Speaker 1: When the problem isn't happening to us, we can be
Speaker 1: really shrewd. But when it's happening to us, we can
Speaker 1: often make bad decisions. And that's where the power of
Speaker 1: distance resides.
Speaker 2: Wow, welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 2: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed They're good.
Speaker 3: Wolf, Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode
Speaker 3: is Ethan Cross, one of the world's leading experts on
Speaker 3: controlling the conscious mind. He's an award winning professor at
Speaker 3: the University of Michigan and the Raw School of Business,
Speaker 3: and also the director of the Emotion and Self Control Laboratory.
Speaker 3: In addition to countless television appearances, Ethan's research has been
Speaker 3: featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 3: USA Today, and many others. Today, Ethan and Eric discuss
Speaker 3: his book Chatter, The Voice in Our Head Wyatt matters
Speaker 3: and How to Harness It.
Speaker 4: Hi, Ethan, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Eric, I've been looking forward to
Speaker 1: this conversation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm really excited. Your book is called Chatter, the
Speaker 4: Voice in Our Head? Whyat matters and How to Harness it?
Speaker 4: Which is right in the basic ideas that we talk
Speaker 4: about on the show. But before we get into the book,
Speaker 4: let's start like we always do, with a parable. There
Speaker 4: is a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says,
Speaker 4: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 4: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 4: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 4: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 4: and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she
Speaker 4: thinks about it for a second. She looks up at
Speaker 4: her grandfather. She said, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 4: the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 4: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 4: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 4: you do.
Speaker 1: Well. There are two thoughts that immediately come to mind.
Speaker 1: One is just how wonderful that parable scaffolds onto the
Speaker 1: content of my research and my book. You know, there's
Speaker 1: the good wolf and the bad wolf, or you could
Speaker 1: think of the good side or the dark side to
Speaker 1: our inner voice, the coach, the critic, And so I
Speaker 1: think we often do feel like in life we are
Speaker 1: battling between these two forces. And the big question we
Speaker 1: face is how do we tilt the balance in the
Speaker 1: direction we want to spend most of our life living.
Speaker 1: And I think for most of us that is in
Speaker 1: the direction of the more positive wolf. So I think
Speaker 1: that really connects that parable to what we know is
Speaker 1: a struggle that many of us, almost maybe even all
Speaker 1: of us face at times. But the other point that
Speaker 1: it raises is the more nuanced one about emotion that
Speaker 1: I think a lot about lately, which is, I think
Speaker 1: many of us reflexively want to rid our lives of
Speaker 1: negative emotions, the negative wolf, and only really dance with
Speaker 1: that positive wolf, the happy joy, and so forth. And
Speaker 1: I think our emotional life I don't think, I know
Speaker 1: is more complicated than that, in the sense that negative
Speaker 1: emotions and small doses can actually be amazingly useful to us.
Speaker 1: So we don't want to rid our life entirely of
Speaker 1: that bad wolf. If you want to stick with that metaphor, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if I don't experience a small ping of anxiety before
Speaker 1: a big presentation, the presentation often doesn't go as well
Speaker 1: if I do have a small ping of anxiety, right
Speaker 1: because that negative emotion is is information that's motivating me
Speaker 1: to attend to the situation and practice and prepare. So
Speaker 1: I don't think we should try to rid ourselves of
Speaker 1: that dark side of us, that that negative wolf, however
Speaker 1: we want to describe it. But I think we want
Speaker 1: to figure out how to coexist with that negative wolf
Speaker 1: or minimize their impact on us, but recognize that there's
Speaker 1: still value that comes from it. If that makes sense.
Speaker 4: It totally makes sense, and it kind of leads me
Speaker 4: into where I want to start this conversation, which is
Speaker 4: around the way that thoughts and emotions work. You know,
Speaker 4: they co arise together in essence. You know, we talk
Speaker 4: about the thought and emotion, but they tend to sort
Speaker 4: of show up together. You know, one may precede the other.
Speaker 4: But the question I have for you is, there are
Speaker 4: two sort of schools out there I've seen of working
Speaker 4: with emotions and working with thoughts. And I'm vastly oversimplifying here,
Speaker 4: but one school is sort of saying, look, you just
Speaker 4: be with what is. You allow it, you give it space,
Speaker 4: but you be with it what is. You don't resist,
Speaker 4: you just you kind of let it be there. The
Speaker 4: other school is more get in there and you know,
Speaker 4: work with your thoughts, trying, you know, turn your thoughts
Speaker 4: down or turn them up, or change them this way
Speaker 4: or that way. And that's the approach. And I'm kind
Speaker 4: of curious how you think about that. I'm not going
Speaker 4: to say it's a split, because I don't think it's
Speaker 4: that obvious, but there does seem to be sort of
Speaker 4: do I start with emotions, do I start with thoughts?
Speaker 4: Does it depend?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: How do you think about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think you're during an important tension that exists
Speaker 1: not only in the field scientifically, but I think also
Speaker 1: more broadly in our culture, where you have certain approaches
Speaker 1: that really emphasize let's call it the mindfulness approach be
Speaker 1: in the moment, except don't try to engage with the thought,
Speaker 1: let it go and move on. And then there's another
Speaker 1: camp that is much more coming out of the cognitive
Speaker 1: tradition cognitive therapy, which is, hey, you can change how
Speaker 1: you think to change how you feel. I think it
Speaker 1: is unfortunate that we have splintered into these camps. Those
Speaker 1: two approaches that you describe, which I just summarize back
Speaker 1: to you, these represent two different tools that we possess
Speaker 1: for managing our emotional lives. And I don't privilege one
Speaker 1: tool over another. Different tools are useful for different people
Speaker 1: in different situations. And so when I hear people say, hey,
Speaker 1: the only thing you well, first of all, let me say,
Speaker 1: if I hear anyone say the only thing they need
Speaker 1: to do, I stop at the only because although we
Speaker 1: often want single magic bullet solutions, none exists. As far
Speaker 1: as I've been able to deduce. What we know is
Speaker 1: that we have evolved this capacity to use the very
Speaker 1: technical term, drive ourselves nuts at times, to get stuck
Speaker 1: ruminating and worrying and catastrophizing. So we have that tendency
Speaker 1: that exists. But what we have also evolved is a
Speaker 1: boatload of tools that we can use to manage these
Speaker 1: negative conversations we have with ourselves in aversive states. And
Speaker 1: so if you come to me and you ask me, like,
Speaker 1: what tools can I give you to give you the
Speaker 1: best chance of succeeding and succeeding in a sense of
Speaker 1: living a fulfilling, productive life, I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: access to the whole toolkit. Right. Why am I going
Speaker 1: to limit you to one tool A carpenter doesn't try
Speaker 1: to build a house with just a hammer. They have
Speaker 1: multiple toolboxes that they bring to the job site. And
Speaker 1: I think the same is true when it comes to
Speaker 1: our emotional lives. We try to oversimplify things sometimes and say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the one thing you need to do, but
Speaker 1: in fact that's not true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I agree one hundred percent. And you know,
Speaker 4: I keep wanting to try and simplify it. I do
Speaker 4: work with clients, and you know, I want to make
Speaker 4: it like, well, here's your four step method, but it
Speaker 4: just never reduces that way. I did think though, that
Speaker 4: later in the book, you talked about conversations with other people,
Speaker 4: and you talked about that there's two needs in conversation
Speaker 4: with other people, and this really resonated with me, and
Speaker 4: it resonated with me about the topic that we're talking
Speaker 4: about here. And what you said was that people in
Speaker 4: a conversation, if they're going to talk to somebody else
Speaker 4: about a struggle they're having, they have an emotional need
Speaker 4: and they have a cognitive need. And I really love
Speaker 4: that because it sort of said, look, it's not one
Speaker 4: or the other. Both those needs are there, and for
Speaker 4: it to be a really productive and satisfying conversation, you've
Speaker 4: got to have both those elements. So talk to me
Speaker 4: a little bit about what you mean by emotional need
Speaker 4: and cognitive need in that way.
Speaker 1: Well, we know from lots of research that when people
Speaker 1: experience chatter, which I use as a term to just
Speaker 1: capture getting stuck in a negative thought loop. So if
Speaker 1: it's a negative thought loop about the past, that's rumination.
Speaker 1: If it's the future or president, call that worry. But
Speaker 1: you're just spinning. You're trying to find a solution to
Speaker 1: a problem, but you're not succeeding. And we know that
Speaker 1: when that happens, people are intensely motivated to find someone
Speaker 1: else to share that chatter with, to talk to that
Speaker 1: other person about what's going through their head. There are
Speaker 1: a couple exceptions to that rule. We tend not to
Speaker 1: want to talk about certain kinds of trauma or experiences
Speaker 1: involving shame, but all the other sources of chatter, the anxiety,
Speaker 1: the sadness, the anger. We want to find someone to
Speaker 1: chat with, and what we know is that our intuitions
Speaker 1: regarding what makes for a good, productive conversation are often off.
Speaker 1: So many people think that the key to having a productive,
Speaker 1: useful conversation about your chatter is to find someone to
Speaker 1: venture emotions, to just unload what is going through your head,
Speaker 1: get it off your chest. We know that when you
Speaker 1: vent to someone else about what you're feeling, this can
Speaker 1: be really good for satisfying those social needs that we have,
Speaker 1: those social and emotional needs. It feels good to know
Speaker 1: that there's someone out there in the world that is
Speaker 1: willing to take the time to hear what I've gone
Speaker 1: through to validate my experience. And indeed, research shows that
Speaker 1: when you vent to someone else, that often strengthens a
Speaker 1: friendship bonds between people. The problem is that if all
Speaker 1: you do is vent your emotions, if all you do
Speaker 1: is that's signify, you wouldn't believe what that guy asked
Speaker 1: me on the last podcast. You know, it was so
Speaker 1: rude and obnoxious, and they said they wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Can you believe it? And then you are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds terrible, Ethan, I would hate to be in that'sity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're damn right. If that's all you do, you leave
Speaker 1: that conversation feeling close and connected to the person you
Speaker 1: talk to, but you're just as upset, if not more upset,
Speaker 1: by the time you're finished talking than when you started.
Speaker 1: The best kinds of conversations. When it comes to chatter
Speaker 1: do two things. You spend a little time expressing your emotions,
Speaker 1: getting it out, letting the other person learn about what
Speaker 1: you've gone through. But then at a certain point in
Speaker 1: the conversation, that person you're talking to starts working to
Speaker 1: help you broaden your perspective. They start helping you try
Speaker 1: to reframe your experience. So you might say to me, hey, Ethan,
Speaker 1: that wow, that sounds terrible. I've been in situations like that.
Speaker 1: You know. The good news is they're one out of
Speaker 1: one hundred and when that happens. Here's how I think
Speaker 1: about it. So when we experience chatter, we get so
Speaker 1: stuck in a tunnel vision mindset. We're thinking about that problem.
Speaker 1: We can't break out of that to think differently about
Speaker 1: what we're going through in ways that might make us
Speaker 1: feel better. And other people are in a prime position
Speaker 1: to help us do it because they've got the objectivity,
Speaker 1: they've got the distance from our problems to think more
Speaker 1: rationally about it. So, you know, oftentimes talking can go
Speaker 1: terribly wrong, but it also has the potential to go
Speaker 1: really right. And what I think knowing about these scientific
Speaker 1: principles do for people is it does two things. I'll
Speaker 1: speak in the first person from my own experience. You know,
Speaker 1: I used to be someone before I knew the science,
Speaker 1: like so many other people, I get upset, I instantly
Speaker 1: call this person, I call that person. I would just
Speaker 1: look for people to share it with, and it didn't
Speaker 1: always make me feel better. Now that I know this science,
Speaker 1: one thing it allows me to do is I am
Speaker 1: exceptionally deliberate about who I contact when I need chatter support.
Speaker 1: Many people that I love dearly they love me. I
Speaker 1: don't talk to them about chatter at all. You know,
Speaker 1: it's about the kids and about work. I keep it
Speaker 1: at that level because I know if I go into
Speaker 1: the chatter with them, they're just going to make it worse.
Speaker 1: They don't intend to, but by just getting me to
Speaker 1: it's just gonna not be a good situation. So there
Speaker 1: are like four or five people that I know I
Speaker 1: can trust to really help listen to me and then
Speaker 1: broaden my perspective. And like that's my chatter board, right
Speaker 1: And I avail myself of that resource quite a bit
Speaker 1: and it's incredibly useful. So that's one take home. The
Speaker 1: other take home is when people come to me for support, Hey,
Speaker 1: you think you know? Can I get your take on this?
Speaker 1: I got to talk to you about this. I'm not
Speaker 1: helpless and just listening and trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do. I've got a game plan. I know. I'm
Speaker 1: going to listen for a bit and I'm gonna start
Speaker 1: feeling out the person who's talking to me and to
Speaker 1: see when they're ready for me to give them advice.
Speaker 1: And there's an art to doing that. You know, if
Speaker 1: my wife comes to me with a problem and she's
Speaker 1: going on and on, and you know, at some point
Speaker 1: I might say totally, I'm so sorry that happened. I
Speaker 1: have a thought, can I give it to you? And
Speaker 1: sometimes she'll say, no, just listen, I just want to
Speaker 1: keep going, and then I'll let her go. But at
Speaker 1: other times she's like, please, yeah, tell me what I
Speaker 1: should do. I want advice. And so you've got to
Speaker 1: feel that out a little bit. But this is science
Speaker 1: giving us a blueprint for how to interact profitably with
Speaker 1: other people when it comes to chatter, and I think
Speaker 1: that is a really valuable commodity to have.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And what I love about that whole idea there
Speaker 4: is there is a stereotype out there of women just
Speaker 4: one event and they get frustrated because they feel like
Speaker 4: they vent to their male partner, and their male partner
Speaker 4: immediately just wants to solve it. Yeah, And what I
Speaker 4: love about what you're saying is, well, you're both kind
Speaker 4: of right.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: You know, that emotional need is real. That venting, that connecting,
Speaker 4: that's an important part of it. And I've often found
Speaker 4: until that's established, the second part can't take off. But
Speaker 4: there is a point where it does make sense to say, Okay, good,
Speaker 4: now we've sort of gotten our feelings out about this,
Speaker 4: Is there anything we can do? Is there a way
Speaker 4: we can think about this differently? And I was recovering
Speaker 4: heroin addict or I guess I am. I found in
Speaker 4: AA that the people that I talked to that the
Speaker 4: most helpful did both those things right. They didn't immediately
Speaker 4: cut you off of me, like, well what you should
Speaker 4: do is this, but at a certain point they went, well, Eric,
Speaker 4: let's look at this slightly differently. And so I think
Speaker 4: that balance is so important, and I think it also
Speaker 4: for me, pointed to internally, for myself needing that same
Speaker 4: balance right, needing to say, Okay, I'm going to allow
Speaker 4: myself to feel what I feel. It's okay to feel
Speaker 4: what I feel, not try and squash the emotion by
Speaker 4: changing my perspective immediately, but then not getting stuck there,
Speaker 4: then moving into okay, are there ways that I can
Speaker 4: cognitively think about this differently? Are there tools I can use?
Speaker 4: So I just love that part of the book. But
Speaker 4: I kind of started you near the end of your book.
Speaker 4: Let's hop back up a little bit and talk about
Speaker 4: how we work more skillfully with chatter. Your book has
Speaker 4: a ton of tools in it, and I love that
Speaker 4: at the end of the book you sort of summarized
Speaker 4: all of the tools that we can use. Let's talk
Speaker 4: about what sort of things cause chatter for us most commonly,
Speaker 4: and then maybe we'll move into some of the tools.
Speaker 1: Well, we all have different chatter triggers, and I think
Speaker 1: that's one thing to recognize. Just like we have different
Speaker 1: tastes and food and partners, we have different kinds of
Speaker 1: experiences that light us up. So you know, for me,
Speaker 1: it may be my kids well being and health. I
Speaker 1: don't worry at all about money stuff or work stuff
Speaker 1: when it comes to their health. Chatter chatter chatter, right,
Speaker 1: But for other people it's the exact opposite. Two common features, though,
Speaker 1: of chatter triggers are uncertainty and a lack of control.
Speaker 1: So not being certain about what is going to happen
Speaker 1: or how something you did might affect you, and not
Speaker 1: having much control over it. Those are like sparks that
Speaker 1: allow chatter to ignite. And what's interesting about those two
Speaker 1: properties is that we're living through a time right now
Speaker 1: filled with a ton of uncertainty and a lack of
Speaker 1: control in the form of COVID and the pandem. We
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen, we won't have much
Speaker 1: control either, and it's not surprising therefore that chatter in
Speaker 1: the form of anxiety and depression is spiking quite a
Speaker 1: bit over the past year and a half or however
Speaker 1: long we've been in this mess. I think it's a
Speaker 1: little bit longer than a year and a half. So
Speaker 1: those are some conditions that give rise to chatter. And
Speaker 1: you know, when we experience that chatter, we just get
Speaker 1: zoomed in very narrowly on whatever it is that's bothering us.
Speaker 1: But what we've learned that is so exciting, and to
Speaker 1: go back to where we started earlier on juxtaposing accepting
Speaker 1: emotions or trying to change as these two different approaches
Speaker 1: that some people subscribe only to one or another. We
Speaker 1: know that there were so many different tools people can
Speaker 1: use to manage this chatter, so it really is handicapping
Speaker 1: us if we try to restrict ourselves, I think to
Speaker 1: just one or two approaches. I like to organize these
Speaker 1: tools into three categories, just to give to try to
Speaker 1: simplify the space. There are things we could do on
Speaker 1: our own, ways of shifting our thinking that can be
Speaker 1: used full. There are ways of interacting with other people
Speaker 1: skillfully like we just described right, like talking but also
Speaker 1: getting advice. And then there are environmental tools which I
Speaker 1: find fascinating. Which are ways of interacting with our physical
Speaker 1: spaces that affect how we talk to ourselves and think
Speaker 1: from the outside in, which can be quite powerful too.
Speaker 1: And I think knowing about what these tools are, what
Speaker 1: it does for us is it gives us the opportunity
Speaker 1: to be much more deliberate about how we control our chatter.
Speaker 1: So people often ask me, hey, do you ever experience chatter?
Speaker 1: Even you know you're an expert in it, in studying
Speaker 1: it and controlling it, and you know, I usually pause, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I experienced it at times. I'm a human.
Speaker 1: But what I think I've gotten really good at over
Speaker 1: the years is the moment I start to detect that
Speaker 1: the chatter is brewing, I shut it down by using
Speaker 1: these different tools. And it's often different combinations, but having
Speaker 1: them at my disposal allows me to just recruit them
Speaker 1: right away to muffle this chatter response rather than let
Speaker 1: it really take over in ways that can be truly debilitating.
Speaker 1: Let me get a little concrete, though, because I'm talking
Speaker 1: in a very abstract way about all this, So, what
Speaker 1: are some things you can do to regulate chatter on
Speaker 1: your own? I'll tell you about a few of my
Speaker 1: favorite tools. One category of them we call distancing tools.
Speaker 1: So when you're experiencing chatter, you're super zoomed in on
Speaker 1: the problem. What we've learned is that if you could
Speaker 1: zoom out and get a broader perspective, that can be
Speaker 1: really useful. One of my favorites tools is something called
Speaker 1: distant self talk. And what this tool involves is trying
Speaker 1: to give yourself advice about how to work on a problem,
Speaker 1: like you would give your best friend advice, and using language,
Speaker 1: harnessing the structure of language to help you do that effortlessly.
Speaker 1: And what it involves doing is you using your own
Speaker 1: name and the second person pronoun you to coach yourself
Speaker 1: your problem. Doing this silently, I should give that caveat,
Speaker 1: not out loud while you're walking down a city street.
Speaker 1: All right, Ethan, how are you going to manage a situation?
Speaker 1: What are you going to do? Here's what you should do.
Speaker 1: What we find in our studies is that it's often
Speaker 1: much easier for us to give advice to other people
Speaker 1: than to take our own advice. You know, do as
Speaker 1: I say, not as I do. This is a very
Speaker 1: strong response that we see playing out across lots and
Speaker 1: lots of studies. What distant self talk does is it
Speaker 1: leverages the structure of language to automatically shift your perspective
Speaker 1: and get you to start relating to yourself, talking to
Speaker 1: yourself like you would talk to another person. If you
Speaker 1: think about when we use names and second person pronouns,
Speaker 1: where it's like you, we use names and second person
Speaker 1: pronouns virtually exclusively when we think about and refer to
Speaker 1: other people. So the link in our mind between a
Speaker 1: name and someone else duper strong. And the idea is
Speaker 1: that when you use your own name to reflect on
Speaker 1: your problems, that's switching you into this coaching mode where
Speaker 1: you're not getting stuck in all those irrational thoughts that
Speaker 1: you are probably ashamed to even articulate to someone else,
Speaker 1: let alone tell your best friend then said, you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, here's how you're going to manage a situation.
Speaker 1: You've done this a thousand times before, you're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: and then you can go off dinner and you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a good night's sleep. And that's in fact what
Speaker 1: we see playing out in our studies. So that's usually
Speaker 1: my first go to strategy. Actually, if I find myself
Speaker 1: getting a little bit of chatter, all right, Ethan, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do it? And it snaps me out
Speaker 1: of the thought loop.
Speaker 4: I found that really interesting, that idea of distant self
Speaker 4: talk and using you, and it took me back to
Speaker 4: early in recovery, and when we were in recovery groups,
Speaker 4: we used to say all the time, use eye statements,
Speaker 4: I feel this. And when I heard you saying like,
Speaker 4: use the you and you know, distant self talk. And
Speaker 4: what I realized was that what we were after in
Speaker 4: early recovery was connection back to ourselves, not distancing from ourselves,
Speaker 4: because we've been doing that with addictions so effectively, and
Speaker 4: we had distanced ourselves from all the consequences from all
Speaker 4: of our emotions. So in that case, we wanted the
Speaker 4: opposite of distant self talk, at least in the beginning,
Speaker 4: to bring us closer to But your point is how
Speaker 4: effective this is when we're dealing with the problem. Are
Speaker 4: you the person who came up with the term Solomon's paradox?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a paper with one of my students.
Speaker 1: We coined that phrase.
Speaker 4: You've got to share what that is because I must
Speaker 4: have read about that six or seven years ago, and
Speaker 4: I have used it countless times because it's so brilliant.
Speaker 4: So tell us about Solomon's paradox.
Speaker 1: Well, So, Solomon's paradox is named after the Bible's king Solomon,
Speaker 1: who was famously adept at giving really great advice to
Speaker 1: other people, and leaders from all over the world would
Speaker 1: travel to his kingdom to get his wisdom. But if
Speaker 1: you look carefully at Solomon's own life, he was a
Speaker 1: terrible decision maker. He made a rash of really bad decisions.
Speaker 1: He got stuck in these like love triangles would be generous.
Speaker 1: It was more like love octagons with different women, and
Speaker 1: you know, built them temples, and it ultimately led to
Speaker 1: his kingdoms to minds, and I talk about this in
Speaker 1: my book. You see this playing out with so many
Speaker 1: people who we think are wise. Abraham Lincoln struggled endlessly
Speaker 1: when it came to his own problems with depression, but
Speaker 1: was able to give his buddy, who is struggling with depression,
Speaker 1: great advice, Bill Clinton. Monica, you know, we can go
Speaker 1: to contemporary culture too with Monica Lewinsky and find all
Speaker 1: sorts of illustrations of people who can be very wise
Speaker 1: in one context but very unwise in another. And so
Speaker 1: it really speaks to something I think fundamental about us,
Speaker 1: which is when the problem isn't happening to us, we
Speaker 1: can be really shrewd. But when it's happening to us
Speaker 1: and we get overly zoomed in and sucked in, we
Speaker 1: can often make bad decisions. And that's where the power
Speaker 1: of distance resides, because we have evolved the ability to
Speaker 1: use tools to counteract Solomon's paradox to fight against it,
Speaker 1: and distance. Self talk is one example of such a tool.
Speaker 1: I want to go back Eric to the point you
Speaker 1: made though about recovery and taking ownership of your experience.
Speaker 1: I think it's such an important point to emphasize. Because
Speaker 1: all the tools that we talk about are useful in
Speaker 1: particular contexts, that doesn't mean they're useful across the board.
Speaker 1: I would never tell someone that, hey, what you need
Speaker 1: to do moving forward is always talk to yourself in
Speaker 1: the third person. That would not be productive. There's a
Speaker 1: time and place to do it, and the time and
Speaker 1: place is when you are overly zoomed in on a problem.
Speaker 1: In some contexts, though, being immersed can be amazingly helpful,
Speaker 1: like when you're experiencing joy and other kinds of positive states.
Speaker 1: You don't want a distance there. You want to immerse
Speaker 1: yourself further or in your For example, if you are
Speaker 1: already distanced too much, then you want to reel a
Speaker 1: person back in and heat them up a little bit.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's just useful to have that
Speaker 1: perspective on how all of these tools work. There's a
Speaker 1: time and place for them.
Speaker 4: And I think that idea of distance is so helpful.
Speaker 4: You talked about one way of doing it, but you
Speaker 4: share other ways.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite questions of all time is like,
Speaker 4: will this matter in five hours, five days, five weeks,
Speaker 4: five months?
Speaker 1: Like ye?
Speaker 4: Which is a time distancing tool.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And that's actually my second personal go to tool.
Speaker 1: We call that temporal distancing, or more colloquially mental time travel.
Speaker 1: And I find this really useful. So first I'll do,
Speaker 1: all right, Ethan, how are you going to manage this?
Speaker 1: And then I'll usually while still using my own name,
Speaker 1: I'll think, Ethan, how are you gonna feel about this
Speaker 1: next week or next month, or next year or ten
Speaker 1: years from now? And what that does is it breaks
Speaker 1: us out of this time vision that is so debilitating,
Speaker 1: and it makes it clear to us that oftentimes what
Speaker 1: we're going through is temporary. It'll eventually fade. We recognize
Speaker 1: that because we've experienced life before and we've learned that
Speaker 1: usually there's some exceptions, but in most cases, even the
Speaker 1: worst emotions fade with time. And when we have that recognition,
Speaker 1: that does something really powerful for the human mind. It
Speaker 1: gives us hope, and hope is a powerful antidote for chatter. Now,
Speaker 1: that's going forward in time, and that's probably the most
Speaker 1: commonly discussed form of mental time travel as a tool.
Speaker 1: But you can also go back in time in ways
Speaker 1: that are productive. I actually do this a lot with COVID.
Speaker 1: So I'll think when I was mired in despair, washing
Speaker 1: fruit with chlorox whites and doing all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff some of us did early on in the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I would think to myself, it is not so good.
Speaker 1: But what about like the last pandemic of nineteen seventeen
Speaker 1: or eighteen. Now, you know, things were arguably much worse
Speaker 1: back then. No uber, no zoom. What about the bubonic plague?
Speaker 1: Like my god, that was way way worse than what
Speaker 1: we're going through right now. And so that's another way
Speaker 1: of broadening my perspective to put in perspective the actual
Speaker 1: magnitude of what we're experiencing, which you know, if you
Speaker 1: look in the big grand scheme of things vaccines, in
Speaker 1: record time technology, it could be much much worse.
Speaker 4: You alluded to another type of backwards time travel when
Speaker 4: you're just sort of off the cuff talking to yourself,
Speaker 4: which was you've handled this a thousand times before, and
Speaker 4: that's a big one for me, is I just look back.
Speaker 4: It's almost inevitable that at least once per week I
Speaker 4: will start to feel my stress level about getting everything
Speaker 4: I have to get done done goes up and I
Speaker 4: starts rising, and then I just remind myself, Eric, this
Speaker 4: has happened every week for twenty years, and every single
Speaker 4: time it has worked out, and that sort of backwards
Speaker 4: time travel is really helpful to me.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I use the same exact reframe, Eric,
Speaker 1: if I find it to be incredibly helpful. I've literally
Speaker 1: given hundreds of presentations over the course of my career,
Speaker 1: and inevitably, if it's a high stakes event, you know,
Speaker 1: very very big audience or a kind of audience that
Speaker 1: I know is going to be gunning for me in
Speaker 1: the academic world, you know, a pretty competitive environment. I'll
Speaker 1: still begin to hear those whispers of doubt perk up
Speaker 1: in my head, and then I remind myself, Ethan, you've
Speaker 1: given hundreds of time box You've never you've never lost it,
Speaker 1: it's never gone. And having that broader perspective and actual evidence,
Speaker 1: it's amazingly anxiolytic. I mean, it really takes the edge off.
Speaker 1: And that's what I love about these tools. Right we've
Speaker 1: talked about too. They're like twenty seven that I cover
Speaker 1: in the book. Many of these tools are very easy
Speaker 1: to implement right now. There are some tools I talk
Speaker 1: about that are more effortful, they require more time and engagement.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these are just very subtle shifts
Speaker 1: that can often make the difference between getting caught and
Speaker 1: that negative thought spiral in a way that allows it
Speaker 1: to take over and regaining control of our mind in
Speaker 1: ways that can be really helpful to us. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I love about so many of these tools.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's hit a few more of them in the
Speaker 4: tools you can implement on your own category, and then
Speaker 4: we can move to some of the others we've hit
Speaker 4: distant self talk we've sort of talked about imagine advising
Speaker 4: a friend. Let's talk about writing expressively. Let's talk about
Speaker 4: why that's a useful tool.
Speaker 1: So expressive writing, the way it's been studied, this is
Speaker 1: a form of journaling about negative experiences. And there's been
Speaker 1: lots of research on this which shows that writing about
Speaker 1: your deepest thoughts and feelings about something negative you've experienced
Speaker 1: can be helpful for allowing you to essentially create a
Speaker 1: story that helps you understand what you've gone through and
Speaker 1: then leave that experience behind and move on with your life.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why we think expressive writing
Speaker 1: is helpful is because it is a type of distancing tool.
Speaker 1: When you stop for a moment and try to put
Speaker 1: pen to the page or I guess fingers to the
Speaker 1: keyboard nowadays, and pen of story you yourself. You are
Speaker 1: the character of that story, so you are now writing
Speaker 1: about yourself, and there's distance that that creates when you're
Speaker 1: thinking about yourself as a character in a story, So
Speaker 1: that gives you some mental space. But another thing that
Speaker 1: writing does is that it helps give us strugture to our experience,
Speaker 1: because when you write about an experience, there's a form
Speaker 1: that that takes. Like, we often think in a very
Speaker 1: fragmented way, very emotional what oh, you know, just pinging
Speaker 1: negative thoughts and images all over the place. But that's
Speaker 1: not how we write. We learn to write with you know,
Speaker 1: there's a subject, a verb, oftentimes a punctuation mark, and
Speaker 1: when we write about things, there's often like a beginning, middle,
Speaker 1: and end. So writing helps us create a narrative that
Speaker 1: helps us do something that we're highly motivated to do,
Speaker 1: which is make meaning out of our lives. And that
Speaker 1: ability to make meaning this is something that sometimes we
Speaker 1: really struggle with, and writing can help bring that process
Speaker 1: back on track in ways that are really helpful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think to your point, I often think of
Speaker 4: thoughts as being really slippery. On one hand, they sort
Speaker 4: of take over, and yet when you try and grab
Speaker 4: onto a lot of them, they tend to be kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, like I said, slippery, Which is why I
Speaker 4: think that writing idea sort of slows the whole process
Speaker 4: down a little bit and it allows a little bit
Speaker 4: more clarity.
Speaker 1: Completely agree. Slowing it down is I think a great
Speaker 1: way of describing it. Because we can often think quite
Speaker 1: fast and in a very disorganized incoherent way, and that's
Speaker 1: just not how you write about things. And so that's
Speaker 1: another kind of distancing tool that I talk about that
Speaker 1: tends to be a more effortful tool because you've actually
Speaker 1: you do have to stop and sit down, find the
Speaker 1: time to actually write about that experience. But it could
Speaker 1: be a really useful one.
Speaker 4: So what about changing the view? This is another slightly
Speaker 4: more effortful one than saying maybe just switching the tense
Speaker 4: you're using from I to you? But what is changing
Speaker 4: the view?
Speaker 1: When we think about negative experiences past or future, we
Speaker 1: often have a mental snapshot of that event in our mind.
Speaker 1: So if I asked you to think back to the
Speaker 1: last time you put your foot in your mouth in
Speaker 1: a conversation, I don't know if you've ever done that before.
Speaker 1: I have. I can think about last time I did that.
Speaker 1: It was just a couple hours ago, and I actually,
Speaker 1: right now I'm seeing I have a snapshot of that experience.
Speaker 1: I can see the person's face who I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to insult but did. And what we know is that
Speaker 1: that image that we have in our mind is malleable.
Speaker 1: The more emotional the experience is, the more you replay
Speaker 1: that event from a first person point of view, you're
Speaker 1: right back there in the moment re experiencing it as
Speaker 1: though it's happening all over again. But what we also
Speaker 1: know people can do is they can essentially take a
Speaker 1: step back in their own imagination and see themselves in
Speaker 1: the experience. They can adopt a fly on the wall
Speaker 1: perspective where they see the bigger picture, they see the
Speaker 1: whole scene. They're looking at themselves in that event doing
Speaker 1: the thing they did, almost like a director in a movie,
Speaker 1: like watching the actors interact. And that's another way of
Speaker 1: getting distanced, right, That's another way of breaking yourself out
Speaker 1: of that very immersed state and thinking about your experience
Speaker 1: from a more objective standpoint. And it actually often goes
Speaker 1: hand in hand with linguistic distancing or the distance self talk.
Speaker 1: So in some studies where we've told people to talk
Speaker 1: about a negative experience using their name, try to work
Speaker 1: through it. When they're done, we have them think about
Speaker 1: the event and tell us, hey, to what extent were
Speaker 1: you actually right back there reliving the event through your
Speaker 1: own eyes versus seeing yourself in it. The more you
Speaker 1: use your own name, the more you actually see yourself
Speaker 1: from far so these different kinds of distance are related.
Speaker 4: I'm going to change directions for a second because I
Speaker 4: want to hit a word that's in the title of
Speaker 4: your book before we forget it, or before I forget it,
Speaker 4: which is you use the word harness and I really
Speaker 4: like that word a lot. I'd love to hear. Why
Speaker 4: that's the term you chose for dealing with chatter is
Speaker 4: harnessing it? And I suppose we could say the same
Speaker 4: thing for negative emotions. You probably assume you might use
Speaker 4: a similar word, which would be that we want to
Speaker 4: harness that. That's right, So why is that the word?
Speaker 1: You know? I can't tell you how many people when
Speaker 1: they learn about the negative implications that chatter can have
Speaker 1: for their life, how it can undermine their ability to
Speaker 1: think and perform, create friction and their relationships, negatively impact
Speaker 1: their physical health. The immediate question they ask me is
Speaker 1: how do I silence this inner voice? And what I
Speaker 1: respond to them is, Hey, that's not something you would
Speaker 1: want to do, given all of the amazing things that
Speaker 1: our inner voice actually does for us. We haven't talked
Speaker 1: much about this, but your inner voice is it's a tool,
Speaker 1: a tool of the mind that is really, really helpful
Speaker 1: helps you keep information active in your head, simulate and plan,
Speaker 1: control yourself, create narratives. And so the challenge here is
Speaker 1: not to get rid of this vital human capacity. Instead,
Speaker 1: the challenge is to figure out how do you wheeld
Speaker 1: that tool of the mind more effectively. And harness is
Speaker 1: a word that I think captures that. It's Hey, I
Speaker 1: got this tool, this ability to silently use language to
Speaker 1: reflect my life, and it's not being properly deployed. For
Speaker 1: whatever reason, the program is not working properly. I'm getting
Speaker 1: the equivalent of error messages and it's making me really upset.
Speaker 1: How can I regain control of that tool? Harness it?
Speaker 1: But you don't want to throw the tool out altogether.
Speaker 1: So that was the reason for choosing the word harness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love it because I think it speaks to
Speaker 4: what you're saying, Like, the brain isn't going to turn off,
Speaker 4: the inner voice is not going to turn off. It's
Speaker 4: just it's not the way the brain works. And to
Speaker 4: your point, we wouldn't want it to. And emotions aren't
Speaker 4: going to go away, but there is tremendous energy available there.
Speaker 4: I know you're often thought of as an emotional regulation
Speaker 4: expert and the way if somebody asked me defined emotional regulation,
Speaker 4: I would just say working with my thoughts and emotions
Speaker 4: skillfully enough that I could act according to my values.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: And so I love that idea of harness because it
Speaker 4: means I can sort of point this entire apparatus at
Speaker 4: my values, and I can use that energy that's coming
Speaker 4: from all this to sort of move me in that direction.
Speaker 4: And when I thought about that word harness in your title,
Speaker 4: I went, that's kind of the word I've been looking for.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we're thinking about things exactly the same way.
Speaker 4: This comes to me. And I don't quite recall if
Speaker 4: it was in your book or not, but it makes
Speaker 4: me think of a question. I think I got it
Speaker 4: from acceptance and commitment therapy, maybe interviewing Steven C. Hayes
Speaker 4: or someone, but it was this question of is this
Speaker 4: thought useful or not? And I love that idea to
Speaker 4: your point, like we may define chatter as becoming maladaptive,
Speaker 4: but the internal voice, the thoughts, sometimes they are very useful.
Speaker 4: And so I do think it's helpful to ask that question,
Speaker 4: is this useful or not? If it is good, let's
Speaker 4: stay with it. And if it's not, then let's start
Speaker 4: talking about deploying some of the tools you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I completely agree with that. Other distinction along those
Speaker 1: lines that I personally find very useful is to also
Speaker 1: think about what aspects of your thoughts and beliefs you
Speaker 1: can control and what you can't. So I don't think
Speaker 1: you have control or human beings can control the thoughts
Speaker 1: that pop into our head. I don't know of any
Speaker 1: evidence suggesting how to control or how to determine why
Speaker 1: it is. And I'm walking down the street to work
Speaker 1: and a very dark, inappropriate thought runs through my head. Yep,
Speaker 1: I don't know where that comes from, and I don't
Speaker 1: think we've figured out. Maybe one day we will. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we will, but we don't right now. So I
Speaker 1: can't control the thoughts that pop into my head. But
Speaker 1: what I do have enormous control over is how I
Speaker 1: engage with those thoughts once they arise. And I've got
Speaker 1: a fantastic toolbox of skills that I could draw on
Speaker 1: to push those thoughts in different directions. I can accept it,
Speaker 1: I can reframe it, I can go deeper into it.
Speaker 1: You know, lots of things that I can do, And
Speaker 1: that's my playground, And so I think just being aware
Speaker 1: of that framework for how to think about thinking can
Speaker 1: be really useful, because some people get down on themselves
Speaker 1: they start experiencing chatter like because a particular thought popped
Speaker 1: into their head. I remember teaching a class a few
Speaker 1: years ago. There was a class on self control and
Speaker 1: emotion regulation, and I posed a question to the students,
Speaker 1: what if you have the temptation to do something that
Speaker 1: you don't want to do? And in this case, it
Speaker 1: was like eating after ten pm. Right, But let's say
Speaker 1: you're on a diet. You want to be regulated there.
Speaker 1: So what if you have the temptation, but you are
Speaker 1: actually effective at not giving into that thought? About half
Speaker 1: the class thought that just because you had the temptation
Speaker 1: meant that you hadn't truly exercised self control. And my
Speaker 1: response to them is, you are setting a really high
Speaker 1: bar for being controlled in your life. You know, if
Speaker 1: that were the case for me, I'm a complete self
Speaker 1: control failure every hour of my existence because I'm constantly
Speaker 1: experience and saying temptations and thoughts that maybe I don't
Speaker 1: want to be having. I don't always give in to them.
Speaker 1: In fact, I usually don't and I think that's that's
Speaker 1: where self control resides totally.
Speaker 4: I mean, sit down to meditate for five minutes, and
Speaker 4: you learn very quickly. Like I think it's actually one
Speaker 4: of the benefits of meditation that is often undersold is
Speaker 4: that you sit there and you go, Okay, I am
Speaker 4: not going to think, and then it just happens. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it just goes and goes. And then again you're like,
Speaker 4: I'm going to pay attention to my breath and they
Speaker 4: just go and you realize very quickly, like at least
Speaker 4: the eye is I think of myself is not running
Speaker 4: that show that factory is producing on its own, and
Speaker 4: so yeah, since I can't control that part of it,
Speaker 4: I can just relax around that.
Speaker 1: That's right, and it is so liberating. It's incredibly liberating
Speaker 1: to us. All right, Yeah, I just had that temptation
Speaker 1: or I had that thought, okay, but I didn't act
Speaker 1: on it or I didn't let it take over. I
Speaker 1: mean it really, I think think lowers the bar for
Speaker 1: being satisfied with oneself in ways I think are truly
Speaker 1: healthy and adaptive.
Speaker 4: I think one of the things that is most difficult
Speaker 4: for people, and I hear this a lot from people
Speaker 4: that I do work with is Yeah, I remembered all
Speaker 4: those tools two hours after it was over. Do you
Speaker 4: have any ideas or has any of your research led
Speaker 4: us to any insight into how we can more quickly
Speaker 4: recognize Okay, I'm in the middle of a chatterstorm and
Speaker 4: I've got tools I can use, because that seems to
Speaker 4: be a very sort of common stumbling block.
Speaker 1: Two responses to that excellent question that taps into I
Speaker 1: think that I agree is a real issue that a
Speaker 1: lot of people struggle with. First, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I find so many of the tools in that
Speaker 1: little skill box I talk about that toolbox so exciting
Speaker 1: is because they are easy to use. Now, just because
Speaker 1: they're easy should not in any way diminish their potential benefits.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of complexity and science that went to
Speaker 1: the identification of these different tools, but some of them
Speaker 1: are just simple to use. And one of the things
Speaker 1: we know about people is the easier it is to
Speaker 1: do it, the more likely they will be to do it.
Speaker 1: And so I think just being aware of what some
Speaker 1: of those easy to use tools are can be really
Speaker 1: empowering and potentially really useful. You know, temporal distance, that
Speaker 1: mental time travel that you skillfully proactively use when you
Speaker 1: detect chatter, and then I do as well. If I
Speaker 1: wasn't aware of that tool, I would just have to
Speaker 1: kind of wait to stumble on it. But I know
Speaker 1: how that works. I can implement that in a matter
Speaker 1: of seconds. That's not an exaggeration how quickly that tool is.
Speaker 1: To use. Same thing with distant self talk, well, we've
Speaker 1: done neuroscience work on that looking at how quickly in
Speaker 1: the brain you see a reduction and emotional reactivity. It's
Speaker 1: within milliseconds because it's so quick to use these tools.
Speaker 1: So that's one thought. The other thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is this, there are things you can do to
Speaker 1: enhance the likelihood that you will use different tools when
Speaker 1: you're struggling with chatter. And so there's work on something
Speaker 1: called implementation intentions or creating IF then plans. I think
Speaker 1: is really fabulous scientific work. And what it involves doing
Speaker 1: is you come up with an if then plan that
Speaker 1: you rehearse ahead of time. If I find myself experiencing
Speaker 1: chatter about work, then I'm going to use distant self
Speaker 1: talk mental time travel and talk to a chatterbuddy, and
Speaker 1: you rehearse that plan a little bit and what ends
Speaker 1: up happening then when you come up with this simple plan.
Speaker 1: It's a commitment device that essentially links specific tools with
Speaker 1: a specific situation, enhancing the likelihood that you use those
Speaker 1: tools in that situation. And so if listeners are struggling
Speaker 1: to use the tools in the moment, I would encourage
Speaker 1: them to try creating some of those if then plans
Speaker 1: and then see if that makes a difference.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think for some of those chatter ones. For me,
Speaker 4: it's not an if then, it's a when then. Yeah.
Speaker 4: When I experience chatter about work, then there's no if
Speaker 4: about it. It's coming sooner or later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4: I think those are really really helpful tools, and I
Speaker 4: think there's something about doing that and repeating that as
Speaker 4: a professor. You may know what this term is called.
Speaker 4: I know it has a name. I can't think what
Speaker 4: it is, but it's basically like, if you think about
Speaker 4: buying a toyota, you all of a sudden start seeing
Speaker 4: toy is everywhere. It's not that there's any more of it, right,
Speaker 4: it's just that you're noticing them. And I think those
Speaker 4: implementation instructions can do a similar thing. Yeah, we're priming
Speaker 4: ourselves to look for chatterstorms.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it is remarkable to me how much time we
Speaker 1: spend dealing with negative emotions and stumbling our way through
Speaker 1: those experiences right trying to find ways of managing it.
Speaker 1: I think that's the case for most people when they're
Speaker 1: experiencing negative emotions. And yeah, the more you know about
Speaker 1: these tools, the less stumbling you'll do, and the more
Speaker 1: deliberate and skillful you can be about managing those states.
Speaker 4: Let's shift into talking about a couple of tools that
Speaker 4: involve the environment, because, like you said, I think these
Speaker 4: are very interesting, and as I've done a lot of
Speaker 4: work on habit study with people, we recognize more and
Speaker 4: more environmental cues are so hugely important.
Speaker 1: I love this work and I find it so fascinating
Speaker 1: that there are ways of interacting with our physical spaces
Speaker 1: that affect our internal condres stations, and there are a
Speaker 1: couple of different tools that exist here. Will deal with
Speaker 1: the elephant in the room first, which is nature and
Speaker 1: green spaces. Lots of people probably have had the experience
Speaker 1: of enjoying going for a walk in a park or
Speaker 1: a tree filled setting. What we know now from lots
Speaker 1: and lots of research is that exposing yourself to green
Speaker 1: spaces does it just kind of like feel good. The
Speaker 1: benefits are much deeper than that. When it comes to
Speaker 1: dealing with chatter, going for a walk in a green
Speaker 1: setting can help you manage your chatter, and it can
Speaker 1: do so in two ways. One thing it does is
Speaker 1: it helps restore your attention. So when you're experiencing chatter,
Speaker 1: all of your attention is devoted to the problem you're
Speaker 1: worried or runating about. That's why when you try to
Speaker 1: read a book or watch a movie when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with chatter, you often don't remember anything you've read or
Speaker 1: seen because your mind somewhere else. What nature does is
Speaker 1: it surrounds us with really interesting things that gently draw
Speaker 1: our attention away from our chatter onto So you're going
Speaker 1: for a walk, you check it out, the leaves and
Speaker 1: the bushes, and now you're not carefully scrutinizing the geometrical
Speaker 1: structure of the hedges, right, You're just kind of taking
Speaker 1: it in. And what that does for you is it
Speaker 1: gives you the opportunity for your attention to restore, so
Speaker 1: by the end of the walk, you have more attention
Speaker 1: to work with your chatter. Now, that's one way it
Speaker 1: can help. The other way nature can help is by
Speaker 1: providing us with opportunities to experience the emotion of awe,
Speaker 1: which is an emotion we experience when we're in the
Speaker 1: presence of something that is much bigger than us, that's
Speaker 1: vast and indescribable, and nature is filled with awe inspiring triggers,
Speaker 1: like a great view or a tree that's been there
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. You can also experience awe from
Speaker 1: other other things in the world, like looking at a skyscraper,
Speaker 1: or if it's me, if I'm contemplating how we can
Speaker 1: get in airplanes and fly safely, like that fills me
Speaker 1: with awe. I still don't quite understand how that all works,
Speaker 1: And what we know happens when you experience awe is
Speaker 1: to what we call shrinking of the self. So you
Speaker 1: feel smaller when you're contemplating something vast and indescribable, and
Speaker 1: when you feel smaller, so does your chatter. So that's
Speaker 1: another way of broadening our perspective. So those are some
Speaker 1: environmental tools. The other one that I would slip in
Speaker 1: really quick because it's so easy to use and many
Speaker 1: people find it useful is organizing and cleaning. When we
Speaker 1: are experiencing chatter, we often feel like we don't have
Speaker 1: control over our thoughts and feelings. Our mind is racing,
Speaker 1: we can't bring it all under our control. And what
Speaker 1: you can do in that instance is you could compensate
Speaker 1: for that feeling by exerting control around you, by tiding up,
Speaker 1: by organizing, and many people find out to be a
Speaker 1: really helpful tool as well. Before I knew about this work,
Speaker 1: I would reflexively clean and put things away when I
Speaker 1: experience chatter, which is interesting for me because I'm not
Speaker 1: an overly organized kind of guy, some one whose room
Speaker 1: was always messy. Same thing as true into my adult life.
Speaker 1: There's a trail of clothing usually from the shower to
Speaker 1: my office downstairs. But when I'm experiencing chatter, everything is
Speaker 1: always neat and tidy. And so that's another way of
Speaker 1: tuning your mind from the outside in.
Speaker 4: That fundamental like recognizing what we can and can't control.
Speaker 4: And you sort of pointed to that earlier that things
Speaker 4: that are out of control fuel chatter. So if we
Speaker 4: can find something we can control and put some energy into,
Speaker 4: I do think it just it's soothing totally and the
Speaker 4: science bears that out. Ethan, thank you so much for
Speaker 4: coming on the show. I absolutely love the book. I've
Speaker 4: loved this conversation. You and I are going to talk
Speaker 4: a little bit more in the post show conversation about
Speaker 4: a couple other tools listeners. If you'd like to get
Speaker 4: access to that and other great benefits of being a member,
Speaker 4: go to one feed dot net slash join. Thanks again, Ethan,
Speaker 4: really really been fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me Eric. It was a
Speaker 1: truly fun and stimulating conversation.
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