If you experience worry, rumination, if you find your inner critic activating at times, there's nothing wrong with you. We evolve the capacity to experience negative emotions for a reason. Why did I do this? Why didn't I do it that way? You idiot. How could you do this? You're worthless. We think about the whatifs. What if this happens? What if that happens? And before you know it, you know, life is over. Here's what I hope everyone takes away from this. Okay, three things. Number one, you'll be able to take your inner critic and turn it into an inner coach. Number two, if you ever find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of rumination and worry, we're going to give you some lifelines to pull yourself out. And then number three, wow. So, we got our work cut out for us. That's a tall order. Yeah, we better get started. Well, I've read your book, so I know you can deliver on that. So Ethan, what exactly is that voice that's in our head that's chattering 4,000 words of it? So when scientists like myself use use this phrase self-t talk or the inner voice, what we're talking about is we've never heard anybody explain selft talk and that inner voice in a way that I actually get it. What is the solution? Is there a simple way to shut it up in order to just silence all of this negative selft talk or is this a much more complicated thing that we need to take on? The most important thing to do is Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so fired up for our conversation today. I'm so excited that you're here. It is always such an honor to spend time together and to be with you. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I'm thrilled that you're here. And because you made the time to hit play and listen to this particular episode, it tells me something about you. It tells me that you're the kind of person who wants to take control of your inner voice. And you want to learn how to be more encouraging and positive, especially when it comes to yourself. And you know what? I think that's amazing because I want to learn how to do that, too. And if you're listening right now or you're watching on YouTube because someone shared this with you, I want to take a minute and point out to you that that means that you've got someone in your life that really cares about you. And so, thank you for trusting them and thank you for being here. And this is a home run of a podcast episode for you to listen to or watch because Dr. Ethan Cross is in the house. He is a psychologist and a neuroscientist and he's been a pioneering researcher in the field of selft talk and emotions for 25 years. Ethan Cross is also a professor at the University of Michigan where he has taught for the past 17 years. He is also the founder and the director of the research institute at the University of Michigan, the emotion and self-control laboratory. His work has appeared in esteemed journals like science and the New England Journal of Medicine. He earned his PhD from Columbia University and he is also the author of two best-selling books, Chatter, The Voice in Our Head: Why It Matters and How to Harness It. And his latest bestselling book is called Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You. His books have been translated into over 40 languages, and today he's going to unpack the insights so that you can use this research to stop the negative selft talk. So, please help me welcome Dr. Ethan Cross to the Mel Robbins podcast. Thank you for hopping on a plane and being here in our Boston studios. I cannot wait to dig into your work in your uh bestselling book, Chatter. And of course, congratulations on your new book, Shift. It's so exciting to have you here. Well, it's a it's an absolute honor to be here with you. you know, I've been um listening to you for quite some time, and the the compatibility between a lot of what you talk about and um what I write about and do research on couldn't couldn't be better. So, um just an honor to be here. Awesome. Well, let's just jump right into it. And here's how I want to start. I would love to have you. Do you want me to call you Professor Cross? Ethan, what do you like? I love Ethan. Okay, Ethan. We're going with Ethan. Yeah. Ethan, I would love to have you speak directly to the person who's here spending time together with us right now and tell them exactly what they could expect to have be different about their life if they take everything that you're about to teach us about our self-t talk, about our emotions to heart and they put it to use in their life. Here's what I here's what I hope everyone takes away from this. Okay, three things. Number one, you'll be able to take your inner critic and turn it into an inner coach. Number two, if you ever find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of rumination and worry, we're going to give you some lifelines to pull yourself out so you can actually use your mind to solve your problems rather rather than just get stuck in them. And then number three, more broadly, we're going to give you lots of really pragmatic, tactical tools, simple to use tools that you can use to really master your emotions. So, if you want to turn the volume on them up or down or shorten or lengthen how long they last or even switch from one emotional state to another, we're going to give you some guideposts that that steer you in the right direction. Wow. So, we got our work cut out for us. That's a tall order. Yeah, we better get started. Well, I've read your book, so I know you can deliver on that. Uh, you know, you have been at the University of Michigan. You are the founding director and have been running this incredible lab, the emotion and self-control lab. What is it? What has it taught to you? What do you want us to know? The first thing that I've learned over the past 25 or so years doing research in this space is if you ever find yourself going down that vortex of doom and despair or anxiety or or even overcome with other negative emotions that don't really feel good in the moment. Welcome to the human condition. We all do at times. And I think that's a really important point for people to take home because I can't tell you how many people I meet who who really feel bad about themselves when they find themselves slipping into one of those emotional states. We evolve the capacity to experience negative emotions for a reason. And we'll talk more about that today. When they're experienced in the right proportions, they can be useful. So number one, if you experience worry, rumination, if you find your inner critic activating at times, there's nothing wrong with you. To the contrary, I would argue there's everything right with you. Number two, there are no onesizefits-all solutions for managing these states that we want to bring more under our control. We have evolved to possess lots and lots of different tools. And I think the key to managing our emotional lives more effectively involves learning about what all those tools are and then figuring out what are the unique combinations that work for you based on who you are as a unique individual. It's a lot like in in my mind's physical fitness. Lots of people have the goal to be physically fit. But the way they get there can be radically different compared to other people and the same is true when it comes to if we want to call it emotional fitness. You got to learn about all the different machines in the gym and then you got to figure out what are the exercises that work for me based on who I am and what my goals are. Well, let's start with going down the rabbit hole. Yeah. Because you know your first bestselling book, Chatter, the voice in our head, why it matters and how to harness it. When is the last time you went down the rabbit hole? Oh boy. Like you seem like a such chill guy like like super tortured yourself about worry or negative thoughts. Um probably um maybe a couple of months ago. Um the you know and it was linked with um one of my daughters. Are you going to get in trouble for telling the story? I'm I'm actively I'm actively monitoring. Now he's going down the rabbit hole. My wife is going to kill me. Yes. Yes. No. Um um this is something I'm used to experiencing. No, this is this is fair to say. So, um my my youngest daughter was um was applying to get into the same school as my oldest daughter. And um when my oldest daughter was applying to get into a school, you know, there was okay, if it works out, great. And if not, no big deal. But now with the second daughter, there's a social comparison element here. and you know, she has this older sister that she looks up to and admires. And so I'm thinking, well, what would happen if she doesn't get in? And she fortunately did get in. And it was a a great relief. But I did I did find myself going down the rabbit hole uh on occasion playing the what if this happens. And you know, I should say that when I do that, when I go down the rabbit hole of despair, which I can get stuck in every now and again, like like the best of us, um, it always amazes me how exceptionally adept we are at brainstorming endless worst case scenarios to our problems. Uh, I mean, have you experienced this yourself? Every day. Like, I mean, you're like saying a couple months ago. I'm like, dude, like if you ask me that question, I'd be like about an hour ago. But it is true because we are so good at thinking about the negative and imagining the worst case scenarios, but we're not so great at imagining that things could go right. That's right. Well, there's a there's what we call this negativity bias. Uh, one of my favorite titles of a paper in in psychology is bad is stronger than good. Um, one of our few Nobel Prize winners won a Nobel Prize for discovering that we're more sensitive to losses than we are gains in our lives. And that all makes sense if you think about it. The the bad things in life have the potential to harm us or derail our lives a lot more than the good things. So we should be more sensitive to them. But sometimes that oversensitivity to the bad stuff can really lead us astray especially because no one ever teaches us about how to rewrite the ship when we find it going in the wrong path. Well, one of the things that you said that I am excited is you said I'm going to teach you how to turn your inner critic into a coach. And I would love to start with this amazing book chatter and all your research about the voice in our head. And I want to read a part of your book to you. Sure. Because this was jaw-dropping to me. So our verbal stream of thoughts, our selft talk is so industrious that according to one study, we internally talk to ourselves at a rate equivalent to speaking 4,000 words a minute. And to put this into perspective, I crunched the numbers. 4,000 words a minute is the equivalent of reading the first book in the Harry Potter series in less than 20 minutes. So when we think, we are not always thinking in full sentences. We're thinking in these sound bites that have deep meaning. And when you spell out what those sound bites are equivalent to, you get essays in your mind. And I'm sure you've you've you've felt this kind of bombardment of information when you find yourself going down that rabbit hole. It's like our mind is pinballing all over the place verbally and and we're we're just inundated which is in part why when we find ourselves kind of racked with chatter it can it can feel so so oppressive. Um this is one of the reasons why writing about our experiences doing something we call expressive writing can be so helpful for folks because it helps us organize our thoughts so that we're not pinballing all around. You know, you're right that the key to beating this negative self-t talk and this chatter in our head isn't to stop talking to yourself. The challenge is to figure out how to do so more effectively. But before we can get into how to control the voice in our head, we need to answer a more basic question. Why do we have one in the first place? So, Ethan, what is selft talk? And what exactly is that voice that's in our head that's chattering 4,000 words a minute? Yeah. So I love I love this question. So um so when scientists like myself use use this phrase self-t talk or the inner voice, what we're talking about is our ability to silently use language to reflect on our lives. And it turns out that is a remarkable tool that we possess for navigating this crazy world. So let me like flag four key functions that this ability to use language silently provides. Um, number one, we're we're the same vintage here, you know, age- wise, more or less. Um, be careful. When we were growing up, what would you do when you wanted to remember a phone number or a name? Um, well, if I didn't have a pen and couldn't write it down, I would repeat it over and over and over again in your head. Yes. Yeah. So, or I'd come up with like rhymes or like I to try to remember it, right? So that's that's probably the most basic function that your inner voice serves for us. It's part of what we call our verbal working memory system. Wait, so that's what the basic of your inner voice is is to help you remember things. That's that's one function it serves. So you could think of your inner voice as like a Swiss Army knife, multi-purpose tool. It does many different things for you. So one and oftentimes death by a thousand cuts. We're going to get there. We're going to get there. Don't you don't you worry. So, number one, memorizing a phone number, repeating a phone number, repeating a name, going to the grocery store and asking yourself, "What was I supposed to buy? Milk, cheese, yogurt. I guess I'm in the dairy aisle." But the whole point here is you're doing that silently, typically, not out loud. That's one thing your inner voice lets you do. Another thing your inner voice lets you do, simulate and plan. So before an well you do a lot of presentations for for as part of your job. You ever go over what you're going to say before you go on stage in your head always. Okay. That's your inner voice. You are you are silently rehearsing preparing simulating for what you need to do. You know what else I use that I just realized? When I'm packing for a trip I'm like thinking ahead to where I'm going and what I'm going to need. There you go. So that's that's another you're simulating and planning. People do this before um interviews before consequential conversations that they uh are going to have. I am not as good at giving a presentation if I don't do this simulation beforehand. My favorite function. So the name of my lab at University of Michigan is the Michigan emotion and self-control lab. I love the topic of self-control. We use our inner voice to control and motivate ourselves. So all right. So Mel, tell me what what do you do to exercise? Oh, keep going. Okay. I I because of some of the experts we've had on the show, I now lift weights. Okay. I walk. I do yoga and pilates. Okay. Um I have like a super active lifestyle outside. But if but if I'm quote exercising, I have to drag myself to the gym and then I use an app to mo motivate myself. Okay. And and that's what I do. Do you ever talk to yourself when you're exercising? All the time. I like I did this morning in a class. Hate this. Why are we on our hands? I don't want to do a pike right now. Um I feel like I'm in a gym class with a woman who's talking like this and who's like screaming at me like screaming and why is she playing ACD at 6:30 in the morning? I thought this was a freaking Pilates class. Like so it was literally like I'm saying that to myself. Um, as she would walk closer, I would think, "Get away from me." You know, go to the other side of the room. So, I or I'm thinking, "This is too heavy. I'm tired. I want to quit." I see. Clearly, I don't have a lot of willpower and discipline because my chatter is a constant barrage of why I should stop doing what I'm actually doing. We have room for intervention here, do we? We have tons of room. We are going to make If you're already doing fine in the gym, we're going to make you do a lot better by the time this episode is over. So, that's another thing. If you're listening, you're going to take home with you. So, so it's possible if you are constantly against yourself. Absolutely. You can you can change your self talk. So, so but if we just go back to a second, this is one of my favorite questions to ask people when I'm when I'm giving talks on this stuff. I just kind of scan the room for what do you say to yourself when you're exercising? Lots of people talk to themselves and what they say varies tremendously from what you just described to come on, you got this to I really want a bagel right now and and and and so on and so forth. And and we know that people who are skilled at harnessing this voice to be motivating and encouraging, they actually perform better in those contexts. So um so I I knowing this stuff am very strategic about how I harness myself talk when I'm exercising. I will be motivating. Come on man, you've got this. That's right. I refer to myself in the second and third person. We'll talk more about how that works. I als I also can become um somewhat in my head uh aggressive towards the instructor that is telling me to do painful things. Oh, like the woman that I was like you were just describing. So for me, I find it, well, why don't you try doing that, you know, like I don't like the way you're talking to me. You know, I want to do it this. I don't say that out loud. I smile out loud, but in my head, right, I'm having that kind of conversation. So, so the point here is another thing your inner voice helps you do is control and motivate yourself. The fourth and final thing I want to flag here, to me, I describe this as the most magical feature of our inner voice. Um, your inner voice helps us make sense of this messy world that we live in. We are bombarded by things all the time that have the potential to lead us astray. We get rejected. We get into arguments. We experience anxiety about what may come. And when those different kinds of curve balls get thrown at us, what we do is we often stop and we try to okay, how do we make sense of this so we could get back on on track of living our lives? And we make meaning, we use our inner voice to try to to try to make sense of our our circumstances to essentially create a story that helps us understand what we're going through and who we are. So your inner voice is actually shaping your sense of self. So, if we just pause here and zoom out, your inner voice helps you do things as simple as reminding yourself what's on your grocery list and memorizing a phone number when you're repeating in your head to simulating and planning for the future to controlling and motivating yourself to making meaning. If I told someone I could give you a tool that does all of those things like these are the things that are really important to us in life. Your inner voice is central to all of those things. It's an invaluable tool that you do not want to live life without. The big question of course that really got me into this business in the first place was on the one hand we have this remarkable capability. We reach for it when we're struggling but as you know as I know as you who are listening knows oftenimes we don't activate this voice and get clear solutions to how to move on. we just start stumbling. We start looping over our problems in an attempt to work through them or we start berating ourselves incessantly for mistakes that are endemic to to human life. And when that happens, I think that is one of the big problems we face as a species. And as I have said before, I say that not to scare or sensationalize. I say it based on what I know of the data. Because if you look at what chatter, which I define as the the negative manifestation of your inner voice, when it turns into that negative thought looping, that self-perate, that just tanks us. It makes it hard for us to think and perform. It creates friction in our relationships, and it undermines our health and well-being. These are the things we care about in our in our lives. And so, that's why I think it's just critical to address it. I have never heard anybody explain selft talk and that inner voice so elegantly and in a way that I actually get it. Well, thank you. I mean it is truly remarkable when you take a 30,000 ft view and think about what does our chatter look like? What does it sound like? I mean, we say things to ourselves that many people not only wouldn't say to a buddy, right? We often talk about that how, you know, talk to yourself like you would talk to someone else. This is a great tool, by the way. We'll talk more about that later. We sometimes say things to ourselves that we are ashamed to even say out loud. Sometimes when I do exercises, workshops with groups or students, I'll sometimes invite people to just write down their chatter on a piece of paper. And it's really remarkable. People are often reluctant to even put in writing what they're think even when I assure them like the shredder's right here. There's another garbage bag with lighter fluid. Like not bag, garbage can, right? You can I'm I'm joking here, but like no one is going to look at this, right? Just admitting to what is happening up here can be so challenging for folks and I think that speaks to the gravity of what we're talking about. What are some of the examples of negative selft talk that just show up again and again? I think hearing it from you would really validate it for me and for the person who's with us right now because if we don't if we're reluctant to even be honest with ourselves and put it on paper. Yeah. What can you validate based on the fact that this is your area of expertise? It's what you research that you see over and over and over again that are examples of negative selft talk. So there there are three three key forms. Number one, what I call rumination, which is going over the past, something you did in the past, you can't fix it, right? But you just keep turning it over and over in your mind. Why did I do this? Why didn't I do it that way? What implications might this have moving forward? So rumination is getting lost in this thought. It's a legitimate issue from the past and you're trying to work through it, but you just keep turning it over and over. You're not making any progress. That's often a telltale sign of chatter. Legitimate issue. You want to work through it, but you don't make progress. So it could be like, just to give it even a more fine point, it could be that you really screwed up in a relationship and now you're telling yourself the one got away or you you made dumb financial decisions. this was me and and now it's I'm why did I do that? I I I should have started with my 401k like my father told me when I graduated from college like d like just hammering yourself into the ground. How did I let myself go? I should have like I I I've just now it's too late. I I've been drinking like all that kind of stuff that's in the past. And and why is this such a predominant form of selft talk for people? Well, it's a predominant form because I often think that we we navigate life in an ideal sense on autopilot. We just kind of want to live the life, you know, knowing that the world is is is orderly, it's safe, it's predictable. And then when we encounter some some challenge to that view that the world is safe, that everything's okay, it's like an alarm gets hit in our brains that says, "Stop. Pay attention. Fix this." And so then we zoom in really narrowly on what the impediment is. And so maybe it's something from the past and we keep focusing on it until we can resolve it. Often times though, we don't know how to resolve it. We just keep on playing it over and over in our minds and then the alarm button stays pressed and we just get into this rut of turning it over and over and over. And we don't some of us don't want to let go of that e either because at least if we're focusing on it that's step one but in the process of doing that we're we're really harming ourselves we're making it very challenging to think and perform. I mean, have you ever get gotten stuck in rumination and then tried to have a conversation with someone or read a book only to find that you're physically there or you're reading the information on the page but nothing is penetrating cuz your mind is somewhere else? Oh, completely. Absolutely. Like if I get into that loop where I am obsessing over something that I think I did wrong, I can't do anything else. Exactly. So think that's that's thinking and performance, right? like that is a major major obstacle to being successful in life if if your ability to really hone your attention now is lost. And the way that works, just if you want to geek out with me for 30 seconds, sure, um our ability to focus is limited. We have these limited attentional resources. They are um they're they're subserved by our prefrontal cortex, the front part of our brains. And chatter acts like a sponge that soaks up all of those attentional resources and it leaves very little left over to do the things that we often want and need to do. Whether that be just pay attention to the person we're talking to or read the chapter in the book and absorb the information. That's one of the way it really sinks us. So, so you asked though like how does chatter manifest? Rumination about the past is one. Uh another one that will be familiar to everyone in the world or most of us is is worry right we we worry about the future. We think about the whatifs. We are what if machines we can easily what if this happens what if that happens and before you know it you know life is over. Right. Right. And that goes really fast. So worrying is is getting stuck in these negative thought loops typically about the present and future relation. the rumination. The first the first is the past. The second form of selft talk is getting stuck in a negative loop talking to yourself about the future. What's the third form? The third form that is very common to folks is this self beratement. This kind of like you idiot you know you know how could you do this you're worthless. So this kind of inner critic is another manifestation of it. It can however take different forms. So chatter really is this process of just looping looping negative information over and over. If you're being super critical about yourself like that that's very common. Sometimes it can be just um anxiety, right? You're you're looping over what if this happens, what if this happens. And so it's really this looping of negative stuff. It's like you keep on getting hit over and over and over. You said it before. I think you said death by a thousand cuts. Yeah, that's what it can feel like when you just start hammering yourself. ing, right? Like it's exhausting. People often who are experiencing chatter, they they report just like being fatigued. Now, I want to be clear also, y we all have this um capability of experiencing chatter at times. And and just because you do doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. Again, this is normative. If it if it morphs into the extreme state that is like the volume is super high and it's on for long stretches of time like more than two weeks then we get into the more um you know clinical state but but what we're talking about here today is really this is just true of human beings and how we operate and again a big big part of what I hope to do in talking to you about this and sharing the science is to convey first and foremost that this is normal This is just part of this messy world that we live in. We have these tendencies to slip into the states. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. The opportunity though is to learn about what you can do to help yourself when you go down this path. If you don't want to stay stay on it, Ethan, what is the solution? I mean, now that you're you're exposing all the negative selft talk, I mean, is there a simple way to shut it up or a magic wand you can wave in order to just silence all of this negative selft talk or is this a much more complicated thing that we need to take on? Well, there's not one simple thing that everyone can do. Um, I don't like that answer. Yes, I'm sure you don't. But I'm going to I'm going to give There goes my negative chatter right out my mouth at you. But but but but I'm going to give you there are lots of simple things you can do is the way to think about it. Oh, I like that. So, um yeah, you should there's a lot of hope. There's a lot there's a lot you can feel bummed. I I think you should feel good when I tell you that there's not one thing you can do to manage your chatter. Because here's what often happens when you give people one solution. They try it. That one thing doesn't work for them. And now they think, "What's wrong with me? M why is this working for everyone else but not me? We just published some research not too long ago that looked at how people dealt with their anxiety during the COVID pandemic. So we did these large studies. We tracked people over time and every day we had them rate their co anxiety and we had them indicate which of something like 18 different tools they used. Now all we wanted to know was well what are the tools that are moving the needle? Yeah. So, what was really interesting about that study was there was no individual tool that moved the needle on people's anxiety. It was only like when you used a combination of tools. It's like curling biceps didn't do it on its own. You had to do bicep curls, push-ups, and sit-ups. Right. Right. Except for journaling. Journaling was the one tool that alone moved the needle on people's anxiety. However, it was also the most infrequently used tool of all the tools we ask people about. How does that make sense? Yeah. Why? It's effortful to sit down for 15 to 20 minutes and actually write. There's also a vulnerability to putting it out there. And so, I think teaching people about that is really useful, too, because that could be a powerful tool for folks. So, do you have a favorite journal prompt that's helpful for starting the process of identifying your negative chatter? What is it? Yeah. Um, well, for me, it's like straight out of the pages of of of the the literature. So, I tell people to um write about your deepest thoughts and feelings about whatever it is that's bothering you. Really let yourself go. Don't worry about punctuation or grammar. Write continuously for 15 or 20 minutes. Now, what do we learn from the time we're young about stories? They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So what writing does is it gives these guideposts to help you take this like jumble of crap in our minds which are making us nuts. Yes. And we're organizing it. And that's the beauty of of what we call expressive writing. So the whole idea here is that we have this remarkable set of tools that we can leverage to help us work through our chatter. But we need to know what those tools are. And what what really mystifies me is we don't get a users's guide for where to find these tools and a user's guide that teaches us how to use it when we are born into this world. We're born into the world with the ability to experience this chatter or this emotion dysregulation, but no one no one teaches us how to use it or how to how to manage it until now. Yeah. And there is hope. There's absolutely hope. What I I find it liberating to know that there are so many different tools that I can bring to bear to deal with the different circumstances that I might encounter. um you know my emotional life is utterly distinct. It's like a fingerprint, right? It's very different from yours and every other human being on this planet. So why would we expect the same single tool to work for every single one of us given how unique we are? My grandfather was a a master carpenter and I remember distinctly like when he would show up to a job site, he would show up with this remarkable set of tools. this toolkit. No matter what problem he encountered on the job site, no matter what he needed to do, he had a tool, a general, you know, he knew how to use these tools and he could wield them to solve the problem. If he showed up with just a hammer, you'd be out of business. And that's how I think about tools. You want to give people those basic tools that exist for pushing our emotions around. And once you have them, you've got a great resource. you've got like I I I mean I'm looking at 12 tools that you can use personally. There are tools for getting other people to support you. There's tools for receiving support. Let me start with the first one. Use distanced selft talk. One way to create distance when you're experiencing chatter involves language. So what is distance selft talk and how do I use it when I'm going down the rabbit hole? And and you know I' I've actually heard you use this on prior podcasts and you weren't even aware of it. That's right. How? So, can you think about times when you might have coached yourself through a problem using your own name and you Oh, you mean like talking like like saying to myself, well, come on. Yeah, there you go. That's that's distant selft talk. You just did distance selft talk. So, distance selft talk involves using your name and you to typically silently coach yourself through a problem. You could do it out loud, but if you do it out loud, you want to be aware of who's listening because it violates um social norms to not only to talk to ourselves out loud, but use our own name to do it. Um we talked before and you've talked before about how much better we are at giving advice to other people than we are taking that advice ourselves. Uh little factoid there, there's actually a name for that phenomenon that we've we've studied this in my lab. It's called Solomon's Paradox. Solomon's Paradox, named after the Bible's King Solomon. Here, I'm going to give you another pop quiz. Don't get nervous if you get it wrong. If you get it No, I think you will. I I think you will. So, what was King Solomon famous for? I have no idea. Being a king. Being wise. Oh, being wise. He's wise. He was a wise guy. So, um, King Solomon, like super wise individual. people would travel from all over the world to to receive his his counsel. But when you look at his own life, he made a slew of terrible decisions. This is true of of humanity. Like when I ask audiences, hey, are you much better at at giving advice to others and taking that advice yourself? Every hand in the in the room goes up. We when you use distant selft talk what it's doing is you're using language to automatically shift your perspective to put you into this I'm talking to someone else advice giving mode. Think about the word you. The word you is the verbal equivalent of pointing a finger at someone else. Most of the time we use the word you. It's when we're thinking about or referring to another person. So when you use the example of being in the gym and one purpose of your selft talk is motivation. Yeah. And you say, "Come on, Ethan. You got this." That's an example of using positive motivating self talk using this distanced language. That's exactly right. You're putting yourself into this coach advice giving mode, right? And what did we say earlier? We we we we don't say to our friends the things that we say to ourselves when we get stuck in that chatter. So when you use your own name and you to coach yourself through a problem, it's like it's putting guard rails up on your selft talk that prevents you from going down that that more negative route. Can you give me a couple examples of just generic positive distance language for somebody that hyperfocuses on the mistakes they make or like saying that I'm never going to be good enough, never like what what are some examples of just things people could start to say to themselves? Ethan, all people make mistakes. You've you've made mistakes before. You've learned from them and you'll be fine. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, that's that's a nice thing to say to yourself rather than I'm such an idiot. I'm such a I mean, you have to, you know, I mentioned before we started filming that I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and although you may not hear the accent right now, um, in my mind when I go into the chatter zone, it's a filthy sometimes inner beratement. Um, and so I'm not doing that when when I'm in distant selft talk mode. So give me another positive one. So So really what we see happening is you get into this more challenge orientation. I can manage this. I can do it. As opposed to being in what we call threat mode. I can't manage this. I'm gonna screw up. So, another example would be um one of my favorites from a study was um someone was was thinking about having to plan a huge event for someone and it was really really stressful. You can do this. You can manage this retirement party for this person and get a great turnout. People are going to come and and they're going to love it. You've got this. Um, you know, in my book, I actually I share an artifact from Mr. Rogers. Remember Mr. Rogers? Of course. He he was the um You're sitting in 143 Studios, which was his favorite number. Really? Uhhuh. Wow. There is some cosmic connection that led me to bring this up. So, Mr. Rogers, in my mind, is the the human equivalent of a warm cup of tea on a rainy afternoon, right? Just kind of soothing. And there was this moment where he had taken some time off from from filming his his show and then he was about to come back and he was racked with chatter, racked with self-doubt. And he he journaled a little bit about it and he's you know it's how can I possibly live up to expectations. I've been gone and I'll never be good enough. And then at a particular moment in that essay he switches. He starts using distant selft talk essentially you've got this the hour have come you're going to do a great job and so forth and so on it's in the book and it's just remarkable because you see the entire tenor of a conversation shift when he goes into this distant selft talk mode you know one of the other tools that you talk about uh that's very effective at helping you get a handle on the inner critic and this negative chatter that we have is rituals can you explain that yeah so you Rituals in popular culture get a bad rap because we often equate them with certain forms of anxiety and there are those links that that do exist where you have people who are suffering from anxiety conditions become really overreiant on a ritual to a point where it can be harmful but a ritual in the right proportions can be quite helpful. I often call them ancient chatterfighting tools. So if you think about it, are are you religious in any way or very spiritual person? Okay. Very spiritual person. So I'm sure that there are certain spiritual rituals that that you know you've been exposed to. Grieving rituals, right? Religions around the world have been like, well, let's just stop for a second. Let's pause for a second. Take the loss of someone. This is like a real chatter challenge for a lot of people. Like their worldview is shattered now. How are they going to go on without this person that they love, that they care about? Religions have identified, hey, that might be a really hard time that people are dealing with. Let's give them a tool to manage that situation. It's a grieving ritual. So, here's what we know about rituals. Rituals are relatively rigid sequences of behaviors that you perform them the same way each time, more or less. They don't necessarily, it's not clear why you do the things that comprise a ritual. Like if you've ever watched an athlete before a game do a ritual, they do some funky things like, you know, pull tug on their earlobe a few times, pick a wedgie, put their hand through their hair. The key is you're doing the same thing in a sequenced order, in a rigid sequence order. The same way, here's how this can help us. Chatter is often triggered when we don't feel like we have order and control. Things are just not under our control. You've written extensively about this, right? A ritual is under your control. You can perform that ritual the same way each time. And when you do, it leads to what we call, this is a mouthful, compensatory control. You're compensating for the lack of control you feel inside when your chatter is taking over by exerting control around you. This is also why people do this. I'm guessing pretty common thing. I'm going to guess you do this. Here's another. Yeah, I feel like I'm putting you on edge throughout our conversation. Do you ever organize and clean when you're experiencing chatter? Okay. So, let's have a conversation about this because not only did I see on page 170 tools that involve your environment. Yeah. To really get your negative selft talk in control. But the first one is create order in your environment. When we experience chatter, we often feel as if we're losing control. You're right. Our thought spiral control our sp thought spirals control us rather than the other way around. When this happens, you can boost your sense of control by imposing order on your surroundings. Organizing your environment can take many forms. Tidying up your work or home, making a list, arranging different objects. This is, I think, my number one way to combat negative selft talk. And I never knew that's what I was doing. So that that was true of me as well before I got into this space. And it was this was a super um a super aha is a technical term for me. So growing up I've always been I would describe myself as positively dispositioned very happy and clean. I've always believed in hygiene. I shower daily sometimes twice. twice. Sometimes if I go to the gym, you know, I like to stay fresh, but uh not terribly organized in the sense of putting my things away. Probably like my wife's biggest pet peeve are the trail of clothing that exists from the the shower to the closet around the room. And if you go into my office, I assure you it does not look like this facility that we're taping in right now. piles of books. That's when times are good. Okay. Yet, going back to when I was a kid, whenever I would experience chatter, I would do this. I something deep inside me would beckon myself to it was like, you remember Field of Dreams, like build it and they will come. And for me, it was like, clean it. Clean it and you will experience relief. And so, I would like go and put things away. And I do this, you know, like go into the kitchen, do all the dishes, maybe even scrub the the counter, you know, same. And then even masochistically, and tell me if you do this, sometimes I even go in my kids' rooms and put their stuff away, of course. And and like all of a sudden things feel a little bit better. I absolutely had no idea this is a technique that we reach for when our overwhelm and our minds get to be too much. You're compensating for the lack of control you feel inside by trying to exert order and control around you. And now that you know how this works, you can weaponize this. Okay. Let's talk about that because I I can see lots of areas moments in my life like when my husband and I were really really struggling the kids would joke that they would come home from school and every other day I would have moved the furniture around dragging it and scraping the floor in the room where the TV was like just like I got to change this around. And even thinking about packing Sunday night to come down, I have this thing about packing. Yeah. Where I start to feel very overwhelmed and then I'm mad at myself that I didn't pack before and now I'm beating myself up relentlessly. Why? Why is this so hard for you? Like just make a damn list and why didn't you do this on Saturday morning and Jesus, you meant to leave like two hours ago and I'm like hammering myself. And that of course makes it impossible to leverage what you've already taught us which is the planning and forecasting aspect of your selft talk because I'm so busy berating myself. So literally I come down in the kitchen on Sunday night. I'm 2 and 1 half hours late leaving. Yeah. I'm not even packed yet, Ethan. And I have clothes still spinning in the dryer upstairs. And you know what I did? I literally pulled out the junk drawer in the kitchen and I started organizing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And my husband comes over and he puts his hand on on my shoulder. He's like, "You don't need to be doing this right now." And what I wanted to do is scream around me like, and I took a deep breath and I was like, "Right." But what I'm realizing is that was me trying to create order and what felt like a tornado of negativity in my brain. That's exactly right. Is that why we do to-do lists, too? Like when we It's a way of organizing. And so th these can be useful tools for helping people to constrain their chatter as long as we don't become overreiant on them. And I'm giving you that caveat that is true by the way of all the tools that we're talking about and that I write about. You know what I find interesting too about what you just said? Tell me. The chaos doesn't bother me when I'm happy. Yeah. Like my desk can look like we tipped over an aisle at Staples. Yeah. And just crap everywhere. But if I start to feel overwhelmed or stressed at work, I don't do work. I clean my desk. You describe yourself so interesting. Like you get caught up in this kind of tizzy, so to speak, of kind of how it feels, right? Like, let me out. Let me give me freedom. And and you're reflexively going to clean. And if that's working, great. But we can also get even more sophisticated about beforehand thinking about what are the two or three things that we want to do when we find oursel in that state and then basically ahead of time coming up with a plan. What do we do? So here's we whoop it up. You whoop it up. Whoop it up. Just like like All right, another another question here. What what comes to mind when I say whoop? Uh like I like isn't there that song? There it is. You just redeemed yourself now. Now, now we're back. We're at like 75%. We're getting back. Yeah. Whoop. There it is. Right. So, so um so people have struggled endlessly. You go from listening to a podcast, reading a book, you learn about information and then you know the bleep hits the fan and the question is you don't do it. Right? It's the New Year's resolution dilemma. I'm going to lose the weight. I'm going to go to the gym every day. 3 days later you stop doing it. And so scientists have spent a ton of time trying to figure out why are we so bad at following through with our intentions and how do we make people better? And you could boil down the decades of research into a simple framework called Whoop. Here's what it stands for. The W stat step one that's your wish. So what is your goal? So your goal might be to calm the chatter down like reduce the noise when you find yourself slipping into that state. That's the goal I want to achieve. That's the wish. That's the wish. Okay. The first O that's the outcome. So what's going to happen to you if you achieve that goal? Uh I'm going to have less stress. I am going to cause less drama for myself and other people. Um, I am going to feel more at peace and more in control because all of this negative chatter and overwhelm that becomes very paralyzing uh, makes me feel out of control and incapable. So, the outcome would be very positive. So, so great job. And the reason we focus I love the affirmations. Just hang around all day. Hey, I'm happy to give them. But it's true. And the reason why we do the the outcome next now like you've articulated your goal. We want to energize you like this is a goal worth pursuing. This is worth my time. So now you're in this energized state for pursuing this goal. Now we get to the second O which are the obstacles. Okay, the personal obstacles that are going to stand in the way of you achieving this goal. So what what might be an obstacle that might prevent you from turning the the volume on your chatter down? Um I am fluent in negative selft talk. Okay. I am fantastic at criticizing myself. Uh I uh can whip myself into a human tornado uh in a nancond and uh it can be very effective when I get into a tizzy because other people try to help. Okay. that. So I think those are all lots of obstacles. Like just being honest about like I don't even know if I can do it. It would be an obstacle. Yeah. So you mean turn the turn the volume down? Yeah. Yeah. So you've just you've just gone through your obstacles. So what we would then do, we would focus on one of those obstacles to start and we get to a P which is our plan. Okay. But it's not any kind of plan. It's what we call an implementation intention. It's easier to call it a plan. Yes. It's basically an if then plan. So if I find myself doomcasting and becoming you know this savant in negative selft talk then and you plug in what you are going to do. You plug in the tools that you're going to use in that situation. So if I find myself berating myself incessantly then I'm going to coach myself using distant selft talk. Mel, you can handle this. It's not that big of a deal. Go for a walk in nature. That's another tool in your book. Go for a walk in nature. Jump into the mental time travel machine. Go forward and back. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay. Right. So, let's talk about it right now. Okay. So, go what is it? I'm not going to remember it. Mental time travel are are these are two of the the most useful tools that I possess along with distant selft talk. Super simple. We talk a lot about the importance of being in the moment. Grounding ourselves in our breath. That is useful. But what we forget when we talk about being in the moment is number one, our minds evolved to travel in time. And you can actually use that to your benefit. So number one, how am I going to feel about this issue next week, next month, next year? Most of our emotions follow a time course. They get triggered and as time goes on, they eventually subside. Most of our emotional experiences follow that trajectory. But when we are stuck in chatter, we just zoom in on the awfulness. It feels like it's never going to end. When you jump into the time travel machine, how am I going to feel about this 10 years from now, 20 years from now? It highlights the fact that what you're going through, as bad as it is, it's not permanent. Things will eventually get better. It gives you hope and that turns the volume on or chatter down. That's one thing you That's mental time travel to the future. I I think that could work. That's powerful for me and then that helps me also access the positive distance talk that you've taught us which is if I time travel even two week like a week from now you've already packed and been on the trip and now you're home like it's not that big of a deal and then I can start to go Mel take a deep breath you're capable of packing you got it so you you're blending these tools which is off also how these things actually operate in daily life right so we go back to the one thing it's Not one. Now we're doing two. And you know what else I I want to point out because I think it's important to keep highlighting this. You've given us other tools of creating a ritual and playing music and going outside and taking a walk in that moment, playing a song and taking a walk would just stress me out more. Don't do it. Right. And but but I can see how now you're starting to build this toolkit. That's right. where I'm not going for a walk right now, but I can time travel to calm myself down and then I can use positive distance talk to say, Mel, you can pack a bag. That's right. So, you can customize the tools based again on who you are and the circumstances you're in. So, let's close the loop though on mental time travel because we just talked about going into the future. You could also go into the past. Works a little bit differently. For me, this is my uh is ace in the hole the right term? I think it is. I don't know. What does it mean? It's like my secret superpower. Oh, gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Um I think I might have gotten wrong, but that's okay. So, um we'll give it to you. Yeah. Well, now you're giving me the apherisms. This is reciprocal. It goes very well. Um, so, um, so I the story I open up my my second book with, shift, is a story of my grandmother in World War II surviving the the Nazis basically slaughtering our whole family. My grandmother's my ace in the hole. When things feel so big and and just kind of how am I possibly going to get through this? I jump into the mental time travel machine. I go back to 1940, whatever. I spent just a little bit of time with my grandmother in my mind. And what that does for me is it it it zooms me out. It makes it super clear to me that what I'm going through as as difficult as it is, it pales in comparison to what she went through and survived. And I think we all have those personal experiences or experiences in our family or in our culture that you can anchor on to put what we're going through in perspective. Is there a something you would add to that though? Because if you're a world class self-critic and ber Yeah. I could see that strategy being something that only becomes more evidence where you go and you're such a piece of crap that you're sitting here working yourself up about this thing. How you know what I'm saying? Like you actually should. So, how do you take that to give yourself perspective but then keep yourself lifted in your capacity to coach yourself through? You want to keep the spotlight on the challenge that they endured compared to what you're dealing with right now. Right. And really use it as a source of motivation as as Exactly. not to not to you don't want to slip back into the well, you know, anything sets you off. That would defeat the purpose of that exercise. And if you find that doing that leads you into that territory, don't use that tool. Use a different one. That's great. And that's that's that's a really important takehome for these tools. Different tools work for different people in different situations. How important of a role does environment play in selft talk being positive or negative? Yeah, it can it can play a big role um in a few different ways. So um so we already talked about your local environment, how the way you structure your environment, how organized it is can affect what's happening between your ears. Um, there's also ways of of of putting things in your environment to trigger positive experiences like um pictures of loved ones, which you know sounds so so silly on the one hand, but we did this research years ago where we had people um think about really painful experiences and we had them then look at a picture of a loved one or a picture of someone else's loved one to see what are the implications of looking at your what we call attachment figure, someone you're really connected to. And what we found is that looking at that person that you care about, this activates a sense that there are people in this world that support you, which sped up how quickly people recovered from from a distressing experience. So after that research, I like went on a shopping spree for f um picture frames and like my my off all of my offices have pictures of of my family and friends all around it for that reason. Yeah. I think that that you know if you think about walking through an office often times that's the thing that te tethers you through the day. Yeah. Is the reminder of what's meaningful in your life especially when you're having a stressful day. Exactly. Sort of like the way that you time traveled backwards to your grandmother. helps helps put things in perspective. Correct. So, that's that's one thing you can do. Um, green space exposure. Uh, I was a little um hesitant to really buy into this when I first started uh researching this space. I come from uh a place we we talked about before Brooklyn, New York. I I like to remind people that one of the most famous books to come out of this burrow or about this burrow was titled a tree grows in Brooklyn, singular, right? So, like there's not a lot of um there was not a lot of green space growing up and uh I'm a city guy. I find green space exposure to be um quite profound in terms of how it impacts my emotional life. And there's been a lot of research on this and what happens is when you're stuck in chatter, it consumes your attention. It's the only thing you can think about. So true. When you go for a walk in a in a safe natural setting, what happens is your attention is is captured by your surroundings, but in a very gentle way. The sights, the sounds, the smells, like your attention just drifts on them. And what that does is it gives you this opportunity to rest and restore over the course of that walk. So, you finish it, you're feeling more rejuvenated, and you actually have more attentional capacity to work through your problems. So that's one way that your environment in particular green space exposure can help you. You know I just had an experience where last week I you know got some very very difficult news and so I had a horrible night's sleep could not fall asleep. Woke up it was like 5:15 in the morning which is ungodly early for me. And it was pitch dark outside. My husband Chris was gone and I laid there and I could just feel the negative what if this and where you're just kind of trying to problem solve through something that's scaring you to death in your life or your work or whatever. And I thought I need to get the hell out of this bed. So, I got up. I got the dogs outside and then I thought I should go for a walk even though the moon is still out and it is pitch dark because my mind is a horrendous place right now and the last thing I want to do is look at social media or try to solve it that way. So, or log on to email. And so, I put on my coat and I still have my pajamas on and I started walking down the driveway. And as I was walking in the pitch dark and I'm seeing the moon start to lower and I started thinking to myself sort of like you thought about your grandmother about the fact that in the scale of humanity and the fact that I am but a speck on this planet h hurtling through space the crap that's keeping me up at like I'm sorry again still negative shaming myself if if you take notice but as I rounded the corner and the the moon is set it probably took about 15 to 15 minutes of walking, but there was an owl. It was like, and I'm like, "Oh, that the owl doesn't care." And as I kept walking and my senses were activated, it pulled me into the experience of the walking and then the sun started to come up and slowly but surely I noticed that the beatdown was gone. Yeah. Why does that work? Yeah. Because I think we've all experienced feeling better and clearing our mind. Yeah. When we either take a walk or if it's available to you, you can get outside in green space. Yeah. So, a couple things I want to point out. So, number one, you said 13 minutes. You said it took about 13 minutes. And the way I interpreted you saying that I was like, it took a while. Mhm. But if you think 13 minutes is a while, how much time have you spent in that negative selft talk? 56 years. 56 years. I think 13 minutes is pretty damn good. Like 13 minutes is probably quicker than the amount of time it takes for Tylenol to have its effect when you got a bad headache, right? Like that is pretty magical. So we talked a little bit about how nature can help us restore. That's one way it can help us. Another thing that it does is it gives us the opportunity to experience the emotion of awe, which is an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something vast and indescribable, something that just feels bigger than ourselves. And nature is replete with those awe triggers like the moon. It's so beautiful and these, you know, you're in you're in southern Vermont. I've been up there at times. It's it's gorgeous up there. Mhm. When we experience this emotion of awe, what it does, it leads to what we call a shrinking of the self. You feel smaller when you're contemplating something vast and indescribable. Here you are, Mel. You're worried about this thing. I'm sure it's a legit. It feels doesn't only feel legitimate. I'm sure it feels existential in the moment that you're having it. Like, it's over. I'm over. The world is over. Right? Like, yeah, we've all been there. We know what it's like. Well, when you're in nature and you have this opportunity to experience awe, it just it makes you and your concerns feel a whole lot smaller when you're contemplating the vastness of maybe like the site you're in. I mean, you're probably walking somewhere, trees are alive for hundreds of years, right? Like that makes what you're dealing with just feel a little bit more insignificant. And when we shrink ourselves in that way, our problems shrink too. So um so I will often weaponize this by going for walks in the local arboritum when I'm really struggling with something and it inevitably helps. It's like what am I'm worried about this like when there are so many more things happening in the universe like come on let's get back into gear. Yeah. And more importantly, I think it helps you access the other tools. Because you know, the thing is is that the walk didn't disappear, the problem. It actually lowered the chatter. And so when I got back and into my workday, and inevitably other things happened that then bring it back up, whether I started organizing my desk or I'm using the other tools, I can see what you're teaching us, which is you have the ability to catch it. That's right. When it's taking you down. That's right. and then use these tools to create distance from it. So, there are so many tools in the book and we've covered a bunch of them so far, but what are some other quick and simple tactics and tools that the person listening can use to make their inner voice more positive? Okay, so let's enter into the rapid fire part of the conversation. Uh, sensory experiences tremendously underutilized tool. I was blind to this up until relatively recently in my life when my daughter was in a um a terrible mood was buming me out and um one of the great songs of all time came on the radio in the car or iPad whatever you call it nowadays journeys don't stop believing and everyone got excited and happy in the car music effortlessly shifts our emotions you can use this yourself you can use it to shift other people's emotions all of the senses are useful tools to shift our emotions. Sense I'm staying at a hotel not far from here. The moment I walked into the hotel, I was I was a wash with this pleasant scent that the hotel has been piping through the ventilation system to make the patrons feel comfortable. We spritz ourselves with chemicals to make ourselves feel good and make other people feel good. Our senses are powerful tools. Um, let's talk about other people though because other people I think are really important and it touches back to this this problem where sometimes you go to other people and we push them away. So, how do you how do you find other people in your life to actually help you when it comes to your chatter or your the big emotions you're experiencing? I call these our chatter advisors. Okay. Okay, how do you find your chatter advisors? You want to look for people who do two things. There are two key steps to providing good chatter support. Step one, you want to listen, empathize, validate, connect with the person, right? Lots of big terms there, but what I mean is like you want to be there emotionally for that person. I want to learn about what you're going through. Like I really would like to know what set you off at 5:00 a.m. the other day. Tell me about it. Terrible. like I've been there too. Genuinely connecting. What that does is it it it it helps satisfy the person who's suffering these needs they have to feel connected. Once I do that, then I want to shift into this kind of advice or cognitive mode. So, all right, now we're connected. You can rely on me, but the problem's still there. Let's try to let's try to look at it. And as someone who is not going through the problem myself, I'm in a great position to help put it in perspective for you. Y those are the two steps to providing good chatter support. And you would be amazed at how frequently people who are exceptionally well-intentioned don't follow those two steps. There are two ways it breaks down. Number one, some people think that their job is just give you a sounding board to let it out. just keep going, right? There's value in that in in connecting and learning, but if that's all we do in a conversation, it can lead to what we call co-rumination. Now, we're just kind of bathing ourselves in the in the problem together. And as a function, we often leave the conversation feeling connected, but the problem's still there. That doesn't work. The other thing that doesn't work, you come to me with a problem and within 5 seconds, Mel, this is simple. You know, like I wrote a paper on this. Here's what you need to do. Just do ABCD. You'll be fine. Call me in the morning. We call those people jerks, right? Or Mel Robbins. I doubt I doubt that. And so, so you really want to follow both of those steps in that order. Listen and then advise. There's an art to doing that. Well, so I'll use my wife here as an example. Is she going to kill you? She might kill me, but it's okay. We love each other. Um, so if my wife came to me with with a problem that she was um experiencing some chatter about, I would immediately start listening, empathizing, connecting. And when I sensed that she had gotten it out and I really understood the problem, I would ask her for permission. I'd be like, "Hey, I I I totally get it. I have a I have a thought. You wanna Do you want to keep going or can I share it with you? Sometimes the way that she'll answer that question is no, I'm not done. Just let me keep going. And then I let her keep going and then I come back to it. Okay. At other moments it'll be yes, please. What do you think? Let's, you know, help me. And so what I love about this framework that I essentially just described that we just talked about is it gives me guideposts for how to steer this conversation. When someone comes to me, whether so my wife, my friend, my students, whoever, there are these two steps that I follow in the in in the same sequence each time. Step one is I'm there to empathize and connect, listen and learn. Step two, now I'm going to try to help work with the person to broaden their perspective. So this has happened to you before. How'd you deal with it last time? Or you know, something like this happened to me and here's what I did. Simple ways for broadening perspective. Like couple of questions like that you ask. It often helps the person find the answer. I will often ask people to do a a chatter advisor audit. So I'll have people like divide their world into personal and professional and then I ask them to list who all the names of the people they go to to talk about the chatter when it erupts. Then I'll explain to them how this art of chatter advising that we've just gone over that the key to being a good adviser is to empathize, listen, and then shift into that advising. And I'll have them circle the names of the people on their list who do both of those things. And I haven't cross out the names of the people who who don't. The people whose names you circle, that's your advisory board. And it's not always the people that you're closest to. Often times it's actually not. It's not. And that's okay. You know, there are people who I love, who I'm super close to. I don't talk to them about my chatter. It doesn't help me. It actually pushes me in the wrong direction. Um, but my board is an amazing asset that I possess and I lean on it frequently to deal with my chatter. Uh Ethan, what does a person do if they're, you know, listening to you and they've got someone in their life who's really struggling because of the way they talk to themselves? I mean, just down on themselves, down emotionally. What is the best thing that you can do to help somebody that you care about when you see them really beaten down? So, I like to divide the way of helping others into into buckets. One thing you can do if they come to you for help as often happens to us, people want to talk to us, people want our support, then you um you follow that that guide that we just talked about. You listen and learn and then you advise. And part of the advice is giving them the tools. Like the way we help others is is teaching others about these tools. I do this to my kids all the time, right? Like I'm constantly complaining that we're born into the world with the the ability to experience chatter and big emotions. We're not born into the world with the users's guide that teaches us these tools. So if my kids come to me, I listen, right? And then I offer them tools. But then there's another situation where you see people you care about, your colleagues, your loved ones, and they don't ask you for help. And then the question is, well, what do you do? Do you let them just figure it out on their own, suffer in silence? Do you volunteer the support without them asking? There's been research on this and and it's tricky. The research shows that if you volunteer the support without the person asking, it has the potential to blow up in your face. As a parent, I'm sure you've experienced this as I know I have. So sometimes if I've seen my kids, I know they're struggling with something. this is something I can help them with and I volunteer the advice. You know, it's basically a mild version of how they respond. When you offer support and it's not asked for, what that does is it communicates to the person that they're not capable of handling their own circumstances. And that can elicit defensiveness. So, here's the really cool thing. We have learned how you can still help people when they don't ask for help. And what it involves doing is providing support invisibly. Okay. Is this another one of these secret weapons? This is a secret weapon that everyone that you are listen if you're listening, you now have a secret weapon. Lay it on us, Ethan. How do we do invisible support? Invisible support is providing people with support but without shining a spotlight on the fact that you're doing You kind of asked me about this earlier when you asked me about how do you tactfully help another person when they're struggling. This is how you do it. Okay. And there are many forms this can take. I'll give you a couple of examples. Let's say someone on my team or or you know my lab is is uh working under a really tense deadline and I I they don't have time to take care of themselves and do simple things. I I can just order in food for them. If my wife is struggling with like lots of stress at work, lots of chatter, it's her turn to get the groceries. Like, I just do the groceries, pick up the dry cleaning, I don't do it, come home and ask for a pat on my back. I just do things to make the other person's life just a little bit easier, a little bit more manageable. That's one way of supporting someone invisibly. Let's say someone else is struggling with a skill. Um, let's say it's public speaking. So, someone on my team is struggling with communicating their science in a way that people can understand with impact. Before I take them aside and say, "Hey, I've noticed that you could do a little bit better here. Here are three things I I want you to try." I'll first have a team meeting and we'll all share out best practice. What are the two or three things that we've all benefited from for speaking more effectively? What I'm doing there is I am getting the person information they can benefit from, but I'm not shining a spotlight on the fact that I'm targeting it to them. So even sharing sources that you've benefited from, podcast episodes, books, share that with someone else. You don't have to target it to them and say, "Hey, this is going to help you." But if you've found the material meaningful, just share it in that context. And what it does is it it gives them the opportunity to benefit as well, but without you think without them thinking this was specifically targeted to them. Oh, you could always do it in a group chat. That's my favorite thing to do is just hit the family group chat. Hit the friend chat. Hey everybody, great episode. Great. This episode was awesome. I learned so much. Or this book was great. Yeah, those are simple things you can do. And I do that all the time. Let me close the loop on invisible support because I told you about two ways you can do it. There's a third and it's my favorite. What is that? It's affectionate but not creepy touch. Are you familiar with this one? Yeah. That's what ants do, not uncles. Well, definitely not uncles. But it's what moms and dads do. That's true. Affectionate but not creepy. Yeah. Like what do you do with your kids when they're born into this world? First thing we do. Oh, I just pulled them against you. You hug them. That's right. And and we have receptors on our skin that encode for an affectionate embrace. And when it's registered, there's this automatic release of of stress fighting chemicals that flood our system. And so, you know, if if my daughters are experiencing something challenging or my my wife, I'll, you know, just kind of give them a hug, caress their back. Again, not creepy. Um, but even at work, you know, like a fist bump, right? Right. Is a simple way. We are a social pat on the back. Pat on the back, right? t tactile species. That's a way of supporting someone invisibly as well. I totally get it. Yeah. You do want to make sure to convey the not creepy part of it though. For sure. Yeah. Um I would love to have you speak directly to the person listening because you have shared so much with us about your research and ways that we can flip that negative chatter into a positive coach. Um and all just so many tools. to reach for that will help you do that. If the person takes just one action based on everything that you've poured into us from your two books, Chatter and Shift, what is the most important thing to do? The most important thing to do is learn about the tools. Just familiarize yourself with them. What I love about these tools is decades of of research have gone into their identification. Complex, backbreaking effort, but the take-homes are super simple. Mental time travel. How am I going to feel about this next year into the past? You know, how does this compare with what Bubby went through? My grandmother Ethan, you've got this. I mean these are simple things that don't take a whole lot of time and energy to practice. Just familiarize yourself with them and then start self-experimenting. That is the that is the the launch pad for gaining control of your chatter. And so um so my invitation to you is to familiarize yourself with the tools that are out there. Start self-experimenting. Find the tools that work best for you and share them with other people. That is the way I think we help really combat this this universal affliction. Ethan, you are so awesome. Now you're giving me all the the No, I actually mean it. Like I'm stunned because this topic can be so heady and you made it so accessible and tactical just like you said that you would. Congratulations on the bestselling book, The Manual, that now exists for all of us to turn our inner critic into positive coaching chatter. Congratulations on your mega bestseller, Shift. I am so happy you came. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, the feeling is totally totally totally mutual. And I also want to thank you. Thank you for choosing to spend time listening to something that can help you create a better life. And there's no doubt in my mind that everything that Ethan taught us today is going to help you change your selft talk from something that is beating you down to something that's lifting you up. and that will change your life and the life of people that you care about. Thank you for sharing this with people that you care about. And in case no one else tells you, I want to tell you in the words of Ethan, you got this. You can do this. And I also want to tell you, in case no one else does, I love you. I admire the fact that you're taking time to listen to something like this. And I know it was worth your time. And I also know it's going to help you create a better life. All righty. I'll talk to you in a few days. And I will be waiting to welcome you in to the very next episode the moment you hit play. I'll see you there. You're definitely going to love this one and I'm going to be waiting to welcome you into it the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.