Chatter
Chatter, The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, by Ethan Kross, Crown 2021
The voice in my head is an asshole.
Dan Harris
Brain power - do we have the ability to turn that chatter into positive, mind-moving signals that take us happily forward? Yes, says Dr. Ethan Kross in this his first book, Chatter, and in fact our brain chemistry is built to give us that ability if we can learn how to harness the power and make it heard over negative messaging. None of this, like so many good things in life, however, simply just happens. There are times when the voice in the head signals are negative and discouraging, to the point where we may even not try.
But there is another way, as Kross shows us in his brilliant Chatter examples. Under stress a monkey brain does funny things, even as it did for a young major league pitcher who suddenly forgot how to pitch. A woman commits to leading a double life of espionage, and the sheer stress of double tasking seemed to be, on second thought, an unmanageable life choice. A tragic school shooting in Dekalb Illinois led psychologists to look at the real value of repeated messaging. The author uses these three examples to show how the mind works and where it is in fact manageable.
Think about this for a bit. When babies cry, louder and louder it seems, because they are hungry or hurting, the crying stops when the caretaker settles them down with a nice bottle - until the next time, because crying works. But, says Kross, as we grow up and our brains become multi-dimensional, we develop new habits, and one of them is sharing and venting distress with the hopes that we will feel better, less desolate and depressed afterward - but in fact, we won't. When dealing with chatter, we may need another voice to confront this out-of-control force - "outside help to work through the problem at hand, see the bigger picture, and decide on the most constructive course of action." Certainly not social media to the rescue! "... this is why talking about emotions so often backfires, in spite of its enormous potential to help. When our minds are bathed in chatter, we display a strong bias toward satisfying our emotional needs over our cognitive ones.... when we're upset, we tend to over focus on receiving empathy rather than finding practical solutions."
While nature may have set us up to believe that a sympathetic partner can help us defend against a predator, in fact the situation, says Kross, actually calls out for a very different solution, a new set of powerful tools. Kross divides the possible solutions into three sections - 1. tools that we can implement by ourselves, 2. tools that leverage relationships with other people, and 3, tools that involve our environment. Interestingly, he leads with the easy tools first, hoping we get to the next, more difficult step later.
Koss offers 12 tools that we can implement on our own, and these are my absolute favorites to work on:
1. Use distanced self-talk
2. Imagine advising a friend
3. Broaden your perspective.
4. Reframe your experience as a challenge
5. Reinterpret your body's chatter response.
6. Normalize your experience
7. Engage in mental time travel
8. Change the view
9. Write expressively
10 Adopt the perspective of a neutral third party
11. Clutch a lucky charm or embrace a superstition.
12 Perform a ritual.
These 12 tools are not the usual "go for a walk," or pop a pill. They are instead enough tools to try when the monkey brain is acting up and interfering, but I would like to see another full book dedicated to just these 12 tools, or maybe a video or podcast. We need more please Dr. Kross!
Patricia E. Moody
FORTUNE magazine "Pioneering Woman in Mfg"
IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert
A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, patriciaemoody@gmail.com