Ethan Kross: Chatter

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.

Key Points

Simply sharing our emotions with others doesn’t help us to recover in any meaningful way.

When seeking out advisors, we should find those who support both our emotional needs as well as our cognitive ones. You want a blend of both Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. 🖖

Reflect on past conversations with advisors and determine if that previously helped you move forward with a challenging situation. That’s a key indicator to determine if they are people you want to keep engaging.

Seek out different advisors for different things.

A key distinction in supporting others is whether they have specifically sought out of advice or not. If not, being helpful people through invisible means is often useful.

Resources Mentioned

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It* by Ethan Kross

Interview Notes

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