When we think about negative experiences, past or future, we often have a mental snapshot of that event in our mind. People can essentially take a step back in their own imagination and see themselves in the experience. That's another way of of breaking yourself out of that very immersed state and thinking about your experience from a more objective standpoint. And t actually often goes hand in hand with linguistic distancing or the distance talk.
Ethan Kross is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. He is an award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and the Ross School of Business and also the Director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. In addition to countless television appearances, Ethan’s research has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and many others.
In this episode, Ethan and Eric talk about his book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness It.
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Ethan Kross and I Discuss How to Harness the Chatter in Our Head and…
- His book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness It
- How we have both emotional and cognitive needs when dealing with the “chatter” in our heads
- Common triggers for internal chatter are uncertainty and lack of control
- The three main categories of tools to work with chatter
- Learning to zoom out and broaden our perspective
- Distance self-talk is talking to yourself like you’d talk to another person
- Temporal distancing (mental time travel)
- Expressive writing about negative experiences
- Using your imagination to replay a past experience to gain objectivity
- Harnessing our internal chatter rather than silencing it
- How to think about thinking and what we can and cannot control
- Being aware of how easy some of these tools are to implement
- Creating if/then plans increases the likelihood you’ll remember to use the tools
- Environmental tools and the benefits of getting outside in nature
- How cleaning and organizing our physical space impacts our mental state
Ethan Kross Links:
Ethan’s Website
Twitter
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If you enjoyed this conversation with Ethan Kross, you might also enjoy these other episodes:
Overthinking and Internal Soundtracks with Jon Acuff
Scott Gornto
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