we possess, this inner voice,

  • and it turns it into a curse rather than a blessing.

  • My name's Ethan Kross,

  • I'm a professor of psychology and management,

  • and I'm the author of the book, "Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It."

  • In terms of whether there's an evolutionary purpose to the inner voice,

  • many scientists believe that language is a tool that helps us navigate the world,

  • and our ability to use language not only to communicate with others,

  • but to communicate with ourselves, provides us with a survival advantage.

  • It's an incredible problem-solving device.

  • At the most basic end of the spectrum,

  • our inner voice is part of what we call our 'Verbal Working Memory System.'

  • It's a basic feature of the human mind that helps us keep verbal information active in our heads.

  • Our inner voice also lets us simulate and plan.

  • So before a big presentation,

  • I'll go over in my head what I'm gonna say, what are the different talking points that I'm gonna run through-

  • I'll hear what questions the audience is gonna ask me,

  • and then I'll respond in turn.

  • I'm simulating that exchange, and I'm using my inner voice to help me do that.

  • Our inner voice helps us control ourselves.

  • Think about the last time you may have wanted to reach for a treat late at night,

  • but then you think to yourself,

  • "Don't do it. You'll regret it in the morning."

  • That's your inner voice.

  • And then finally, the inner voice helps us "storify" our lives.

  • Many of us turn our attention inward to come up with some narrative that explains our experiences

  • in ways that give shape to our understanding of who we are, our identity.

  • So sometimes this inner voice can be an incredible source of help,

  • but at other times it can really sink us.

  • First, it makes it incredibly hard for us to focus.

  • Chatter consumes our attention.

  • Chatter can also create friction in your relationships

  • because you're talking about your problems over and over again,

  • and not being a great listener to others.

  • It can also make us more irritable, and lead to something called 'displaced aggression.'

  • Finally, we know that chatter can have severe, negative, physical health effects.

  • You've probably heard that stress kills-

  • that's not exactly true.

  • A stress response is a really adaptive response.

  • What makes stress toxic is when it remains chronically-elevated over time.

  • This is precisely what chatter does.

  • We experience a stressor in our life.

  • It then ends, but in our minds our chatter perpetuates it.

  • We keep thinking about that event over and over and over again.

  • And that keeps that stress response active in ways that can predict things

  • like cardiovascular disease, chronic inflammation, and even cancer.

  • It's hard to overstate how negative the implications of chatter can be.

  • The good news is there is a science-based toolkit that you can use to regain control of your inner voice.

  • There are things we can do on our own,

  • ways of harnessing our relationships with other people,

  • and even ways of interacting with physical environments.

  • One really great example of these tools are rituals.

  • We love having control.

  • When you experience chatter, you often feel like your thoughts are in control of you.

  • One of the things that we've learned through science

  • is that we can compensate for this feeling out of control

  • by creating order around us- rituals are one way to do that.

  • A ritual is an ordered sequence of behaviors that you rigidly perform the same way each time

  • by engaging the same sequence of behaviors every time the same way.

  • That's giving you a sense of order and control.

  • That can feel really good when you're mired in chatter.

  • The tennis great, Rafael Nadal,

  • he said the hardest thing that he struggles to do on the tennis court is manage the voices inside his head.

  • He engages in rituals.

  • During breaks between play he goes over to his bench.

  • First, he takes a sip out of one water bottle.

  • Then he takes a sip out of another.

  • Then he puts each water bottle back exactly where he picked them up from on a diagonal to the court.

  • It's a ritual he does to manage his chatter.

  • There are no individual tools that work for all people in all situations to help manage your chatter.

  • Instead, the real challenge is to figure out

  • what are the unique combinations of tools that work best for you?

  • Are you weaker for experiencing chatter?

  • Absolutely not.

  • You are human for experiencing chatter,

  • so welcome to the human condition.

I think chatter is one of the big problems we face as a species.

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