Over the summer, I read ‘Chatter. The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross, after I’d had several conversations about how our inner dialogue can often seem to hijack our thinking.
Our inner voice, which Kross describes as a “Swiss army knife of the human mind,” is an amazing tool. It helps us store nuggets of information (think of a shopping list that keep in your head when you go to the supermarket) and to make sense of our experience in the world among many other things. And it gives us the ability to have some of the most important conversations – with ourselves.
Chatter by Ethan Cross Front Cover
It's a fabulous tool, helping us to plan ahead and draw on experiences from our past but when this inner dialogue shifts to ‘chatter’ it can feel much less helpful. We can ‘zoom in’ on issues and our world narrows.
But what I’ve discovered is that by understanding more about chatter, how our inner voice can backfire and tools we can draw on to help us use our inner dialogue in a more helpful way, things can be much more positive. We can move from that ‘loop of misery’ into a more comfortable and useful place.
As Kross shares in the book with a wonderful example, getting rid of our inner voice is not where we want to be as that can be disruptive. But, from the tools he shares, there are ways we can harness it.
Kross shares a range of tools that we can choose from to test out and see what works best for us. As with many approaches linked to resilience and wellbeing, it’s very clear from ‘Chatter’ that there isn’t a one size fits all. Multiple tools might work for different people and in different contexts and combinations.
Here are just three of the tools he introduces:
Distance self-talk
Talking about ourselves in the third person and using our name. Using his own experience as an example and also referring to others, like the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Malala Yousafzai, who used her own name to coach herself, shows the power of this approach. It creates an emotional distance and makes you feel as if you’re talking to someone else. We’re great at giving advice to others so putting ourselves in this perspective for ourselves has been shown to be hugely beneficial.
Time travelling and temporal distancing
The human mind has evolved to travel in time, backwards and forwards. I’m preparing to deliver a talk to a client team and in my mind’s eye, I’m imagining how this will play out. I’m thinking about how the presentation will run and anticipating some of the questions I might be asked. If I wake up at 4am worrying that something might go wrong, Kross suggests asking myself, “How will I feel about this ten years from now?” and getting my experience in perspective.
Outside in
Research outlined in the book demonstrates that being in green spaces can have a very positive effect on our brains. As there is so much to notice in nature and so how it prompts the emotion of awe, it can help us get greater perspective – we literally shrink in the face of such wonder. And so does the volume of our chatter.
This is something I’ve seen and experienced this first hand in the work I do with teams around wellbeing, resilience and change.
Reading this book and experimenting with some of the tools that Kross shares could be a great investment of time for helping ourselves and others to prepare for when chatter kicks in.
We are navigating greater change and uncertainty, trying to juggle more balls than ever and burnout and overwhelm seem to be on the increase. Having our own chatter toolkit handy could be very valuable.
If you’d like some help in exploring some of the approaches to supporting your own chatter toolkit or developing this for your team, let me know.