Dr. Ethan Kross on Inner Chatter

How to harness it. Today. Dr Cross is here to explain the incredible hidden power of our inner voice and show us how we can harness it to live healthier, more satisfying, and more productive lives, all on this episode of Holy Human. Yeah yeah, all right, Dr Ethan Cross, thank you so much for joining us here on the Holy Human Podcast. So it's a delight to be here chatting with you about this. So yeah chatting. I love that.

I'm no fun intended. I have literally recommended your book and I'm yet to finish it because it is a thick book, but I'm I'm so obsessed. I read like a hundred pages this morning because I I find that this is a topic that is very close to my heart. I feel like it's something that I have. I'm very aware of chatter in my mind and how it can take on different forms and and control all of our lives. And so that's what we're diving into today with you,

is everything chatter and inner voice. And I would love to just start at what when you talk about inner voice, what is that? Exactly? What do you mean by that? So I think of the inner voice um as this amazing tool that we all have. It's our ability to silently use language to do lots of different things. So it's like a Swiss army knife of the mind. So if I asked you to repeat a phone number in your head, you use the language to do that, right,

So it helps us remember things. But we can also use our inner voice to to plan and or simulate things. So I do it when when I'm when i have to give a big presentation, I'll often rehearse what I'm going to say in my head, and then I'll hear what people in the audience are going to say, and I'll often think of what the nasty audience member is going to say, and then I'll say something back. And usually I'll say something back in my head that I wouldn't say in daily life, but right, so, so that's

like a powerful tool. We also use our inner voice to make sense of our experiences. Like things happen all the time to us, and we're trying to weave those experiences together to give us a sense of who we are, and our inner voice helps us do that too. I would imagine that in your line of work, you're you're also constantly engaging this inner voice when you're hearing sounds and a lot of progressions. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but does it does it factor into your everyday experience

as well? Oh? Yeah, absolutely, Well gosh, I could go so many ways with this. I feel like my under voice turns on like the moment I get up, and it can it can go kind of down one way or the other, whether it be a negative path or somewhat of a positive path. It just depends on on the day. And when I'm performing, I definitely engage it,

you know. I feel like sometimes that's what the performance piece for me is actually the one place where I can lose it, where I can go beyond it, which is to me what feels so for someone who has constant chatter in their mind. It's actually really blissful to perform. I mean, obviously I'm still using it because there's I mean, I'm engaging when I'm singing words and in that way, but when I get lost in my art, there is a there's a place beyond the chatter for me. That is,

like I said, blissful. And at the same time, I can actually have full on conversations in my head on stage about like what I'm gonna eat for breakfast tomorrow and who I'm piste off at. And so it's it's interesting how that I can have I can be doing something and still have this whole other experience and internal

dialogue going on. Yeah, I mean that reminds you of like when when I'm at the dinner table and like my daughters are telling me about their day, and if my mind somewhere else, they finished talking and I don't necessarily hear what they've said, you know that it has happened where they like telling me about a whole experience. And then when they're done, I'm like, oh, so what happened today? And I just told you that that And so that's an example of how you know, really are

thoughts and which are often verbal in nature. Um, you know, they they determine where we are, like what we're feeling, what we're attending to even and so they can like cloud out our experiences. But but you know, back to the inner voice. So so it can do a lot of things for us that I think are really really useful, but it can also get us into trouble. And and chatter is what I the term I used to describe what happens when our inner voice gets us into trouble.

So so we've got this amazing ability, uniquely human our ability to use words to silently talk to ourselves, solve problems, create, innovate. But then when we experience problems in our life, we we we we we go inside, we try to figure out why we're feeling this way we are, and then

we get stuck. We start spinning, we get worried, anxiety, rumination, we catastrophize, think of the worst scenarios, and we get stuck in those negative thought loops that I think many of us have probably experience from time to time that may make life not so much fun. You know that that make it difficult to be in that blissful state you were describing earlier that can interfere with our health and our relationships and so so chatter is is what

captures those the negative side of the inner voice. And and you know, my my approach to this is if the inner voice is really helpful in some cases, which I think it is. I don't think we want to stop talking to ourselves. I don't think we want to silence our inner voice. We want to figure out how to use it more effectively. And so I spent a lot of time in my lab trying to figure out how to do that, and I talk about that in the book. Yeah, so does everyone have an inner voice?

I've actually read that people some people don't experience an inner dialogue? And how does one develop that inner voice? And do people that don't have an inner voice actually have a call more world? Wow, they're okay, lot lots of good questions here, So let me check how much time do you? Yes? I know I can talk to you about this all day long. No, I'm game. This is this is what I live and breathe, So it's all good. So do some people not have an inner voice?

So I think about the inner voice as like the Swiss army knife, of the mind. It does lots of different things. And I think if you have the ability to speak out loud, then you've got the capacity for an inner voice. So most people can use land with properly functioning brains can use language to rehearse information. So if I give you like like that the challenge I gave you before, just here's here are four numbers, repeat

them in your head. That is a basic feature of the human mind that we can use language to do that, and I think everyone has that. Now, when you go to other other functions that the inner voice provides, like having an ongoing conversation with ourselves, there, I think there's a lot more variability. Some people report never doing that, and you know, there may be a minority of people like that who don't have that inner running commentary. Other people do it a fair amount, others a lot more.

In my experiences, the majority of people that I've spoken to have certainly had experiences with with chatter, and so I think it is a pretty common common experience that that people have. Do you find that certain types of people are more prone to negative or and or positive self talk, Well, so there there are differences. Um, we do know that women are more likely to get stuck in chatter than men, but the tools that exist for

managing chatter work equally well for men and women. Now this is not to say, by the way, that women just have it worse than men. Across the word. Men do plenty of things in psychological terms worse than women, engage in certain kinds of other harmful behaviors, so so it all balances out. But we do know that there is that gender difference in terms of the experience of chatter, but the tools work equally well, and I think that's

really good news. Yeah, absolutely this you say that. One of my favorite things that you say is the inner conversation is is the most important conversation we have all day. Can you dive into a little bit of why that is. Yeah, we're spending a lot of time I think most of us lost in thought. You know. We we often hear about the importance of living in the moment and being in the moment. And I am all for being in the moment at the appropriate time, but our brains evolved

to not be in the moment. We spend between a half and a third of our waking hours flowing into the past and transporting ourselves into the future, and we spend a lot of that time talking to ourselves about past experience. Is trying to figure out, well, why did I screw this up? Or or savoring like a past event my daughter, my younger starter, had a birthday, you know, two weeks ago. I'm thinking about that experience, replaying conversations we had, or I'm imagining what I'm going to say,

you know, during this podcast or something else. So we're spending a whole lot of time in our heads and a lot of that time talking to ourselves. And so I think what we say is really quite important. Um. We know those conversations can impact like how we feel, our relationships, our ability to focus and perform at work. So I think they really are truly important set of conversations we have. Yeah, when we get stuck in that rumination or that that negative place, what effects does it

have on our bodies? Like physically do you do? You really want to know? Yeah? I would I say this because you know, this is disconcerting stuff. And um, and so let me preface it by saying, I'll talk a little bit about the negatives. But there's a there's a light at the end of the tunnel. So you know, we often hear that stress kills, stress is bad for you. In fact, that's not correct. Stress, like the ability to

experience stress is really adaptive. When there's something threatening in front of us, having this system to react super fast is useful when stress gets harmful in a in a physical sense, is when we have a stress response, it goes up, it's activated, and then it remains chronically elevated over time. That's when the stress begins to eat away at our body in ways that predict things like cardiovascular disease,

in certain forms of cancer and information. Now, this inner voice that we have is really really good at maintaining our stress responses because what happens is something happens in the world. Someone tells me I'm a bad professor, or they don't like an experiment, whatever, and it happens. But then what do we do. We replay it again and

again and again and again in our heads. And when we do, we're essentially conjuring up and reactivating that threat response, that that stress response, and we're keeping it active over time. So that's one of the ways that stress can get under the skin to really impact our health in in really powerful ways that, um I think we want to try to avoid. Yeah. Absolutely, Um. Well, and you know, you talk about something we hear a lot about is

going inward and turning inward. And I found it so interesting how you talk about how introspection can actually backfire on some people. Yeah, well, you know, and I found this interesting too because it was actually the way I got interested in this whole line of work. Wasn't wasn't really I think the typical path that most people get

into psychology and neuroscience. Um so if I inter started with my dad when I was a little kid, and every time something bad would happen to me, not that I got into huge amounts of trouble, but you know I didn't get a cookie extra cookie for dessert, or I got into find my mom. You know, he'd tell me to like go inside, to introspect and try to figure out a solution to move on with my life. And that advice really served me well throughout my childhood

an adolescence. And then I got to college and I took a psychology class, and I realized that a lot of people do exactly what my dad told me to do when they get upset, but it doesn't make them feel better, they end up feeling worse. Instead, they get stuck ruminating over and over and over about things are worrying excessively. And so for me, the big question became, Okay, well, why does that happen? Why is this really useful ability to tap inside ourselves and try to use our mind

to come up with a solution. Why does it often fail us? And we've learned a little bit about about the answer to that question over the years. Um. We we've learned that when when people are really upset and they introspect, they tend to over focus on the problem.

They zoom in so narrowly that the only thing they can think about is what happened to them and how they felt, and that makes it really challenging for them to think about the bigger picture, other ways of maybe making sense of the experience that might lead them to feel better. And so one of the piece of advice we give people is to try to zoom out when you're feeling chat when you're experiencing chatter. And there are

lots of ways you can do that. Yeah, you know, you talk a lot about our environment and how it affects this chatter in our mind, and I feel like, you know, something I've been experiencing. I think a lot of people are experiencing as we sit at home, as our lives have changed. You know, I've been I've been on the road my whole life, basically since I was thirteen, and all of a sudden, now being at home in one place, which is something that's never happened to me.

I've found that, you know this, the chatter can get really loud, and I think a lot of people probably are experiencing that in this moment. And can you talk about how that those shifts in our environment can can affect the way that we we talk to ourselves, because I know that that shift in my environment has definitely

been challenging. Yeah, well, you know you're not alone. Um, We've seen a threefold increase in clinical levels of anxiety and depression in the population over the past year, which is quite significant. We have a lot of time that we're now spending alone with ourselves and our thoughts, and

we're living through a really stressful time. Like arguably, I mean, I think this is like the chatter event of the century if you think about it, Like, but once in a century pandemic really scary, economic instability, politics were a mess up until recently. People are fighting with each other, Like there's a lot of uncertainty in the world and a lack of control, and we know that those are two ingredients that fuel chatter when we don't have control

over things. And so the first thing I would say is, if you're feeling chatter, you're not alone. I think a lot of people are are feeling chatter, and that makes total sense. And so then the question as well, well, what can you do about it to manage it effect like, and you know, there are lots of different kinds of tools that people can use. It look like you wanted

to give an no first. I think it's interesting. I feel like I've had to really become aware of the fact that it's even happening sometimes, Like I feel like we can get so you talk about you know, with listening are thinking about something and not hearing your daughters. I almost feel like that can happen in my own head,

Like it just continues to have this conversation. I have a friend of mine and I were talking about our inner voice, and she's like, if it's not if it's not talking, and it finds song lyrics and it just keeps going on that and all of this that happens to me a lot. All of a sudden, I'm like, wait, I've been ruminating on song lyrics now, the same song forever, and it's it's almost like the awareness of it has to to occur because sometimes we totally just completely unaware

of that it just continues to talk. Well, I think you just described like that's like part one of the battle against it is simply like being aware of what chatter is and how works. Because I think if you're not even aware of it happening, and you're not going to do anything to try to fix it. So I study self control and I break it down for people's self control's got two pieces motivation and ability. So you've got to want to do something, and then you've got

to have the tools to actually do it. So if you're if you don't know, if you don't realize your experience and chatter, you're not gonna be motivated to reduce it. You're just going to get lost in it. Hopefully, listeners right now and people who read the book, like step one is they just recognize that, Yeah, when I'm getting stuck in the thought loop and it's coloring everything I do. That's chatter, and that's a cue to maybe try to minimize it so I can live a happier and healthier,

healthier life. And up next we're going to learn exactly how to do that. But first we are going to take a super quick break. Welcome back everyone. We are here with Dr Cross talking about how to minimize negative mental chatter. And it's not something we teach, you know. This is the amazing thing we're doing research now where we've developed curricula on the mind and emotions and have a manage it that we're teaching to high school kids. It's shocking to me, Like, you know, I spent so

much time in high school learning about the digestive system. Man, I never have the need for knowledge about the digestive Like I've used it once in recent history, like to explain to my daughters how it's possible to be upside down and swallow food, like that is it. But like the mind, this thing that that we cared between our ears, like we use this all the time. People who understand our works are in a good position. Yeah, and it

can have effect on the digestive system. But it absolutely has an effect on the digestives and that's right, so very good. Yeah, we really need to start up here the to understand anything. And the fact that kids are even learning this in high school now, I think it is incredible because you know, it really can change the course of of their life. Yeah. Well, you know when my oldest daughter, when you know, she's eleven, which I'm

learning is an interesting age. I have an only only child, so I didn't know about daughters, and eleven is an interesting, interesting time to be one. I'll just say that. And when she gets upset about something, like when I tell her, actually, you don't have to feel that way. You can you can actually choose to feel differently. And and here's here's like a way of thinking differently that might make you

feel better. Like that's eye opening for I think kids, right, because if you don't, if no one teaches you that, then you don't know any better. And so you're then just victim to how you automatically respond. And we know that, like our thoughts aren't our destiny, we have the ability to control them in ways that can be really useful. So that's part of the reason why we're trying to

work with kids and and why I wrote that book. Yeah, absolutely, Well, I mean, you know, I've struggled with anxiety and depression, and depression for me has has really kind of hit

hard um the beginning of this year. And you know, when you get caught and that you say you can choose your thoughts, But when you get caught in that rumination, and it can be when I get depressed, it's like the lens in which I view the world changes and that therefore the thoughts change, and I can literally make up a completely different story about the exact same life that I that I have, that I love, and all

of a sudden, like that whole story changes. So when you're caught in that rumination, what's the when you, like you said, you say you can choose your thoughts. But to someone in that rumination space, choosing your thoughts seems like the last thing that you're able to do. What where's the first place to go when you're in that space?

So first all I want to point out I love the way you just describe that experience because it invoked the voice, right you're the stories that you're telling yourself when you're when you're depressed or sad, are are shaping how you feel right and and so that goes back to like these how important these conversations that we have with ourselves are because they can really influence how we

view the world. So what can people do? First of all, I break it down into there being like three categories of tools that science has revealed that people can use for managing their InterVoice. Things that people can do on their own to change the way where they're thinking about the situation, small ships that can have benefits, ways of interacting with other people that can be really useful, and

then ways of interacting with our environments. And so there are like twenty something tools that fit into those different buckets. Let me tell you what I do when I find myself slipping into chatter, because if I go through all twenty tools, probably you might fall asleep and so listeners. Um, so take COVID as an example. Not a fun not a fun time to be in. So one thing I'll do is is we know that when people are experiencing chatter, they zoom in really now in the problem, that's all

there is. And so what we try to do is get people to zoom out to broaden their perspective. One way you could do it is by doing something called temporal distancing or mental time travel. So I'll think about, all, right, how am I going to feel nine months from now when everyone I know is vaccinated and I'm traveling again

and going to restaurants That seems pretty awesome? Right, When I travel in time in the future like that, what that does is it makes it clear that as awful as what I'm experiencing is right now, and it really is awful, it's temporary. It will eventually fade. And that gives me hope. And we know that hope is a really powerful antidote to chatter, right, It can really help bring people out when you're when you're sad and anxiously feel hopeless, So it's giving you the exact opposite. I'll

also go back in time. I'll think about the pandemic from eighteen and how that was even worse than this, Right, people didn't have uber eats and zoom and all of the things that we can do right now that make this, I think much more tolerable. And they got through it back then, right, They came and roaring back in the nineteen twenties and life was awesome, And so that that broadens mic perceptives. That's one thing I'll do. Another thing I'll do is I'll try to give myself advice like

I would give to another person. One of the things we've learned is there's a quirk of human nature. We are so much better at advising other people on their problems than we are taking that advice ourselves. It's bizarre. And what we have learned is that it's possible for us to coach ourselves through our problems like we're talking to someone else. And as wacky as it sounds, one way to do it is to use language, to use your name to walk yourself people. All right, ethan, how

are you going to deal with this problem? That sounds a little a little strange, But what we know is that when people do that silently, what that linguistic shift does is it gets you to think about yourself like you're another person. Like most of the time we use names and when we're talking to other people. So here you're giving distance between you and yourself. And that can be really helpful too for helping you think objectively and not get stuck in a rumination wortex. Have you ever

have you ever done that? Yeah? Well, so I've been been implementing some of these pieces of your book, especially

during tennis. So I started playing tennis a couple of years ago, and I really have been using the self talk, the distant self talk piece, you know, like coaching myself, you know, Lee, and You've got this like just you know, I've been calming myself down, um while playing tennis, because I have a tendency to just like at a certain point, if I even if I'm winning the match, like all of a sudden, I'll start playing harder or trying harder. And it's like I've been trying to like kind of

talk myself back from that. And so today today I just played tennis that long ago, and well, there's a piece in your book about belief, which is really which we can get into in a second. I'll just tell my story. But the belief being such a huge component in in the way that we can work with our chatter, and really a belief being kind of this magical tool,

is what you call it. And so with belief, I had was watching the Australian Open the other day and there were these two girls playing and I looked at my husband, I'm like, I could play them, and he's like, no, you couldn't, and I'm like, yes, I could. I could play them. So I went on on the court today and I looked at my coach and I told him the story. I'm like, I could play them, and he very kindly and facetiously was like, oh yeah, sure, you're goold.

And I literally took that belief and I truly believe that if I worked hard enough, I could play them. And with that belief and my distance self talk today, I have never played better tennis. And he looked at me at the end and he went, what the hell got into you? Like? I walked away from that realizing, like I mean, belief is so powerful. It is incredibly powerful. And for me, I have been you know, like I said,

I've been sitting at home. Another way that they have kind of flipped this on myself is also sitting at home, not being on the road. And the first place that my mind goes, and this is another story telling your book about the picture that forgot how to pitch. The first place my mind has gone, not being in practice of singing every other weekend or whatever it may be,

is oh ship, well, I forget how to sing. That path can take me down to a really dark place where I'll go to sing and all of a sudden have all this apprehension around something that I've never thought about, like I don't think about singing just comes out. And so that's been so interesting to have the time to sit and be like, wait, when do I know what

I'm doing? Still? And when I read that part in your book about the picture forgetting to pitch, it actually gave me some context of what was going on in my own mind, and it allowed me to go, oh, I can shift that, I can change the way that I'm thinking about this. And to be able to see the way that my belief changed my tennis. It was like having the yin and the yang of experiences of belief shaping the way that I talked to myself and the outcome of things. Yeah, well that's that's that's a

great example. Too bad I'm not still writing the book. I would have used that one of the anecdotes. And the belief is, you know, just remarkably powerful. And I think, you know, there's so much science behind showing like when the placebo work. So if you give people a sugar pill and you say take this pill, it's gonna make you feel better. It's going to help relieve your anxiety

and depression. And sure enough, if you actually believe the physician who gives you that medication, research shows that for mild and moderate forms of depression and anxiety, it actually has that effect, which to me speaks to the power of belief to impact how we feel. Right, And so, you know, how does that work? Why can't we just often believe ourselves into something? Right? Well, there's always like some nagging self doubt, right, and in our critical nous

that I think gets in the way. But when you've got a trusted physician or coach who says, Leanne, this is going to make you feel better, I am certain of it, right, they're basically taking away those downs and just letting your belief carry the day. And so I think a lot of really great coaches do this for their players, right, their masters at channeling this belief. But what we've learned is that there are ways we can we can do that for ourselves, and I think that

provides us with a useful tool. Yeah, So, do you have to be a hundred percent and on a belief for it to work? Because I find there is the inner believer. And there's also like the one that doesn't like there is the one who is a skeptic in me too. And so for the magic to work, do you have to be all in? You have to be all in for the belief one to to usually work. That's that's typically how that one goes. So you may have some trouble with that. But but here's the good news.

The good news is that the belief that's like one of twenty different tools that exist. So here's another tool tennis related that you don't have to believe in it for its work and as rituals, so so like athletes um and performing artists as well. Actually you do you have any rituals before you perform that you engage them, you know what I Actually I probably do, but they're

not like elaborate or concrete in any way. But I'm sure there's some kind of well, I would have to say probably one of the things that I've when I'm on the road that I do before my guitar player will come in and we'll just kind of like play over music just it doesn't have to be songs we're going to perform, but just to like get us in that headspace. I think that's probably the one. You just did it. You said we didn't, we didn't rehearse that.

That was just organic. Yeah, got you in the headspace, right. So here's what's super fascinating about rituals. Rituals by the way, you know, I think we often think of rituals as synonymous with like obsessive compulsive disorder in certain worms of anxiety. That is an extreme usage of rituals. But we have been using rituals to help with our chatter for a really long time. Like cultures around the world give us

rituals for handling the ultimate chatter provoking events like death. Right, no matter what your religion is, you probably have a grieving ritual that you engage in. When babies are born, there are birthing, this is a tumultuous time. Our cultures give us rituals to engage in. And what we see is that, like a lot of athletes and people who perform under stress, they organically create their own rituals. So Raphael Adualts bring it back to the tennis. He's got

a great story that I just I just love. Um. He is interviewed and someone asked him like what's the hardest thing you do on the tennis court? And and you know, this guy is playing against the best athletes in the world, like athletes who are trained from the moment they're born to beat him, basically, and competing against his athletes, that's not the hardest thing he does, he says. The hardest thing he does is battle of voices inside his head, the nagging inner voice, the chatter that can

get in the way of him and performing well. And how does he do it. He engages in a ritual, a very rigid, structured sequence of behavior. So he always walks onto the court the same way, and then he you know, takes his jacket off in a very particular way, and he lines his water bottles up diagonally against the cord. And before ever we serve, he runs his fingers through his hair and he picks his shorts out of his butt. I mean, weird, wacky stuff, right, but he does it

every time. And what it does for him is it provides him with a sense of order and control and one word, experienced and chatter. We often feel like we don't have control of what's happening, right, like our mind is taking over, like ah, like I can't control what I'm what I'm thinking and feeling. And what we've learned is you can compensate for that feeling of a lack of control by creating order around you, and rituals are

one way that people do that. And the science shows that you don't actually have to even believe that they're going to help you. If you engage in the rigid sequence of behaviors, they still have benefit. And so the beliefs aren't working for you. You know, you can do a ritual interesting, so you don't actually have to believe that they're working. Oh that's fascinating. Yeah, Now if you

do believe, right, it's only benefit. But there's research which shows you don't have to believe and you still bet you can still benefit from them. That's interesting. Um. The environment pieces is always is fascinating, and it's for me. I know that while I've been sitting at home, a lot of lists have been happening. I know you talk about a lot of that lot about the like people can tidy up their environment, which helps a lot, especially

as we're all sitting at home, like you know. Um, for me, it's been about lists and and being able to execute the things on my list. Like, that's a way I know that from my own mind that I feel like I have a bit of control over a time when I have I feel like I also I feel like I have zero control. You're you're you're creating order, and we know that when when anxiety is heightened, people naturally try to re establish order in ways like that

by by creating lists in order. I tell a story in the book about how when when I was a little chatter prone one writing the book, like when a paragraph wouldn't come out right, or I had a deadline approaching, I would do something really strange for me, strange because I'm not a particularly like orderly. I'm pretty free, you know, like books are all over the place, and to my wife's dismay, like a shirt might be in one corner another.

But when I was struggling, like my office never looked so good, and I go to the kitchen and like carefully clean all the pots and put them away really nicely. And that was my way. And I think doing what you're doing with lists, right, I'm trying to compensate for this feeling of despair that I'm experiencing by leaning on my environment and I think that's fascinating that they were like tools that exist in the world around us for

managing the chatter inside our head. Like, again, we don't learn that growing up, you know, we kind of just stumble on these things through the course of living. But I think science can help guide us now and say, Okay, here's what we've learned about how to harness your environment to your betterment. Well, that's what I love about your book is that there's scientific proof. I mean some of these ticks and things that we're not aware that we're

actually sometimes already doing these things. And you know, that's where the science is so fascinating to me because for me reading it, it's made me aware of the things already do and given me context around why why it works. And I think like you were saying that in the placebo, it's like here, take this placebo. It will help you

feel better. It's and knowing how the placebo works and why it's gonna help you feel better, It's like knowing the why has really been beneficial for me at least on you know, continuing to to do these things that I kind of naturally already do and doing them even with more purpose. Yeah, and I think I think that's exactly it. It's knowing what the tools are and how they work allows us to be a lot more deliberate

about how we use them in our lives. So so if I experience a moment of chatter, I have a go to like chatter cocktail that I take as not alcohol based right to deal with it. Definitely don't do chat alcohol not conferred competition, that's not in your book. It's not in the book. Not a good thing. But you know, I'll do the mental time travel, I'll do the distance self talk. I'll do something we haven't actually talk about yet. I'll talk to people about my chatter.

But like, I'll be really careful about who I choose to talk to because other people can be incredibly helpful when it comes to our chatter, but they can also get us into a lot of trouble. And that's not a message you hear often conveyed. You know, we often hear, oh, if you're feeling bad, just get it out, vent your emotions, find someone to unload. And we know that that that's not actually helpful for helping people deal with chatter. So

what is beneficial then for for each other? Find someone who's there to like really listen to you and show empathy, someone who you can have a conversation with, but at a certain point they hear you, but they don't just keep asking you to rehash what you felt. Oh my god, he said that, and how did you feel? What are you going to do? Like not just getting you to

keep venting, because what if you're just venting? That makes you and I feel really close and connect did like our friendship grows, but it doesn't do anything to help you solve the problem. So what you really want to find as a person who can let you bend a little but then nudge you to think about the bigger picture,

trying to help you reframe the experience. So so you know, if you're really down about let's say your your last performance didn't go so well, you know maybe I'm like, well, but yeah, you've done hundreds of thousands of these performances before, right, Like you've had bad ones before, you've gotten over it and you've gone onto great things. So think about that, or or let me tell you about the last time I floved a presentation, and you know, like here's what

I did. And so these are ways of just trying to break you out of that doom and despair that characterizes chatter. And other people can be helpful. But um, but if they don't do that, they can make the chatter worse. So I'm super super careful about who I go lose throughout. And sometimes it's not the people who

are the closest with it's other people. M hm, Well it's my husband so great at that of giving that type of advice, And sometimes I just want to slap him because I'm like, that's not what I wanted to hear at this moment in time. All right, at this moment in time, we are going to pause for a quick break. But don't worry, we'll be right back. Welcome back, loves. We were talking about the best people to bounce your inner chatter off of. But that's a very important um caveat.

And I talk a little bit about this. There's an art to being a good chatter advisor and so um And you know, as a scientist, I'm not used to talk to me about art in what I view, right, but but there's an art here in this in the following sense, Different people need different amounts of time to just unload their emotions. Like, so maybe I take two minutes of subscribing it to my wife before I'm ready for her to help me, but maybe for someone else

it's twenty minutes, right, or fifteen minutes. I think the art of being good chatter advisors being able to read the person you're interacting with so that you can know when they've really felt heard like and are ready to go broader. And and it's going to be different for every every individual. That's interesting. Yeah, that is very important. Did these voices change, I mean throughout our lives and like what influences that you know, like where, when, at

what times can they can they change and shift? Yeah? So they can shift? And um, I like to think about it as the voices in our head are are tuned by our surroundings, and so early on in life, our parents and caretakers are playing you know, they're in our heads quite a bit. As we grow older, the other other people in our lives and our relationships, like our colleagues are, our partners, are loved ones like their voices are shaping our own voices. So we are very

sensitive to our surroundings. And that makes sense, right, because we want to be tuned to the world around us

so that we can navigate it optimally. So the kinds of things that are causing you concern or giving you joy at different moments in time are likely going to be shifting depending on where you are in your life, right and so you know the things that give me joy right now professionally, like I don't know, twenty five years ago I would have made fun of Like in fact, I remember, like in college, saying to myself, if I ever end up doing them for a living, like you know,

someone shake me, and here I am doing it. So so how we think about our lives and use language and do so is very sensitive to who we surround ourselves with. Yeah, I mean, what are some of the unconscious ways that our environment is shaping the way that we think? Well, So, so this goes to a tool that I think could be really useful, which is which

is nature? So nature, there's actually just an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, I think it was that basically said is two hours of time in nature the New ten Thousand Steps, and and I talked a lot about nature in the book. What we've learned is like nature, our physical surroundings provide us with the tool for rejuvenating ourselves after we're depleted from chatter. So when we're experiencing

chatter like that's taking up all of our attention. And that's in part why it impairs us when it comes to work, because we can't think about anything else. It's what we've learned is that exposure to green spaces. So if you go for a walk, I can see your window right now looks much nicer than mine because I'm facing like a foot of snow, but yours looks a lot more pleasant outside. Yes, not here. More, what nature does for us is it captures our attention in a

very soft way. So it's like our our attention just drifts to the leaves and the trees and and the bushes and the squirrels, and and that it occupies our attention, but we're not working really hard to make sense of our surroundings. And that allows our attention, our ability focus to restore, and that can be really, really helpful. So that's one way that our environment can, outside of our awareness,

really help us well. And I found it, sorry not to interrupt you, I found it interesting that you said not only being in nature, but actually photos and sounds and so a lot of people, you know, have been stuck at home and they don't have access to nature. I mean, I'm fortunate have a backyard, you know, I can go out in it, like so many people can be stuck in small places. And that's what I've found

so fascinating about the research of nature. It's just even looking at photos or hearing sounds of nature can be just as impactful. Yeah, absolutely right. You know, I will say that I think the more immersive it is, the better. So the more time you spent and the more all consuming it is, the more likely it is to have the biggest effect. But you can absolutely benefit from it

by looking at pictures or videos. In fact, when I became involved in some of this research, the first thing I did is in my office at work, I took down like the picture of whatever that was there, and I put like a photo of a tree that my sister I had taken for me because like, you know, practice what I preach it. I got like an orchid in the corner now because I know I know what the science says. So that's one way the environment up.

But the other really cool thing, and I mean I suspect people actually get this from like going to your concerts, and I'd be curious about whether you experienced this too. On the other side, we've learned that experiencing awe, the emotion of awe, can also help us manage chatter and so really quick. The way that works is as an emotional we experience when we're in the presence of something vast that we have trouble explained. And so a lot

of people get it from nature. So when I think about like the number of planets in the universe, I can't it's hard for me to contemplate that it's awe inspiring. But other people get it from attending an amazing concert where everyone's singing together and there's a sense of transcendence, like you're all in it and the sounds are amazing. And this is hard to understand how that actually works.

And what we know is that when people experience that emotion, it makes us as individuals and our concerns feel a whole lot smaller. Our self shrinks, And when it comes to chatter, like shrinking your chatter is that's not a bad thing, right, Like our concerns feel a lot smaller in their presence of something bad. So to me, that's a really just neat beautiful finding and so do you ever experience that when you're I think that's what I was saying earlier about getting past the chatter, is that

the the awe of knowing. I always say that I'm being sung instead of being the one singing. And when I experienced that kind of effortless, free flowing energy and knowing I'm connected to something else, Um, that is inspiring on stage and you know you're saying, so many people singing you know the same song. Like to watch the energy of a massive crowd like coming right back at you. Yeah, that's absolutely inspiring. I think about it. You know, I

live for those moments. I think when we experience then, we all really do like it takes you out of your own inner chaos for a moment and and places you somewhere that's um for what I feel is kind of probably our truest The truest place for us is

out beyond us. Well, here's what's really cool about the awe research, I think, which is not everyone gets to sing in front of how many tens of thousands of people to experience that, and a lot of us don't get to go to that many concerts right, like you know,

once every couple of years maybe, um. But what we've learned is like you can find I think your own awe triggers, Like you don't have to wait for those experiences, so you can like seek out like, okay, are there are there things in the park that give you a sense of also and I go, like to the arboretum by my house and like think about the fact that a tree has been here for three years, like that's all inspiring. Or if I look at an amazing piece

of art, like that fills me with awe. So there are ways of Again, now that we know how these things work, you can try to be really deliberate to build these chatter fighting tools and experiences into your life. And that's the challenge I think that we all face, which is, once we are aware of the different tools that exist, how do we bring them in and fold them in profitably to help us live better lives. I want to ask a bit of a selfish question right now,

because I mean, I don't think it's probably selfish. I think a lot of people are experiencing this in the morning when I like when I wake up, like I said, that's my first thing that I'm aware of the chatter that instantly starts. Is there anything to set us on the right path in the morning when it comes to our own chatter? Well, I think I think what you could try to do is like try to create like a chatter habit. You know, so if you know that as soon as you wake up, boom, like there's that

voice and I don't want to hear it. Um, you know, think about, like what are the tools that really work for you. So maybe it's a ritual that you engage in right away that like that morning to start your day and you know, followed by a walk and wherever to you know, try to give you a double hit, Like, so, find the tools at work and then make habits, make specific plans to activate those tools right away before you

let the chatter to take hold. A lot most of the tools I talked about in the book are are pretty simple to implement, Like these aren't tall orders. Um, they're not meant to replace, like clinical interventions if the chatter gets too extreme, Like I'm a huge proponent of

science based interventions and therapy and things like that. For most of us, we experienced like chatter is a part of life and so just trying to think about how you can bring those tools in and and make those plans can hopefully help prevent it from getting more intense, might require you to get more more intensive intervention. Yeah, you know, we're living in a really interesting, chatter provoking time, and I think that your book is is really fascinating

and and so helpful. Like I said, I've I've been implementing the things that that you write about, and I am living proof that it actually does work, and which makes me excited because there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of books and a lot of information out there, and you know, like so much that people

can that people claim to be helpful. And I just found that the tools that, like you said that you that are fairly simple and easy to implement, and the tools that you have provided have definitely already been impactful in my life with just the first like a few days of really implementing them. And that makes the four years of drudgery that went into that all worth it.

I mean really, um, I mean, you know, the reason I wrote that book was to take what we know and translated for others, like you know, not so just signed just talking about the stuff so that people can benefit from it. So the fact that it's having that effect really warms my heart and is the best news

I've gotten. While so very good, Thank you well. I always like to end my episodes with music because obviously music is such a big part of my life, and I find it fascinating to hear what music people love and what's on their playlist and what's inspiring them. So I call this the Holy Five. I've so do you are you? Are you a music fan? And do you do you have five songs that are that moview that you'd like to share? I do, but I think you might have to change it from calling the Holy five.

I don't know that you'll these will be holyse blongs. No no, no, no, like whole holy as in like you know your whole five? I see, okay, good not with an age, not with the age the w okay. So no judgment. I love music, but I've been made fun of throughout my life for my case, so here goes. Don't stop leaving journey. Oh that's that's a solid one. Um, it's gonna get worse. Just prepare with or without you YouTube that's still solid. Uh. Jesse's Girl, Rick Springfield, Jessee's good. Yeah,

that's a good one. Um, blinding Lights the weekend and more contemporary one. Oh yeah, very cool. I'm maybe and bon Jovie living on a prayer Steve you that's those are all great. I got made made fun of big time in college for those choices, so oh well, now you're cool. Thank you to stand for approval. Yes, absolutely, Thank you so much for joining us today. Um. I really think people will benefit from from everything we discussed and especially your book, So thank you so much. Thanks

for having me. It's ten of fun alright everyone. That wraps up this episode and kicks off our second season of Holy Human. I am so thrilled that we are on our second season. Thank you so much for all of you for coming along on this journey with me. I truly truly appreciate you joining me on this ride, and I also love hearing from you. So please leave me your feedback wherever you're listening, and don't hesitate to share this podcast with anyone in your life that you

feel could benefit from hearing it. I send you my love until next time. On the next episode of Holy Human, We're going to tackle something that is truly transformative, heart centered guidance with the beautiful Daniel apport. Until then, loves, have a beautiful day, a beautiful week, and I love you. Holy Human with Me Leanne Rhymes is a production of

I Heart Radio. You'll find Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes on the I Heart app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get the podcast that matter most to you.