So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New

Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for

free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!

Welcome to the HBR idea cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Ellison Beard.

For the past month, I have not been able to stop thinking about a certain challenge going

on in my family life. It keeps me up at night. It distracts me from work. It kills my productivity

and it ruins my mood. I go over and over the problem in my head thinking about what I could

have done to prevent it, what I should do now, and how it's going to play out in the future.

It's awful and exhausting and I don't know how to stop. Luckily our guests today will have

some advice for me and any of you who suffer from the same tendency to overthink. Ethan

Cross is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and its Ross School of Business

and is the director of its emotion and self-control laboratory. He spent years studying people

who struggled with issues like the one I have, from a major league baseball pitcher whose

yips are so bad that he can't throw a strike, to an Ivy League student on her way to a promising

career who still suffers from imposter syndrome. And he's conducted and reviewed dozens of experiments

to see what actually helps them. How do we calm these inner voices? How do we stop the

worrying and ruminating and get back on track? And how can we help other people? Friends,

family, employees, colleagues do the same. Cross's new book is called Chatter, the voice in

our head, why it matters and how to harness it. Even thanks for being on the show. Thanks

for having me, Allison. So let's start with some background. Why do we as human

talk to ourselves? Well, when we talk to ourselves, what we're really talking about is using

language silently. And we use language for a number of reasons. I think it's an amazing

...