Ethan Kross

AS HEARD ON THE CHRIS EVANS SHOW 'This book is going to fundamentally change some of the most important conversations in your life-the ones you have with yourself.' - Adam Grant, bestselling author of Give and Take Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Cain, Adam Grant, and Daniel H. Pink's Next Big Idea Club Winter 2021 Winning Selection One of the best new books of 2021 - BBC Science Focus Magazine, The Washington Post, CNN Underscored, USA Today, Shape, Behavioral Scientist, People, PopSugar * Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness starred reviews * Turn your inner voice from critic to coach We all have a voice in our head. We tune into its endless chatter to look for guidance, ideas and wisdom. Except sometimes, this voice leads us down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk and endless rumination. These silent conversations are so powerful they can sink our mood, trip us up and even impact our health. How can we take back control? This is the question award-winning psychologist Ethan Kross set out to answer twenty years ago when he began an audacious mission - to study the conversations we have with ourselves. In Chatter, Kross interweaves cutting-edge science with real-world case studies to explain how these inner conversations shape our work and relationships. Then he reveals the tools you need to harness your own voice so that you can be happier, healthier and more productive. Brilliantly argued and expertly researched, Chatter will explain how the conversations we have with ourselves shape our lives, and will give you the power to change them.

The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It

Chatter

An award-winning psychologist reveals the hidden power of our inner voice and shows how we can harness it to live a healthier, more satisfying, and more productive life. "This book is going to fundamentally change some of the most important conversations in your life--the ones you have with yourself."--Adam Grant, bestselling author of Give and Take One of the best new books of the year--The Washington Post, BBC, CNN Underscored, Shape, Behavioral Scientist, PopSugar * Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness starred reviews * Next Big Idea Club Finalist Tell a stranger that you talk to yourself, and you're likely to get written off as eccentric. But the truth is that we all have a voice in our head. When we talk to ourselves, we often hope to tap into our inner coach but find our inner critic instead. When we're facing a tough task, our inner coach can buoy us up: Focus--you can do this. But, just as often, our inner critic sinks us entirely: I'm going to fail. They'll all laugh at me. What's the use? In Chatter, acclaimed psychologist Ethan Kross explores the silent conversations we have with ourselves. Interweaving groundbreaking behavioral and brain research from his own lab with real-world case studies--from a pitcher who forgets how to pitch, to a Harvard undergrad negotiating her double life as a spy--Kross explains how these conversations shape our lives, work, and relationships. He warns that giving in to negative and disorienting self-talk--what he calls "chatter"--can tank our health, sink our moods, strain our social connections, and cause us to fold under pressure. But the good news is that we're already equipped with the tools we need to make our inner voice work in our favor. These tools are often hidden in plain sight--in the words we use to think about ourselves, the technologies we embrace, the diaries we keep in our drawers, the conversations we have with our loved ones, and the cultures we create in our schools and workplaces. Brilliantly argued, expertly researched, and filled with compelling stories, Chatter gives us the power to change the most important conversation we have each day: the one we have with ourselves.

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

Great book about the voice that runs around free in our mind

Message Received

Kendall McClain

Recommend to all my over-thinkers! Informative and pretty helpful.

interesting information about the internal chatter we all have but gets dull

Fredo Moreno

Jaiden Ratti

Boothby

Even with such a nebulous topic, this was a very straightforward helpful book. The title, "The voice in our head, why it Matters, and how to harness it" is actually a very accurate outline of what the book does. Kross defines an important distinction between the voice generally and Chatter, the negative or counterproductive instances of inner voice. Chatter is what results when the inner voice overwhelms what you're trying to do--he makes the comparison to computer RAM: the issue arises when chatter crowds out necessary processing power and interferes with your ability to concentrate and process negative emotions in a positive way. Offers a fascinating discussion on the ways that social media may amplify chatter and foreclose the healing process around painful experiences. 

Kross identifies a productive kind of self-talk that ALSO happens naturally, but he argues that by recognizing what kinds of self-talk are productive and encouraging those kinds we can foster more productive thought patterns with ourselves and alleviate the bad kinds of chatter. He advocates the kinds of self talk that encourage appropriate distancing from painful things, in such a way that we can have healthier perspective on them, and can ignore the intrusive kinds of chatter.

Thomas Plaatsman

The main idea to calm negative chatter is the technique called distancing. The conclusive chapter at the end of the book (summarized below) shows several ways to implement this method. Each technique is explained with practical examples throughout the book. 

CONCLUSION 
1. Use distancing through Journaling, imaging yourself as a fly in the wall, time travel. Help friends to reframe things into a challenge when things cool down
2. Use nature, environment and happy memories 

PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS 
1. use distancing. Talk to yourself in third person and use your own name
2. Imagine what you'd say to a friend and apply to yourself
3. Broaden your perspective. Think about how this event related to other (bigger) events you and others have experienced. Think what someone you admire would say 
4. Reframe your experience as a challenge. If we realize we have control, it makes us feel better 
5. Remind yourself that your bodily response is a revolutionary response and is there to help you perform better not the other way around 
6. Normalize your experience. Use the word you to refer to people in general (you think it's like this, but it's not) 
7. Engage in mental time travel. Think of yourself some months or years in the future and how you'd look back on the experience 
8. Change the view. Picture yourself as a fly on the wall
9. Journaling. Write as a narrator not as yourself
10. Adopt the view of a neutral 3rd person observer 
11. Clutch a lucky charm or embrace a superstition 
12. Perform a ritual (fixed sequence of rituals with meaning) 

HELPING OTHERS 
1. support emotional and rational needs (give perspective) 
2. Give invisible support. For example cleaning or providing options. If you take over they feel a loss of control. General examples. For example, it's amazing how many of my friends struggle with parenthood 
3. Tell kids to pretend they're a superhero. Refer to themselves using their superhero name
4. Touch them. Embrace or a hand in the shoulder. Needs to be welcome 
5. Be someone else's placebo 

RECEIVING SUPPORT 
1. Find the right people to talk to. Who help with both emotional and rational needs. Depending on the topic. 
2. Seek out physical contact. Can also be a teddy bear 
3. Look at a photo of a loved one. Reminds you that you have people to turn to. 
4. Perform ritual with others (communal meditation, same toast with friends) 
5. Limit passive social media use. Makes you feel less happy. Use to reach out. I'd you use it for support, limit the negative thought sharing bcs it might upset others 

TOOLS INVOLVE ENVIRONMENT 
1. Clean up and create order. Make lists and clean up
2. Increase exposure to green spaces. Go to a park. If not possible look at pics or videos 
3. Seek out awe inspiring events

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

Laura Mitchell Hutchinson

Really helpful info for an anxious soul like me! Fascinating to learn of the science behind my own 'inner voice' and what I can do to stop the negative spiralling that seems to happen so often. I have tried to use some of these techniques over the past week or so and surprised myself when they actually worked! 4.5 stars from me, not because the content was lacking but just my own personal experience with it – this is quite an academic read, which I am not used to, and at times I found it really hard to concentrate. Right when I was thinking 'I hope someone makes a dot point summary of this so I don't forget' I discovered the back section is a fantastic, categorised summary of practical tips for handling my own inner voice, being a support to the people around me coping with 'chatter' and how to adjust my lifestyle to prevent that negative-spiral taking over unnecessarily. I am SO GRATEFUL for intelligent people like Dr Ethan Kross. THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR WISDOM

Disclaimer: I was able to read this book early as an advanced reading copy because I work in the publishing industry in Australia.

Matthew Xu

I'm naturally a bit skeptical of this type of "pop psychology" book, but I really enjoyed Kross' approach to laying out practical, evidence-backed concepts in Chatter. Not all of the ideas are world-shattering or even necessarily novel, but I think Kross does a good job of framing the book as a toolbox - something that still requires personal reflection and modification. Easy recommendation for anyone who wants to think more about thinking.

Strengths:
- Very actionable in recommendations, without being overly prescriptive. The idea of "distanced self-talk" is probably the best example of this - it's a really simple but interesting way to "test" healthier processing and something that I've noticed myself inadvertently use in the past.
- Not too long? Sometimes these books stretch on and on, trying to hammer home basically one or two core ideas. Chatter is rife with interesting footnotes but doesn't overstay its welcome, progressing pretty quickly through Kross' core outline.

Weaknesses:
- I was hoping the book would get more into the mechanics of cognition and, in particular, the non-verbal modes of internal narrative that many people had. I think the idea of chatter (which is really a type of negative spiraling?) definitely applies to those other internal modes of thinking. I would have liked broader acknowledgement of how these processing techniques apply to people who have a visual or sensory-dominant pristine experience.
- There's a lot of "what" but still not much "why" behind the concepts in this book, which felt pretty unsatisfying to me. Some of that is probably a function of how these population psychology studies work, but in cases where experts have brain scans/deeper mechanistic understandings, it would have been nice to learn more about those things. Fair authorial choice to make, just a note of personal preference.

Chatter The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It

Reviews