Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I just walked out of the studio here in Boston. I am absolutely blown away by what I just learned about stopping negative self-talk from our guest. You're about to meet him. His name is Dr. Ethan Cross. He's a professor at the University of Michigan, a neuroscientist, and he spent the last 25 years researching how your self-talk determines your experience of life. and how it also impacts what it actually feels like to be you.
Now this is something that I've struggled with and I know you struggle with negative self-talk too. And the people that you care about struggle with it. I mean, I'm so blown away by what you're about to hear and what you're about to learn. I've never heard anyone lay out the exact ways you can stop negative self-talk. In fact, right out of the gate.
He's going to tell you there are four reasons why you and I talk to ourselves. I mean, I didn't know these four reasons. And once you hear it, it's so fascinating and it makes a lot of sense. And then he's going to share that you say 4,000 words a minute to yourself. And just to put that into perspective, that's like reading the first book of Harry Potter series in less than 20 minutes. I mean, that's a lot of words.
And if you're anything like me, 99% of what you're saying is pretty terrible. I'm not good enough. I shouldn't have done this. What if that happens? Never should have sent that text. I promise. You are going to leave this conversation today a different person. Because Professor Cross isn't just bringing the research, he's bringing tools. And he's bringing a lot of them. Professor Cross is going to tell you, you can turn your inner critic into a coach.
He's gonna give you tools so that the next time you find yourself falling down that rabbit hole of rumination and worry, you can throw yourself a lifeline. So if you're ready to stop overthinking and silence that self-doubt and finally take back your power, this is the episode you've been waiting for.
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Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so fired up for our conversation today. I'm so excited that you're here. It is always such an honor to spend time together and to be with you. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I'm thrilled that you're here. And because you made the time to hit play and listen to this particular episode, it tells me something about you.
It tells me that you're the kind of person who wants to take control of your inner voice and you want to learn how to be more encouraging and positive, especially when it comes to yourself. And you know what? I think that's amazing because I want to learn how to do that too. And if you're listening right now or you're watching on YouTube because someone shared this with you, I want to take a minute and point out to you.
That that means that you've got someone in your life that really cares about you. And so thank you for trusting them and thank you for being here. And this is a home run of a podcast episode for you to listen to or watch. Because Dr. Ethan Cross is in the house. He is a psychologist and a neuroscientist, and he's been a pioneering researcher in the field of self-talk and emotions for 25 years. Ethan Cross is also a professor at the University of Michigan, where he's taught for the past 17 years.
He is also the founder and the director of the Research Institute at the University of Michigan, the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory. His work has appeared in esteemed journals like Science and the New England Journal of Medicine. He earned his PhD from Columbia University, and he is also the author of two bestselling books, Chatter, The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. And his latest bestselling book is called Shift. Managing your emotions so they don't manage you.
His books have been translated into over 40 languages, and today he's going to unpack the insights so that you can use this research to stop the negative self-talk. So please help me welcome Dr. Ethan Cross to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Thank you for hopping on a plane and being here in our Boston studios. I cannot wait to dig into your work and your bestselling book, Chatter. And of course, congratulations on your new book, Shift.
It's so exciting to have you here. Well, it's an absolute honor to be here with you. You know, I've been listening to you for quite some time. the compatibility between a lot of what you talk about and what I write about and do research on couldn't be better. So just an honor to be here. Awesome. Well, let's just jump right into it. And here's how I want to start.
I would love to have you, do you want me to call you Professor Cross, Ethan? What do you like? I love Ethan. Okay, Ethan. We're going with Ethan. Yeah. Ethan, I would love to have you speak directly to the person who's here spending time together with us right now and tell them exactly. what they could expect to have been different about their life if they take everything that you're about to teach us about our self-talk, about our emotions, to heart, and they put it to use in our life.
Here's what I hope everyone takes away from this. Okay. Three things. Number one, you'll be able to take your inner critic and turn it into an inner coach. Number two, If you ever find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of rumination and worry, we're going to give you some lifelines to pull yourself out.
So you can actually use your mind to solve your problems rather than just get stuck in them. And then number three, more broadly, we're going to give you lots of really pragmatic tactical tools, simple to use tools. that you can use to really master your emotions. So if you want to turn the volume on them up or down or shorten or lengthen how long they last or even... switch from one emotional state to another. We're going to give you some guideposts that steer you in the right direction.
Wow. So we got our work cut out for us. That's a tall order. Yeah, we better get started. Well, I've read your book, so I know you can deliver on that. You know, you have been at the University of Michigan. You are the founding director and have been running this incredible lab, the Emotion and Self-Control Lab. What has it taught you? What do you want us to know?
The first thing that I've learned over the past 25 or so years doing research in this space is if you ever find yourself going down that vortex of doom and despair or anxiety or even overcome with other negative emotions that don't really feel good in the moment welcome to the human condition we all do at times and i think that's a really important point for people to take home because i can't tell you how many people
I meet who really feel bad about themselves when they find themselves slipping into one of those emotional states. We evolve the capacity to experience negative emotions for a reason. And we'll talk more about that today. When they're experiencing the right proportions, they can be useful. So number one, if you experience worry, rumination, if you find your inner critic activating at times, There's nothing wrong with you. To the contrary, I would argue there's everything right with you.
Number two, there are no one size fits all solutions for managing these states that we want to bring more under our control. We have evolved to possess lots and lots of different tools. And I think the key to managing our emotional lives more effectively It involves learning about what all those tools are and then figuring out what are the unique combinations that work for you. based on who you are as a unique individual. It's a lot like, in my mind, physical fitness.
lots of people have the goal to be physically fit but the way they get there can be radically different compared to other people and the same is true when it comes to if we want to call it emotional fitness you got to learn about all the different machines in the gym And then you've got to figure out what are the exercises that work for me based on who I am and what my goals are.
Well, let's start with going down the rabbit hole. Yeah. Because your first bestselling book, Chatter the Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters and How to Harness It. When is the last time you went down the rabbit hole? Oh, boy. You seem like such a chill guy, like super tortured yourself about worry or negative thoughts. probably maybe a couple of months ago. And it was linked with one of my daughters.
Are you going to get in trouble for telling the story? I'm actively monitoring it. So now he's right out of the rabbit hole. My wife is going to kill me. Yes, no. This is something I'm used to experiencing. No, this is fair to say. So my youngest daughter was applying to get into the same school as my oldest daughter.
When my oldest daughter was applying to get into a school, there was, okay, if it works out great, and if not, no big deal. But now, with the second daughter, there's a social comparison element here.
And, you know, she has this older sister that she looks up to and admires. And so I'm thinking, well, what would happen if she doesn't get in? And she fortunately did get in. And it was a great... relief but i did i did find myself going down the rabbit hole on occasion playing the what if this happens and you know i should say that when i do that when i go down the rabbit hole of despair which i can get stuck in every now and again like like the best of us
It always amazes me how exceptionally adept we are at brainstorming endless worst case scenarios to our problems. I mean, have you experienced this yourself? Every day. Like, I mean, you're like saying a couple of months ago, I'm like, dude, like if you asked me that question, it'd be like about an hour ago. But it is true because we are so good at thinking about the negative.
And imagining the worst case scenarios, but we're not so great at imagining that things would go right. That's right. Well, there's what we call this negativity bias. One of my favorite titles of a paper in psychology is bad is stronger than good. One of our few Nobel Prize winners won a Nobel Prize for discovering that we're more sensitive to losses than we are gains in our lives. And that all makes sense if you think about it. The bad things in life have the potential to harm us.
or derail our lives a lot more than the good things, so we should be more sensitive to them. But sometimes that oversensitivity to the bad stuff can really lead us astray, especially because No one ever teaches us about how to rewrite the ship when we find it going in the wrong path. Well, one of the things that you said that I am excited, as you said, I'm going to teach you how to turn your inner critic.
into a coach and i would love to start with this amazing book chatter and all your research about the voice in our head and i want to read a part of your book to you sure because this was jaw-dropping to me So our verbal stream of thoughts, our self-talk, is so industrious that according to one study, we internally talk to ourselves.
at a rate equivalent to speaking 4,000 words a minute. And to put this into perspective, I crunched the numbers. 4,000 words a minute is the equivalent of reading the first book in the Harry Potter series. In less than 20 minutes. So when we think, we are not always thinking in full sentences. We're thinking in these sound bites that have deep meaning. And when you... spell out what those sound bites are equivalent to. You get essays in your mind.
And I'm sure you've felt this kind of bombardment of information when you find yourself going down that rabbit hole. It's like our mind is pinballing all over the place verbally. And we're just inundated, which is in part why... When we find ourselves kind of wracked with chatter, it can feel so oppressive. This is one of the reasons why writing about our experience is doing something we call expressive writing can be so helpful for folks because it helps us. organize our so that we're not.
pinballing all around. You know, you're right that the key to beating this negative self-talk and this chatter in our head isn't to stop talking to yourself. The challenge is to figure out how to do so more effectively. But before we can get into how to control the voice in our head, we need to answer a more basic question. Why do we have one in the first place? So, Ethan...
What is self-talk, and what exactly is that voice that's in our head that's chattering 4,000 words a minute? So when scientists like myself use this phrase, self-talk, or the inner voice. What we're talking about is our ability to silently use language to reflect on our lives. And it turns out that is a remarkable tool that we possess for navigating this crazy world. So let me flag four key functions.
that this ability to use language silently provides. Number one, we're the same vintage here, age-wise more or less. Be careful. When we were growing up. What would you do when you wanted to remember a phone number or a name?
Well, if I didn't have a pen and couldn't write it down, I would repeat it over and over and over again. In your head. Yes. Yeah. Or I'd come up with rhymes to try to remember it. Right. So that's probably the most basic function that your inner voice serves for us. It's part of what we call... our verbal working memory system. Wait, so that's what...
The basic of your inner voices is to help you remember things? That's one function. So you can think of your inner voice as like a Swiss army knife. multi-purpose tool that does many different things for you. And oftentimes death by a thousand cuts. We're going to get there. Okay. We're going to get there. Don't you worry. So number one, memorizing a phone number, repeating a phone number, repeating a name.
going to the grocery store and asking yourself, what was I supposed to buy? Milk, cheese, yogurt. I guess I'm in the dairy aisle. But the whole point here is you're doing that silently, typically not out loud. That's one thing your inner voice lets you do. Another thing your inner voice lets you do
simulate and plan. So before, well, you do a lot of presentations as part of your job. You ever go over what you're going to say before you go on stage in your head? Always. Okay, that's your inner voice. You are silently rehearsing, preparing, simulating for what you need to do you know what else you said i just realized when i'm packing for a trip i'm like thinking ahead to where i'm going and what i'm going to need there you go you're simulating and planning people do this before
interviews before consequential conversations that they are going to have. I am not as good at giving a presentation if I don't do this simulation beforehand. My favorite function, so the name of my lab at University of Michigan is the Michigan Emotion and Self-Control Lab. I love the topic of self-control. we use our inner voice to control and motivate ourselves. So, all right, so Mel, tell me, what do you do to exercise?
Oh. Keep going. Keep going. Because of some of the experts we've had on the show, I now lift weights. Okay. I walk. I do yoga and Pilates. Okay. I have like a super active lifestyle outside, but if I'm quote exercising, I have to drag myself to the gym and then I use an app. to motivate myself. And that's what I do. Do you ever talk to yourself when you're exercising? All the time. Like I did this morning in a class. Tell us. I freaking hate this. Why are we on?
our hands. I don't want to do a pike right now. I feel like I'm in a gym class with a woman who's talking like this and who's like screaming at me like... screaming and why is she playing acd at 6 30 in the morning i thought this was a freaking pilates class yeah like so it was literally like i'm saying that to myself
As she would walk closer, I would think, get away from me. Or I'm thinking, this is too heavy. I'm tired. I want to quit. See, clearly I don't have a lot of willpower and discipline because my chatter is... A constant barrage of why I should stop doing what I'm actually doing. We have room for intervention here. Do we? We have tons of room. If you're already doing fine in the gym, we're going to make you do a lot better by the time this episode is over.
That's another thing. If you're listening, you're going to take home with you. It's possible if you are constantly against yourself. absolutely you can you can change your self-talk so so but if we just go back to a second This is one of my favorite questions to ask people when I'm giving talks on this stuff. I just kind of scan the room for what do you say to yourself when you're exercising? Lots of people talk to themselves and what they say varies tremendously from what.
You just described her, come on, you got this, to I really want a bagel right now, and so on and so forth. And we know that people who are skilled at harnessing this voice to be motivating and encouraging, they actually perform better in those contexts. So I, knowing this stuff,
I'm very strategic about how I harness my self-talk when I'm exercising. I will be motivating. Come on, man, you've got this. That's right. I refer to myself in the second and third person. We'll talk more about how that works. I also can become... somewhat in my head, aggressive towards the instructor that is telling me to do painful things. Oh, like the woman that I was like. Yeah, like you were just describing. So for me, I find, well, why don't you try doing that?
You know, like, I don't like the way you're talking to me. I want to do it this way. I don't say that out loud. I smile out loud. But in my head. right? I'm having that kind of conversation. So the point here is another thing your inner voice helps you do is control and motivate yourself. The fourth and final thing I want to flag here. To me, I describe this as the most magical feature of our inner voice.
Your inner voice helps us make sense of this messy world that we live in. We are bombarded by things all the time that have the potential to lead us astray. We get rejected. We get into arguments. We experience anxiety about what may come. And when those different kinds of curveballs get thrown at us, what we do is we often stop.
And we try to, okay, how do we make sense of this so we can get back on track of living our lives? And we make meaning, we use our inner voice to try to make sense of our circumstances, to essentially create a story. That helps us understand what we're going through and who we are. So your inner voice is actually shaping your sense of self. So if we just pause here and zoom out.
Your inner voice helps you do things as simple as reminding yourself what's on your grocery list and memorizing a phone number when you're repeating in your head. to simulating and planning for the future, to controlling and motivating yourself, to making meaning. If I told someone I can give you a tool that does all those things, like these are the things that are really important to us in life. Your inner voice is central to all of those things. It's an invaluable tool.
that you do not want to live life without. The big question, of course, that really got me into this business in the first place was, on the one hand, we have this remarkable capability. We reach for it when we're struggling, but as you know, as I know, as you who are listening knows, oftentimes we don't activate this voice and get clear solutions to how to move on.
we just start stumbling. We start looping over our problems in an attempt to work through them or we start berating ourselves incessantly for mistakes that are endemic to human life.
And when that happens, I think that is one of the big problems we face as a species. And as I have said before, I say that not to scare or sensationalize. I say it based on what I know of the data, because if you look at what... chatter, which I define as the negative manifestation of your inner voice, when it turns into that negative thought looping, that self-peratement.
That just tanks us. It makes it hard for us to think and perform. It creates friction in our relationships. And it undermines our health and well-being. These are the things we care about in our lives. And so that's why I think it's just critical to address it. I have never heard anybody explain self-talk and that inner voice. so elegantly and in a way that I actually get it. Well, thank you. I mean, it is truly remarkable when you take a 30,000 foot view and think about
What does our chatter look like? What does it sound like? We say things to ourselves that many people not only wouldn't say to a buddy. We often talk about that. Talk to yourself like you would talk to someone else. This is a great tool, by the way. We'll talk more about that later. We sometimes say things to ourselves that We are ashamed to even say out loud. Sometimes when I do exercises, workshops with groups or students, I'll sometimes invite people to just write down their chat.
on a piece of paper. And it's really remarkable. People are often reluctant to even put in writing what they're thinking, even when I assure them. Like, the shredder's right here. There's another garbage bag with lighter fluid. Like, not bag. Garbage can, right? I'm joking here, but no one is going to look at this. Right. Admitting to what is happening up here can be so challenging for folks, and I think that speaks to the gravity. of what we're talking about
What are some of the examples of negative self-talk that just show up again and again? I think hearing it from you would really validate it for me and for the person who's with us right now because if we don't... If we're reluctant to even be honest with ourselves and put it on paper, what can you validate based on the fact that this is your area of expertise? It's what your research that you see over and over and over again. that are examples of negative self-talk.
There are three key forms. Number one, what I call rumination, which is going over the past. Something you did in the past, you can't fix it, right? But you just keep turning it over and over in your mind. Why did I do this? Why didn't I do it that way? What implications might this have moving forward? So rumination is getting lost in this thought. It's a legitimate issue from the past.
and you're trying to work through it, but you just keep turning it over and over. You're not making any progress. That's often a telltale sign of chatter. Legitimate issue. You want to work through it, but you don't make progress. So it could be like, just to give it even a more fine point, it could be that you really screwed up in a relationship and now you're telling yourself the one got away. Yeah. You made dumb financial decisions. This was me. And now why did I do that?
I should have started with my 401k like my father told me when I graduated from college like that. hammering yourself into the ground how did I let myself go I should have like I've just now it's too late I've been drinking like all that kind of stuff that's in the past and why is this such a predominant form of self-talk for people? Well, it's a predominant form because I often think that we navigate life in an ideal sense on autopilot. We just kind of want to live the life.
Knowing that the world is orderly, it's safe, it's predictable. And then when we encounter some challenge to that view that the world is safe, that everything's okay, it's like an alarm gets hit in our brains that says, stop, pay attention, fix it. And so then we zoom in really narrowly on what the impediment is. And so maybe it's something from the past. And we keep focusing on it.
until we can resolve it. Oftentimes though, we don't know how to resolve it. We just keep on playing it over and over in our minds and then the alarm button stays pressed. And we just get into this rut of turning it over and over and over. Some of us don't want to let go of that either. Because at least if we're focusing on it, that's step one. But in the process of doing that...
we're really harming ourselves. We're making it very challenging to think and perform. I mean, have you ever gotten stuck in rumination and then tried to have a conversation with someone or read a book only to find that you're physically there? or you're reading the information on the page, but nothing is penetrating because your mind is somewhere else. Oh, completely. Absolutely. Like if I get into that loop where I am obsessing over something that I think I did wrong.
I can't do anything else. Exactly. So that's thinking and performance, right? Like that is a major, major obstacle to being successful in life. If your ability to really hone your attention now is lost. And the way that works, just if you want to geek out with me for 30 seconds, our ability to focus is limited. We have these limited attentional resources. They are subserved by our prefrontal cortex, the front part of our brains.
And chatter acts like a sponge that soaks up all of those attentional resources. And it leaves very little left over to do the things that we often want and need to do. whether that be just pay attention to the person we're talking to or read the chapter in the book and absorb the information. That's one of the way it really sinks us. So you ask, though, like, how does chatter manifest? Rumination about the past is one.
Another one that will be familiar to everyone in the world or most of us is worry, right? We worry about the future. We think about the what-ifs. We are what-ifs. machines we can easily what if this happens what if that happens and before you know it you know life is over right right and that goes really fast So worrying is getting stuck in these negative thought loops, typically about the present and future. It's a rumination. The first is the past. The second form of self-talk is
getting stuck in a negative loop talking to yourself about the future. What's the third form? The third form that is very common to folks is this self-beratement. This kind of like, you idiot. You know, how could you do this? You're worthless. So this kind of inner critic is another manifestation of it. It can, however, take different forms. So chatter really is this process of just looping.
looping negative information over and over. If you're being super critical about yourself, that's very common. Sometimes it can be just anxiety. right you're you're looping over what if this happens what if this happens and so it's really this looping of negative stuff it's like you keep on getting hit
over and over and over. You said it before, I think you said death by a thousand cuts. Yeah, that's what it can feel like when you just start hammering yourself. And then it's just tiring, right? Like it's exhausting. People often who are experiencing chatter, they report just like being fatigued. And I want to be clear also. Yeah. We all have this capability of experiencing chatter at times, and just because you do doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you again. This is normative.
If it morphs into the extreme state, that is like the volume is super high and it's on for long stretches of time, like more than two weeks, then we get into the more clinical state. But what we're talking about here today is really, this is just true of human beings and how we operate. And again, a big, big part of what I hope to do in talking to you about this and sharing the science is to convey first and foremost that
This is normal. This is just part of this messy world that we live in. We have these tendencies to slip into the states. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. The opportunity, though. is to learn about what you can do to help yourself when you go down this path. If you don't want to stay, stay on it. Ethan, what is the solution? I mean, now that you're exposing all the negative self-talk, is there a simple way to shut it up or a magic wand you can wave in order to just silence?
all of this negative self-talk or is this a much more complicated thing that we need to take on? Well, there's not one simple thing that everyone can do. I don't like that answer. Yes, I'm sure you don't, but I'm going to give you... There goes my negative chatter right out my mouth at you. But I'm going to give you, there are lots of simple things you can do, is the way to think about it. Oh, I like that.
So, yeah, you should. There's a lot of hope. There's a lot. There is, because I feel bummed. I think you should feel good when I tell you that there's not one thing you can do to manage your chatter. because Here's what often happens when you give people one solution. They try it. That one thing doesn't work for them. And now they think, what's wrong with me? Why is this working for everyone else but not me?
We just published some research not too long ago that looked at how people dealt with their anxiety during the COVID pandemic. So we did these large studies. We tracked people over time and every day. We had them rate their COVID anxiety, and we had them indicate which of something like 18 different tools they used. Now, all we wanted to know was, well, what are the tools that are moving the needle? Yeah. So what was really interesting about that study was there was no individual tool.
that moved the needle on people's anxiety was only like when you used a combination of tools. It's like curling biceps didn't do it on its own. You had to do bicep curls, push-ups, and sit-ups, right? Except... for journaling. Journaling was the one tool that alone moved the needle on people's anxiety. However, it was also the most infrequently used tool of all the tools we asked people.
How does that make sense? Yeah, why? It's effortful to sit down for 15 to 20 minutes and actually write. There's also a vulnerability to putting it out there. And so I think... Teaching people about that is really useful, too, because that could be a powerful tool for folks. So do you have a favorite journal prompt that's helpful for starting the process of identifying your negative chatter? What is it? Well, for me, it's like straight out of the pages of the literature. So I tell people to
Write about your deepest thoughts and feelings about whatever it is that's bothering you. Really let yourself go. Don't worry about punctuation or grammar. Write continuously for 15 or 20 minutes. Now, what do we learn from the time we're young about stories? They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So what writing does is it gives these guideposts to help you take this life. jumble of crap in our minds which are making us nuts and we're organizing.
And that's the beauty of what we call expressive writing. So the whole idea here is that we have this remarkable set of tools. that we can leverage to help us work through our chatter. But we need to know what those tools are. And what really mystifies me is we don't get a user's guide. for where to find these tools and a user's guide that teaches us how to use it when we are born into this world. We're born into the world with the ability to experience this chatter.
Or this emotion dysregulation. But no one teaches us. how to use it or how to manage it. Until now. Yeah. And there is hope. There's absolutely hope. What I find it liberating to know that there are so many different tools that I can bring to bear to deal with the different circumstances that I might encounter. My emotional life is... utterly distinct it's like a fingerprint right it's very different from yours and every other human being on this planet
So why would we expect the same single tool to work for every single one of us, given how unique we are? My grandfather was a master carpenter. And I remember distinctly, like when he would show up to a job site, he would show up with this remarkable set of tools, this toolkit, no matter what problem he encountered on the job site, no matter what he needed to do.
He had a tool, a general, you know, he knew how to use these tools and he could reel them to solve the problem. If he showed up with just a hammer, he'd be out of business. And that's how I think about tools. You want to give people those basic tools that exist for pushing our emotions around. And once you have them, you've got a great resource.
I just love how you teach. And what I want to do is just hit the pause button real quick so that we can all just think about what you're sharing so far. And I also want to give you, as you're listening to Ethan, a chance to share this with people that you care about.
Because I think we all need to know how to stop the negative self-talk. And don't go anywhere. Because Ethan is just getting started. There are so many tools that he's going to be sharing with you. Don't go anywhere. He and I will be waiting for you after a short break. Stay with us. we all belong outside we're drawn to Whether it's the recorded sounds of the ocean we doze off to or the succulents that adorn our homes Nature makes all of our lives well better despite all this
We often go about our busy lives removed from it. But the outdoors is closer than we realize. With all trails, you can discover trails nearby. with offline maps and on trail navigation. Download the free app today. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get dedicated support from people who care about your success. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University.
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You'll always look as good as you feel. Upgrade your wardrobe, because when your clothing performs, so do you. Roan, performance apparel fit for progress. New customers get 20% off your first order at Roan.com with code Roan20. Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins. Today you and I have the honor of getting to spend time with and learn from Professor Ethan Cross from the University of Michigan. He is teaching us all about our...
Self-talk and simple ways that we can actually change it. You've got like. I mean, I'm looking at 12 tools that you can use personally. There are tools for getting other people to support you. There's tools for receiving support. Let me start with the first one. Use distance. Self-talk. One way to create distance when you're experiencing chatter involves language.
So, what is distance self-talk and how do I use it when I'm going down the rabbit hole and you know I've actually heard you use this on prior podcasts and you weren't even aware of it no I'm not So can you think about times when you might have coached yourself through a problem using your own name and you?
Oh, you mean like talking, like saying to myself, I'll come on now. Yeah, there you go. That's distance self-talk? You just did distance self-talk. So distance self-talk involves using your name and you. typically silently coach yourself through a problem. You could do it out loud, but if you do it out loud, you want to be aware of who's listening because it violates social norms, not only to talk to ourselves out loud, but use our own name to do it.
We talked before and you've talked before about how much better we are at giving advice to other people than we are taking that advice ourselves. A little factoid there. There's actually a name for that phenomenon that we've studied this in my lab. It's called Solomon's Paradox. Solomon's Paradox? Named after the Bible's King Solomon. Here, I'm going to give you another pop quiz. Don't get nervous. I'm not going to know the answer to this. No, I think you will.
I think you will. So what was King Solomon famous for? I have no idea. Being? A king? Being wise. Oh, being wise. He was a wise guy. So King Solomon, like. Super wise individual. People would travel from all over the world to receive his counsel. But when you look at his own life, he made a slew of terrible... This is true of humanity. Like when I ask audiences, hey, you're much better at giving advice to others and taking that advice yourself, every hand in the room goes up.
When you use distance self-talk, what it's doing is you're using language to automatically shift your perspective, to put you into this. I'm talking to someone else, advice giving mode. Think about the word you. The word you is the verbal equivalent of pointing a finger at someone else. Most of the time we use the word you. Some are thinking about or referring to another person. So when you use the example of being in the gym and one purpose of your self-talk is motivation, and you say,
Come on, Ethan, you got this. That's right. That's an example of using positive, motivating self-talk using this distanced language. That's exactly right. You're putting yourself into this coach advice giving mode. And what did we say earlier? We don't say to our friends the things that we say to ourselves when we get stuck in that chatter. So when you use your own name and you to coach yourself through a problem, it's like it's putting guardrails off.
on your self-talk that prevents you from going down that more negative route. Can you give me a couple examples of just generic positive distance language for somebody that hyper focuses on the mistakes they make or like saying that I'm never going to be good enough. What are some examples of just things people could start to say to themselves? Ethan, all people make mistakes. You've made mistakes before. You've learned from them. And you'll be fine.
Oh, that's nice. That's a nice thing to say to yourself. Rather than, I'm such an idiot. I mentioned before we started filming that I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. And although you may not hear the accent right now, in my mind, when I go into the chatter zone, it's a filthy sometimes inner beratement. And so I'm not doing that when I'm in distant self-talk mode. So give me another positive one. So really what we see happening is you get into this more challenge.
orientation i can manage this i can do it as opposed to being in what we call threat mode i can't manage this i'm gonna screw up so another example would be um one of my favorites from a study was Someone was thinking about having to plan a huge event for someone, and it was really, really stressful. You can do this. You can manage this retirement party for this person and get a great turnout. People are going to come and they're going to love it. You've got this. In my book, I actually...
I share an artifact from Mr. Rogers. Remember Mr. Rogers? He was the... You're sitting in 143 Studios, which was his favorite number. Really? Uh-huh. Wow. There is some cosmic connection that led me to bring this up. So Mr. Rogers, in my mind, is the human equivalent of a warm cup of tea on a rainy afternoon, right? Just kind of soothing.
And there was this moment where he had taken some time off from filming his show, and then he was about to come back, and he was racked with chatter, racked with self-doubt. And he journaled a little bit about it. How can I possibly live up to expectations? I've been gone. I'll never be good enough. And then at a particular moment in that essay, he switches. He starts using distant self-talk essentially.
you've got this, the hour have come, you're going to do a great job, and so forth and so on. It's in the book. And it's just remarkable because you see the entire tenor of a conversation shift. when he goes into this distant self-talk mode. You know, one of the other tools that you talk about
that's very effective at helping you get a handle on the inner critic and this negative chatter that we have is rituals. Can you explain that? Yeah, so rituals and popular culture get a bad rap because we often equate them with certain forms of anxiety. And there are those links that do exist where you have people who are suffering from anxiety conditions become really over-reliant on a ritual to a point where it can be harmful.
But a ritual in the right proportions can be quite helpful. I often call them ancient chatter fighting tools. So if you think about it. Are you religious in any way? Very spiritual person. Okay, very spiritual person. So I'm sure that there are certain spiritual rituals that you've been exposed to. grieving rituals, right? Religions around the world have been like, well, let's just stop for a second. Let's pause for a second. Take the loss of someone.
This is like... a real chatter challenge for a lot of people like their worldview is shattered now how are they going to go on without this person that they love that they care about religions have identified. Hey, that might be a really hard time that people are dealing with. Let's give them a tool to manage that situation. It's a grieving ritual.
So here's what we know about rituals. Rituals are relatively rigid sequences of behaviors that you perform in the same way each time, more or less. They don't necessarily... It's not clear why you... do the things that comprise a ritual. Like if you've ever watched an athlete before a game do a ritual, they do some funky things like, you know, tug on their earlobe a few times, pick a wedgie, put their hand through their hair. The key is you're doing the same thing.
in a sequenced order, in a rigid sequence order the same way. Here's how this can help us. Chatter is often triggered when we don't feel like we have order and control. Things are just not under our control. You've written extensively about this, right? A ritual is under your control.
you can perform that ritual the same way each time. And when you do, it leads to what we call, this is a mouthful, compensatory control you're compensating for the lack of control you feel inside when your chatter is taking over by exerting control around you This is also why people do this. I'm guessing pretty common thing. I'm gonna guess you do this.
Here's another. I don't know. Yeah. I feel like I'm putting you on edge throughout our conversation. Not at all. Do you ever organize and clean when you're experiencing chatter? Okay. So let's have a conversation about this. Because not only did I see on page 170. tools that involve your environment to really get your negative self-talk in control.
But the first one is create order in your environment. When we experience chatter, we often feel as if we're losing control. You're right. Our thought spirals control us rather than the other way around. When this happens, you can boost your sense of control by imposing order on your surroundings. Organizing your environment can take many forms. Tidying up your work or home, making a list, arranging different objects.
This is, I think, my number one way to combat negative self-talk, and I never knew that's what I was doing. So that was true of me as well before I got into this space. This was a super... A super aha is a technical term for me. So growing up, I've always been, I would describe myself as positively dispositioned, very happy. clean. I've always believed in hygiene. I shower daily, sometimes twice. Twice? Sometimes if I go to the gym, you know, I like to stay fresh.
Not terribly organized in the sense of putting my things away. Probably like my wife's biggest pet peeve. are the trail of clothing that exists from the shower to the closet around the room. And if you go into my office, I assure you it does not look like this facility that we're taping in right now. Piles of books. That's when times are good. Okay. Yet, going back to when I was a kid.
Whenever I would experience chatter, I would do this. Something deep inside me would beckon myself to. It was like, remember Field of Dreams? Like, build it and they will come. Yes, yes. For me, it was like... Clean it. And you will experience relief. And so I would like go and put things away. And I do this, you know, I go into the kitchen, do all the dishes, maybe even scrub the counter. Same, even. And then even masochistically. And tell me if you do this.
Sometimes I even go in my kids' rooms and put their stuff away. Of course! And, like, all of a sudden, things feel a little bit better. I absolutely had no idea this is a technique that we reach for when our overwhelm in our minds get to be too much. You're compensating for the lack of control you feel inside. by trying to exert order and control around you. And now that you know how this works,
You can weaponize this. Okay, let's talk about that. Because I can see lots of various moments in my life, like when my husband and I were really, really struggling, the kids would joke that they would come home from school. And every other day I would have moved the furniture around, dragging it and scraping the floor in the room where the TV was. Like, just like, I got to change this around. And even thinking about packing.
Sunday night to come down. I have this thing about packing where I start to feel very overwhelmed and then I'm mad at myself that I didn't pack before and now I'm beating myself up. relentlessly why is it so hard for you like you just make a damn list and why didn't you do this on saturday morning and jesus you meant to leave like two hours ago and i'm like hammering myself
And that, of course, makes it impossible to leverage what you've already taught us, which is the planning and forecasting aspect of your self-talk because I'm so busy berating myself. So literally, I come down in the kitchen on Sunday night. I'm two and a half hours late leaving. Yeah. I'm not even packed yet, Ethan. And I have clothes still spinning in the dryer upstairs. And you know what I did? I literally pulled out the junk drawer in the kitchen. And you started organizing. Yes.
Yeah. And my husband comes over and he puts his hand on my shoulders like, you don't need to be doing this right now. And what I wanted to do is scream around me like that. And I took a deep breath. I was like, right? But what I'm realizing is That was me trying to create order and what felt like. tornado of negativity in my brain. That's exactly right. Is that why we do to-do lists too? It's a way of organizing. And so these can be useful tools for helping people to constrain their chatter.
as long as we don't become over-reliant on them. And I'm giving you that caveat. That is true, by the way, of all the tools. that we're talking about and that I write about. You know what I find interesting too about what you just said? Tell me. The chaos doesn't bother me when I'm happy. Yeah. My desk can look like we tipped over an aisle at Staples. Yeah. And just crap everywhere. But if I start to feel overwhelmed or stressed at work, I don't do work.
I clean my desk. You described yourself so interesting, like you get caught up in this kind of tizzy, so to speak, of, ah, right? That's kind of how it feels, right? Like, let me out. Give me freedom. And you're reflexively going to clean. And if that's working, great. But we can also get even more sophisticated about... beforehand thinking about what are the two or three things that we want to do when we find ourselves in that state.
And then basically ahead of time coming up with a plan. What do we do? So here's, we whoop it up. You didn't even whoop it up. Whoop it up. Just like, all right, another question here. What comes to mind when I say whoop?
Like, isn't there that song? There it is. You just redeemed yourself. Now we're back. We're at like 75%. We're getting back. Yeah, whoop, there it is, right? So people have struggled endlessly. You go from... listening to a podcast reading a book you learn about information and then the bleep hits the fan and the question is
You don't do it. It's the New Year's resolution dilemma. I'm going to lose the weight. I'm going to go to the gym every day. Three days later, you stop doing it. And so scientists have spent a ton of time trying to figure out Why are we so bad at following through with our intentions, and how do we make people better? And you can boil down the decades of research into a simple framework called woke. Here's what it stands for. The W, stat step one, that's your wish. So what is your goal?
So your goal might be to calm the chatter down, like reduce the noise when you find yourself slipping into that state. That's the goal I want to achieve. Okay, that's the wish. That's the wish. Okay, the first O, that's the outcome. So what's going to happen to you if you achieve that goal? I'm going to have less stress. I am going to cause less drama for myself and other people.
I am going to feel more at peace and more in control because all of this negative chatter and overwhelm that becomes very paralyzing makes me feel out of control and incapable. So the outcome would be very positive. So great job. I love the affirmations. Just hang around all day. I'm happy to give them. But it's true. And the reason why we do the outcome next, now you've articulated your goal, we want to energize you.
Like this is a goal worth pursuing. This is worth my time. So now you're in this energized state for pursuing this goal. Now we get to the second O, which are the obstacles, the personal obstacles. that are gonna stand in the way. of you achieving this goal. So what might be an obstacle that might prevent you? from turning the volume on your chatter down? I am fluent in negative self-talk. Okay. I am fantastic at criticizing myself. I can whip myself into a human tornado in a nanosecond.
And it can be very effective when I get into a tizzy. Because other people try to help. Okay. So I think those are all lots of obstacles. Just being honest about like, I don't even know if I can do it would be an obstacle. Yeah. So you mean turn the volume down? Yeah. Yeah. So you've just gone through your obstacles. So what we would then do, we would focus on one of those obstacles to start.
And we get to a P, which is our plan. But it's not any kind of plan. It's what we call an implementation intention. It's easier to call it a plan. It's basically an if-then plan. I find myself doom casting and becoming, you know, the savant in negative self-talk. Then, and you plug in. what you are going to do. You plug in the tools that you're going to use in that situation. So if I find myself berating myself incessantly, then I'm going to coach myself using distance self-talk.
Mel you can handle this. It's not that big of a deal. Go for a walk in nature. That's another tool in your book. Go for a walk in nature. Jump into the mental time travel machine. Go forward and back. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay. Let's talk about it right now. What do I do? I'm not going to remember it. Mental time travel, these are two of the most useful tools that I possess along with distance self-talk.
Super simple. Okay. We talk a lot about the importance of being in the moment, grounding ourselves in our breath. That is useful. But what we forget when we talk about being in the moment is number one. Our minds evolved to travel in time. And you can actually use that to your benefit. So number one, how am I going to feel about this issue next week, next month, next year?
Most of our emotions follow a time course. They get triggered, and as time goes on, they eventually subside. Most of our emotional experience follow that trajectory, but when we are... stuck in chatter, we just zoom in on the awfulness. It feels like it's never going to end. When you jump into the time travel machine, how am I going to feel about this 10 years from now? 20 years from now? It highlights the fact that what you're going through, as bad as it is,
It's not permanent. Things will eventually get better. It gives you hope. and that turns the volume on our chatter down. That's one thing. That's mental time travel to the future. I think that could work. powerful for me and then that helps me also access the positive distance talk that you've taught us exactly which is if i time travel even two weeks like a week from now
You've already packed and been on the trip, and now you're home. It's not that big of a deal. And then I can start to go, Mel, Take a deep breath. You're capable of packing. You got it. So you're blending these tools, which is also how these things actually operate in daily life, right? So we go back to the one thing. It's not one. Now we're doing two. And you know what else I want to point out because I think it's important to keep highlighting this.
You've given us other tools of creating a ritual and playing music and going outside and taking a walk in that moment. Playing a song and taking a walk would just stress me out more. Don't do it. But I can see how now you're starting to build this toolkit. That's right. Where I'm not going for a walk right now, but I can time travel to calm myself down. And then I can use positive distance talk to say, Mel. You can pack a bag. That's right
So you can customize the tools based again on who you are and the circumstances you're in. So let's close the loop though on mental time travel because we just talked about going into the future. You could also go into the past. It works a little bit differently. For me, this is my, is ace in the hole the right term? I think it is. I don't know. What does it mean? It's like my secret superpower. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Yeah.
I think I might have gotten wrong, but that's okay. We'll give it to you. Now you're giving me the aphorisms. This is reciprocal. It goes very well. So the story I open up my second book with, Shift, is a story of my grandmother in World War II. surviving the Nazis basically slaughtering our whole family. My grandmother's my ace in the hole. When things feel so big, And just kind of how am I possibly going to get through that?
I jump into the mental time travel machine. I go back to 1940-whatever. I spend just a little bit of time with my grandmother in my mind. And what that does for me is it zooms me out. It makes it super clear to me that what I'm going through, as difficult as it is, it pales in comparison to what she went through and survived. And I think we all have those personal experiences or experiences in our family or our culture that you can anchor on.
to put what we're going through in perspective. Is there something you would add to that, though? Because if you're a world-class self-critic and berater. Yeah. I could see that strategy being something that only becomes more evidence where you go and you're such a piece of crap that you're sitting here working yourself up about this thing. You know what I'm saying? So how do you take that?
to give yourself perspective, but then keep yourself lifted in your capacity to coach yourself. You want to keep the spotlight on. the challenge that they endured compared to what you're dealing with right now. Right. And really use it as a source of motivation. Got it. Exactly. Not to, not to, you don't want to slip back. into the well you know anything sets you off that would defeat the purpose of that exercise and if you find that doing that
lead you into that territory, don't use that tool. Use a different one. That's great. And that's a really important take home for these tools. Different tools work for different people in different situations. This is so fascinating. And I could just talk to you all day. I have so many more questions, but I want to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our amazing sponsors. And I also want to give you...
a chance to share this amazing conversation with people that you care about. Because there is zero doubt in my mind that these tools are going to help me stop the negative self-talk and I want that for you and I want that for the people in your life too. So share this with people you care about and don't go anywhere. Because as you are learning, Ethan has a lot of tools. That's right, plural. And he's got a lot more to share with you when we return. We'll be waiting for you after a short break.
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Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins and today you and I are learning from Professor Ethan Cross from the University of Michigan. So, you know, over the break, Ethan, I was thinking about something else I wanted to ask you. And so where I want to go next is how important of a role does environment play in self-talk being positive or negative?
it can play a big role in a few different ways. So we already talked about your local environment, how the way you structure your environment, how organized it is, can affect what's happening between your ears. There's also ways of putting things in your environment to trigger positive experiences like pictures of loved ones, which, you know, sounds so... silly on the one hand, but we did this research years ago where we had people think about really painful experiences.
And we had them then look at a picture of a loved one or a picture of someone else's loved one to see what are the implications of looking at your... what we call attachment figure someone you're really connected to and what we found is that looking at that person that you care about this activates a sense that there are people in this world that support you which sped up how quickly people recovered
from a distressing experience. So after that research, I went on a shopping spree for picture frames and like my my off all my offices have pictures of my family and friends all around.
for that reason. Yeah I think that you know if you think about walking through an office oftentimes that's the thing that tethers you through the day yeah is the reminder of what's meaningful in your life especially when you're having a stressful day exactly sort of like the way that your time traveled backwards to your grandmother helps
put things in perspective correct so that's that's one thing you can do okay um green space exposure i was a little um hesitant to really buy into this when i first started researching this space i come from a place we talked about before, Brooklyn, New York. I like to remind people that one of the most famous books to come out of this borough or about this borough is titled tree grows in brooklyn singular right so like there's not a lot of
There was not a lot of green space growing up, and I'm a city guy. I find green space exposure to be quite profound in terms of how it impacts my emotional life. And there's been a lot of research on this. And what happens is when you're stuck in chatter, it consumes your attention. It's the only thing you can think about. So true. When you go for a walk in a safe, natural setting.
What happens is your attention is captured by your surroundings, but in a very gentle way. The sights, the sounds, the smells, like your attention just drifts on them. And what that does is it gives you this opportunity to rest and restore. over the course of that walk. So you finish it, you're feeling more rejuvenated, and you actually have more potential capacity to work through your problem.
So that's one way that your environment, in particular, green space exposure can help you. You know, I just had an experience where last week I got some very, very difficult news. And so I had a horrible night's sleep, could not fall asleep. Woke up. It was like 5.15 in the morning, which is ungodly early for me. And it was pitch dark outside. My husband Chris was gone.
And I laid there and I could just feel the negative, what if this and what if, or you're just kind of trying to problem solve through something that's scaring you to death in your life or your work or whatever. And I thought, I need to get the hell out of this bed. So I got up, I got the dogs outside, and then I thought I should go for a walk even though the moon is still out and it is pitch dark because my mind is a horrendous place right now.
And the last thing I want to do is look at social media or try to solve it that way or log on to email. And so I put on my coat and I still have my pajamas on. And I started walking down the driveway and as I was walking in the pitch dark and I'm seeing the moon start to lower and I started thinking to myself, sort of like you thought about your grandmother.
about the fact that in the scale of humanity and the fact that I am but a speck on this planet hurling through space, the crap that's keeping me up and like, I'm sorry, again, still negative, shaming myself if you take notice. But as I rounded the corner and the moon is set, it probably took about 13 to 15 minutes of walking. But there was an owl. It was like, oh, and I'm like, oh. The owl doesn't care.
And as I kept walking and my senses were activated, it pulled me into the experience of the walking. And then the sun started to come up and slowly but surely. I noticed that the beatdown was gone. Why does that work? Because I think we've all experienced feeling better and clearing our mind when we either take a walk.
Or if it's available to you, you can get outside in green space. Yeah, so a couple of things I want to point out. So number one, you said 13 minutes. You said it took... about 13 minutes and the way I interpreted you saying that I was like it took a while but if you think 13 minutes is a while How much time have you spent? in that negative self-talk. 56 years. 56 years. I think 13 minutes is pretty damn good. Like 13 minutes is probably quicker.
than the amount of time it takes for Tylenol to have its effect when you've got a bad headache. That is pretty magic. So we talked a little bit about how nature can help us restore. That's one way it can help us. Another thing that it does is it gives us the opportunity to experience the emotion of awe, which is an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something vast and indescribable, something that just feels bigger than ourselves and nature.
is replete with those awe triggers like the moon it's so beautiful and You're in Southern Vermont. I've been up there at times. It's gorgeous up there. When we experience this emotion of awe, what it does, it leads to what we call a shrinking of the self. You feel smaller when you're contemplating something vast and indescribable.
here you are, Mel, you're worried about this thing. I'm sure it's a legit, it feels, it doesn't only almost feel legitimate, I'm sure it feels existential in the moment that you're having it. Like, it's over. I'm over. The world is over, right? Like, yeah, we've all been there. We know what it's like. Well, when you're in nature and you have this opportunity to experience awe, it just makes you and your concern.
I feel a whole lot smaller when you're contemplating the vastness of maybe like the site you're in. I mean, you're probably walking somewhere. Trees are alive for hundreds of years. That makes what you're dealing with just feel a little bit more insignificant. And when we shrink ourselves in that way, our problems shrink too.
So I will often weaponize this by going for walks in the local arboretum when I'm really struggling with something. And it inevitably helps. It's like, I'm worried about this. Like when there are so many more things happening in the universe. Come on, let's get back.
Yeah, and more importantly, I think it helps you access the other tools. Because, you know, the thing is, is that the walk didn't disappear the problem. It actually lowered the chatter. And so when I got back and into my work day, and inevitably other things happened that then bring it back up. Whether I started organizing my desk or I'm using the other tools, I can see what you're teaching us.
which is you have the ability to catch it. That's right. When it's taking you down. That's right. And then use these tools to create distance from it. So there are so many tools in the book and we've covered a bunch of them so far, but what are some other quick and simple tactics and tools? that the person listening can use to make their inner voice more positive. Okay, so let's enter into the rapid fire part of the conversation. sensory experiences. Tremendously underutilized tool.
I was blind to this up until relatively recently in my life when my daughter was in a terrible mood, was bumming me out, and one of the great songs of all time came on the radio in the car. iPad, whatever you call it nowadays. Journeys don't stop believing. And everyone got excited and happy in the car. Music effortlessly. Shifts our emotions. You can use this yourself. You can use it to shift other people's emotions. All of the senses are useful tools to shift our emotions. Sense.
I'm staying at a hotel not far from here. The moment I walked into the hotel, I was awash with this pleasant scent that the hotel has been piping through the ventilation system to make the patrons feel comfortable. We spritz ourselves with chemicals to make ourselves feel good and make other people feel good. Our senses are powerful tools.
Let's talk about other people, though, because other people I think are really important. And it touches back to this problem where sometimes you go to other people and we push them away. So how do you... How do you find other people in your life to actually help you when it comes to your chatter?
or the big emotions you're experiencing. I call these our chatter advisors. How do you find your chatter advisors? You want to look for people who do two things. There are two key steps to providing good chatter support. Step one. You want to listen, empathize, validate, connect with the person, right? Lots of big terms there. But what I mean is like you want to be there emotionally for that person. I want to learn about what you're going through. Like I really would like to know.
What set you off at 5 a.m. the other day? Tell me about it. Terrible. I've been there too. genuinely connecting. What that does is it helps satisfy the person who's suffering these needs they have to feel connected. Once I do that, then I want to shift into this kind of advice or cognitive mode. So, all right, now we're connected. You can rely on me, but the problem's still there. Let's try to look at it. And as someone who is not going through the problem myself, I'm in a great position.
They'll put it in perspective for you. Those are the two steps to providing good chatter support. And you would be amazed at how frequently people who are exceptionally well-intentioned don't follow those two steps. There are two ways it breaks down. Number one, some people think that their job is just give you a sounding board to let it out.
Just keep going, right? There's value in that, in connecting and learning. But if that's all we do in a conversation, it can lead to what we call co-rumination. Now we're just kind of... bathing ourselves in the problem together. And as a function, we often leave the conversation feeling connected, but the problem is still there. That doesn't work.
The other thing that doesn't work, you come to me with a problem, and within five seconds, Mel, this is simple. You know, like I wrote a paper on this. Here's what you need to do. Just do A, B, C, D. You'll be fine. Call me in the morning. We call those people jerk. Right. Or Robbins. I doubt that. And so you really want to follow both of those steps in that order. Listen.
and then advise. There's an art to doing that well. I'll use my wife here as an example. Is she going to kill you? She might kill me, but it's okay. We love each other. So if my wife came to me with a problem that she was experiencing some chatter about, I would immediately start listening, empathizing, connecting. And when I sensed that she had gotten it out and I really understood the problem.
I would ask her for permission. I'd be like, hey, I totally get it. I have a thought. Do you want to keep going or can I share it with you? sometimes the way that she'll answer that question is, no, I'm not done, just let me keep going. And then I let her keep going, and then I come back to it. At other moments, it'll be, yes, please, what do you think? Let's, you know, help me.
And so what I love about this framework that I essentially just described that we just talked about is it gives me guideposts. for how to steer this conversation. When someone comes to me, my wife, my friend, my students, whoever, there are these two steps. that I follow in the same sequence each time. Step one is I'm there to empathize and connect, listen and learn. Step 2
Now I'm going to try to help work with the person to broaden their perspective. So this has happened to you before. How did you deal with it last time? Or, you know, something like this happened to me and here's what I did. Simple ways for broadening perspective. A couple of questions like that you ask, it often helps the person find the answer. I will often ask people to do a chatter advisor audit.
So I'll have people divide their world into personal and professional. And then I ask them to list all the names of the people they go to to talk about the chatter when it arrives. Then I'll explain to them how this art of chatter advising that we've just gone over, that the key to being a good advisor is to empathize, listen, and then shift into that advising. And I'll have them circle the names.
of the people on their list who do both of those things. And I have them cross out the names of the people who don't. The people whose names you circle, that's your advisory board. And it's not always the people that you're closest to. Oftentimes it's actually not. It's not. And that's okay. You know, there are people who I love, who I'm super close to. I don't talk to them about my chatter. It doesn't help me. It actually pushes me in the wrong direction.
But my board is an amazing asset that I possess, and I lean on it. frequently to deal with my chatter. Ethan, what does a person do if they're listening to you and they've got someone in their life who's really struggling because of the way they talk to themselves. I mean, just down on themselves, down emotionally. What is the best thing that you can do to help somebody that you care about when you see them really beaten down?
So I like to divide the way of helping others into two buckets. One thing you can do if they come to you, for help as often happens to us people want to talk to us people want our support then you you follow that that guide that we just talked about you listen and learn and then you advise and part of the advice is giving them the tool
The way we help others is teaching others about these tools. I do this to my kids all the time. I'm constantly complaining that we're born into the world with the ability to experience. chatter and big emotions we're not born into the world with the user's guide that teaches us these tools so if my kids come to me i listen i and then i offer them tools But then there's another situation where you see people you care about, your colleagues, your loved ones, and they don't ask you for help.
And then the question is, well, what do you do? Do you let them just figure it out on their own, suffer in silence? Do you volunteer the support without them asking? There's been research on this, and it's tricky. The research shows that if you volunteer the support without the person asking, it has the potential to blow up in your face. As a parent, I'm sure you've experienced this, as I know I have. So sometimes if I've seen my kids, I know they're struggling with something.
This is something I can help them with. And I volunteer the advice. It's basically a mild version of how they respond. When you offer support and it's not asked for, what that does is it communicates to the person. that they're not capable of handling their own circumstances. And that can elicit defensive. So here's the really cool thing. We have learned how you can still help people. when they don't ask for help and what it involves doing providing support invisibly.
Okay, is this another one of these secret weapons? This is a secret weapon that everyone that you are listening, if you're listening, you now have a secret weapon. Lay it on us, Ethan. How do we do invisible support? Invisible support is providing people with support. without shining a spotlight on the fact that you're doing it. You kind of asked me about this earlier when you asked me about it.
How do you tactfully help another person when they're struggling? This is how you do it. And there are many forms this can take. I'll give you a couple of examples. Let's say someone on my team or my lab is working under... Really? Tense deadline. And they don't have time to take care of themselves and do simple things. I can just order in food for them.
If my wife is struggling with lots of stress at work, lots of chatter, it's her turn to get the groceries. I just do the groceries, pick up the dry cleaning. I don't do it, come home and ask for a pat on my back. Just do things to make the other person's life just a little bit easier, a little bit more manageable.
That's one way of supporting someone invisibly. Let's say someone else is struggling with a skill. Let's say it's public speaking. So someone on my team is struggling with communicating their science. in a way that people can understand with impact. Before I take them aside, I say, hey, I've noticed that you could do a little bit better here. Here are three things I want you to try.
I'll first have a team meeting and we'll all share out best practice. What are the two or three things that we've all benefited from? speaking more effectively. What I'm doing there is I am getting the person information they can benefit from, but I'm not shining a spotlight on the fact that I'm targeting it to them. So even sharing sources that you've benefited from, podcast episodes, book,
Share that with someone else. You don't have to target it to them and say, hey, this is going to help you. But if you found the material meaningful, just share it in that context. And what it does is it gives them the opportunity to benefit as well. Without you think without them thinking This was specifically targeted to them. Oh, you can always do it in a group chat.
That's my favorite thing to do is just hit the family group chat, hit the friend chat. Hey, everybody, great episode. This episode was awesome. I learned so much. Or this book was great. Yeah, those are simple things you can do. And I do that all the time. Let me close the loop on invisible support because I told you about two ways you can do it. There's a third and it's my favorite. What is that? It's affectionate but not creepy.
Are you familiar with this one? Yeah, that's what ants do, not uncle. Definitely not uncles, but it's what moms and dads do. That's true. Affectionate, but not creepy. Yeah, like, what do you do with your kids when they're born into this world? First thing we do. Oh, I...
Just hold them against you. You hug them. That's right. And we have receptors on our skin that encode for an affectionate embrace. And when it's registered, there's this automatic... release of stress-fighting chemicals that flood our system. You know, if my daughters are experiencing something challenging or my wife, I'll just kind of give them a hug, caress their back. Again, not creepy. But even at work, you know, like...
A fist bump is a simple way. We are a social pat on the back, right? Tactile species. That's a way of supporting someone invisibly as well. I totally get it. Yeah. You do want to make sure to convey the not creepy part of it, though. For sure. Yeah. I would love to have you speak directly to the person listening because you have shared so much with us. about your research and ways that we can flip that negative chatter into a positive coach.
And just so many tools to reach for that will help you do that. If the person takes just one action based on everything that you've poured into us from your two books, Chatter and Shift. What is the most important thing to do? The most important thing to do is learn about the tool. Just familiarize yourself with them. What I love about these tools is decades of research have gone into their identification. Complex, back-breaking effort.
But the take-homes are super simple. Mental time travel. How am I going to feel about this next year? Into the past. How does this compare with what Bobby went through? My grandmother. Ethan, you've got this. I mean, these are simple things that don't take a whole lot of time and energy to practice, just familiarize yourself with them and then start self-experimenting. That is the launch path.
for gaining control of your chatter. And so my invitation to you is to familiarize yourself with the tools that are out there. Start self-experimenting. Find the tools that work best for you and share them with other people. That is the way I think we help really combat this universal affliction.
Ethan, you are so awesome. Now you're giving me all the answers. I actually mean it. I'm stunned because this topic can be so heady and you made it so accessible and tactical just like you said that you would. Congratulations on the bestselling book, The Manual, that now exists for all of us to turn our inner critic into positive coaching chatter. Congratulations on your mega bestseller, Shift.
I'm so happy you came. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Well, the feeling is totally, totally, totally mutual. And I also want to thank you. Thank you for choosing to spend time. listening to something that can help you create a better life. And there's no doubt in my mind that everything that Ethan taught us today
is going to help you change your self-talk from something that is beating you down to something that's lifting you up, and that will change your life and the life of people that you care about. Thank you for sharing this with people that you care about. And in case no one else tells you, I want to tell you, in the words of Ethan, You got this. You can do this. And I also want to tell you, in case no one else does, I love you.
I admire the fact that you're taking time to listen to something like this, and I know it was worth your time, and I also know it's going to help you create a better life. Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days, and I will be waiting to welcome you in to the very next episode, the moment you hit play. I'll see you. My brain is like, take a bunch of mice.
put them in a cardboard box and tip them over in a restaurant. I see. That is how my brain works. Sounds liberating. Why are you like a spreadsheet on legs? No, I'm a little bit of both. Positively shifting people's emotions. at how big the shift you get. from going to the bathroom when you really need to go.
Oh, it's true, because you're managing it. You're probably embracing it. I just went up, like, on a ten-point scale, four points. I'm so much happier. Is that one of your tools? Negative self-talk. Take a link. Professor Cross is going to tell you that there are four reasons why you actually talk to yourself.
Oh, I always said that actually. Is it sounding all right? And what I want to know is after having... Oh, wait, sorry. Your work has been cited. Sorry. That was great. Thanks so much. So good. Oh, my God. oh and one more thing and no this is not a blooper this is the legal language you know what the lawyers write and what i need to read to you This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
I'm just your friend, I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Stitcher. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get dedicated support from people who care about your success. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.
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