Ethan Kross is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. As an award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top-ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he studies how the conversations people have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions, and relationships.

His research has been published in Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He’s been featured by Good Morning America, NPR’s Morning Edition, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and many other publications. He’s the author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It*.

In this conversation, Ethan and I highlight how introspection can sometimes do more harm than good. Ethan invites us to form a board of advisors that support us with both our emotional and cognitive needs. Plus, he shares the science behind how we can do this effectively for others.

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