CHATTER: Learning to Love the Voice in Your Head

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2021

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Whether or not we care to admit it, we all talk to ourselves. A lot. The voice in our heads yaks it up about half the time we’re awake, and it can speak at a rate of 4,000 words per minute. When it really gets going like that, not everything it says is particularly helpful. We’ve all gotten stuck dwelling on the past, worrying about the future, or standing idly by as our inner monologue devolves from introspection into negativity. Experimental psychologist Ethan Kross calls those moments chatter. “When the inner voice runs amok and chatter takes the mental microphone,” he writes, “our mind not only torments but paralyzes us.” Luckily, there are tools we can use to take back the mic, and in this episode, Ethan talks Rufus through them.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rufus Griskem and this is the next big idea.
0:12.0	Today is the voice in your head and asshole so is mine and there's something we can do about it.
0:30.5	A couple of weeks ago, I was driving on I-77 South through North Carolina with no one but my GPS for company.
0:38.0	And for fun, I started speaking my inner monologue out loud.
0:42.0	So we're doing an episode about the voices in people's heads and the question is how do we open it?
0:47.0	One option is I could open it with actually my inner dialogue, right?
0:51.0	Like what's bouncing around my head? That's two on the nose.
0:54.5	How about our producer, Michael's inner track coach who just berates him relentlessly.
0:59.0	Michael's so funny when he riffs on that. It could be a possibility.
1:03.0	So I asked Michael to record himself on his next trail run through the mountains of Santa Fe.
1:08.0	Everyone's gonna bring him crazy talking to Michael.
1:11.0	I could just take it on a phone.
1:14.0	That's normal, right?
1:17.0	Running out of breath talking to the phone.
1:25.0	Good morning.
1:29.0	No matter how calm or poised you look on the outside, you spend a lot of time talking like crazy on the inside.
1:37.0	Turns out the voice in our heads, you accent up about half the time that we're awake and it can speak at a rate of 4,000 words per minute.
1:45.0	You know those voice actors who read side effects at the end of a drug commercial?
1:49.0	It's like that, but on speed.
1:51.0	I have to say though that the experience of getting inside Michael's head was kind of amazing.
1:56.0	I thought it to wonder what if we could eavesdrop on other people's secret conversations.
2:01.0	But who do I know who's brave enough to share their interior monologues?
	...

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