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Chatter: How Our Inner Voice Affects Our Performance, Relationships, and Health
We all experience chatter in our lives, but it can be detrimental to our performance, relationships, and health. According to Ethan Kross, author of Chatter, this inner voice manifests in different ways, and many of us have experienced negative thought loops at some point in our life. However, not everyone is aware of this because we don’t always talk about our inner world to other people.
The Impact of Inner Chatter
When ruminating, we voice the thoughts in our minds to the sympathetic listeners we know in search of their support, but doing so excessively ends up pushing away the people we need most. We also underestimate the power of normalization. One of the reasons Kross wrote his book was to really normalize the fact that we all have an inner voice that manifests in different ways. When people realize that they are not suffering from an inner voice run amok, that provides them with a sense of comfort and understanding.
Kross also believes that parents play a profound role in shaping our inner voices. What we say to our parents can influence how they talk to themselves as well. It’s important to recognize that rumination can be detrimental to our performance, relationships, and health. It’s essential to use tools to manage it and zoom out to gain perspective.
