“People are embarrassed to even articulate out loud what they say to themselves silently.”- Ethan Kross

Do you ever wonder why some people excel under intense pressure while other people fold? How is that an Olympic athlete can train for four years honing their skills with exact precision and in the final moment make a crucial mistake to blow their shot at gold?

Maybe you've had the experience of preparing for hours for your dream job interview and when you finally sat down to talk, you froze up and forgot everything you prepared. Or maybe you had an argument with a friend, co-worker, or partner and said something you instantly regretted, then spending the rest of the night ruminating over what you did wrong and wondering why no one likes you? Or how about that noise you hear late at night as you lie in bed, convincing yourself that it's a serial killer coming to murder you?

If you've experienced any of these situations or anything similar, then you've experienced “chatter.” Chatter is the dark side of our inner voice (and trust me, we all have it). My guest today is bestselling author Ethan Kross, a Professor of Psychology and Management, father of 2, and the bestselling author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters and How to Harness It. He defines chatter as "getting stuck in a negative thought loop" and it is often the reason behind our successes or failures in high pressure situations.

Chatter is what feeds into imposter syndrome, limiting beliefs, and the worries that we consciously and unconsciously obsess over. The good news is there are tools for harnessing your chatter (and even making it your ally). In this conversation, Ethan will share the research he's uncovered and the numerous strategies he's discovered to befriend your chatter in any situation you encounter. I only wish I had discovered his book 3 weeks before I ran the American Ninja Warrior course instead of the month after. If you want to hear how my own chatter disrupted my performance on the course and how you can apply my failures to your future successes, you won’t want to skip today’s conversation.

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Here's What You'll Learn:

• How Ethan began his journey to investigating the chatter in our minds.
• What exactly is chatter and what does it mean?
• Not all forms of the voice in your head are chatter.
• Some forms of our inner voice are helpful and beneficial.
• The dark side of the inner voice is chatter.
• How much time we spend each day using our inner voice.
• How the message of mindfulness has been distorted and how it should be revised.
• Why awareness of our thoughts is so key to making change in our lives
• The origins of our self talk.
• The physical effects chatter has on our bodies and overall health.
• Using a piano metaphor to understand how our genes are expressed and how chatter influences gene expression.
• How chatter effects our telomeres and the way we age.
• The two pieces of self control and how you need both of them to achieve your goals.
• How to target imposter syndrome so it doesn't hold you back.
• The story of the limiting belief script that defeated me on the Ninja Warrior course.
• The mechanism behind chatter breaking down performance and how it affects executive function.
• Why athletes engage in rituals before games and performances.
• The physical symptoms of a threat response vs. the symptoms of a challenge response and how they help or hurt our response to experiences.
• Tools for how to illicit the challenge response rather than the threat response.
• What distanced self talk is and how to use to coach yourself through stressful situations.

Useful Resources Mentioned:

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It

Ethan Kross - Author of Chatter and Acclaimed Psychologist

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Guest Bio:

Ethan Kross is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. An award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s top ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he is the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory.

Ethan has participated in policy discussion at the White House and has been interviewed about his research on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science.

His book, CHATTER: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters and How to Harness It, is a National Bestseller and was chosen as one of the best new books of the year by the Washington Post, CNN and USA Today and the Winning Winter 2021 selection for Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, Susan Cain and Dan Pink’s Next Big Idea Book Club.

Show Credits:

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.

The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).

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