One Simple Trick To STOP NEGATIVE THOUGHTS & Control Your Mind! Dr. Ethan Kross & Lewis Howes

So what does Chatter do? Let's say we go to the opposite end of the spectrum. You're filled with Chatter. I think this is one of the big problems we face as a species. Why? Because here are the three domains that Chatter targets. I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really?

Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes.

We're talking about Chatter. You're one of the leading experts, psychologists in the world, talking about controlling the conscious mind. And I've always said as an athlete from Ohio, the great state of Ohio.

That... We'll get back to that in a little bit.

I've always said that our thoughts really dictate the outcomes of our life. It's the beginning stages of what we manifest, what we attract, what we create, what we alchemize. If we think more positive, more vision-based, higher level thinking thoughts, we usually alchemize that in our real world. We manifest it and if we think a lot of negative consuming thoughts, darker thoughts, we typically attract that type of environment as well. Now this has been talked about as woo-woo world, positive thinking, negative thinking, but now you're bringing in some amazing research talking about the voice in our head and why it matters. Can we talk about is it really possible to control the conscious mind? Is that even possible or are thoughts always going to be coming in and out without our ability to control them?

Yeah, well, it's a great question to kick us off. And so here's how I break it down. We can't always control, well, we can't control the thoughts that pop up in our head. So we don't know why I'm going to be walking down the street and all of a sudden just have a really dark thought about this or, you know, a positive thought about something else. We don't have control over the thoughts that pop. But what we do have control over is how we engage with those thoughts once they surface. And we have a lot of control there. We can choose to immerse ourselves in the thoughts and if we immerse ourselves in the positive thoughts, that can be great. Like when I'm out here in LA, I'm away from my kids and my family. I'm walking down the street, I'm thinking about my youngest daughter who tried to FaceTime me this morning at 4:30 in the morning. And it brought happiness to me. Just thinking about how cute that was and, you know, it was inappropriate, but cute at the same time. I immersed in it, you know? I can also choose to distance myself from my thoughts or challenge my thoughts. So there's a range of things we can do when thoughts pop up. So, and that's where the control comes in. And as we were mentioning a little bit earlier, we don't get taught in a systematic way how to manage our thoughts in this way. And I think that's a problem and it's one of the reasons why I wrote the book.

If someone is asking themselves, what I think I am, are we our thoughts or are our thoughts something that don't define us?

Well, I think this is another important aha that we can give because thoughts are mental events. They're things that pop up in our head. Whether they define us or not, depends on whether we allow them to define us.

What does that look like when we allow it to?

We can be strategic about that. So allowing myself to think of myself as someone who... I'm going to give you all the positive features here, right? So someone who is intellectually curious, is a good friend, has humility, I allow those thoughts to define myself. I think that they are fairly accurate portrayals of who I am. Those thoughts are constantly being tested in my life because I'm getting feedback when I interact with people, when I go on different kinds of events and people say things like that informs whether that understanding of who I am is in touch with reality. I think we want to have that. But other kinds of thoughts, like self-defeating ones, I'm not good enough, this manuscript was rejected, or I really put my foot in my mouth, I mean, I put my foot in my mouth all the time. It hopefully won't happen during this conversation, but if I allowed myself to be defined by my foot in the mouth faux pas, I would not be a happy individual. So there's agency there. there is a choice to attach to some cognition, some thoughts and not others.

So is it about attaching an identity to the thought? Is it saying this is who I am and being and where does identity plan to that then? Is that allowing, okay, I am this as opposed to this is something I think, but it's not who I am?

Yeah, so it's about you can, Internalize or externalize, different kinds of experiences happen to us, right? And so people who tend to be more optimistic as an example, they'll internalize the positive but externalize the negative. What I mean by that is they'll take responsibility for positive things that are going on but they'll shirk the responsibility for the negative. Well, it's about the situation. Now, you could do that to an extreme. Right? So let's say you're at work and things aren't going well. You do need to experience some negativity. It's not always someone else's fault. Like sometimes it is going to be your fault and owning that can be quite useful. One thing that I often tell people is that negative emotions aren't something that we should be trying to avoid. We evolved the capacity to experience negative emotions for a reason. They provide us with really useful information that we can use to manage ourselves. And one of the best examples of this is there are children who are born into the world each year with the inability to experience physical pain. So, it's a genetic anomaly. They can't feel. I punch you in the face, you don't feel it.

You don't feel physical pain.

I stab you with a knife, you.

Don'T feel the pain.

It's a genetic polymorphism. It's in the bone. Break a bone, you don't feel the pain. You do not feel the pain. Right? So it's a mutation, it's a quirk of genetics and you can't feel the pain. What happens to these children is they die young.

Because they're not, they're putting hand on the fire, they're hitting their head over and over again.

You got it. So pain is useful in small doses. It's really helpful that if I put my hand on the flame, I pull it away. The pain, the negativity is what makes that such an amazingly adaptive response. So let's go away from extreme examples. examples. If I've got a big performance coming up, a big event, thousands of people, and a couple of weeks before, the whispers, Steven Spielberg talks about these as whispers in his ear. Oh my God, you've got enough. Thousands of people, you've got to get right, a little bit of anxiety bubbles up. Really useful because you know what happens? Then I start working on the presentation.

Make sure you're prepared.

And I practice. negativity, negative emotions and small doses elegantly adaptive. When the negative emotions become harmful is when they become more chronic. And that's what chatter is all about when we experience a negative emotion and then we get stuck in it. We get so immersed that we start looping over and over and over again. That's not good. And that's the pain point that I think so many people suffer from and where I think the science can be really helpful because we know there are things that people can do when that happens to manage it.

You're one of the leading experts in controlling the conscious mind. Where's the biggest challenge you face in your personal mindset? Even though you practice these tools, teach these tools, what's the chatter that still holds you back?

Well, thank you for asking this. I don't experience chatter. No, I'm lying. Of course I experience chatter. I'm a human. Actually, we've done research and what we know is that people in general are much better at advising others than they are following their own advice. We actually, there's a name for this phenomenon. It's called Solomon's Paradox. It's named after the Bible's King Solomon, who was famous for being wise. But if you read his story, he was not wise when it came to his own life. He had concubines and they all got in fights and his whole kingdom unraveled. This is a truism that I can tell lots and lots of other people how to manage their chatter. And here's what the science says, but that doesn't mean I never struggle with it myself. I like to think I'm pretty good at it, but I still experience blips of chatter, the domains that I experience it, mostly about the well-being of my kids and my family. You know, I can, when something happens to them, The world stops and it's easy to start going down that rabbit hole.

Anxiety, stress, worry, fear.

Yeah, are they gonna be sick or are they gonna do well in school and blah, blah, blah. And the moment I catch myself experiencing that chatter, I try to put an end to it by using the tools that are in the book and other tools that are out there. But certainly, I can experience it. Work-related chatter, Big thing coming up, a big paper that gets rejected from a journal. That's the currency in science. You do these experiments for years and years and years. You spend time writing them up and then you submit them and then people say, no, not so good.

Really?

Yeah, that's not fun. I mean, rejection isn't a great feeling.

How does someone deal with rejection from the chatter of rejection or the fear of rejection even before they put something out there?

Yeah.

Say they want to launch a book, a speech or whatever it is, a paper, but they're so afraid to even put it out there because of the rejection that might come versus you put it out there and it's projected.

Yeah.

How do you manage both of those situations of chatter?

Well, so one idea that I really do believe very strongly in is that there are no single tools that work for all people across all situations. We often hear like, do this and it's going to rid you of anxiety. I've been doing research on this for 20 years. I have yet to find it. I'd be curious if you have in all the interviews and research that you've done, you know, magic pills, I've yet to find them. But what I have found are lots and lots of tools that can often be used in combinations to help people. And I think both of those situations lend themselves well to using different chatter tools. So take the concern about being rejected. If that were me and it was holding me back from doing something, one thing I would do is I would do something called mental time travel or in technical terms we call it temporal distancing. I think to myself about, you know, how many other situations have been like this and have I actually been rejected in the past? Yeah, like what are the rates? Like let's do some reality testing. And when I do that, well, you know, not too many. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a big presentation and it was like the prep for this presentation, it was virtual. It was designed to stress me out because first the producers said, all right, we want you to script this and just record it. And I never memorize talks. I just like to speak, but I did it and then I sent it to them and, well, the lighting isn't good, so do it again. And then at the 12th hour, they're like, Just do it live. So they're pushing all my buttons and I felt a little bit of chatter beginning to brew and then I just remind myself, Ethan, you've given yourself, you've given literally hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of presentations. They've never tanked in a terrible way. And that realization, so looking at that broader perspective, the bigger picture, really useful. The other thing I would do is, I don't know if you were listening carefully, but when I just simulated, when I just went over what I did before, I used my own name to kind of coach myself through the experience.

Is that called third person?

Third person. We call it distant self-talk. And that's another tool that I think is Personally really useful. I talk about this too. There's a lot of data behind this. We know that we're better at advising other people than we are ourselves, right? Like it's not, I don't think, a controversial saying, but you push back if you think it is.

Of course.

Yeah. And it's like, you know, we stay.

In relationships far too long when we know we should get out of them, but we tell someone else, you need to get out of that thing, it doesn't look good. We'll do certain things to hurt ourselves over and over. We'll eat the food. we're not supposed to eat, we'll do all these things, but we can tell someone else, oh, you need to stop doing that.

Exactly. So here's what I find mind-blowingly fascinating. We have, so this is a big, big, big amp up, I better deliver here. We've learned that there are ways that we could engage with ourselves like we were engaging with someone else. And language is one tool we can use to do it. And it involves coaching ourselves through a problem using our name and other like second person pronouns, words like you. If you think about when do we use names and second person pronoun you, when we think about and refer to others. Most of the time I use names, it's when I'm addressing other people or thinking about other people. So like, Lara, what is she doing right now with my wife, you know, Danny, I'm using names. Names In our brains, like this is the currency of thinking about others. So what happens when you use your own name to think about a problem? It's like a psychological jujitsu move. It's automatically switching your perspective and allowing you to start engaging with yourself, advising yourself like someone else.

What happens when we don't do that? When we are just... I mean, I'm horrible, I'm stupid, I can't do this, I'm never enough, or I gotta get myself out of this when we speak from I as opposed to Lewis, you got this. Lewis, you are good enough. Yeah. So what happens when we come from I?

So I is a signature of being immersed in the experience and that can lead us down the rabbit hole of rumination and worry and use your favorite descriptor. I call it all that chatter. Rumination is when you're When you're spinning about the past, worries spinning about the future, in each case, you're spinning, you're making yourself nuts. I mean, I chatter is all about being so zoomed in on the problem, you can't think about anything else.

What if you use I am in a powerful sense? I am able to get through this. I am confident. I've put in the work. I am loving.

Yeah.

Would that be supportive or is it better to still say, Louis, you are loving. Louis, you are kind. Louis, you got this.

Yeah, so I mean, you know, the positive affirmations, there's mixed evidence behind them. They could be useful in some cases, but less useful, but not useful in others. I would suggest trying the trying to coach yourself through the problem using your name. Because what it does, it's like a mental time out, right? It's letting you step back from the situation and it's broadening your perspective. When we broaden our perspective, we often realize that there's a lot more to the situation than what we're now, than what's making us Looney Tunes temporary. Very technical term, by the way.

Looney Tunes, crazy. You're almost like you're in a mental tornado that you can't get out of. You're spinning in a loop and you're in a cycle you can't get out of. So wait a minute, you mentioned positive affirmations that there might be some research that supports it and contradict it. In the world of personal growth and personal development, positive affirmations has been a standard for probably, I don't know, 50 or 100 years. What is the science of positive affirmations saying currently?

Well, so self-affirmations, this idea that I am a good human being, I am worthwhile, I mean, there is some evidence that that can be useful. But there are other studies that don't show benefits. Not that it backfires, but there's just some variability.

Benefits, got you. Well also, if you're in the real world, but you're saying, I am a person of integrity, then there's probably a disconnect if you're saying a positive affirmation, but you're not actually being it, right?

Well, I think that gets to a very profound issue that is useful to talk about here, which is, In a lot of the work that we do on trying to figure out how can you help people who are spinning, work through it, you're getting them to engage and work through that problem. All right, Ethan, how are you going to manage a situation? It's a situation. What are you going to do? We're not making it, I like to joke, we're not, when we have people distance in that way or use other techniques and tools, we're not transforming this situation into the culinary equivalent of cupcakes and warm cups of tea. And I don't think we should be. That means we're not making this negative thing into a remarkable positive thing. We're turning the temperature down, allowing people to manage this aversive situation in ways that allow them to then move on. It's not always possible to take something that is totally negative and make it an extreme positive. And I don't know that we would always want to do that because you know, learning from mistakes can be really, really helpful. Like, I value.

Isn't there a way to learn from the mistake and not let it consume your energy and make you feel exhausted?

That's exactly what we try to do.

Something I learned in the last couple years that I wasn't good at this until about two years ago. And the more I practice it, I have found this technique. Maybe there's a term for this tool that you have. I found this technique to be extremely life changing for me.

Yeah.

You talk about the mental time travel. Is that what you mentioned? Yeah. Like time travel.

Yeah.

Mental time travel. Looking back to see how you've overcome something.

Yeah.

When I'm going through challenging situations now, especially something that happened a few years ago, there was a challenging situation that I was like, man, this sucks. This really sucks. And it wasn't, it wasn't fun for a few months. I remember saying to myself, the only way that I could get out of it without feeling like pain every day and feeling like taken advantage of and abused and all these things was say, this is happening in my favor. In one year, two years, five years, ten years out, I'm going to look back and realize, oh, this happened so that I could do this in my life, so that I could have a better experience in my relationship, so that I could be a better leader in my business. It's almost like future time traveling.

Totally.

And just saying, telling myself over and over, this is happening in my favor. This is happening to support a greater mission in the future. And when I think that way, I'm like, okay, I can handle this.

Yeah. So, what you described is not notably, that's not a positive affirmation, right? And in that situation, that's the only thing that sometimes, if we're dealing with true adversity, it feels inauthentic to just say, everything's gonna be right. What you're describing is exactly mental time travel. Temporal distancing. Temporal distancing is the scientific terminology. It's the dorky term, I throw it in there.

It's a habit, sorry.

I like it.

Temporal distancing.

Temporal distancing, yeah. What does temporal mean?

Temporal time. So distancing through time.

You can either do that in the past or future. Or the future. So take COVID, right? Which has been, I think, tough for many of us, myself included, right? Temporal distancing is one thing.

It wouldn't be fun being stuck in Michigan, you know, it'd be tough.

Yeah, you know. I was waiting for when the next dig would come, but don't you worry, we have more time. I will get some digs about Ohio.

I will end up there actually, it's good. Yeah, more lakes and beautiful scenery than we do.

Nice try. Sorry, go ahead. So, you know, for COVID, one thing, and I've done several, I use like, I have like a cocktail that I, a non-alcoholic, cocktail I take, right, with tools that I use.

Mental tools.

Mental tools, right? Because we've actually done some research on combinations of tools are particularly useful. But for COVID, I think about the future. Like five months from now, we're gonna be vaccinated, we're gonna go on vacation. The worst part of this will be over. When I do that, I realize that as awful as what I'm going through right now is, it's temporary. It's going to fade. We will get back. That gives me hope. Hope is a powerful way of alleviating chatter. Then I'll go back in time too, and I'll think about pandemic of 1918, which was much, much worse than what we're going through.

Much scarier probably.

Much scarier. We didn't have the medical technology. We didn't have Zoom. We didn't have takeout. Right? Like much, much. I mean takeout, you know, I'm joking, but It makes a difference. It's a benefit for people, yeah. Yeah. So, and we didn't just get, even though it was worse, we got through that and we came roaring back, like the roaring 20s, economic growth. So, in each future, future past, I'm broadening my perspective. It's getting me away from, oh my God, I can't get through another day.

I'm stuck in this. It's no way out.

It's distancing and it's a very useful tool.

So you call that temporal distancing.

Yeah, or mental time travel.

Mental time travel. It's like we need to have mental floss on a daily basis.

Yeah.

This is something we were talking about before and how most of us were not taught these tools from our parents, from our friends, from teachers in school because they weren't training us to teach us these things. And this is what I love about your work is you talk about the preventative mental training the preventative mental health, I don't know what you call it, but not waiting until you're anxious and depressed and feeling overwhelmed, needing to take a drug to calm your mind, but doing these tools on a daily basis. What would you say are three to five things that we could do on a daily basis, simple strategies to get started to help prevent our mind from taking over?

Okay. So we've already talked about two, so I don't have to go through those.

Maybe three more than that.

The distant self-talk and mental time travel. Let's shift to another category. The way that I like to simplify this whole universe of tools, there are three buckets. Things you could do on your own, ways of reframing the situation, simple tools that shift how you think, that help you reframe that can be useful. So both tools we talked about are examples of that. Then another category are what we might think as people tools, ways of interacting with others that can help us. So let's go into that and then I'll go into the third. People tools are really interesting to me because A, I'm a social psychologist so I care about how we interact with one another. But when it comes to chatter, there are some myths out there. So we're going to have some myth-busting right now.

Okay.

So when people experience chatter, they're often intensely motivated to talk about it with other people, to share their emotions, to get help and support. There are a couple of exceptions. If the chatter is around things that we experience shame or embarrassment about, then we don't want to talk. But all the other things.

We vent.

We vent. We want to find someone. Let's just let me unload.

Is that good or bad unloading on our friends or family?

Well, it's complicated. And I'll tell you what it doesn't do. It doesn't help us work through our chatter. And it can even make it worse.

By venting to someone, this happened or whatever, or this person did this and complain about it, you're saying it could make it worse. Why? They'll say, you're right or.

Well, so let's say you and I minus the geographical differences that we share, we're friends, right? So let's say I call you up and hey, you know, I'm really struggling with something. I just, I need your support. Let me help you out. So you start asking me questions about what happened. I start sharing what I felt and we keep going back and forth. That makes me feel really good about our friendship. I feel really close and connected with you. And research shows that when you vent, that strengthens friendships, right? But if all we do is harp on what happened and what you felt, in technical terms that's called co-rumination. We just ruminate together. I leave that conversation and I'm just as upset as when I started. Like that guy. Like it's still, I'm just throwing logs on a burning fire. You're just keeping me going, right? So hey, Great for our friendship, but I still got the problem. I'm having like, you know, gastric distress over this.

Yeah, heart palpitations.

So instead, the best kinds of conversations when it comes to managing chatter, they actually do two things. You do need to connect emotionally with someone else. There's value in that.

Empathize with them.

Empathize, critically important, right? But at a certain point in the conversation, the person you're talking to ideally can help you broaden your perspective. You might nudge me to, Hey, look at the big picture. How have you dealt with this? And get me to mentally time travel. Help put this in perspective. That's the signature of a great conversation.

So first empathize and listen. Deep listening, empathize, and then would you say, okay, would you like my feedback or support or some suggestions or some coaching?

The way, you know, so can I offer you like, I totally hear you. Do you want to keep going or can I offer you some advice? And ask genuinely because I'm a scientist, but in the chapter when I talk about this, I talk about this as being an art. And there is an art to this.

It's a dance.

It's a dance because different people may need more time to just vent before they're ready to get into that advice-giving and receiving mode. And so some people are ready for it right away. Others, it may take some time. It may depend on the situation. If it's a really nuclear chatter event, right? Then you may need to spend some more time just listening and talking before you can go. But the way you did it is exactly what we'd want to do. But that orientation is very different from, Hey, let me just vent. And I think there's a really important take-home lesson here for people who are listening, because if you know that there are these two pieces to getting good chatter support from others, that lets us be a lot more deliberate about who we seek out for support. So, I was mentioning before, I've got a board of advisors when it comes to chatter. And three people I go to for personal problems and four for if it's professional, work-related issues. And these are people who I know. they will empathize and connect but then also really help me try to work through the problem. And what's interesting about the people on those two different boards, there are some people who love me a lot and I love them back and I know this for a fact because like DNA determines it. Close family members, right? I don't go to them about my chatter because I know it doesn't make it better. We just get stuck venting and it doesn't help. So I'm really careful about curating who I go to for support. And then on the flip side, because I know the science, I like to think that I can be a better chatter advisor to others, to my friends and colleagues and students. When they come to me, I actually have a little playbook that tells me, Here's how I can help. And it's not complicated. Two steps. Listen deeply, empathize and connect. And then start reframing.

And if you were reframing, would you go to the distant self-talk as a coach yourself since you're already distant, or would you go to the time travel of like, look, you've overcome this in the past. This is going to happen to you.

I'm throwing out different options.

Different tools.

Because what we know well from the science point of view, so there are 26 different tools I talk about in the book. We know how each of those tools operate individually. What we don't yet know is how they combine for different people in different situations.

How they integrate.

How they integrate. We're doing science on that now. The challenge in the adventure for people who are listening is to start doing some self-experimentation on their own. Figure out what's the combination that works for you. So, it's like my daughter, if she comes to me with like some chatter at school, this girl is being mean and this boy I have a crush on but so does my friend. All this stuff. That, you're asking about chatter triggers for me. My daughter's dating. That is a... How old is she? That is a chatter trigger. She's 12.

Oh, 12? What is going on with the world?

Yes, yeah, this is a major post.

Source trigger for you.

Yeah, it is. And my wife helps me look at the big picture.

But what is the big picture in that scenario?

Well, you know, we all went through this. You dated as well, and you know, there's... It's part of life. It's part of life and then you know she has good judgments and and.

She'S got to make her own mistakes.

She by the way is going to love the fact that I'm talking about her dating life and dating is too strong by this.

Sure, sure, sure.

So, crushes. We won't mention any names. If we did, I would then have serious chatter because I wouldn't be allowed back in my house. But I'll just say what I would do with my daughter if she came to me me with a problem, I'd.

Say, what if it triggered you personally and she wanted your advice to support her chatter? It's your chatter and her chatter.

Then I hand off to my wife. I can be pretty regular. I can use it. So there, you'd want to use the tools on yourself. And then once you're in the position to help someone else, you've got yourself under control, then you work with the other person. So I would say, so hey, what would you tell your sister if she was dealing with this or your friend?

How would you coach someone else?

How would you coach someone else? That's a distance coach move.

Coach move to make. Don't give them the answer, ask them the question and how they would do it with someone else.

Yeah, yeah.

That's the way to do it.

Let them figure that out, the discovery. That's a powerful move. I do other things too, like the third bucket that I didn't mention is the environment. The world around us has, there are tools that exist in the world around us and they're just waiting there. And that sounds kind of corny, but it's the truth. And so I'll give you a couple examples like green spaces. There's been a ton of cutting edge neuroscience research which shows that spending some time in a safe natural setting, I always feel the need to say safe because where I grew up in Brooklyn, parks, green spaces were synonymous with getting mugged. So, you know, you don't, it has to be a place where you can let your guard down and relax in nature. In nature, it allows, it gently draws your attention away from the chatter, allowing you to recharge in ways that are really, really helpful. Nature also can give us a sense of awe, which is an underrated emotional experience because it helps us fight chatter. So awe, This is an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something, something vast we can't explain. You know what a lot of people experience awe? It's when Ojibwe come to the big house in Michigan and they sit in this stadium, largest, I think it's larger than...

It's a couple thousand, yeah, a little bit bigger.

And they just take it all in. They're filled with awe.

That's amazing.

That's right.

And then they're even more awe-inspired when they beat Michigan.

Oh, in their house. All right, so you got me. You're so cute. But that leads to what we call experiencing awe, leads to what we call shrinking of the self.

When we experience a moment of beauty, spectacular sporting event, whatever it is, a musician that performs something, someone doing something great or nature in its element, we then what in our mind?

It leads to, we feel smaller and that usually is not a good thing except when you're experiencing chatter our problems shrink because we realize, hey dope, what are you worried about that thing you said last night at dinner? There's a whole universe out here that is much bigger than you. So it's like the ultimate way of broadening your perspective and helping you realize that what you're going through while still significant, there's more to it. There's more to life than this.

Yeah, and I know you quoted Dan Harris in there who's a buddy of mine as well.

Well.

And for me, a simple 10 or 15 minute meditation practice in the morning, evening, afternoon for me, I go into a place where in my mind, I leave my body, I leave the world, and I'm in a space where I can see the world from a different perspective that is so small, and therefore my problems get smaller.

That's exactly the phenomenon.

When I, when I when I, in my mind, imagine myself in the universe floating, which is kind of weird, I get it. But it allows me to be like, oh, the earth is so tiny. I can see like a speck of sand. And then I can get so far away from it where it disappears. And I'm like, there's so much out there. And yet I'm worrying about this little problem and making it consuming my mind all day. For what?

That's exactly how is it supporting me? And it's liberating to have that. that orientation. And I want to come back to meditation because that can be a way of cultivating these states. But what you describe there, you became a fly on the wall to yourself. And what we know is that there are these strategic moves that you can engage in to help you do that. Meditation is one, but there are other things that you could do in the moment simply. What else you like? Well, I mean, language, that's another. Ethan, what's going on? You're becoming an observer to yourself. It's not me, someone else, right?

Or let's say...

Speaking to yourself, Ethan, what's going on? Yeah, silently, by the way. Not out loud in front of us. Airpods make it easier if you wanted to do that, because it, you know, like talking to yourself, but I still wouldn't recommend that. You know, when you visualize, like we often see experiences in our... We think in terms of words, but also in terms of images and pictures. So, I could probably ask you to think about a time in your recent past when you got angry and ask you to have a mental snapshot of that event. You could probably see that.

Sure, yeah.

We can actually, we can manipulate the imagery. And so I could ask you to replay it happening through your own eyes when you got into that fight, or I could ask you to float away and see yourself in that event, like interacting and fighting with that other person, becoming a fly on the wall to your own experience.

Yes.

And that's another way of doing what you just described, which is zooming out. I mean, like, hey, there's more to it than this. I love this other person.

There's this phenomenon that, I don't know if it's a phenomenon, but when I heard him say it, it really made me think differently. I don't know if you know Dr. Joe Dispenza, if you've seen his work at all. When I asked him a question, I said, Should we all be focusing on healing the traumas or the memories of the past. He said, Yes, heal the memory of the past, but really start to remember the memories of the future. And put your memories now of what you could create in the future and start putting your energy towards that as opposed to the pain of the past. Should we be thinking about the past? Should we be thinking about the future or just being more present? present in your mind.

These are deep, deep, big questions. And I'm so glad you asked them, actually.

This is not the school of average.

This is the school of average.

We're not in Michigan right now. We want to be the school of greatness.

All right, let's go, you know? Okay. So, you know, let's start with being in the moment. Yeah. Because this is all the rage, and it has been for quite few many years right now. Being in the moment can be wonderful.

Yes.

And I love being in the moment sometimes. And sometimes when you're stuck in the past or the future, bringing your attention back to the moment can be liberating. But there's, I think, a very important piece of information to put out there, which is this brain up here, it did not evolve to keep us in the moment. In fact, We evolve the capacity to travel in time in our minds.

Isn't that crazy?

It's crazy. We spend between one half and one third of our waking hours not in the moment.

What are we thinking about? More the past or the future?

The past future varies for different people. Like different people, some are more future focused than past. We're going back in time and that's not a bad thing. I would argue it's an amazing thing because we're learning from our experiences where we're experiencing nostalgia, right? I'm savoring past victories. I'm fantasizing about what's, I'm dreaming. This is this ability to travel in time.

Crazy.

It's a superpower. I mean, I use that word lightly, but truly this is what distinguishes us from other species, the degree to which we can do this. And so sometimes when we travel in time, the, you know, the DeLorean, if you get that reference, it gets stuck. and that's rumination or worry. And so I think one solution is, okay, well just stop traveling in time altogether. I don't think that's the answer, right? I think instead we want to figure out how can we help people become better mental time travelers? How can we help them go back in time? Think about the bad stuff if you need to and make sense of it, learn from it, grow from it without getting stuck there, right? And that's what a lot of the the tools can help people do?

I've heard that there's somewhere between, I don't know, 50,000 or 80,000 thoughts a day that humans have. I'm not sure what the actual number is. Is that accurate?

Well, it'd be, I don't know. And it would be, it's a hard question to answer because part of it's like, well, what does it mean to even have a thought? Is it an image, a verb? So, it's a hard one. But it's a lot. There's a lot of stuff happening on that.

Would you say there's, tens of thousands of thoughts or connecting points of ideas throughout the day.

Yeah, there's a huge amount of activity occurring in our brains, probably much more than most of us would imagine in terms of, I mean, we're constantly making connections all the time subconsciously and then it bubbles up into awareness and it's.

I've heard also, again, I don't know if this is true, that if we had 50 to 80,000 thoughts a day, most of them I hear are negative, and most of them are on repeat. I heard 80% or something like that is repeating thoughts, and most of the time they're negative or worrisome or fear-based or protection thoughts.

Well, that I can comment on. Okay, go ahead. So there have been lots of different kinds of research. One of my favorite studies was an anthropology study where a very brave scientist went up to people on the streets of New York, gave them a tape recorder, it was like a decade ago, and just asked them to speak out loud the thoughts streaming through their head as they navigated the streets of New York. And it's really interesting. I tell this, I go into this a little bit in the book, and you hear people you know, one woman starts talking about like she's looking for a staple store and then she's thinking about her friend's cancer diagnosis and going down that rabbit hole and then she's like oh and someone just cut me off and now I'm going back to this looking for a staple. So the thoughts are pinging all over but what comes out of that study and many others studies that tried to quantify this with really cutting edge tools is that The bulk of our thoughts are negative. So the majority, it doesn't mean all of them and there's variability across people, but a lot of the thoughts that are bubbling up are in that negative range. As to whether it's repeating over and over, that's certainly a very common experience. I don't know if that... What do.

You think would happen if, let's say that's fact for most people, right? Most people have reoccurring thoughts and most of the reoccurring thoughts are negative or we see the negative, whatever reason, because.

We'Re designed to-- Bad is stronger than good. Have you ever heard that phrase? I love that phrase.

Bad is stronger than good.

We are-- oh, bad is stronger than good. There are lots and lots of studies which show that we are exceptional, we are more sensitive to losses than gains. And the idea is from a survival point of view, it's potentially more threatening to experience bad stuff than it is good stuff. And so, we care about survival. So, we want to be vigilant for the bad stuff.

This is why the news stations continue to show the bad because people are, they're going to put their attention towards it and we're going to focus our energy on the bad more than the good. We try to shift that and send out positive to help people to overcome the bad, overcome the negative that they're consumed with.

What.

Would it look like if a person had 80 to 90% positive thoughts or powerful thoughts or empowering thoughts on a daily basis and very little negative chatter? Maybe the chatter came in for a moment and they were able to address it and move back into a positive place. what would that person be able to create in their life with more empowering thoughts over negative thoughts?

That would be, to use a technical term, very good. Well, you know, we could reverse engineer things to answer that question. So what does Chatter do? So let's say we go to the opposite end of the spectrum. You're filled with Chatter. I think this is one of the big problems we face as a species. Why? Here are the three domains that Chatter targets and sinks us in. Our ability to think and perform. So when your mind's, when you're on that hamster wheel, all of your attention is on your problems. It doesn't leave a whole lot over to work on what you need to do at your job. It makes it really hard to perform under stress. These habits to unravel because we call you get stuck in paralysis, by analysis, right? So thinking and performing, that goes down.

When you have chatter and you can't get out of it, your performance and your ability to think clearly goes down.

Goes down, and across domains, tons of evidence to support that. Let's go to another domain of life that we care about, something called relationships. So we know that chatter creates friction in our social relationships, and it does in a few different ways. If I want to talk to you about my problems, one of the things that often happens with chatter is I talk and I keep talking and keep talking and keep talking. And there's a limit to how much someone else, even the most well-intentioned loved ones and colleagues, can take on. Can take on without them experiencing their own chatter. So it can create problems.

Exhausting, you know.

That's right. Okay, you know, let me get out of the house. So, you know, friction in relationships. The other thing is, let's say we're, you know, we're here and I'm thinking about other stuff, you're talking to me, you're telling me about your day. If my mind is somewhere else, I'm not listening to you. And that can also create problems in relationships. So, you know, if I have chatter at the dinner table and my daughter, my youngest daughter, wants nothing else than just tell me about what she did at recess. I ask her, Hey, so what did you do today? She starts talking, I go somewhere else. 10 minutes later, I'm like, oh, so what'd you do today? I just told you. How many times can you do that without problems beginning to brew? So relationships are an issue. And then the last domain is our physical health. People often say that stress kills and I think that's actually a little bit misleading because the ability to experience a stress reaction, a fight or flight reaction, this is a feat of evolution. If there's a threat, someone's coming to get me, it's really good to know that there is this response that quickly prepares me for how to react. So stress on its own, not bad. What makes stress toxic is when the stress reaction goes up and it remains elevated over time. and that's what Chatter does because we experience the stressful event but then we re-experience it over and over by thinking about it and reliving it on auto play. And so, Chatter has been linked with things like cardiovascular disease and inflammation and all sorts of.

So having negative, ruminating, worrisome, anxious thoughts on a consistent basis is linked to diseases.

Diseases, poor relationships and poor performance. I'd argue those are the three domains that many of us care most about and that make life really enriching. And so to go back to your question about what does a person look like who's able to harness this chatter and get into another state of mind where they are experiencing either positive thoughts or an absence of negative ones, you're getting the logic would suggest improvements in each one of those domains.

Better health, better performance, better relationships.

Right.

What happens if someone watching or listening is in a relationship where their partner is in constant, their chatter is so loud that every week they're questioning their partner, they're, what are you doing? They're, you know, not trusting them. maybe she or he is doing something wrong and bad constantly, whether it's actually happening or not. Yeah. What happens and how can you manage the chatter of a partner who keeps accusing you of something you're not doing?

Yeah, well, it's a, it's a, it's a difficult predicament to be a therapist. Well, you know, so there are, there are levels to all of this. Right. And chatter, I think, is a feature of the human condition. It's something that many of us experience to varying degrees. And for some people, trying to use the different tools that are out there may be helpful. And so there the opportunity is, so if it's my partner, the idea is, okay, well let's have a conversation to try to help you understand what these tools are. Normalize this like, hey, look, lots of people experience chatter, but you don't have to keep experiencing because there are science-based tools you can use. If that doesn't work, then I think there are other ways of intervening. At the extreme end, there are therapeutic interventions, see a therapist. If the chatter morphs into full-blown states of anxiety and depression, clinical manifestations, then I would advise people to find someone who does a science-based therapy. because they'll just be able to help really, really quick. You know, it's a concentrated dosage of help. But that's a small minority of folks when it comes to chatter, right? Most of us are experiencing this on a daily basis or semi-regularly.

How many negative thoughts a day do you think you have? Like percentage-wise, positive thoughts versus negative thoughts. Are you 50-50? Are you 70% positive and 30% have you been training your mind for this?

So I will say that I definitely do use these tools and I've worked on different combinations and I have like, I know the, I have my go-to's that I use and they, and I do use them. I'm in general pretty, you know, pretty positive as long as I'm not thinking about, you know, Ohio. Losing to Ohio, yeah. Exactly. You know, in general, I'm positive and in part that's because I know the data linked to positivity. And actually when we've done presentations, I've talked to teachers about some of these tools and when giving the background behind optimism, I tell a story about a friend in college who used to say to me, Why are you always so positive, Ethan? And the answer I give is it beats the alternative. And if you look at the data, there is a striking amount of data that links optimism with lots of different benefits. Benefits, health, relationships, performance, I mean a lot of the things that we just talked about.

So the power of positive thinking is scientifically backed.

There is absolutely being able to be more proactive and positive is an adaptive outcome to strive for. With one little caveat, which is that doesn't mean we should rid ourselves of negative emotions. It means, look, if you experience a negative emotion, great, you're a human and this is serving you well. Actually, there are studies which show that when you bring people into really stressful situations, you have one group thinking about it as a threat, oh my God, I'm not going to be able to deal with it. in another situation you say, you know what? Those feelings you're having in your stomach, that's a sign that you're rising to the challenge of the situation. So you're reframing this negative state as, hey, this is my body doing what it's supposed to do under threat. Like, I gotta go pee because I can't pee when I'm on stage, right? Like your body's mobilizing.

Interesting.

That's a reframe. You're still feeling uncomfortable, but it makes it more manageable and people perform better there as well. So I don't think we want to definitely be more positive, but ridding ourselves of all negativity, it'd be hard to imagine. I mean, I'll throw this back to you. You've spoken to countless people, I think over a thousand interviews at this point.

1,000 plus interviews.

So what in your view is the goal? Is it to always be positive or have it be a majority, like a baseline positivity and the ability to deal with the negative when it happens?

For me, it's thinking what serves the vision, what serves the mission? Does anger serve the mission I have for my life in this season of my life? I'm speaking for myself.

Yeah.

Does it serve me being angry and holding on to this? whatever thing happened, someone was out of integrity or this person tried to hurt me or whatever thing is. Does it serve me to hold on to the anger, the frustration, the pain and put energy towards that problem as opposed to focusing on the energy towards the mission? Because that's what I think about. I also think about not discounting how I feel, not discounting the way something might have hurt me or affected me. so it's feeling it in the moment and then quickly getting back to the vision when I'm able to distance myself and say, okay, this happened. I don't like it. This sucks. I have different techniques. Maybe I'll scream in a pillow, I'll do a workout, I'll do whatever. And then I say, okay, how long do I want to hold on to this pain? How long do I want to suffer and focus on one thing as opposed to a bigger positive mission? And that's what I try to think about. It's not discounting my emotions, my pain, it's moving through them quickly and focusing back on the mission.

Well, that's entirely compatible with how I view it too. You said, if you experience the anger, you don't want to hold on to it. The holding on to it, that's the chatter.

That's what hurts you.

That's what hurts you. But anger in the appropriate amount, it's a tool. There's a perspective that says emotions, both positive and they're tools, right? They help us, like if I experience a ping of envy, right? Like when I see someone else, like that gives me some, well, maybe you need to try harder in this domain, like, you know, why?

Maybe it's something you care about.

Or maybe it's, yeah, exactly. They work on it. Exactly, so we can use this, but we don't want to get stuck.

Yes.

And that's the key. So, you know, overall, let's be in a positive state, let's not discount the negative or try to never experience it. I think it's actually empowering for people to know that, hey, negative emotions aren't something you need to be afraid of. They're there for a reason.

What about if someone's feeling imposter syndrome? A lot of people have been talking about imposter syndrome in the last few years. If that chatter is in their mind, what's something they can do to feel like, no, they are they aren't an imposter. They are where they need to be. They're ready for this moment, whatever that might be, their career, the book, whatever it might be.

How can they overcome imposter syndrome? Well, you know, imposter syndrome gets back to these negative thought loops at the end of the day, right? It's not a negative thought loop that's focused on anxiety per se, but it's a different set of cognitions. Like, hey, I just don't belong here. And so the idea is that, these different tools, you can use if you're looping, regardless of what you're looping about, try these tools. And so we've only talked about a few. Time travel, linguistic distancing, nature. We've actually talked about some. I mean, another one that I love is do a ritual.

Yes, I'm a huge fan of rituals.

So tell me about your rituals. What would be like, what's one of your favorites?

Oh man, well, I mean, as an athlete, I would do many rituals, for the game where I walk the field or walk the court and visualize myself, not only replaying in my mind the future of what I wanted to create, but also preparing my mind for when things might go wrong. So it's both. Okay, I'm on offense and defense and allow myself, how will I respond when it doesn't go my way? Focusing that I want it to all go my way, but if it doesn't, I'm also prepared for the backup. yeah, that's, that's in sports. Another thing is, and every night before, I would usually watch highlight film of an individual that I was inspired by, someone greater than me in that position in professional leagues when I was in high school or college. And I would try to just put myself in that alter ego state consistently, which I want to get back to alter ego in a second. Another thing that I would do, I've done many times. especially in relationships. I've never really ended relationships well, intimate relationships, and I've always held on to a lot of pain and suffering of what could I have done better? Or did I do the wrong thing? Or this person doesn't love me, whatever. This has been kind of like a challenge in my past. I've had so many ceremonies and rituals where I write letters that I don't share with anyone, thanking the person, talking about the things that I'm grateful for, talking about the things that I didn't like about the situation, apologizing to them, forgiving myself, and then letting them go. And what I'll do is I'll fold that up and then I'll burn it and I'll put it in the ground and I'll bury it. So, that might sound weird.

Okay, I'm just moving a little bit closer to the door. Get me out of here.

But I will create these rituals for myself to help me create closure in relationships, to help me be at peace and not ruminate on frustration from both sides. And I think it allows me to like close the chapter as opposed to hold on to pain. So I do a lot of weird stuff out of that play.

No, but here's what I find so cool about this entire space. Like you describe that as weird. I think of it as beautiful.

Yeah.

And what so many of us do in life is we stumble on tools that help. Sometimes tools that don't help. But I don't think, I mean, did your parents tell you that when you break up with someone, you should write a letter and burn it?

No, they didn't. I mean, I'm stumbling on stuff.

And what I think the opportunity is that to say, okay, well here's what we know about how all these things work. and we could just give people a list of these things so we don't have to wait to just kind of stumble on. Like, LeBron James is another example of this stumbling. When he was trying to decide whether to leave the dreadful state, I'm just joking, when he was trying to figure out whether to leave the Cavs. I was actually, I really like LeBron. I rooted for the Cavs. I'm a Knicks fan, so it's been some dark days for a long time. But when he was first way back before Miami, when he was trying to decide should he leave the Cavs or not, during a press interview, he was going through his thought process and he said, you know, the one thing I didn't want to do is make an emotional decision. LeBron James got to do what is best for LeBron James. Distant self-talk. He just did it. Jennifer Lawrence is in a New York Times interview with a reporter who starts asking her really hard-hitting questions.

What does she do?

She stops, she goes, All right, Jennifer, get yourself together. This isn't therapy. Like, I don't know. I haven't spoken to LeBron or Jennifer, but I don't know that anyone told them to use their name when they get into distress.

When I see that sometimes, and I think people will see that if you'll see a celebrity or an athlete say, you know, Conor McGregor is the greatest of all time. Narcissism, right? Don't you think they're like, okay, this.

Person'S got an ego and they think they're this big?

Big shot.

This is where the science is useful. So we did a study where we tracked people how frequently they do this in their lives. Five times a day we sent them a text message and asked them, How much have you talked to yourself? Have you done it using your name? We did this over two weeks. We included measures of narcissism. How much of a self-inflated sense of zero relationship.

So it didn't increase their level of ego and narcissism?

No. It didn't.

Ego stayed the same.

And people who were more narcissistic to begin with weren't more likely to do it. So, you know, we see people do this, celebrities in front of the camera. One thing to keep in mind is, look, celebrities are more often in front of the cameras than non-celebrities, so there's more opportunity to see. And the other thing is, this might just be an example of something that's useful that gives has a social cost. That's why I don't tell anyone to do it out loud. But let's go back to it. They do it internally.

Internally, always doing it internally. So you're not saying Ethan Cross is the best, you know, when you're doing interviews, I'm like, Ethan always knows what to do.

Ethan's always, you're not saying this out loud. I'm already uncomfortable. I know, I never, you say it internally. Internally, and that's an important disclaimer, always internally. But to go back to rituals, yes, So rituals are useful. First of all, I think it's really important to recognize that our cultures give us rituals. Like there are things we develop on our own. You have one. Before I go, you know, before I give a presentation, I repeat in my head what my high school wrestling coach used to tell me, like, and that's my ritual and it helps me feel better. But our cultures throughout time, like, have bestowed rituals upon us. So like when someone dies, we have grieving rituals. When babies are born, birthing rituals, births like historically been a time of stress, joy, but also like will the baby make it? And so this is a tool. It's like a technology that we've discovered that can be very useful and it helps in a few different ways. One of the things that people like, the experience of having chatter, you can feel like you don't have control. Like my mind, like my thoughts are in control. It's chaotic in there. I don't know what's going on. And human beings love, love, love, love being in control of things. If the world is certain and we can control things, like we feel really good. What we've learned is that by doing things that are under our control, like engaging in a a specific sequence of behaviors like you do with your rituals or even things like organizing our surroundings, like tidying up, that gives us a sense of control. We can control our space. -That's the environment.

-That'S why I make my bed every morning. -That's why I create so much peace of mind going into the next activity knowing I did a productive activity, I have a clean space, I don't have a dirty mind, that's right, a clean environment.

-That'S right, you're compensating for the lack of control you have in your head by controlling yourself. It's like I'm a pretty easygoing guy and under normal circumstances if you came into like visited my office at home, like stacks of books and teacups lined up. Sure, sure. But if I've got some chatter, like that office is spick and span and I often do it reflexively. I just start organizing and cleaning up.

What does that do? for the mind when you organize your space.

It organizes your thoughts. Really? And so it held and so there's data. This is not just so like Rafael Nadal, he gave an interview several years ago and I think it was a journalist who asked him like what's the hardest thing you struggle to do on the court? And his answer was the hardest thing I struggle to do is battle the voices inside my head, manage the chatter and If you watch Nadaal, you know what he does. Nadaal is famous for engaging in these elaborate rituals. He orders his water bottles, positions them perfectly on a diagonal with the court. Before every serve, he flips his hair, pulls his shorts out of his butt, and bounces the ball. He says, so why do you do these rituals? They provide me with the order I seek in my head. And the data bears that out. There are studies which show that doing these rituals or organizing your spaces can actually have anxiety reducing features.

That's why you see a lot of baseball players do the same attempt before every at-bat. You see basketball players at the free throw line do the same amount of dribbles or flip the ball and the ones that do it consistently don't have to think of another approach. You do the same approach every time.

To clear your mind. And so rituals are kind of like They're another one of these cocktails in the sense that they help us in a few different ways. So they help us by giving us the sense of order and control. That's useful. Rituals are also often attentionally demanding in the sense that they're not easy to just do. They're multiple pieces like what you described, writing a letter, getting to the point where you actually thank them and apologize.

Thoughts on the paper.

Yeah. That's effort. Right? And then you're also crumpling it up. You're burning it. You're putting it in an incense machine. You're blowing it all over the place. You're rubbing it under whatever. You know, I mean, like there are steps. And so performing those steps takes our attention away from the chatter. So it can be useful in that way too as a momentary distraction. And then the other thing is rituals, not always, but are often infused with meaning. So there's meaning that we often have from engaging in the same ritual the same way. Like when I have a weekend ritual with my kids where I wake up, I exercise, I go to the farmer's market, I come back, I make breakfast for my daughters, we do it together, there's meaning. And that meaning is like you describing becoming that fly on the wall. There's more to life than what I'm... And so rituals do all those things.

Absolutely.

And it's one... that's another tool, lots of tools that are out there.

That's why I think it's important to have some type of ritual, whether it's five minutes or 50 minutes, every morning and every night, to help start your thoughts in a more productive and powerful, progressive way in the morning and not be in reaction chatter mode.

Yeah.

Start the day that way and finish the day to close the mind down from the chatter. I like to just finish with gratitude, my girlfriend, what are three things you're grateful for? I share three things. to create perspective. Okay, maybe I was angry about this today or this happened, but there's still a lot of good. Let's focus on that.

Yeah, and I think, you know, gratitude is a very useful intervention. So I think it's great that you guys do that. And, you know, you mentioned it. It's about perspective. And that is the antithesis of chatter. Because chatter is all about getting lost in the moment and being so immersed that we lose that perspective. So the question is like, what is the tool or what are the tools you need to broaden you? Is it a crowbar? Is it a crowbar and a hammer and a screwdriver? And different people are gonna use different tools to help make that happen. And so that's, you know, lots of, for a long time we've studied individual tools. And what we're learning is that no single tool, no single intervention, explains it all, right?

Well, this is why I think our society has struggled and suffered, me included, with having addictive personalities, finding substances as tools, whether it be alcohol or smoking or pornography or whatever it is, comparison mode, as tools.

Don't do any of those, by the way.

As tools to numb the chatter.

Yes.

To calm the chatter. find something to bring a dump of dopamine that will allow me to feel happier in the moment, but then we always feel worse after that dump phase. And these are more conscious tools, not substance or addictive tools in a negative sense that we should start implementing so we don't have to lean towards, I have nowhere to cope, I'm gonna drink, I'm gonna smoke, I'm gonna vape, I'm gonna whatever. And I think if our societies can learn how to use emotional intelligence, psychological tools that support us as opposed to hurting us, we'd be a lot better off.

I mean, I completely agree. All the tools we're talking about are-- They're free. They're free.

They're not hurtful.

They're easy to use. Now, can any tool be taken to an extreme and be harmful? Yes, right? So you want to use the tool appropriately. And the analogy I like to give is of a hammer. A hammer is a source of amazing, you know, creations. We build houses and all sorts of things, but if you use it the wrong way, too intensively, too much, you can get into trouble. So rituals are a great example there. Some people think rituals, they immediately think about OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. And rituals are a feature there, but that's an example of taking a tool that is useful to an extreme.

Gotcha. And always need to organize everything every moment. That's like, that's chatter in itself.

Exactly.

That's when the tool becomes chatter.

Exactly. So having that recognition, I think, is important.

What about mantras? We talked about positive affirmations. What's the difference between a positive affirmation and a mantra? And is a mantra a tool we can use? to eliminate chatter.

So, mantra is prevalent in meditation and meditation I would suggest is another kind of tool we can use to manage chatter. It's one tool among the many. It's not the only tool. And I think that I've been meditating on and off since I'm five years old. My fifth birthday, I wanted a bicycle, he got me a mantra instead. I was very upset at the moment. In retrospect, it wasn't a bad thing.

You went on a, you wanted a bicycle, he got you a mantra.

Yes, it was very upsetting on my fifth birthday. It was a moderate trauma.

What was the mantra?

It was a TM, it was a transcendental mantra. It was just a sound that you repeat. And the beauty of mantras and meditation, this is another technology that we've developed over time. Like Chatter is an age-old problem. We've probably been dealing with it. for as long as we've had language, for as long as we've been talking to other people and talking to ourselves, we've probably had chatter. And we've learned tools over time to help with it. And meditation is one of them. So when you repeat a mantra over and over again, the idea is that that's not easy to do because it's hard to focus on one thing. So what over time, what you realize is, oh wow, I just wasn't focusing on it for minutes. and so you realize how easy it is for your attention to shift and for other thoughts to come into play. But over time, the idea is that you begin to realize that you're not the same thing as your thoughts and you can let go of thoughts, right? And just re bring your attention to something else. It's a way of training your attention and also getting you to understand that you don't have control of the thoughts that pop up in your head, but you do have control about what you do. once they pop up. And I think that awareness is really, really important. If you are going to, when I teach a class on self-control, we often have a discussion about this. And some students, I ask them, what is self-control? Like, is it a failure? Like, what if you have the temptation to, you know, eat after 10 o'clock but you don't follow through with it? Is that a self-control failure? Some students think, no, you succeeded. You didn't give in to it. Others should say, if you have the thought itself, you failed. And my response to those students is, you are setting a really high bar for success.

How do you not have, yeah, having the thought, you're gonna think, I want to eat food, but the self-control is, but I didn't act on it.

That's exactly right. That's right. So I think, but that's, to go back to the learning about stuff, No one teaches us about these things in a formal way. If you take a class in psychology, maybe in college, you'll get this. I think it's a problem because when you think about, I spent a lot of time talking to educators, and we teach children at a lesson about information that, A, we think it's culturally significant, it's knowledge. So you want to read Charlotte Bronte and you know, that's questionable. But we think it's important and/or we think this information is actually going to serve these students well as they go on and live their lives. So me learning math is useful. Like learning how to compute a percentage, amazingly useful. Every time I go to give a tip, I do a percent, right? Like practical knowledge. Why are we not teaching people about how the mind works and how to manage the mind? Like it's hard for me to think about a more important topic. Like not a day goes by where I'm not challenged in some way that requires me to manage myself. And we're just like throwing the people we care most about into the world without any information about this.

I feel like the, not everyone, but the ones that grow up playing sports, coaches, usually great coaches have learned some of this. some of these tools and techniques for their athletes when they're under stress, anxiety, when they fail, when they lose, when they get injured. The great ones have learned these tools on teaching them about how to do this when they're in school, which is what I felt like was very supportive for me because I would fail tests all the time and I didn't know how to feel like I was stupid or how I wasn't stupid and how I wasn't worthy and how I wasn't lovable. Like I was feeling those things. because I would fail so much in school, but I learned in sports and high school and college, like, no, like, here's how you deal with failure. And here's how failure can be a tool to support you.

Yeah.

And failures doesn't mean you are a failure. It's information, it's feedback to support you in improving and what, where your gaps are and how you can take it.

And if you're not failing, I mean, you're not growing. Yeah. That goes back to the importance of negativity in small doses. You need, like, if my life is, I'm not ready at this point in my life to just be in, you know, you know, existence mode of coasting. Like, you know, I want to grow in there personally, professionally, and there's going to be some hurdles you experience.

Yeah, there's a, there's a meme online. I've said this before on the show. There's like a meme of, it says, like, when a kid is learning to walk, they fall something like a thousand times or something like that. and none of those times did the kids say, maybe this walking thing isn't for me. Yeah, that's a great example.

You know, it's like, they're not like.

I fell a hundred times. I hit my head, I scratched my elbow, I'm crying. They don't say, I'm supposed to crawl the rest of my life.

Yeah.

I just live in this space because it's painful. That's right. They figure out, they man, they use the couch.

Right.

I'm assuming.

And.

And they figure it out. Exactly. And that's what we need to learn as adults, is. how do we not fail once at something and think, I'm a failure. I'm going to never do this again because it hurts so much. But how can I learn to manage the chatter in my mind and take the next step?

That's exactly right. And why do we have to wait for people like you to figure this out? Why do we have to wait for people to just stumble on the tools? Now, like what you're doing with this podcast, that's one attempt. to educate. And I think we need a lot more. I think there's an opportunity here to be systematic in how we give people this information, teach people. And we don't have to wait until you've got an iPhone and we could go much earlier. And so I think that's a really exciting challenge and opportunity that awaits us. And I think there's more receptivity to that nowadays.

What about the subconscious mind? What's the difference between the conscious mind, the subconscious mind? And how do we manage the chatter of the subconscious mind?

Well, I wish I knew that one. You know, the conscious mind is what we're aware of, our subjective experience of who we are and how we feel. And that's a territory, that's a space that I feel comfortable.

That's what you study.

I feel comfortable having. The subconscious mind is a giant mystery. We still don't quite know what gives rise to a particular kind of thought. Like why does a thought bubble up? We have some ideas about what the triggers can be, but there are so many different computations happening in our brain all the time. Like the brain is doesn't go off like when you sleep or when you're not thinking. It's always engaging in different operations and and you could argue that all of that is subconscious. And so it's not until things bubble up into our awareness that we can start modulating things. I don't know of tools that can be useful for managing the subconscious chatter. Freud was a big proponent of that and a lot of those tools haven't stood the test of time. So that's not to say we won't find tools At some point, we still have a ton to learn, but it's not something that I would know how to coach someone on.

Yeah. I grew up in a religion called Christian Science, where the founder of the religion was named Mary Baker Eddy. And she had a quote that said, Stan Porter at the door of thought. And this is something I heard over and over as a child, to not allow negative or mortal thoughts enter my mind and take over the mind. Because those were the things that would hurt me and have me thinking harmful thoughts about myself, about others, about doing immoral things, things like that. And that's always stood with me to Stan Porter at the door of thought. And when something, we don't control what comes to the door, like things are going to come to the door of our mind all the time. But what you said we control how we respond to those things. Do we open the door and allow it to come in and stay there? Or do we open the door and say, Hey, you can leave?

Well, and that describes right there the difference between... So, to answer your question, I think there's a time and a place for engaging with the thought and just letting it float away. Many mindful practices, mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches to dealing with adversity suggest When we observe ourselves experiencing a negative thought, we should recognize it, accept it, and then let it go bye-bye. Don't engage with it. There can be value to that approach for sure. Like if a negative thought is irrelevant and has no implication for my future, it's just this random self-defeating cognition, let it go. You know, off you go. One metaphor that I love is think about the mind as a school bus. there are different passengers, different kids who get you're the driver of the bus, right? And you've got passengers who come on, some are really spitballs and others are nice. And kids come on and off the bus and that's how the mind works. And so just if one of these obnoxious kids come on, just let them go. So there's a time and a place for that, but there is also a time where we do need to engage with the negative stuff. We have to engage with it because we have to learn from it. Like, if you really mess up sometimes, like you like, I know some people who are so skilled at just not attaching to the negative stuff.

They don't take responsibility or accountability. They say that wasn't me. It's not my fault.

I'm not gonna. Yeah. And so. And I don't think that's productive either. So you want to be strategic and Nimble. This goes back to that. There's no one size fits all. Right? We have evolved these different tools for a reason. So like, you know, my wish is, you know, if you've got like a building team come in, they've got these amazing tool kits or like Batman, you know, the utility belt with all the different, like we want to give people the most sophisticated tool belt that they can have so that they can be adept at using the right one given the right situation.

And what about the alter ego mindset? Is this something, is this a tool that you would talk about or you recommend people using? Like Beyonce uses an alter ego when she goes on stage. I used to use one when I was going on the football field. I'm sure there's a lot of other examples out there of people stepping into a character in their mind to disassociate their fears.

We've done research on this actually. And so, you talk about stepping into.

Being like a superhero in here, like being Batman.

Yeah, but the kids, we call it the Batman effect. Yes. And it's, it's all, you know, it is about an alter ego. And we find that in particular with kids where we've done the most research on this, it can be useful. It's, it's another kind of distancing tool, right? Like you're stepping outside of yourself and into this other identity that is skilled in the domain you're in. So for kids, you know, it's like pretend you're Wonder Woman or Dora the Explorer or Batman. And then we put them in stressful tasks. Well, what do we know about superheroes? Like, they don't give up. They keep going. Right. Right. If you're assuming that alter ego, you keep doing it. Now, the one caveat to this is if you're gonna choose an alter ego, choose wisely. Right. You don't want to choose to become the Joker. Right. Or, you know, choose your other villain because. And there is some research which suggests that. It depends on which alter ego you select because you're gonna assume part of their identity and so you don't want to assume the malicious or bad guy. But yeah, that's another kind of tool we can use and that's another distancing tool.

Distancing.

So it's like if chatter is all about immersion, we want to find ways of just broadening that perspective, breaking people out, getting outside of themselves, momentarily.

Temporarily. Whatever it is, yeah, meditation, any tool.

You can't get away from and then get away, but then engage once you're from that different perspective. So we don't want people to avoid. We want them to step back and then be able to engage more objectively. Just like I'm giving you advice, like your problem, I could weigh in. It's not happening to me. I can really use every mental resource I have to give you the best possible advice. When I'm bathed in emotion, not as easy to do.

It's really hard when we are so emotional and angry or frustrated or fearful to communicate the right way. Like in a healthy way.

Yes.

Extremely hard. I've been there so many times in the past. What should we do when we want to argue with someone, we're angry at someone, a business colleague, relationship, whatever. Should we unload them in that way or should we try to figure out a way to like calm the chatter first and then have a conversation.

That one.

Why does it seem like 90% of people can't do that?

Well, I think because number one, it's hard to manage chatter. We've been struggling with this for a really long time. And again, we don't talk about these tools that are out there. So for some of us, we're just stumbling on these tools. Others aren't discovering them at all. other people may think that the things they're doing aren't actually helpful, like they're venting or they're taking drugs or doing other things that we know are harmful. So I think there's a lot of, there's an opportunity here to learn about what we can do. And then of course, there are these impulses we have. Like when we get angry, we're often motivated to engage. And so remembering to think about the big picture, I think can be really helpful.

What about language we use? You said language is key, not just the internal dialogue, but the actual words we say. How does the words we say affect our thoughts?

Well, so language can shape how we think. We don't only think in words, so it's not the same thing as thinking, but certainly the way we use language to explain what we're going through is really powerful. I mean, you know, the subtitle of my book is A Voice in Our Head, Our Inner Voice. And oftentimes when I talk about this material to people, the first thing they say is, oh, how can I silence that voice? Just shut it up. I don't want to ever hear it. And what I say to them is, no, you don't want to do that. You want to stop the chatter. But words, language, this is a powerful tool. So I'll give you a couple examples of what language does for us. In the most basic sense, if I were to, I'm gonna spell out a word. I'm gonna give you some letters. I want you to just repeat these letters in your head silently, okay?

Okay.

M-I-C-H-I-G-A-N. Yeah, okay. Can you repeat those letters in your head? Two or three times? You don't want to, but, So if I give you a phone number, 209, 209-0501, someone gives you that, that doesn't happen anymore.

I know, I know.

But when we were growing up, it did. You repeat that in your head, you're using your inner voice to do that, right? That's part of what we call our verbal working memory system. This system, it's essential to life. You go to a grocery store, you want to what do I need from the grocery? Eggs, bread and milk. Your inner voice lets you do that. So that's an essential way that language helps us. But then it gets more complicated. It does other things for us. Before I give a presentation, in my head, I will go through what I'm gonna say on the stage. I'll go through it word by word in my head and then I'll actually hear what someone's gonna ask me and I'll respond. So I'm simulating That whole, you,'re visualizing. I'm visualizing, I mean, I'm doing it with language in my head. And I think that helps prepare me. I use language to coach myself, to control myself. All right, you know, don't eat the cookies when I, you know, like it's too late, you know, the pants are gonna be, they're already a little tight from the pandemic. We don't, right? We also use language to, I think this is like the most magical feature of it. We, when bad things happen, we try to make sense of those experiences. And we use language to do that in ways that shape our understanding of who we are. So like when I'm rejected or I experience loss, I think about those events and I try to come up with a story, a narrative that explains it. Like that's all about words. So language, it lets us do a lot of amazing things, but it can also take us down the rabbit hole.

If we're using that language and Constantly putting ourselves down. For me, this is the type of work that I feel like everyone should be consuming. So I'm really grateful you created this work and this book, Chatter, the Voice in Our Head, why It Matters and How to Harness It by Ethan Cross. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this book because there are 26 tools in here. I was going through a lot of them and I felt like I used some of them already and others I was like, wow, that's a powerful thing that I could start applying to my own life. So make sure you guys get this book. I think it's going to be an incredibly powerful tool that you use for yourself and for other people in your life and coaching other people as well. So get the book Chatter, the Voice in Our Head, why It Matters. Where can we follow you online or is there a place that we can support you online?

Yeah, you can go to my website, www.ethancrosswithak.com, and then I'm on Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn.

Okay. What's your main social channel?

What do you like to use the most? Instagram, LinkedIn?

You know, I, I, I, this is.

All new to me. I've begun to learn. You're in the professor world. Yeah, it's a different world. You don't do that. And I've actually studied social media and well-being, so I know it can be a minefield.

You've got to be careful how you navigate it. Absolutely. And I must say I really like Instagram. That's cool. Okay.

How about you?

Are you, are you, is it just.

Eastman Cross on Instagram?

Instagram or okay. Yeah, Instagram is a big one for me as well. YouTube, we have a big audience and channel on YouTube, so I'm a big.

Fan of providing this information on all these platforms. Yeah, it's an amazing way to, you know, social media, you know, people often ask me because we've been doing research on social media for so long and how it impacts well-being is it good or bad? And my answer is it's both. You know, it's a new environment. And if you think of the offline world, if you go to the wrong neighborhoods in the physical world and talk to the wrong people the wrong way, you get in trouble. If you go to the right neighborhoods and talk to the right people, you could benefit. Social media is the same way and one of the real benefits is how it can connect us and get information out. So that's how I've been trying to use it and not for the more.

Harmful You got to use the tool appropriately. Don't abuse the tool, otherwise it'll abuse you. That's right. It's like the tools in your book.

That's right.

You got to learn to use them in the right way. Really grateful for this. I've got a couple of final questions. This question is called the Three Truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical situation. It's your last day on Earth many years away from now. You live as long as you want to live, but eventually you got to turn off the lights. You've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. You you see everything come to life, your dreams, all that stuff. But you got to take all of your work with you. No one has access to your content, your words, videos, nothing. You have to take it with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true from your experiences of life, the lessons that you would share with the world. And this is all we would have to remember you by. I call it the three truths, your three lessons. What would you say? Are your three truths?

Boy oh boy, that was supposed to come in the memo before we spoke. I know. So, what are the three truths? It gets better with time because it almost always does. We're much better at helping others than we are ourselves. Because I think that can be as a framework for living a good, flourishing life, an incredibly powerful understanding. And be a mensch.

Be a mensch.

Be a mensch. A term I grew up with, which is just be a good, decent human being. because it feels good and because it makes other people feel good and because it's rewarding for everyone. So there you have it.

Be a mensch. Big fan of this. We'll have to connect. Maybe I'll come to Michigan at the big house someday. If you give me a ticket, maybe I'll come up there finally.

Ticket is yours.

There's so many seasons.

You might have to use some tools to regulate yourself before you come.

I would acknowledge you, Ethan, for showing up powerfully for the last couple of decades doing the research, doing this work, helping students who need it the most at the University of Michigan. And now helping the world through this book and the work you're doing and putting yourself out there. I feel like these strategies and tools are the things we need the most. So I'm really grateful that you're alive. I'm really grateful that you're creating this work. I'm really grateful that you're showing up in a powerful way to support and serve so many people who need help understanding their mind, the noise, the anxiety and the stress. So I acknowledge you for that. I'm really grateful that you're here. My final question is, what is your definition of greatness?

Hmm. Sorry, I'm not, this is another one. I wish I had the memo on this one.

No worries.

What is my definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is leaving another person a little bit better off than before they met you and leaving the world, I guess, if I'm going to the next domain, leaving it just a little bit better than it was before I came on it. That would be a definition of a great life.

Love it, Ethan. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Appreciate it, man.

False positivity is one of the greatest.

Contributors to decreases in human well-being right now.

Because what it does is it doesn't allow people the space or even the.

Permission to process normal experience.