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Chatter

The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It

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Chatter

Written by: Ethan Kross
Narrated by: Ethan Kross
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELER

Turn your inner voice from critic to coach with the life-changing guide from the award-winning neuroscientist and psychologist.

We all have an inner voice. It helps us focus, achieve our goals and reflect on life’s most joyful moments. But it can also be our biggest enemy, replaying embarrassing moments, overthinking stressful situations, and sabotaging our confidence with endless mental ‘chatter’.

So why does this source of wisdom turn into our biggest critic? And how can we take back control?

In Chatter, award-winning neuroscientist and psychologist Ethan Kross distils decades of research to reveal the sheer power of the inner voice and shows us that we all possess a set of tools to harness it.

Weaving cutting-edge science with compelling true stories, Kross shares the powerful but simple tools to help make your brain’s ‘chatter’ work for you.

Fascinating, entertaining and full of original insights and tips, Chatter will change the conversations you have with yourself forever, and help you lead a healthier, happier, more productive life.

Praise for Chatter:

‘A masterpiece’ Angela Duckworth, bestselling author of GRIT

‘The groundbreaking and transformative book the world needs now.’ Susan Cain, bestselling author of Quiet

‘The definitive work on how to redirect our inner voices away from rumination and self-criticism and toward reflection and self-improvement.’ Daniel H. Pink, bestselling author of Drive

‘This book is going to fundamentally change some of the most important conversations in your life’ Adam Grant, bestselling author of Think Again

‘Completely fascinating... it's already changed my life’ Chris Evans

‘Accessible and informative - a fantastic addition to our understanding of our mind’ Julia Samuel, psychotherapist and bestselling author of This Too Shall Pass

‘Chatter isn't just thought provoking - it's thought transforming.’ Apple Books Review

‘Weaves cutting-edge science with riveting stories…a truly compelling and valuable book.’ Carol Dweck, bestselling author of Mindset

© Ethan Kross 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

 Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Self-Help Success

Critic Reviews

Completely fascinating... it's already changed my life
Are there right and wrong ways to communicate with yourself, and if so, are there techniques that might usefully be employed by those with inner voices that are just a little too loud?...Kross has found answers to some, if not all, of these questions...[Chatter] could hardly be published at a more opportune moment.
Fresh and riveting, Chatter is a masterpiece-a landmark book that will change the way you think about human nature. Ethan Kross is one part sage, one part mensch, and one part world-class psychological scientist. When I need advice, it's Ethan I call. Now, through Chatter, everyone has a chance to learn about their inner voice from among the wisest people I know. Required reading for all.
So accessible and informative - a fantastic addition to our understanding of our mind, and how it emphatically changes our day for good or bad.
Ethan Kross isn't just a world-renowned scientist, he's an expert storyteller too. In Chatter, he shows why our inner voice is indispensable, and reveals how we can master it. Urgent, lucid, and compelling, Chatter is the groundbreaking and transformative book the world needs now.
I've demonstrated throughout my career how negative thoughts can spiral and undermine people's success. In Chatter, Ethan Kross weaves cutting-edge science with riveting stories to reveal the tools people can use to manage these experiences. Chatter is a truly compelling and valuable book.
Chatter isn't just thought provoking - it's thought transforming.
This book is going to fundamentally change some of the most important conversations in your life - the ones you have with yourself. Along with being a pioneering psychologist and neuroscientist, Ethan Kross is an unusually gifted writer and storyteller. He shows that instead of trying to silence your monkey mind, you can learn to educate it, motivate it, and even reason with it.
I talk to myself. And so do you. Yet this remarkable capacity for introspection can sometimes lead us astray. Ethan Kross has written the definitive work on how to redirect our inner voices away from rumination and self-criticism and toward reflection and self-improvement. Chatter is a profound and practical book-one that will leave you with both a fresh understanding of yourself and new strategies to live a fuller life.
Stimulating . . . Kross, the director of the University of Michigan's Emotion & Self Control Laboratory, debuts with an eye-opening look at managing 'the silent conversations people have with themselves'.
All stars
Most relevant
Amazing book. A must read for all age groups. It provides us with real practical solutions to counter our negative inner voices and allow it to help us instead in dealing with challenges. The tools provided in the book are very simple yet very effective. Most of you would have been already practising many of these techniques with being aware of them. Being aware of them helps us to use them more often at right times.

I would like to thank Ethan Kross for this amazingly articulated book.

Definitely one of the Best if not the Best

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Brilliant book but I think I’ll need to listen to with my own voice and pace. Well done!

Will order a print version for sure

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recommendable to listen to on walks..which is how I did it. Narrator has a kind and empathetic voice

empowering with empatht

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We look for our inner coach, but we sometimes find our inner critic. Our thoughts tend to go from routine to terrible abruptly.

We spend a third to a half of our life not living in the moment.

When we face a threat, like a lion, adrenaline enters our bloodstream. Then cortisol, the stress hormone. These cause the body to redirect resources towards facing the immediate threat, away from maintenance. Continuous stress has a long-term cost on the body, such as cardiovascular diseases and early death. In the modern world, threats are typically not lions but job loss, financial loss, relationship or family problems, etc, but the body reacts the same way. Some of us have been in situations where we’ve been threatened repeatedly. As a founder, my product did not take off. I’ve lost most of my savings. Employees I invested a lot in didn’t reciprocate. An employee take advantage of me. And some companies I tried to work with tried to take advantage of me. An investor or two I approached refused to fund my startup. When we’ve been threatened repeatedly like this, we become trained to see situations as threats, even when they’re not. When we go for a walk and see a cat, we imagine a lion. This imagined threat causes the same physical problems as real threats — cardiovascular diseases, early death, etc. So, when you have a stress response to an imagined threat, remind yourself you’re not under threat.

Sometimes introspecting makes things worse, not better. It causes the negative emotion to have a life of its own. To fix this, seek not to re-live the experience, but to evaluate it objectively, as if you’re a third person. This eases the emotion and brings more understanding. This is called distancing.

When you’re in an argument, whether with a romantic partner or at work, seek to distance. That way, you get to solve the problem instead of getting carried away in the argument. Talking to yourself in the third person, like “Why are you getting worked up about this, Kartick?” can help distance. Or using a pronoun like “he” for yourself, as in, “He now needs to decide whether…” Or give yourself a name of a fictional character, and ask “How would Picard handle this?”

You also distance temporally: ask yourself how you’ll feel about this a decade from now.

Staying at home all the time, and social distancing, increases the chatter in your mind.

Spend 20 min writing about your worst experiences: it makes you feel better, be healthier, and visit the doctor less.

When a traumatic event like 9/11 or a shooting at a college happens, people who shared their emotions with others, be it online or offline, felt worse and had worse physical health. People who shared their emotions a lot ended up worse than people who shared a little. When we share our pain, there are two aspects: an emotional aspect (we want people to commiserate with us) and a logical one (we want specific steps to overcome the pain). The former makes you feel worse, and the latter, better. But people, both support seekers and support givers, focus on the former. Don’t.

An affectionate touch from a loved one reduces chatter.

Exposure to greenery reduces chatter, increases health, and slows aging. Even photos, videos or sounds of greenery work.

Placebos have been proven to work, showing that the mind matters, even reducing the intensity of physical problems.

Summary:

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Important aspect of brain. Well narrated and lots of techniques to take away from the book. Need to put it in practice to see the benefits.

Well narrated and explained clearly

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