Turn Your Inner Dialogue Into Productivity and Confidence w/Dr. Ethan Kross EP 1118

“Negative emotions aren’t something that we should be trying to avoid.”Today's guest is Dr. Ethan Kross, who is a psychologist, author, and professor at the University of Michigan. Ethan is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind and in his new book CHATTER, he explores how the silent conversations individuals have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions, and relationships. In this episode Lewis and Ethan discuss how to control and engage with thoughts when they enter your mind, how to not let your negative thoughts define you, daily practices to help you improve your mental health, the benefits of mentally time traveling, how to shift the inner monologue you experience into productivity and confidence, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1118Check out his website: www.ethankross.comCheck out his book: Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness ItThe Power of Erotic Intelligence with Esther Perel: https://link.chtbl.com/732-podFind Lasting Love with Matthew Hussey: https://link.chtbl.com/811-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is episode number 1,118 with Dr. Ethan Kross.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:28Speaker 00

  Gandhi said, happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. And Carl Jung said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. My guest today is Dr. Ethan Kross, who is a psychologist, author, and professor at the University of Michigan. And he is one of the world's leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. And in his new book, Chatter, he explores how the silent conversations that individuals have with themselves impact their life, from their health, their performance, their decisions, and their relationships. And in this episode, we discuss and dive in deep on how to control and engage with thoughts when they enter your

• 1:10Speaker 00

  mind. How to not let your negative thoughts define you and hold you back. The daily practices to help you improve your mental health, the benefits of mentally time traveling. Yes, you can travel time in your mind. And how to shift the inner monologue you experience into productivity and confidence instead of insecurity. I'm telling you, this is going to give you so many practical strategies to help you improve the quality of your mind and the overall performance of your life. And if you're enjoying this at any time, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired by this as well, that would give them one practical tool to help them improve the quality of their life. Just copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this podcast, or go to lewishouse.com/1118 and you can share that show note with your friends and people on social media as well.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  And also make sure to click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcast or Spotify right now so you can stay up to date with the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness podcast. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Dr. Ethan Cross.

• 2:09Lewis Howes?

  This podcast is sponsored in part by Skillshare. Now, I'm constantly pushing myself to grow and learn new skills. And one of my favorite ways to do this is through Skillshare. They're an online learning community that offers membership with meaning. Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. And I recently took a Skillshare class from Gary Vee on social media strategy in a noisy world. And I learned so much. He's always talking about the latest and greatest strategies to grow your audience, to get attention, and to cultivate a community. And there are a ton of other topics to explore through Skillshare besides social media marketing. And you can dive into classes on creative writing, productivity, freelance, and entrepreneurship, and so much more. Practice makes progress.

• 2:50Lewis Howes?

  Advancing towards a goal is achievable with short lessons and hands-on projects. Skillshare is incredibly affordable, especially when compared to pricey in-person classes and workshops. An annual subscription is less than $10 a month. Explore your creativity at skillshare.com/greatness and get a free trial of the premium membership. That's skillshare.com/greatness for a free trial of the premium membership.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, everyone, to School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest. Ethan Cross is in the house. We're talking about chatter. You're one of the leading experts, psychologists in the world, talking about controlling the conscious mind. And I've always said, as an athlete from Ohio, the great state of Ohio, that...

• 3:40Lewis Howes?

  We'll get back to that in a little bit. I've always said that our thoughts really dictate the outcomes of our life. It's the beginning stages of what we manifest, what we attract, what we create, what we alchemize. Yeah. If we think more positive, more vision-based, higher-level-thinking thoughts, we usually alchemize that in our real world. We manifest it. And if we think a lot of negative, consuming thoughts, darker thoughts, we typically attract that type of environment as well. Now, this has been talked about as woo-woo world, positive thinking, negative thinking. But now you're bringing in some amazing research, talking about the voice in our head and why it matters. Can we talk about...

• 4:23Lewis Howes?

  Is it really possible to control the conscious mind? Is that even possible? Or are thoughts always going to be coming in and out without our ability to control them?

• 4:32Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, well, it's a great question to kick us off. And so here's how I break it down. We can't always control, well, we can't control the thoughts that pop up in our head. So we don't know why I'm going to be walking down the street and all of a sudden just have a really dark thought about this, or a positive thought about something else. We don't have control over the thoughts that pop. But what we do have control over is how we engage with those thoughts once they surface.

• 5:02Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 5:03Ethan Kross?

  And we have a lot of control there. We can choose to immerse ourselves in the thoughts. And if we immerse ourselves in the positive thoughts, that can be great. Like when I'm, you know, I'm out here in LA, I'm away from my kids and my family. I'm walking down the street, I'm thinking about my youngest daughter who tried to FaceTime me this morning at 4:30 in the morning. You know? And it brought happiness to me, just thinking about how cute that was. And, you know, it was inappropriate, but cute at the same time.

• 5:32Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 5:33Ethan Kross?

  I immersed in it, you know? I can also choose to distance myself from my thoughts, or challenge my thoughts. So there's a range of things we can do when thoughts pop up. So, and that's where the control comes in. And as we were mentioning a little bit earlier, we don't get taught in a systematic way how to manage our thoughts in this way. And I think that's a problem, and it's one of the reasons why I wrote the book.

• 5:59Lewis Howes?

  If someone, if someone is asking themselves, you know, what I think I am? Are we our thoughts? Or are thoughts something that don't define us?

• 6:11Ethan Kross?

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

• 6:28Lewis Howes?

  What does that look like when we allow it to?

• 6:30Ethan Kross?

  We can be strategic about that. So allowing myself to, to think of myself as someone who, I'm going to give you all the positive features here, right? So someone who has, is, is...

• 6:45Ethan Kross?

  Is intellectually curious, is a good friend, has humility. I allow those thoughts to define myself. I think that they are fairly accurate portrayals of who I am.

• 6:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:58Ethan Kross?

  Those thoughts are constantly being tested in my life, right? Because I'm getting feedback when I interact with people. When I go on different kinds of events and people, you know, say things like that informs whether that that understanding of who I am is in touch with reality. I think we want to have that. But other kinds of thoughts, like self-defeating ones. I'm not good enough, you know, this manuscript was rejected. Or I really put my foot in my mouth. I mean, I put my foot in my mouth all the time. Like, it hopefully won't happen during this conversation. But, you know, if I allowed myself to be defined by my by my foot in the mouth faux pas, I would be I would not be a happy individual. So I'm I'm I'm there's agency there.

• 7:43Ethan Kross?

  There is a a choice to to attach to some cognition, some thoughts and not others.

• 7:51Lewis Howes?

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

• 8:06Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, so it's about you can you can internalize or externalize. Different kinds of experiences happen to us, right? And so people who tend to be more optimistic, as an example, they'll internalize the positive, but externalize the negative. What I mean by that is they'll take responsibility for positive things that are going on, but they'll shirk the responsibility for the negative. Well, it's about the situation. Now, you could do that to an extreme, right? So. Let's say you're at work and things aren't going well. You do need to experience some negativity. It's not always someone else's fault.

• 8:48Ethan Kross?

  Like, sometimes it is gonna be your fault and owning that can be quite useful. One thing that I often tell people is that negative emotions aren't something that we should be trying to avoid. We evolved the capacity to experience negative emotions for a reason. They provide us with really useful information that we use to manage ourselves. And one of the best examples of this is there are children who are born into the world each year with the inability to experience physical pain. So it's a genetic anomaly.

• 9:20Lewis Howes?

  They can't feel. I punch you in the face, you don't feel it.

• 9:22Ethan Kross?

  You don't feel physical pain.

• 9:23Lewis Howes?

  I stab you with a knife, you don't feel the pain. Really?

• 9:27Ethan Kross?

  It's a genetic polymorphism. It's in the book.

• 9:29Lewis Howes?

  Break a bone, you don't feel the pain.

• 9:30Ethan Kross?

  You do not feel the pain, right? So it's a mutation, it's a quirk of genetics and you can't feel the pain. What happens to these children is they die young.

• 9:43Lewis Howes?

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

• 9:48Ethan Kross?

  So pain is useful in small doses. It's really helpful that if I put my hand on the flame, I pull it away. The pain, the negativity is what makes that such an amazingly adaptive response. So let's go away from extreme examples. If I've got a big performance coming up, a big event, thousands of people, and a couple of weeks before, you know, the whispers. Steven Spielberg talks about these as whispers in his ear.

• 10:15Lewis Howes?

  They're never gonna make it.

• 10:17Ethan Kross?

  Oh my god.

• 10:17Lewis Howes?

  You're not good enough.

• 10:18Ethan Kross?

  Thousands of people, you've gotta get ready. Little bit of anxiety bubbles up, really useful, cuz you know what happens? Then I start working on the presentation.

• 10:27Lewis Howes?

  Make sure you're prepared.

• 10:28Ethan Kross?

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

• 11:01Lewis Howes?

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

• 11:15Ethan Kross?

  Well, thank you for asking this. I don't experience chatter. No, I'm lying. Of course I experience chatter. I'm a human. Actually, we've done research and what we know is that people in general are much better at advising others than they are following their own advice. We actually, there's a name for this phenomenon. It's called Solomon's Paradox. It's named after the Bible's King Solomon, who was famous for being wise. But if you read his story, he was not wise when it came to his own life. He had concubines and they all got in fights and his whole kingdom unraveled. This is a truism that I can tell lots and lots of other people how to manage their chatter.

• 11:57Ethan Kross?

  And here's what the science says, but that doesn't mean I never struggle with it myself. I like to think I'm pretty good at it, but I still experience blips of chatter. The domains that I experience it, mostly about the well-being of my kids and my family. You know, I can, when something happens to them, the world stops and it's easy to start going down that rabbit hole.

• 12:22Lewis Howes?

  Anxiety, stress, worry, fear.

• 12:24Ethan Kross?

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

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 13:01Ethan Kross?

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

• 13:05Lewis Howes?

  How does someone deal with rejection from, from the chatter of rejection and the fear of rejection even before they put something out there? Say they want to launch a book, a speech, or whatever it is, a paper, but they're so afraid to even put it out there because of the rejection that might come versus you put it out there and it's rejected?

• 13:25Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  How do you manage both of those situations of chatter?

• 13:30Ethan Kross?

  Well, um, so one idea that I really do believe very strongly in is that there are no single tools that work for all people across all situations. We often hear like, "Do this and it's going to rid you of anxiety." I've been doing research on this for 20 years. I have yet to find it. I'd be curious if you have in all the interviews and research that you've done. You know, magic pills, I've yet to find them. But what I have found are lots and lots of tools that can often be used in combinations to help people. And I think both of those situations lend themselves well to using different chatter tools. So take the concern about being rejected.

• 14:11Ethan Kross?

  If that were me and it was holding me back from doing something, uh, one thing I would do is I would, I'd do something called mental time travel, or in technical terms, we call that temporal distancing. I'd think to myself about, you know, how many other situations have been like this? And have I been, have I actually been rejected in the past? Yeah, like, what are the rates? Like, let's do some reality testing. And when I do that, well, you know, not too many. In fact, just, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a big presentation. And it was like, the prep for this presentation, it was virtual, it was designed to stress me out.

• 14:53Ethan Kross?

  Because first, the producers said, "All right, we want you to, we want you to script this and just record it." And I never, I never memorized talks. I just like to speak. But I did it, and then I sent it to them, and, "Well, the lighting isn't good, so do it again." Oh, man. And then, and then at the, you know, the 12th hour, they're like, "Just do it live." So, you know, they're pushing all my buttons, and I felt a little bit of chatter beginning to brew. And then I just, I remind myself, "Ethan, you've given yourself, you've given literally hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of presentations. They've never tanked in a, you know, in a terrible way." Yeah.

• 15:34Ethan Kross?

  And that realization, so looking at that broader perspective, the bigger picture, really useful. The other thing I would do is, I don't know if you were listening carefully, but when I just simulated, when I just went over what I did before, I use my own name to kind of coach myself through the experience. Is that called third person? Third person.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  Communication.

• 15:53Ethan Kross?

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

• 16:13Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 16:13Ethan Kross?

  I mean, it's like, you know.

• 16:15Lewis Howes?

  We stay in relationships far too longer when we know we should get out of them. But we tell someone else, "You need to get out of that thing. It doesn't look good." We'll do certain things to hurt ourselves over and over. We'll eat the food we're not supposed to eat. We'll do all these things, but we can tell someone else, "Oh, you need to stop doing that."

• 16:30Ethan Kross?

  Exactly. So here's what I find mind-blowingly fascinating.

• 16:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Ethan Kross?

  We have, so this is a big, big, uh, big amp up. I better deliver here. We've, we've learned that there are ways that we could engage with ourselves like we were engaging with someone else. And language is one tool we can use to do it. And it involves coaching ourselves through a problem using our name and other, like, second-person pronouns. Words like "you." If you think about, when do we use names and second-person pronoun "you"? When we think about and refer to others. Like, most of the time I use names, it's when I'm addressing other people or thinking about other people. So like, "Laura, what is she doing right now with my wife?" You know, "Danny," you know, I'm using names.

• 17:18Ethan Kross?

  Names in our, in our brains, like, this is the currency of thinking about others. So what happens when you use your own name to think about a problem? It's, it's like a psychological jujitsu move.

• 17:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:32Ethan Kross?

  It's automatically switching your perspective and allowing you to start engaging with yourself, advising yourself like someone else.

• 17:40Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we don't do that? When we are just...

• 17:43Ethan Kross?

  I mean, I.

• 17:44Lewis Howes?

  "I'm horrible, I'm stupid, I can't do this, I'm never enough, or I gotta get myself out of this." When we speak from "I" as opposed to... Louis, you got this.

• 17:54Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 17:54Lewis Howes?

  Louis, you are good enough.

• 17:55Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Lewis Howes?

  So what happens when we come from I?

• 17:58Ethan Kross?

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

• 18:29Lewis Howes?

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

• 18:38Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Lewis Howes?

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

• 18:46Ethan Kross?

  Yeah. So, I mean, you know, those, the positive affirmations, there's, there's mixed evidence behind them that could be useful in some cases, but less useful, but not useful in others. I would, I would suggest trying the, trying to coach yourself through the problem using your name. Because what it does, it's like a mental timeout, right? It's letting you step back from the situation and it's broadening your perspective. When we broaden our perspective, we often realize that there's a lot more to the situation.

• 19:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:21Ethan Kross?

  Than what we're now, than what's making us Looney Tunes temporarily. Very technical term, by the way, Looney Tunes.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  Crazy. You're almost like you're in a, a mental tornado that you can't get out of.

• 19:32Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 19:32Lewis Howes?

  You're spinning in a loop and you're in a cycle you can't get out of. So wait a minute, you mentioned positive affirmations that there might be some research that supports it

• 19:39Ethan Kross?

  and, and contradict it.

• 19:42Lewis Howes?

  In the world of personal growth and personal development, positive affirmations

• 19:46Ethan Kross?

  This is the thing.

• 19:47Lewis Howes?

  has been a standard for probably, I don't know, 50 or 100 years.

• 19:51Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Lewis Howes?

  What is the science of positive affirmations saying currently?

• 19:57Ethan Kross?

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

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 20:15Ethan Kross?

  Right?

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  Well, also if you're lying in your, in the real world, but you're saying, "I am an person of integrity."

• 20:21Ethan Kross?

  Right.

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  You know, then there's probably a disconnect. If you're saying a positive affirmation, but you're not actually being it, right?

• 20:27Ethan Kross?

  Well, I think that gets to like a very profound issue that, that is useful to talk about here, which is, in a lot of the work that we do on, on trying to figure out, how can you help people who are spinning, work through it? You're getting them to engage and work through that problem. "All right, Ethan, how are you going to manage a situation? It's a situation, what are you going to do?" We're not making it, I like to joke, we're not, when we have people distance in that way, or use other techniques and tools, we're not transforming this situation into the, the, you know, culinary equivalent of cupcakes and warm cups of tea. And I don't think we should be, that, that means we're not making this negative thing into a remarkable positive thing.

• 21:09Ethan Kross?

  We're turning the, the temperature down, allowing people to manage this aversive situation in ways that allow them to then move on. It's not always possible to take something that is totally negative and make it an extreme positive. And I don't know that we would always want to do that.

• 21:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 21:26Ethan Kross?

  Because, you know, learning from mistakes can be really, really helpful. Like, I value...

• 21:34Lewis Howes?

  Isn't there a way to learn from a mistake and not let it consume your energy and...

• 21:38Ethan Kross?

  That's exactly what we try to do.

• 21:40Lewis Howes?

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

• 21:56Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Lewis Howes?

  You talk about the mental time travel, is that what you mentioned?

• 22:00Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 22:01Lewis Howes?

  Like, time travel?

• 22:02Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Lewis Howes?

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

• 22:06Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Lewis Howes?

  When I'm going through challenging situations now, especially something that happened a few years ago, there was a challenging situation and I was like, man, this sucks. This really sucks. And it wasn't, it wasn't fun for a few months. I remember saying to myself, the only way that I could get out of it without feeling like pain every day and feeling like taken advantage of and abused and all these things was to say, this is happening in my favor. In one year, two years, five years, 10 years out, I'm gonna look back and realize, oh, this happened so that I could do this in my life, so that I could have a better experience in my relationship, so that I could be a better leader in my business.

• 22:44Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 22:45Lewis Howes?

  It's almost like future time traveling.

• 22:47Ethan Kross?

  Totally.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

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

• 22:57Ethan Kross?

  Yeah. So, so what you described is not notably, that's not a positive affirmation, right? Like, and in that situation, I'm getting, that's the only thing that, like, sometimes positive, it's, if we're dealing with true adversity, it's almost, it feels inauthentic to just say, everything's gonna be right. Right? What you're describing is exactly mental time travel, temporal distancing. Temporal distancing is the, is the-

• 23:22Lewis Howes?

  The scientific terminology?

• 23:23Ethan Kross?

  It's the dorky term. I throw it in there. It's a habit. Sorry.

• 23:26Lewis Howes?

  I like it. Temporal distancing.

• 23:28Ethan Kross?

  Temporal distancing, yeah.

• 23:29Lewis Howes?

  What does temporal mean?

• 23:30Ethan Kross?

  Temporal time. So distancing through time.

• 23:34Lewis Howes?

  You can either do that in, in the past or future.

• 23:37Ethan Kross?

  Or the future. So take COVID, right? Which has been, I think, tough for many of us, myself included, right? Temporal distancing is one-

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

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

• 23:49Ethan Kross?

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

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  You got lakes and everything.

• 23:58Ethan Kross?

  I will get some digs about Ohio.

• 23:59Lewis Howes?

  You got beautiful land up there, actually. It's good. You got more lakes and beautiful scenery than we do, so.

• 24:04Ethan Kross?

  Nice try there.

• 24:04Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead.

• 24:06Ethan Kross?

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

• 24:17Lewis Howes?

  Mental tools.

• 24:17Ethan Kross?

  Mental tools, right? Cause we've actually done some research on combinations of tools are particularly useful. But for COVID, I think about the future. Like, five months from now, we're gonna be vaccinated, we're gonna go on vacation.

• 24:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Ethan Kross?

  The worst part of this will be over. When I do that, I realize that as awful as what I'm going through right now is, it's temporary, it's gonna fade. We will get back. That gives me hope. Hope is a powerful way of alleviating chatter.

• 24:48Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 24:48Ethan Kross?

  Then I'll go back in time, too. And I'll think about pandemic of 1918, which was much, much worse than what we're going through now.

• 24:56Lewis Howes?

  Much scarier, probably.

• 24:57Ethan Kross?

  Much scarier. We didn't have the medical technology. We didn't have Zoom. We didn't have takeout, right? Like, much, much... I mean, takeout, you know, I'm joking, but it makes a difference.

• 25:06Lewis Howes?

  It's a huge benefit for people, yeah.

• 25:07Ethan Kross?

  Yeah. So, and we didn't just get... Even though it was worse, we got through that and we came roaring back, like the roaring twenties, economic growth.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 25:18Ethan Kross?

  So, in each future past, I'm broadening my perspective. It's getting me away from, oh, my God, I can't get through another day.

• 25:28Lewis Howes?

  Stuck in this, yeah. There's no way out.

• 25:30Ethan Kross?

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

• 25:33Lewis Howes?

  So, you call that temporal distancing?

• 25:35Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, or mental time travel.

• 25:37Lewis Howes?

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

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  to help prevent our mind from taking over?

• 26:23Ethan Kross?

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

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  Give me three more, then.

• 26:28Ethan Kross?

  The distant self-talk and mental time travel. Let's shift to another category. The way that I like to simplify this whole universe of tools, there are three buckets. Things you could do on your own, ways of reframing the situation, simple tools that shift how you think, that help you reframe, that can be useful. So both tools we talked about are examples of that. Then another category are what we might think as people tools. Ways of interacting with others that can help us.

• 26:57Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 26:58Ethan Kross?

  So let's go into that and then I'll go into the third. People tools are really interesting to me because, A, I'm a social psychologist, so I care about how we interact with one another.

• 27:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Ethan Kross?

  But when it comes to chatter, there are some myths out there. So we're gonna have some myth busting right now.

• 27:14Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 27:14Ethan Kross?

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

• 27:32Lewis Howes?

  We vent.

• 27:32Ethan Kross?

  We vent. We wanna find someone. Let just let me unload and our.

• 27:36Lewis Howes?

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

• 27:39Ethan Kross?

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

• 27:47Lewis Howes?

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

• 27:57Ethan Kross?

  Well, so let's say, so you and I, minus the geographical differences that we share, we're friends, right? So let's say I call you up and, hey, you know, I'm really struggling with something. I just, I need your support.

• 28:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Ethan Kross?

  Let me help you out. So you start asking me questions about what happened. I start sharing what I felt and we keep going back and forth. That makes me feel really good about our friendship. I feel really close and connected with you. And research shows that when you vent, that strengthens friendships, right? But if all we do is harp on what happened and what you felt, in technical terms, that's called co-rumination.

• 28:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 28:33Ethan Kross?

  We just ruminate together. I leave that conversation and I'm just as upset as when I started, like that guy. Like it's still, I'm just throwing, throwing logs on a burning fire. You're just keeping me going, right? So, so hey, great for our friendship, but I still got the problem. I'm having like, you know, gastric distress over this, right?

• 28:57Lewis Howes?

  Heart palpitations, yeah.

• 28:58Ethan Kross?

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

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Empathize with them.

• 29:10Ethan Kross?

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

• 29:31Lewis Howes?

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

• 29:45Ethan Kross?

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

• 30:00Lewis Howes?

  It's a dance.

• 30:01Ethan Kross?

  Right? It's a dance because different people may need more time to just vent before they're ready to get into that advice giving and receiving mode, right? And so some, some people are, they're ready for it right away. Others, it may take some time. It may depend on the situation. If it's a really nuclear chatter event, right? Like then you may need to spend some more time just listening and talking before you can go. But, but the way you did it is exactly what we'd want to do. But it's that, that orientation is, is very different from, hey, let me just vent. And I think there's a really important take home lesson here for, for people who are listening.

• 30:42Ethan Kross?

  Because if you know that there are these two pieces to getting good chatter support from others. That lets us be a lot more deliberate about who we seek out for support.

• 30:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:53Ethan Kross?

  So I was mentioning before, like I've got a board of advisors when it comes to chatter. And like three people I go to for personal problems and four for if it's professional, like work-related issues. And these are people who I know. They're, they will empathize and connect, but then also really help me try to work through the problem. And, and what's interesting about the people on, on those two different boards, there are some people who love me a lot and I love them back. And I know this for a fact, cause like DNA determines it, like close family members, right? I don't go to them about my chatter because I know it doesn't, it doesn't make it better. We just get stuck venting and it doesn't help.

• 31:37Ethan Kross?

  So I'm really careful about curating who I go to for support. And then on the flip side, because I know the science, I like to think that I can be a better chatter advisor to my, to others, to my friends and colleagues and students. When they come to me, I actually have like a little playbook that tells me like, here's how, here's how I can help. And it's not complicated, right? Two steps, right? Listen, deeply empathize and connect, and then start reframing, so.

• 32:08Lewis Howes?

  And you would, if you're reframing, would you go to the distance self-talk as a coach yourself, since you're already distant? Or would you go to the time travel of like, look, you've already, you've overcome this in the past.

• 32:19Ethan Kross?

  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm throwing out different options.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  Different tools, yeah.

• 32:23Ethan Kross?

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

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  How they integrate.

• 32:39Ethan Kross?

  How they integrate. We're doing science on that now. The challenge and the adventure for people who are listening is to start doing some self-experimentation on their own. Figure out what's the combination that works for you. So it's like my daughter, if she comes to me with like some chatter at school. This girl's being mean and this boy I have a crush on, but so does my friend. Right, right. All this stuff. That, you asked me about chatter triggers for me. My daughter's dating. That is a- How old is she? That is a chatter trigger. She, um, she's 12. Oh, 12? What is going on with the world? Yes, yeah, this is, this is, this is a major potent source of- That's a trigger for you, right? Yeah, it is. And my wife helps me look at the big picture. What is the big picture in that scenario?

• 33:23Ethan Kross?

  Well, you know, we all went through this. You dated as well and you know, there's, it's- It's part of life. It's part of life and you know, she has good judgments and, and- She's gotta make her own mistakes and- She, by the way, is going to love the fact that I am talking about- Really? Her dating life and dating is too strong, but this- Sure, sure, sure. Her crushes. Her crushes. We won't mention any names. Right, right, okay. If we did, I would then have serious chatter because I wouldn't be allowed back in my house. But I'll just say what I would do with my daughter if she came to me with a problem. I'd say like- And what if it triggered you personally and she wanted your advice to support her chatter? It's your chatter and her chatter. And I talk, then I hand off to my wife.

• 34:08Ethan Kross?

  Right. I can be pretty regular. I can use the- So there, you'd wanna use the tools on yourself. And then, once you're in the position to help someone else, you've got yourself under control. Then you work with, with the other person. So I would say, so hey, what would you tell your sister if she was dealing with this or your friend? Like, you know? How would you coach someone else? How would you coach someone else? That's a distancing move.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

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

• 34:38Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:39Lewis Howes?

  That's the way to do it.

• 34:40Ethan Kross?

  Let them figure that out, the discovery.

• 34:44Ethan Kross?

  That's a powerful move. I do other things too, like, you know, the third bucket that we, I didn't mention is like the environment. Like, the world around us has, there are tools that exist in the world around us. And they're just waiting there. And that sounds kind of corny, but it's the truth. And so I'll give you a couple of examples, like green spaces. There's been a ton of cutting-edge neuroscience research, which shows that spending some time in a safe, natural setting. I always feel the need to say safe, because where I grew up in Brooklyn, parks, green spaces were synonymous with getting mugged. So, you know, you don't, it has to be a place where you can let your guard down.

• 35:27Lewis Howes?

  Relax in nature.

• 35:28Ethan Kross?

  Relax in nature. It allows, it gently draws your attention away from the chatter, allowing you to recharge in ways that are really, really helpful. Nature also can give us a sense of awe, which is an underrated emotional experience, because it helps us fight chatter. So awe, this is an emotion we experience when we're in the presence of something, something vast we can't explain. You know when a lot of people experience awe? It's when Ohioans come to the big house in Michigan. And they sit in this stadium, largest, I think it's larger than Ohio State.

• 36:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, a little bit bigger.

• 36:07Ethan Kross?

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

• 36:10Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 36:11Ethan Kross?

  That's right.

• 36:12Lewis Howes?

  And then they're even more awe-inspired when they beat Michigan in their own house.

• 36:15Ethan Kross?

  Alright, so you got me. You got me. But that, that, that leads to what we call, experiencing awe leads to what we call shrinking of the self.

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  So when we experience a moment of beauty, awe, spectacular sporting event, whatever it is, a musician that performs something, someone doing something great, or nature in its element.

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  We then what in our mind?

• 36:40Ethan Kross?

  It leads to, we feel smaller. And that usually is not a good thing, except when you're feeling, experiencing chatter, our problems shrink. Because we realize, hey, you know, hey dope, you know, what are you worried? You worried about that thing you said last night at dinner? Like, there's a whole universe out here.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:59Ethan Kross?

  That, that is much bigger than you. So it's like the ultimate way of broadening your perspective. And, and, and helping you realize that, you know, what you're going through while still significant, there's more to it, there's more to life than this.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I know you quoted Dan Harrison there, who's a buddy of mine as well. And for me, a simple 10 or 15 minute meditation practice, in the morning, evening, afternoon, for me, I go into a place where, in my mind, I leave my body, I leave the world, and I'm in a space where I can see the world from a different perspective that is so small, and therefore my problems get smaller.

• 37:39Ethan Kross?

  That's exactly the phenomenon.

• 37:41Lewis Howes?

  When I, when I, when I, in my mind, imagine myself in the universe floating, which is kind of weird, I get, get it, but it allows me to be like, oh, the earth is so tiny, I can see like a speck of sand.

• 37:52Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Lewis Howes?

  And then I can get so far away from it where it disappears.

• 37:55Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Lewis Howes?

  And I'm like, it's, there's so much out there.

• 38:00Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  And yet I'm worrying about this little problem and making it consuming my mind all day, for what?

• 38:06Ethan Kross?

  That's exactly.

• 38:06Lewis Howes?

  How is it supporting me?

• 38:08Ethan Kross?

  And it's liberating to have that, that orientation. And, you know, I want to come back to meditation.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 38:14Ethan Kross?

  Because that can be a way of, of cultivating these states. But what you described there, you became a fly on the wall.

• 38:21Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 38:22Ethan Kross?

  To yourself. And what we know is that there are these strategic moves that you can engage in to help you do that. Meditation is one, but there are other things that you could do in the moment, simply.

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  What else you like?

• 38:35Ethan Kross?

  Like, you know, well, well, I mean, language, that's another. Ethan, what's going on? You're becoming an observer to yourself. It's not me, someone else, right? Or, let's say.

• 38:44Lewis Howes?

  Speaking to yourself, Ethan, what's going on?

• 38:46Ethan Kross?

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

• 39:15Lewis Howes?

  Sure, yeah.

• 39:16Ethan Kross?

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

• 39:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:34Ethan Kross?

  And, and that's another way of doing what, what you just described, which is zooming out. And being like, hey, there's more to it than this.

• 39:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:42Ethan Kross?

  I love this other person.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

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

• 40:24Lewis Howes?

  Should we be thinking about the future, or just be more present in your mind?

• 40:30Ethan Kross?

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

• 40:35Lewis Howes?

  This is not the school of average.

• 40:36Ethan Kross?

  This is, this is the school of average.

• 40:38Lewis Howes?

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

• 40:41Ethan Kross?

  All right, let's go, you know, okay. So, you know, let's, let's start with being in the moment.

• 40:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Ethan Kross?

  Because this is, this is all the rage, and it has been for, for quite a few many years right, right now.

• 40:59Ethan Kross?

  Being in the moment can be wonderful.

• 41:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:02Ethan Kross?

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

• 41:27Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 41:27Ethan Kross?

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

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  What are we thinking about more, the past or the future?

• 41:36Ethan Kross?

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

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 42:00Ethan Kross?

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

• 42:42Ethan Kross?

  So I think, and, and that's what a lot of the, the tools can help people do.

• 42:48Lewis Howes?

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

• 42:58Ethan Kross?

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

• 43:10Lewis Howes?

  There's a lot of thoughts.

• 43:11Ethan Kross?

  Lot of stuff happening up here.

• 43:12Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:19Ethan Kross?

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

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 43:42Lewis Howes?

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

• 44:01Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Lewis Howes?

  protection thoughts.

• 44:03Ethan Kross?

  Well, that I can comment on.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 44:05Ethan Kross?

  So there have been like lots of different kinds of research. One of my favorite studies was, this was, it was an anthropology study where a very brave scientist went up to people in the streets of New York, gave him a video, a tape recorder, it was like a decade ago, and just asked them to speak out loud the thoughts streaming through their head as they navigated the streets of New York.

• 44:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:29Ethan Kross?

  And it's really interesting. I tell this, I go into this a little bit in the book and you hear people, you know, one woman starts talking about like, she's looking for a Staples store. And then she's thinking about her friend's cancer diagnosis and going down that rabbit hole. And then she's like, oh, and someone just cut me off. And now I'm going back to looking for Staples. So the thoughts are pinging all over. But what comes out of that study and many others, studies that tried to quantify this with really cutting edge tools is that the bulk of our thoughts are negative. So the majority, it doesn't mean all of them. And there's variability across people. But a lot of the thoughts that are bubbling up are in that negative range.

• 45:15Ethan Kross?

  As to whether it's repeating over and over, that's certainly a very common experience. I don't know if that

• 45:23Lewis Howes?

  What do you think would happen if, let's say that's fact for most people, right? Most people have reoccurring thoughts and most of the reoccurring thoughts are negative. Or we see the negative, whatever reason, because we're designed to.

• 45:36Ethan Kross?

  Bad is stronger than good. Have you ever heard that phrase? I love that phrase.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  Bad is stronger than good.

• 45:40Ethan Kross?

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

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  This is why the news stations continue to show the bad.

• 46:07Ethan Kross?

  That's exactly right.

• 46:08Lewis Howes?

  People are, they're gonna put their attention towards it and we're gonna focus our energy on the bad more than the good. We try to shift that and, and, and send out positive information to help people to overcome.

• 46:22Ethan Kross?

  Yes.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

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

• 46:52Ethan Kross?

  That would be, to use a technical term, very good.

• 46:57Ethan Kross?

  Well, you know, let's, we could reverse engineer things to answer that question. So what does chatter do? Like, so let's say you go to the opposite of the spectrum, you're filled with chatter. I think this is one of the big problems we face as a species. Why? Because here are the three domains that, that chatter targets and sinks us in. Our ability to think and perform.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 47:18Ethan Kross?

  So when, when your minds, when you're on that hamster wheel, right? All of your attention is on your problems. It doesn't leave a whole lot over to work on what you need to do at your job. Makes it really hard to perform under stress. Leaves habits to unravel because you're, you're, we call you get stuck in paralysis by analysis. Right? So thinking and performing, that goes down.

• 47:41Lewis Howes?

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

• 47:45Ethan Kross?

  Goes down. And, and across domains, tons of evidence to support that.

• 47:51Ethan Kross?

  Let's go to another domain of life that we care about, something called relationships.

• 47:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 47:55Ethan Kross?

  So, we know that chatter creates friction in our social relationships, and it does in a few different ways.

• 48:03Ethan Kross?

  When, if I want to talk to you about my problems, one of the things that often happens with chatter is I talk, and I keep talking, and keep talking, and keep talking. And there's a limit to how much someone else, even the most well-intentioned loved ones and colleagues can act.

• 48:18Lewis Howes?

  Can take on.

• 48:19Ethan Kross?

  Can take on, without them experiencing their own chatter, so, so it can create problems.

• 48:24Lewis Howes?

  Exhausting.

• 48:25Ethan Kross?

  That's right, okay, you know, let me get out of the house. So, you know, friction in relationships. The other thing is, let's say we're, you know, you know, we're here, and I'm, I'm thinking about other stuff. You're talking to me, you're telling me about your day. If my mind is somewhere else, I'm not listening to you. And that's, you know, that can also create problems in relationships. So, you know, if I have chatter at the dinner table, and my daughter, my youngest daughter wants nothing else, and just tell me about what she did at, at, on, at recess, I ask her, hey, so what did you do today? She starts talking, I go somewhere else, 10 minutes later, I'm like, oh, so, so what'd you do today? I just told you. How many times can you do that without problems beginning to brew?

• 49:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:09Ethan Kross?

  So, relationships are an issue. And then the last domain is our physical health. You know, people, people often say that stress kills, and I think that's actually a little bit misleading, because the ability to experience a stress reaction, a fight or flight reaction, this is, this is a feat of evolution. Like, if there's a, if there's a threat, someone's coming to get me, it's really good to know that there is this response that quickly prepares me for how to react.

• 49:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 49:42Ethan Kross?

  So, stress on its own, not bad. What makes stress toxic is when the stress reaction goes up, and it remains elevated over time. And that's what chatter does, because we experience the stressful event, but then we re-experience it over and over by thinking about it, and reliving it on auto, auto, you know, play.

• 50:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Ethan Kross?

  And so, you know, chatter's been linked with things like cardiovascular disease, and inflammation, and all sorts of.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  So, having negative, ruminating, worrisome, anxious thoughts on a consistent basis.

• 50:19Lewis Howes?

  Is linked to diseases.

• 50:22Ethan Kross?

  Diseases, poor relationships, and poor performance.

• 50:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 50:25Ethan Kross?

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

• 50:52Lewis Howes?

  Better health, better performance, better relationships.

• 50:55Ethan Kross?

  Right.

• 50:56Lewis Howes?

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

• 51:18Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Lewis Howes?

  What happens and how can you manage the chatter of a partner who keeps accusing you of something you're not doing?

• 51:25Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, well, it's a difficult predicament to be.

• 51:29Lewis Howes?

  See a therapist.

• 51:30Ethan Kross?

  Well, you know, so there are levels to all of this, right? And chatter, I think, is a feature of the human condition. It's something that many of us experience to varying degrees. And for some people, trying to use the different tools that are out there may be helpful. And so there, the opportunity is so if it's my partner, you know, the idea is, okay, well, let's have a conversation to try to help you understand what these tools are, normalize this, like, hey, look, lots of people experience chatter, but you don't have to keep experiencing because there are science-based tools you can use. If that doesn't work, you know, then I think there are other ways of intervening.

• 52:10Ethan Kross?

  And at the extreme end, you know, there are therapeutic interventions, see a therapist. If the chatter morphs into, you know, full-blown states of anxiety and depression, clinical manifestations, then I would advise people to find someone who is, who, you know, does a sci- A science-based therapy because they'll just be able to help really, really quick. You know, it's a concentrated dosage of help. But, but that's, that's, that's, that's a small minority of folks when it comes to chatter. Right? Most of us are experiencing this on a daily basis or semi-regularly.

• 52:48Lewis Howes?

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

• 53:01Ethan Kross?

  So I will say that I definitely do use these tools. And I've worked on different combinations and I have like, I know the, I have my go-tos that I use. And they, and I do use them. I'm in general pretty, you know, pretty positive as long as I'm not thinking about, you know, Ohio.

• 53:22Lewis Howes?

  Losing to Ohio, yeah, yeah.

• 53:24Ethan Kross?

  Exactly. You know, I, my, I, I, in general, I'm positive. And in part, that's, that's because I know the data linked to positivity. And actually, when we've done presentations, I've, I've taught to like teachers about some of these tools. And when giving the background behind like optimism, you know, the, the, I, I tell a story about a friend in college who used to say to me like, "Why are you always so positive, Ethan?" And the answer I give is, it beats the alternative.

• 53:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:58Ethan Kross?

  And if you look at the data, there is a striking amount of data that links optimism with, with lots of different.

• 54:04Lewis Howes?

  Benefits.

• 54:05Ethan Kross?

  Benefits.

• 54:05Lewis Howes?

  Health.

• 54:06Ethan Kross?

  Relationships, performance. I mean, a lot of the things that we just talked about.

• 54:10Lewis Howes?

  So the power of positive thinking is scientifically backed.

• 54:14Ethan Kross?

  There is absolutely being able to be more proactive and positive is, is an adaptive outcome to strive for. With one little caveat, right? Which is, that doesn't mean we should rid ourselves of negative emotions. It means, look, if you experience a negative emotion, great, you're a human and this is serving you well. Actually, there are studies which show that when you bring people into like really stressful situations. You have one group thinking about it as a threat, oh my god, I'm not gonna be able to deal with it. In another situation, you say, you know what? Those feelings you're having in your stomach? That's a sign that you're rising to the challenge of the situation.

• 54:58Ethan Kross?

  So you're reframing this negative state as, hey, this is my body doing what it's supposed to do under threat. Like, I gotta go pee because I can't pee when I'm on stage, right? Like, your body's mobilizing.

• 55:13Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 55:13Ethan Kross?

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

• 55:37Lewis Howes?

  Thousand episodes, yeah.

• 55:38Ethan Kross?

  Thousand episodes.

• 55:38Lewis Howes?

  Five hundred plus interviews, yeah.

• 55:39Ethan Kross?

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

• 55:56Lewis Howes?

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

• 56:08Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 56:08Lewis Howes?

  Does it serve me being angry and holding on to this? Whatever thing happened. Someone was out of integrity, or this person tried to hurt me, or whatever the thing is. Does it serve me to hold on to the anger, the frustration, the pain? And put energy towards that problem? As opposed to focusing on the energy towards the mission? Because that's what I think about. I also think about not discounting how I feel. Not discounting the way something might have hurt me or affected me. So it's feeling it in the moment, and then quickly getting back to the vision when I'm allowed, when I'm able to distance myself and say, okay, this happened. I don't like it. This sucks.

• 56:50Lewis Howes?

  I have different techniques. Maybe I'll scream in a pillow. I'll do a workout. I'll do whatever. And then I say, okay, how long do I wanna hold on to this pain?

• 56:58Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Lewis Howes?

  How long do I wanna suffer? And focus on one thing as opposed to a bigger positive mission? And that's what I try to think about. It's not discounting my emotions, my pain. It's moving through them quickly and focusing back on the mission.

• 57:11Ethan Kross?

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

• 57:21Lewis Howes?

  That's what hurts you.

• 57:22Ethan Kross?

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

• 57:44Lewis Howes?

  Or maybe it's something you care about.

• 57:46Ethan Kross?

  Maybe it's, yeah, exactly.

• 57:47Lewis Howes?

  Go work on it.

• 57:48Ethan Kross?

  Exactly. So we can use this, but we don't want to get stuck.

• 57:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 57:52Ethan Kross?

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

• 58:12Lewis Howes?

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

• 58:34Ethan Kross?

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

• 59:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes, I'm a huge fan of rituals.

• 59:14Ethan Kross?

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

• 59:17Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man. Well, I mean, as an athlete, I would do many rituals before the game, where I'd walk the field or walk the court and visualize myself, not only Replaying in my mind, the future of what I wanted to create, but also preparing my mind for when things might go wrong. So it's both, okay, I'm on offense and defense and allowing myself, how will I respond? When it doesn't go my way. Focusing that I want it to all go my way, but if it doesn't, I'm also prepared for the backup plan. Yeah. That's, that's in sports. Another thing is, and every night before, I would usually watch highlight film of an individual that I was inspired by, someone greater than me in that position in professional leagues when I was in high school or college.

• 1:00:01Lewis Howes?

  And I would try to just put myself in that alter ego state consistently, which I want to get back to alter, we'll go in a second. Another thing that I would do, I've done many times, especially in relationships. I've never really ended relationships well, intimate relationships, and I've always held on to a lot of pain and suffering of what could I have done better, or did I do the wrong thing, or this person doesn't love me, whatever. This has been kind of like a challenge in my past. I've had so many ceremonies and rituals where I write letters that I don't share with anyone. Thanking the person, talking about the things that I'm grateful for, talking about the things that I didn't like about the situation.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  Apologizing to them, forgiving myself, and then letting them go. And what I'll do is I'll fold that up and then I'll burn it and I'll put it in the ground and I'll bury it. So this, this might sound weird. I'm just moving a little bit closer to the door. Get me out of here. But I will create these rituals for myself to help me create closure in relationships, to help me be at peace and not ruminate on frustration. From both sides. And I think it allows me to like, close the chapter as opposed to hold on to pain. So I do a lot of weird stuff.

• 1:01:27Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:01:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:01:51Lewis Howes?

  No, I learned this through therapy and different, reaching out to experts.

• 1:01:54Ethan Kross?

  I'm stumbling on stuff and what I think the opportunity is that to, to say, okay, well, here's what we know about how all these things work. And we can just give people a list of these things. So we don't have to wait to just kind of stumble on like, LeBron James is another example of this stumbling. When he was trying to decide whether to leave the dreadful state, I'm just joking. When he was trying to figure out whether to leave the Cavs. I was actually, I like, I really like LeBron and I rooted for the Cavs.

• 1:02:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:02:25Ethan Kross?

  I'm a Knicks fan, so it's been some dark days for a long time. But when he was first, way back before Miami, when he was trying to decide should he leave the Cavs or not, during a press interview, he was going through his thought process and he said, you know, the one thing I didn't want to do is make an emotional decision. LeBron James got to do what is best for LeBron James. Distant self-talk. He just did it. Jennifer Lawrence is in a, in a New York Times interview with a reporter who starts asking her like really hard hitting questions. What does she do? She, she stops. She goes, all right, Jennifer, get yourself together. This isn't therapy. Like, I don't know. I haven't spoken to LeBron or Jennifer, but I don't know that anyone told them to use their name when they get into distress.

• 1:03:09Lewis Howes?

  When I see that sometimes, and I think people will see that, if you'll see a celebrity or an athlete say, you know, Conor McGregor is the greatest of all time.

• 1:03:17Ethan Kross?

  Narcissism, right?

• 1:03:18Lewis Howes?

  Don't you think they're like, okay, this person's got an ego and they think they're this big shot?

• 1:03:22Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:03:46Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:03:49Ethan Kross?

  No.

• 1:03:50Lewis Howes?

  Their ego stayed the same?

• 1:03:52Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:04:20Lewis Howes?

  So they do it internally?

• 1:04:21Ethan Kross?

  Internally, always do it internally.

• 1:04:23Lewis Howes?

  So you're not saying Ethan Kross is the best, you know, when you're doing interviews, I'm like, Ethan always knows what to do. Ethan's always, you're not saying this out loud?

• 1:04:32Ethan Kross?

  I'm already uncomfortable. I know, I never-

• 1:04:35Lewis Howes?

  You say it internally.

• 1:04:36Ethan Kross?

  Internally, and that's an important disclaimer, always internally. But to go back to rituals.

• 1:04:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:04:42Ethan Kross?

  So rituals are useful. First of all, I think it's really important to recognize that our cultures give us rituals. Like there are things we develop on our own, you have one, before I go, you know, before I give a presentation, I repeat in my head what my like high school wrestling coach used to tell me, like, and that's my ritual, and it helps me feel better.

• 1:05:05Ethan Kross?

  But but our cultures throughout time like have bestowed rituals upon us. So like when someone dies, we have grieving rituals. When babies are born, birthing rituals, births like historically been a time of stress, joy, but also like will the baby make it? And so this is a it's a tool. It's like a technology that we've discovered that can be very useful and it helps in a few different ways. One of the things that people like this, the experience of having chatter, you can feel like you don't have control, like my my like my thoughts are in control. It's chaotic in there. I don't know what's going on. And human beings love, love, love, love being in control of things.

• 1:05:49Ethan Kross?

  Or if the world is certain and we can control things like we feel really good. What we've learned is that by by by doing things that are under our control, like engaging in a a specific sequence of behaviors like you do with your rituals, or even things like organizing our surroundings, like tidying up, we that gives us a sense of control. We can control our space.

• 1:06:15Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:06:27Ethan Kross?

  That's right.

• 1:06:28Lewis Howes?

  A clean environment.

• 1:06:29Ethan Kross?

  That's right. You're compensating for the lack of control you have in your head.

• 1:06:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:33Ethan Kross?

  By controlling yourself. It's like I'm I'm a pretty easygoing guy and under normal circumstances, if you came into like visited my office at home, like stacks of books and teacups lined up.

• 1:06:45Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:06:45Ethan Kross?

  And but if I've got some chatter, like that office is spick and span. And I and I often do it reflexively. I just start organizing and cleaning up.

• 1:06:55Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:06:59Ethan Kross?

  It organizes your thoughts.

• 1:07:00Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:07:01Ethan Kross?

  And so it held and so there's data. This is not just so like Rafael Nadal. He gave an interview several years ago and I think it was a journalist who asked him like, "What's the hardest thing you struggle to do on the court?" And his answer was, "The hardest thing I struggle to do is battle the voices inside my head, manage the chatter." And if you watch Nadal, you know what he does. Nadal is famous for engaging in these elaborate rituals. He orders his water bottles, positions them perfectly on a diagonal with the court. Before every serve, he like flips his hair, pulls his shorts out of his butt and you know, bounces the ball. He says like, "So why do you do these rituals?"

• 1:07:43Ethan Kross?

  "They provide me with the order I seek in my head." And the data bears that out. There are studies which show that doing these rituals or organizing your spaces can actually have anxiety reducing features.

• 1:07:56Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:08:13Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:08:43Lewis Howes?

  Thoughts on the paper, yeah.

• 1:08:45Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:09:24Ethan Kross?

  we do it together. There's meaning and that meaning is like you describing, you know, becoming that fly on the wall. Like, there's more to life than what I'm, and so rituals do all those things.

• 1:09:37Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:38Ethan Kross?

  And it's one, so like, that's another tool. Lots of tools that are out there.

• 1:09:43Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:09:57Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:10:16Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, and I, well, I think, you know, gratitude is a very useful intervention. And so I think it's great that you guys do that. And, you know, you, you mentioned it. It's about perspective. And that is, that is the antithesis of chatter. Cause chatter is all about getting lost in the, the moment and being so immersed that we lose that perspective. So the question is like, what is the tool or what are the tools you need to broaden you? Is it a crowbar? Is it a crowbar? And a hammer and a screwdriver? Like, and, and different people are gonna use different tools to help make that happen. And so that's, you know, lots of, for a long time,

• 1:10:56Ethan Kross?

  we've studied individual tools. And what we're learning is that no single tool, no single intervention explains it all. Right?

• 1:11:07Lewis Howes?

  Well, this is why I think our society has struggled and suffered, me included, with.

• 1:11:16Lewis Howes?

  Having addictive personalities, finding substances as tools, whether it be alcohol, or smoking, or pornography, or whatever it is, comparison mode, as tools.

• 1:11:27Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:11:28Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, yeah. As tools to numb the chatter.

• 1:11:31Ethan Kross?

  Yes.

• 1:11:31Lewis Howes?

  To calm the chatter.

• 1:11:32Ethan Kross?

  Yes.

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  Find something to bring a dump of dopamine that will allow me to feel happier in the moment. But then we always feel worse after that dump fades.

• 1:11:43Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Lewis Howes?

  And these are more conscious tools, not substance or addictive tools in a negative sense that we should start implementing, so we don't have to lean towards, "I have nowhere to cope, I'm gonna drink, I'm gonna smoke, I'm gonna vape, I'm gonna..." whatever. And I think if our societies can learn how to use emotional intelligence, psychological tools that support us as opposed to hurting us, we'd be a lot better off.

• 1:12:11Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:12:16Lewis Howes?

  They're free.

• 1:12:17Ethan Kross?

  They're free.

• 1:12:17Lewis Howes?

  And they're not hurtful.

• 1:12:18Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:12:58Lewis Howes?

  Got you. And always needing to organize everything every moment, that's like, that's chatter in itself.

• 1:13:03Ethan Kross?

  Exactly.

• 1:13:03Lewis Howes?

  That's when the tool becomes chatter.

• 1:13:05Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:13:10Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:13:21Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:13:46Lewis Howes?

  You wanted a bicycle? He got you a mantra?

• 1:13:49Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:13:52Lewis Howes?

  What was the mantra?

• 1:13:54Ethan Kross?

  It was a TM. It was a transcendental mantra. It was just a sound that you repeat. And the beauty of mantras and meditation, this is another technology that we've developed over time. Like chatter is an age-old problem. We've probably been dealing with it for as long as we've had language, for as long as we've been talking to other people and talking to ourselves. We've probably had chatter. And we've learned tools over time to help with it. And meditation is one of them. So when you repeat a mantra over and over again, the idea is that that's not easy to do because it's hard to focus on one thing.

• 1:14:34Ethan Kross?

  So what, over time, what you realize is, oh, wow, I just wasn't focusing on it for minutes. And so you realize how easy it is for your attention to shift and for other thoughts to come into play. But over time, the idea is that you begin to realize that you're not the same thing as your thoughts and you can let go of thoughts, right? And just re-bring your attention to something else. It's a way of training your attention and also getting you to understand that You don't have control of the thoughts that pop up in your head. But you do have control about what you do. Once they pop up, and I think that awareness is really, really important.

• 1:15:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Ethan Kross?

  If you are going to, when I teach a class on self-control. Uh, we often have a discussion about this and some students, I ask like, what is self-control? Like, is it, is it a failure? Like, what if you have the temptation? To, you know, eat after 10 o'clock, but you don't follow through with it? Is that a self-control failure? Some students think, no, you, you've succeeded, like you didn't give into it. Other students are like, if you have the thought itself, you failed. And my response to those students is. You are setting a really high bar for success.

• 1:15:50Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:15:55Ethan Kross?

  That's exactly right. That's right. So I think, but, but that's, you know, to go back to the learning about stuff. No one teaches us about these things in a formal way, like if you take a class in psychology, maybe in college you'll get this. And I think it's a problem because when you think about, like I spend a lot of time talking to educators. And we teach children adolescents about information that, you know. A, we think it's culturally significant, it's knowledge that we, so you, you wanna read Charlotte Bronte and, you know, that's questionable. But, but we think it's important and/or we think this information is actually.

• 1:16:37Ethan Kross?

  Gonna serve these students well as they go on and live their lives. So. Me learning math is useful, like learning how to compute a percentage. Amazingly useful, like every time I go to give a tip, I do a percent, right?

• 1:16:49Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:16:50Ethan Kross?

  Practical knowledge.

• 1:16:52Ethan Kross?

  Why are we not teaching people about how the mind works and how to manage the mind? Like, it's hard for me to think about a more important topic. Like, not a day goes by where I'm not challenged in some way that requires me to manage myself. And we're just like throwing the people we care most about into the world without any information about this.

• 1:17:14Lewis Howes?

  I feel like the, the, not everyone, but the ones that grew up playing sports, coaches, usually great coaches, have learned some of this, some of these tools and techniques for their athletes when they're under stress, anxiety, when they fail, when they lose, when they get injured. The great ones have learned these tools on teaching them about how to do this when they're in school, which is what I felt like was very supportive for me, because I would fail tests all the time and I didn't know how to feel like I was stupid, or how I wasn't stupid, how I wasn't worthy, and how I wasn't lovable. Like, I was feeling those things because I would fail so much in school,

• 1:17:56Lewis Howes?

  but I learned in sports and high school and college, like, no, like, here's how you deal with failure. And here's how failure can be a tool to support you.

• 1:18:03Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:18:13Ethan Kross?

  And if you're not failing, I mean, you're not growing.

• 1:18:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:18:35Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:18:52Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, that's a great example.

• 1:18:54Lewis Howes?

  They're not like, I fell a hundred times, I hit my head, I scratched my elbow, I'm crying. They don't say, I'm gonna crawl the rest of my life and just live in this space because it's painful.

• 1:19:05Ethan Kross?

  That's right.

• 1:19:06Lewis Howes?

  They figure out, they use the couch, right, I'm assuming, and they figure it out.

• 1:19:12Ethan Kross?

  Exactly.

• 1:19:12Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:19:26Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:20:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:20:15Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:20:31Lewis Howes?

  Right, that's what you study.

• 1:20:32Ethan Kross?

  I feel comfortable having. The subconscious mind is a giant mystery. We still don't quite know what gives rise to a particular kind of thought. Like, why does a thought bubble up? We have some ideas about what the triggers can be. But there are so many different computations happening in our brain all the time. Like, the brain is, doesn't go off, like, when you sleep or when you're not thinking.

• 1:20:56Lewis Howes?

  It's always thinking.

• 1:20:57Ethan Kross?

  It's always engaging in different operations. And you could argue that all of that is subconscious. And so... It's not until things bubble up into our awareness that we can start modulating things.

• 1:21:09Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 1:21:10Ethan Kross?

  I don't know of of tools that can be useful for managing the subconscious chatter. You know, Freud was a big proponent of that and a lot of those tools haven't stood the test of time. So that's not to say we won't find tools at some point. You know, we still have a ton to learn, but but it's not something that I would, you know, know how to coach someone on.

• 1:21:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I grew up in a religion called Christian Science where the founder of the religion is named Mary Baker Eddy.

• 1:21:39Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:40Lewis Howes?

  And she had a quote that said, "Stand porter at the door of thought." And this is something I heard over and over as a child, to not allow negative or mortal thoughts enter my mind and take over the mind. Because those were the things that would hurt me and have me thinking harmful thoughts about myself, about others, about doing immoral things, things like that. And that's always stood with me, to stand porter porter at the door of thought. And when something, we don't control what comes to the door. Like, things are going to come to the door of our mind all the time. But what you said, we control like how we respond to those things.

• 1:22:20Ethan Kross?

  Yes.

• 1:22:20Lewis Howes?

  Do we open the door and allow it to come and stay there? Or do we open the door and say, "Hey, you can leave"?

• 1:22:27Ethan Kross?

  Well, and that describes right there the difference between. So to answer your question, I think there's there's a time and a place for engaging with the thought and just letting it float away. Many mindful practices, mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches to dealing with adversity suggest when we observe ourselves experiencing a negative thought, we should recognize it, accept it, and then let it go bye-bye. Don't engage with it. And there can be value to that approach, for sure. Like, if the negative thought is irrelevant and has no implication for my future, it's just this random self-defeating cognition, let it go. You know, off you go. One metaphor that I love is, think about the mind as a school bus.

• 1:23:09Ethan Kross?

  And, you know, there are different passengers, different kids who get, you're the driver of the bus, right? And you've got passengers who come on, some are really spitballs and others are nice. And, you know, kids come on and off the bus, and that's how the mind works. And so just... If one of these obnoxious kids come on, just let them go.

• 1:23:29Lewis Howes?

  Let them go.

• 1:23:30Ethan Kross?

  So, there's a time and a place for that, but there is also a time where we do need to engage with the negative stuff. We have to engage with it because we have to learn from it. Like, if you really mess up sometimes, like, you, like, I, I know some people who are so skilled at just not attaching to the negative stuff.

• 1:23:49Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:23:53Ethan Kross?

  I'm not gonna, yeah.

• 1:23:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Ethan Kross?

  And so, and I don't think that's productive either.

• 1:23:56Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:23:57Ethan Kross?

  So you wanna be strategic and nimble. This goes back to that, there's no one size fits all, right? We have evolved these different tools for a reason. So, like, you know, my, my, my wish is, you know, like, if you're, you've got like a building team come in, they've got these amazing toolkits or, or like Batman, you know, the utility belt with all the different, like, we wanna give people the most sophisticated tool belt that they can have, so that they can be adept at using the right one, given the right situation.

• 1:24:31Lewis Howes?

  And what about, um, the alter ego mindset? Is this something, is this a tool that you would talk about or you recommend people using? Like Beyonce uses an alter ego when she goes on stage.

• 1:24:46Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Lewis Howes?

  I used to use one when I was going on the football field. Um, I'm sure there's a lot of other examples out there of people stepping into a character in their minds

• 1:24:54Ethan Kross?

  Yes.

• 1:24:55Lewis Howes?

  to disassociate their fears.

• 1:24:57Ethan Kross?

  We've done, we've done research on this, actually, and, um,

• 1:25:01Lewis Howes?

  You didn't talk about stepping into being like a superhero in here, like being Batman.

• 1:25:04Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, we call it the Batman effect.

• 1:25:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:25:07Ethan Kross?

  And it's, there, it's all, you know, it is about an alter ego. And we find that, in particular with kids, where we've done the most research on this, it can be useful. It's, it's another kind of distancing tool, right? Like, you're stepping outside of yourself and into this other identity

• 1:25:22Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:25:22Ethan Kross?

  that is skilled in the domain you're in. So for kids, you know, it's like, pretend you're Wonder Woman, or Dora the Explorer, or Batman, and then we put them in stressful tasks. Well, what do we know about superheroes? Like, They don't give up. They keep going. Right? If you're assuming that alter ego, you keep doing it. Now, the one caveat to this is if you're gonna choose an alter ego, choose wisely. You don't wanna choose to become the Joker.

• 1:25:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:25:46Ethan Kross?

  Or, you know, choose your other villain. Because, and there is some research which suggests that it depends on which alter ego you select. Because you're gonna assume part of their identity. And so you don't wanna assume the malicious or the bad guy. But yeah, that's another, another kinda tool we can use. And that's another distancing tool.

• 1:26:07Lewis Howes?

  Distancing.

• 1:26:08Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:26:18Lewis Howes?

  Coaching yourself, whatever it is, yeah. Meditation, any tool you can to get away from it.

• 1:26:22Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:26:49Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:27:00Ethan Kross?

  Yes.

• 1:27:00Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:27:19Ethan Kross?

  That one.

• 1:27:20Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:27:24Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:28:06Ethan Kross?

  And so remembering to think about the big picture, I think, can be really helpful.

• 1:28:12Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:28:24Ethan Kross?

  Well, so, so, language can, can shape how we think. You know, we don't only think in words, so it's not the same thing as thinking. But, but certainly, the way we use language to explain what we're going through is really powerful. I mean, you know, the subtitle of my book, The Voice in Our Head, Our Inner Voice. And oftentimes, when I talk about this material to people, the first thing they say is, "Oh, how can I silence that voice? Just shut it up. I don't want to ever hear it." And what I say to them is, "No, you don't want to do that. You want to, you want to stop the chatter." But words, language, this is a powerful tool. Like, so I'll give you a couple of examples of what language does for us.

• 1:29:08Ethan Kross?

  In the most basic sense, if I were to, I'm gonna spell out a word. I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you some letters. I want you to just repeat these letters in your head silently, okay?

• 1:29:21Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:29:22Ethan Kross?

  M-I-C-H-I-G-A-N.

• 1:29:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:29:28Ethan Kross?

  Can you, can you repeat those letters in your head two or three times? You don't want to, but, so, if you, if I give you a phone number, 209, you know, 2090501. Like, someone gives you that, that doesn't happen anymore. It's, it's like at parties, but when we were growing up, it did. You repeat that in your head, you're using your, your inner voice to do that, right? That's part of what we call our verbal working. Memory system. This system, it's essential to life. Like you go to a grocery store, you wanna, what do I need from the grocery store? Eggs, bread and milk. Your inner voice lets you do that. So that's, that's, that's an essential way that language helps us. But then it gets more complicated, does other things for us.

• 1:30:11Ethan Kross?

  Before I give a presentation, in my head, I will go through what I'm gonna say on the, on the stage. I'll go through it word by word in my head. And then I'll actually hear what someone's gonna ask me and I'll respond. So I'm simulating that whole.

• 1:30:26Lewis Howes?

  Visualizing.

• 1:30:27Ethan Kross?

  I'm visualizing, I mean, I'm, I'm doing it with language in my head. And I think that helps prepare me. I use language to coach myself, to control myself. All right, you know, don't eat the cookies when I, you know, like it's too late. You don't, the pants are gonna be, they're already a little tight from the pandemic, we don't, right? We also use language to, I think, this is like the most magical feature of it. We, when bad things happen, we try to make sense of those experiences. And we use language to do that in ways that shape our understanding of who we are. So like when I'm rejected or I experience loss, I think about those events. And I try to come up with a story, a narrative that explains it. Like, that's all about words.

• 1:31:10Ethan Kross?

  So language, it lets us do a lot of amazing things. But it can also take us down the rabbit hole.

• 1:31:17Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:32:01Lewis Howes?

  why it matters. Where can we follow you online? Or is there a place that we can support you online?

• 1:32:06Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:32:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What's your main, what's your main social channel? What do you like to use the most? Instagram?

• 1:32:20Ethan Kross?

  You know, this is all new to me. I've begun to really-

• 1:32:24Lewis Howes?

  You're in the professor world. Yeah.

• 1:32:25Ethan Kross?

  Yeah, you don't do that. And I've actually studied social media and wellbeing. So I know it can be a minefield. You've got to be careful how you navigate it.

• 1:32:32Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:32:33Ethan Kross?

  And I must say, I really like Instagram.

• 1:32:35Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Okay.

• 1:32:36Ethan Kross?

  How about you? What's your favorite?

• 1:32:37Lewis Howes?

  Are you, is it just Ethan Kross on Instagram?

• 1:32:39Ethan Kross?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Lewis Howes?

  Or, okay. Yeah, Instagram is a big one for me as well. YouTube, we have a big audience and channel on YouTube. So I'm a big fan of providing this information on all these platforms.

• 1:32:49Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:33:30Lewis Howes?

  You gotta use the tool appropriately. Don't abuse the tool, otherwise it'll abuse you.

• 1:33:36Ethan Kross?

  That's right.

• 1:33:36Lewis Howes?

  Just like this tool is in your book.

• 1:33:37Ethan Kross?

  That's right.

• 1:33:38Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:34:23Lewis Howes?

  I call it the three truths. Your three lessons. What would you say are your three truths?

• 1:34:28Ethan Kross?

  Boy, oh, boy.

• 1:34:31Ethan Kross?

  That was supposed to come in the memo before we spoke.

• 1:34:34Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:34:35Ethan Kross?

  So what are the three truths?

• 1:34:46Ethan Kross?

  It gets better with time. Because it almost always does.

• 1:34:57Ethan Kross?

  We're much better at helping others than we are ourselves. Because I think that can be as a framework for living a good flourishing life. An incredibly powerful understanding.

• 1:35:11Ethan Kross?

  And

• 1:35:16Ethan Kross?

  be a mensch.

• 1:35:18Lewis Howes?

  Be a mensch.

• 1:35:19Ethan Kross?

  Be a mensch. Mensch, you know, term I grew up with, which is, you know, just be a good, decent human being. Because

• 1:35:28Ethan Kross?

  because it feels good and because it makes other people feel good. And because it's rewarding for everyone. So there you have it.

• 1:35:36Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:35:46Ethan Kross?

  Ticket is yours.

• 1:35:48Lewis Howes?

  There's so many seats.

• 1:35:49Ethan Kross?

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

• 1:35:53Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:36:41Ethan Kross?

  Sorry, this is another one. I wish I had the memo on this one.

• 1:36:43Speaker 00

  No worries.

• 1:36:44Ethan Kross?

  What is my definition of greatness?

• 1:36:49Ethan Kross?

  My definition of greatness is leaving another person

• 1:36:55Ethan Kross?

  a little bit better off than before they met you. And leaving the world, I guess, if I'm going to the next domain, leaving it just a little bit better than it was before I came on it. That would be a definition of a great life.

• 1:37:11Speaker 00

  Love it. Ethan, thanks, man. Appreciate it.

• 1:37:12Ethan Kross?

  Thank you.

• 1:37:13Speaker 00

  Appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and got some value out of these tools from Dr. Ethan Kross. If you did, make sure to share this, post it on social media, text it to a few friends. And if you enjoyed it, make sure to tag me over on Instagram and let me know what part you enjoyed the most. As well as leave us a rating and review over on Apple Podcast and let me know the part of this episode that you got the most value out of this. We'd love to read those ratings and reviews over on Apple Podcast. And I want to leave you with this quote from psychologist Abraham Maslow, who said, "In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety." You've got to evaluate your life right now in this moment. Are you living a safe life? Are you living a comfortable life? Is it too comfortable?

• 1:37:57Speaker 00

  Or are you doing things on a daily basis to help you get beyond your insecurities, your fears, your doubts, the things that hold you back from greater joy in your life? Every great thing comes when you overcome insecurity. So lean into your insecurities and go all in on those fears because I'm telling you, there is magic and beauty on the other side. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.