The Voice in your head and the stories we tell ourselves
..Why did I miss adding the critical point during the presentation?….
…why hasn’t he called me back yet….
” What I if let her go and she gets hurt…
“As humans, we may talk to ourselves at a rate equivalent to speaking 4,000 words per minute out loud ” says Ethan Kross
Again. 4,000 words per minute
A University of Michigan professor and the author of “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.”
Although the inner voice functions well much of the time, it often leads to chatter—
The cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather than a blessing.
He talks about the phonological loop – the element of working memory that transcribes “everything related to words that occurs around us in the present.”
So we have an inner voice and an inner ear. One that guides out attention – one that evaluates us “as we strive for goals,” popping up to assess our progress “like an appointment reminder appearing on your lock screen.”
We talk to ourselves
And we listen to what we have to say
It recounts the potential hazards of lingering over the negative content – highlighting anecdotes
Like the mental block that ended the pitching career of Major League Baseball’s Rick Ankiel.
“When our minds are bathed in chatter,” Kross writes, “we display a strong bias toward satisfying our emotional needs over our cognitive ones.”
Highly recommend this fascinating read. It is a short ~5 hours on Audible.
A huge take-away for us as parents – your voice as primary care-givers (which in turn is shaped by your culture) is what shapes and becomes the inner voice of the children you raise.
Also, makes one want to be more mindful of the most important conversation we have each day:
The one we have with ourselves.
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#reviewswithranjani
#Book35/52 2021