Gandhi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” And Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”
My guest today is Dr. Ethan Kross, a psychologist, author, and professor at the University of Michigan. He is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind, and in his new book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters and How to Harness It, he explores how the silent conversations that individuals have with themselves impact their life from their health to their performance to decisions in their relationships.
And in this episode, we discuss and dive in deep on how to control and engage with thoughts when they enter your mind, how to not let your negative thoughts define you and hold you back, some daily practices to help you improve your mental health, the benefits of mentally time traveling, and how to shift the inner monologue you experience into productivity and confidence.
Who Is Dr. Ethan Kross?
Dr. Ethan Kross is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. An award-winning professor and bestselling author in the University of Michigan’s top-ranked Psychology Department and its Ross School of Business, he studies how the conversations people have with themselves impact their health, performance, decisions, and relationships.
Dr. Ethan was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude. After earning his Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, Ethan completed a post-doctoral fellowship in social-affective neuroscience to learn about the neural systems that support self-control. He moved to the University of Michigan in 2008, where he founded the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory.
Dr. Ethan’s research has been published in Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, among other peer-reviewed journals. He has participated in policy discussions at the White House and has been interviewed on Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR’s Morning Edition. His pioneering research has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and Time.
Dr. Ethan is the author of the national bestseller Chatter, which was chosen as one of the best new books of the year by the Washington Post.
Let’s jump right in!
Can We Control Our Minds?
I always said that our thoughts dictate the outcomes of our lives. They are the beginning stages of what we manifest, attract, and create if we think more positively and more vision-based higher-level thinking thoughts. Of course, if we think a lot of negative, consuming thoughts, we can attract that type of environment as well. These topics used to be on the fringe and seen as ‘out there’ — but now we have Dr. Ethan Kross with decades of research behind him sharing his findings in his book and lectures.
The big question he often gets is whether it’s possible to control the conscious mind.
“We don’t have control over the thoughts that pop [up], but what we do have control over is how we engage with those thoughts once they surface. We can choose to immerse ourselves in the thoughts. I can also choose to distance myself from my thoughts or challenge my thoughts. There’s a range of things we can do when thoughts pop up — that’s where the control comes in.” – Dr. Ethan Kross
Our thoughts are basically the same as our life — we can’t control external events that happen, just how we react to them. It’s a great way to make a distinction between what we can and can’t control and what to focus on.
It’s a pity we aren’t taught in a systematic way how to manage our thoughts. I guess that’s why Dr. Kross’s book is even more useful!
The Solomon Paradox
Dr. Kross is one of the leading experts in controlling the conscious mind, it’s always easy to assume that just because someone studies a subject and is an expert that they have mastered it in their own lives, so you might think he’s mastered his own mind. In fact, studies show that for most of us, people are better at advising others on what to do than taking their own advice.
“There’s a name for this phenomenon — it’s called Solomon’s Paradox, named after the Bible’s King Solomon who was famous for being wise. If you read his story, he was not wise when it came to his own life — he had concubines, and they all got in fights, and his whole kingdom unraveled. This is a truism, that I can tell [many] other people how to manage their chatter, but that doesn’t mean I never struggle with it myself. I like to think I’m pretty good at it, but I still experience blips of chatter.” – Dr. Ethan Kross
Perhaps this is one of the greatest lessons we can learn — no matter how experienced someone is in a topic, the work never ends. We’re all human, and we need to let go of chasing this illusory goal we set ourselves of reaching the endpoint. The aim is not that we never have chatter again, it’s that we train ourselves as best we can to recognize it and deal with it effectively.
“The moment I catch myself experiencing chatter, I try to put an end to it by using the tools that are in the book and other tools out there.” – Dr. Ethan Kross
I’m excited to dive deeper into these tools and understand their application, especially as our mind’s chatter is a daily non-stop occurrence.
