266. Your Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open: Managing the Voice in Your Head

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for your career. Doom loops can be one of the biggest barriers to effective communication. Yet we can quiet the chatter and regulate our emotions. My name is Matt Abraham's, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talksmart, the podcast. Today I'm really excited to speak with Ethan Cross. Ethan is an award-winning professor of

management organizations at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He is a director of its emotion and self-control lab. He studies emotion regulation and the conscious mind. Ethan is written to bestselling books, chatter, the voice in our head, why it matters and how to harness it, and his latest book is shipped, managing your emotions so they don't manage you. Welcome Ethan. I'm really excited for our conversation.

It's a done-light, not-er-to-be-her-man. I've been looking forward to this for a while now,

“so now we can make it happen. Absolutely, shall we get started?”

Yeah, let's do it. So let's start our chat about chatter. Your work on chatter explorers are internal self-talk and how it can hijack our performance. Can you explain how this happens? Yeah, should probably start by defining what chatter means. chatter refers to getting stuck in a negative thought loop, and they're really two kind of tell-tale signs that you are experiencing it. So one is, you've got a legitimate problem that you're

facing, maybe it's a problem that work, maybe it's a problem at home, and you're motivated to work through that problem to use your glorious marvelous brain to come up with a solution. That problem is you're not successful. So you keep on trying to work through the problem, but you don't make any progress, and you start spinning. Sometimes you call this worry, sometimes you call a remination, the common thread, there's a legitimate problem,

but you're not progressing. So that's one sign that you're experiencing this state of chatter. Another is you just perrate yourself and,cessantly, I'm an idiot,

“saturated it. How can I have done this and you just pile on yourself?”

How does this undermine performance? One way it does so is by consuming your attention. So let me ask you this question, Matt. Have you ever been in a situation where you sit down to read a few pages in a book, and under oath you is swear to a judge that you've read the information on the page, except you get to the end, and you do not remember damn that you've read. Even that happens so frequently that it is common. Well, and it's in my experience talking to lots

of people about this stuff over the years. This is a universal experience we all have at times, and chatter just promotes this. So how does this work? We have a limited capacity to focus our attention. Our potential resources are a precious limited commodity in our brains, and chatter acts like a sponge that consumes that limited capacity. It leads very little left over that allows us to do the things that we want or need to do. So that's one way you can undermine our performance. The other thing

it can lead to is something that we call analysis paralysis. Here, the idea is you start over thinking things that you can normally do without thinking to the point where the entire performance crumbles. If you watch sports, you see this happening all the time to athletes who choke under pressure,

all the sudden second basement who could historically throw the ball to first base with their

eyes closed. Now, can't get anywhere near the vicinity. That is also a function of chatter.

So chatter sucks up our cognitive bandwidth, and it has us doing things more consciously

“than we might normally do it, and that's what gets in the way of us performing well. I see this”

play out all the time in the work I do around helping people feel more comfortable and confident in communicating. Anxiety around speaking gets into this chatter loop very easily. But what are some techniques we can use to break this cycle? An early experience that I had with

analysis paralysis. When I was first public speaking as a grad student, one of the first classes I

taught. It went well. I got some feedback though that said that I had forgotten to smile enough. And so in the second time I came back, I over-corrected and like I smiled so widely that it disrupted. I forgot what I wanted to say. And that happens a lot. People get caught up on things like they hear themselves saying or they know what they wanted to say in a certain way. And then they get into these doom loops that prevent them from performing well. And how do we get out of that?

So here's the good news. You can get out of it. Morgan news. If someone has told you about a tool that worked for them, but it didn't work for you, no problem. Because what we have learned from a science is that different tools work for different people in different situations.

“There are no one-size-fits-all solutions. I think of managing your chatter a lot like becoming”

physically fit. So most of us have goals to be physically fit for different reasons. Some of us

want bigger muscles. Some of us want to be able to run longer. Based on who you are in your goals, you're going to benefit from doing different kinds of exercises and routines. The same is true when it comes to managing your chatter. So what can you do? Well, there are some things you could just do on your own. Basic ways of shifting the way you're thinking or behaving that can turn the volume on your chatter down. One category of tools that a lot of people benefit from are

called distancing tools. So here the idea is when you find yourself zoomed in very narrowly on a problem that you're ruining about it, let's find a way to help you step back and look at the circumstance a bit more objectively. It will feel like you'd be hearing it on a friend. Most of us have had the experience of finding it much easier for us to give great advice to a friend as compared to ourselves. There's a name for this phenomenon. We studied it in my lab.

It's called Solomon's paradox. Name back from the Bible's King Solomon. King Solomon was known for being supervised when it came to other people. When it came to himself, he made terrible decisions. This is true of all of us. So how do you step outside yourself? Lots of ways to do it. One tool that I'm fond of is called "distance self-taught." So what this involves is trying to work through a problem using your own name and you. So if I'm really stressed out before a big presentation,

“I think to myself already, then how are you going to manage a situation? How have you managed”

a situation before? Here's why "distance self-taught" helps. It leverages language to shift our perspective. Most of the time that we use the word "you" or a name, we're using those parts of speech when we think about or refer to someone else. So the link in a person's mind between the word "you" as an example and another person is about as strong as you can get. So when you use that part of speech to reference yourself, it's essentially turning on the brain machine we're thinking about someone else.

Makes it a lot easier for us to work through our problems objectively. That's one tool you can use. Another tool is something that I call "mental time travel into the future." Super simple. How am I going to feel about this presentation? Three hours from now. Three days from now, three years from now. All of our emotions, they take place on a timeline. So you're living your life, something happens in a motion yet spike. Then as time goes on, the emotion eventually fades.

When we're consumed with chatter, we zoom in on the peak of that experience. I'm the awfulness. Oh my god, everyone's staring at me and what if I forget to say what I need to say?

What if one of the bathroom and blah blah blah. It is amazing. I should add that how creative we

can be in coming up with worst case scenarios in those moments. So when you zoom in on the cynical of the negative experience, what you lose sight of is something that you know at your core to be true. You know this to be true because you've experienced what I'm about to describe millions of times in your life, which is the emotion has come and has increased. But then as time is gone on, it has faded. So when you jump into the mental time travel mission, you're like,

hey, how am I going to feel about this tomorrow? Or next week, it automatically makes accessible this notion that what you're going through as awful as it is, it's temporary. It will eventually fade. And that does something very powerful to a mind that is racquet chatter. It gives it hope. That turns the mind down too. So those are just two examples or dozens of tools out there.

advice to and then asking yourself what this means in the future. I've heard things like writing things down, just recognizing mindfulness teaches us that this is what I'm experiencing in the moment, all of those give us a little bit of space to be able to manage. So thank you for that. Given that a lot of our interactions are mediated, they're virtual, they're through social media. I'm curious if you found that there are any differences in our self-talk or how we should approach

“those interactions. I think it's really important for us to be mindful of the modality that we are”

communicating to other people through technology has provided us with just enormous opportunities to be more efficient and effective. But there are some tradeoffs that you get. So here's something I think about often when it comes to chatter and technology. We know from lots of research that when people experience strong emotional reactions of the sort that characterized chatter, they are intensely motivated to share the glory that is shaming through their mind with other people.

That is the thing we want to talk about it. Now in the real world, in the non-social media, non-technology, core and core real world, there are some obstacles that are embedded into life that prevents you from immediately talking about your chatter in the instant that it has spiked and is perhaps most extreme. Number one, you've got to find someone to talk to and people are

like always available and then when you find them, they may not even be able to listen to you.

Right? So you've got to wait some time to find someone and then what often happens as time passes, some scientists describe time as a component of our psychological immune system that is time works to reduce the intensity of our emotional responses. As time goes on, our emotions fade. Right? So you're waiting to talk to someone in the real world. You find my wife. I finally reconnect with her five hours later. I'm not as upset as I was before. Social media, though, gives us access

to a network at all times. And when you couple it with smartphones, you whip it out at the very peak and then you're sharing. And there's one other thing to keep in mind, which is, on social media, I'm sharing my inner thoughts and sometimes frustrations to a text box. When I am face to face with someone, I'm in the presence of another human being who is sending me all of this rich information back about how what I'm doing and how I'm behaving is affecting them. That is your face, your body

is sending me information about how you are feeling. And that can constrain the way I behave to you. Like sometimes man, I'll be honest, like when I'm pissed off, I mean, it's like a Robert De Niro film in there, right? Like the explotives that are going, if I said some of these things out loud,

I would be in big trouble. I would never talk to you that way. I wouldn't talk to any other human

being that way. And it's because you are calibrating how I communicate. So I think it's just really important to be mindful of these modality differences, because we do see that people are much more likely to share emotional information in an unfiltered way on social media that can sometimes

“get them in big trouble. Absolutely. And I think it's important to always be thinking about the”

channel and what that means for how and when and how specific you can be in your communication. I really like that idea of time being part of the immune system and really helping calm things down. I appreciate that. You've said that a common piece of bad advice is simply get over the negative feelings that people have. I'm curious. Why is that such a bad idea? And if it is, what are some communication frameworks or tools? You can share with us that we can use to acknowledge others

negative feelings without just saying, hey, get over it. How can we help them process those feelings? Yeah, just get over it. Doesn't really give people a whole lot of tactical information to help them get over it. I think a lot of people when they're struggling, they're highly motivated to reduce that struggle. They don't want to stay in that state for the most part. And so when you just tell people just get over it, it's not like they're not trying to do so. In my latest book,

I tell this anecdote where my wife and I were driving back from dinner into Troy with another couple, very close friends of ours. And the husband has been experiencing some real stress at work. And it was the source of some chatter. And he was describing it to us in the car and his wife says him, yeah, why don't you just think differently about it, effectively, like just get over it. And he turns, sir, and goes, yeah, easier. He did said that done. And he did not say,

“"Bleeping, I'll let you fill in the blanks." And so the idea is, okay, but how?”

It's a cool thing, like, just get in shape. Just lose weight. But I've never taught you

way of supporting other people when they're struggling with chatter or big emotions?

There's a two-step science-based framework that then particularly fond of. I'm fond of it because it's grounded in rigorous science. I'm also fond of it because I have personally found enormous value in it. Because before I came in contact with this framework, people would come to me for help. And I didn't know what to say. Like, sorry, I feel for you, but now I have a guide. So what is in what are the steps in this framework?

Step one is emotionally connect with the person, listen to the problem, validate what they're experiencing, show empathy, connect with them, communicate that you are there for them, they have your support,

“and also learn about the circumstance you need to wrap your head around it. Once you have a sense”

that those social and emotional connections have been forged, then you want to shift to starting

to work with that person to help broaden their perspective. Help give them actual tools that can benefit that. So now you come to me with a problem. I listen, I learn, you know that I'm genuinely here for you. I might throw it back to you in that case. What would you tell me if I was in your circumstance? Or I was in that situation a couple of years ago. You know what really benefited me? It was actually doing this mental-time travel thing where I went into the future. Maybe you

tried that. And then lots of different tools you could slip in during that part of the conversation, but the idea is you lay the groundwork, the emotional groundwork for giving those tools at the beginning part of the conversation. And then you come into problems often on at the end. That's the formula for both being a good chatter advisor to someone else. It's also a formula for helping

“you figure out who are the people that you should put on your chatter advisory board. Who are the”

people who do both of these things for me? Because I'll tell you what I do on it's of people's advisory board to them. There are lots of people that folks go to talk to about their problems. They don't do both of those things. Sometimes they just co-ruminate with the other person ways that make the situation even worse. I really like this idea of a chatter advisory board and really think about who are the people that help you and it might be the same person or it

might be different people for different situations. But I really like that proactive idea. And then as somebody who is trying to help others, we talk a lot on this show and with a lot of people and colleagues that you and I have in common about how we can connect. We can ask questions. We can paraphrase. We can demonstrate our empathy to really learn about the circumstance before we begin to provide potential advice and guidance. And the examples you use of advice and guidance, I think

I want to call everybody's attention to. You didn't say you should do this. You said, in my experience, I have found this help me which it changes the dynamics. So the tone and manner in

“which you give the advice I think is really important. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. The you should”

you want to use that very sparyway. I have a friend who says you shouldn't should all over people, right? But saying from your own experience opens up for conversation. Yeah. And just to take that beat further, because I think it's such an incredibly insightful and important point, Matt, is why is it that the kind of softer way in to giving the info as important? It's because all human beings have this fundamental drive towards agency. It's a drive to believe to use the

technical term that we are capable of handling our own shit. And when you threaten that drive, it elicits a kind of defensive reactants. And so if you could get in there a little bit softer, it may could all easier. Absolutely. I love the technical term. Thank you. I'd like to shift our conversation away from chatter to your latest book, Shift. You've already alluded to it, but it's all about emotional regulation. And by the way, it's fantastic. You say in there that

a key to managing your inner world is to view our emotions, not as problems to be suppressed, but as data to be analyzed. So this is a way of reframing it. What does this ship do for us? And how can we train ourselves to use this reframe so we can get some of the benefit? I think one of the big problems we have in society right now, at least in Western society, is we often we give people these aspirational goals to live

lives free of negative emotions, striding for happiness all the time. Sometimes this leads to what we call toxic positivity. And here's the problem with that. Number one, you're giving

people an impossible goal. There's no way you can achieve this goal. Never experiencing negative

emotions. Number two, it is an undesirable goal. Because you're negative emotions in the right proportions are helpful. Let me give you a couple of examples, anxiety. When I don't experience any anxiety before an important presentation, the performance I deliver is not as good as when I do experience low anxiety. Why is that? Because the anxiety is information that tells

mind," right? If I don't do that, I just walk in, doesn't go as well. Anger is what motivates me to intervene when my daughter doesn't put on her helmet when she's running her bike. So we experience anger when our conception of what is right and wrong is transgressed. And there's an opportunity for you to fix the situation. And you approach, you intervene. In the right proportions, those are healthy. The big problem, of course, is we often experience negative emotions out of proportion.

“That's why it's important to understand how to regulate it. But we really need to understand”

that we should not be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because negative emotions are harmful, some of the time doesn't mean that they don't sort of vital role in our lives. Taking that reframe really can help. When I feel my anxiety before giving a speech or my anger with one of my kids because they're driving too fast, when I see that as, hey, this is input for me to then act upon, rather than something to bury deep inside or get over one by

I can really make a difference. And I appreciate that. It again takes that little bit of distancing to give yourself that space to do that, though. We'll be right back to finish our conversation.

But first, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Their support

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website or domain. Before we end, I always ask people three questions. One I make up just for you

and the other two I've been asking people as long as the podcast has been around. Are you up for that? Yeah, let's do it. Question number one, you have studied awe. Can you tell us very quickly what awe is? And what have you learned about it? Yeah, awe is an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something vast and indescribable. Something that just feels bigger than ourselves. And what we've learned is that number one, you can experience awe from lots of different sources.

So a lot of people find on nature, beautiful sunset, fall foliage, I'm a science guy and I often and filled with awe when I contemplate the fact that we human beings have cracked the puzzle of interplanetary travel. That is, we have figured out how to blast a vehicle office planet and safely landed on planet Mars. A my mind is just can't comprehend how we figured out how to do that. When we experience this emotion of awe, leads what we call shrinking of the self, we feel smaller

when we're contemplating something vast and indescribable. And when we feel smaller, set all of the troubles that are weighing us down. And so it's an important reminder of another

“resource we possess from adage your emotions. Yeah, and awe, I think also can be experienced internally.”

You can think about internal things as well, not just external. So again, it's a way of distancing and perspective taking. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? Like good friend Angela Duckworth is, I think, just exceptional and clearly talking about science that honors its richness, but still being really impactful. And I think finding that sweet spot between being able to talk with impact, but not diluting the science is really hard to

do. She is an amazing communicator and you and Katie Milkman have both nominated her as a

person that is admired. So thank you for that. Our final question, Ethan. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? Clarity simplifying as much as you can, but not beyond that and sharing your passion and love of what you're doing and talking about. Clarity, simplicity and emotion that you feel and experience. Thank you for that recipe. And thank you for all the insights you've provided. A lot of us carry around a lot of chatter. It can make

it hard for us to regulate our emotions and manage and you've given us some very specific

I'm sending out applications to several people to join right away. Thank you, Ethan, for your time.

“Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast,”

Talksmark, the podcast. To learn more about how to manage our internal world and negativity,

please listen to episode 179 with Laurie Santos. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed,

“Ryan Campos, and me Matt Iberhems. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to”

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