It encourages us to catastrophize the inevitable daily challenges we face, it undermines our confidence, and it’s an incredible saboteur. How can you possibly measure the voice in someone’s head? It leads students to perform worse on tests, causes athletes to choke, turns romantic relationships into battlegrounds, and if you don’t get it under control it can create constant stress and seriously undermine your health. My colleagues and I use tools from psychology, medicine, philosophy, biology, and computer science. Technologies such as EEG and fMRI help us measure the brain’s response and behavior. We use the experience sampling method which is a structured way to get people to monitor their thoughts and feelings as they unfold throughout the day. In the lab, we employ think-aloud paradigms, asking people to tell us their thoughts in real time. So what are some strategies for controlling that inner voice? We analyze journals and increasingly look at what people are writing about on social media. Many of the techniques I outline in my book involve stepping back from the echo chamber of your own mind so you can get a more objective perspective. One way to do that is to use distanced self-talk and silently refer to yourself in the third-person. For example, I can often snap myself out of chatter by saying “Come on, Ethan.” It’s also helpful to put myself in the role of a good friend giving advice.Īnother way to gain perspective is to visualize moving away from any upsetting scene in your imagination, like a camera zooming out. This technique will literally widen your focus. You can also do a little time-traveling - think about how you will feel about this problem a month, a year, or even longer from now. Journaling works for some, since it allows people to create a more nuanced narrative about an experience. You can also calm chatter by inviting a feeling of awe and wonder. Some people feel awe when they stare up at the stars at night or take in a spectacular view. Others might find it in a piece of art or the sight of a sleeping child. Find what instills a sense of awe in you. Feeling awe allows us to transcend our current concerns, giving us the mental space to recharge and reset. One of the most famous experiments in self-control was Walter Mischel’s marshmallow test. Yes, that was one of the reasons I chose to get my PhD at Columbia. He was like royalty in psychology for his studies on delayed gratification and self-control. In the early 1960s he began bringing kids into his lab and presenting them with a choice: they could have one marshmallow immediately, or if they waited a little longer they could have two. Long-term studies showed that the children who exercised self-control and waited for the bigger reward performed better on their SATs as teens and were healthier and more resilient in adulthood.
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