How to Harness the Voice in Your Head
—Grace & Truth Linkup
Who do you talk to the most in any given day?
Yourself. If you’re like me, you keep a conversation going in your head All.The.Time.
I’d love to turn off the chatter sometimes. The thoughts about yesterday’s disappointing lunch (Hot Pocket and chips). About upcoming activities (my next colonoscopy). About conversations I’ve already had or conversations I need to have with other people.
“Our verbal stream of thought is so industrious that according to one study we internally talk to ourselves at a rate equivalent to speaking four thousand words per minute out loud. . . .
The voice in your head is a very fast talker.”
– Ethan Kross
The inner voice won’t be silenced. But we can learn to use it more effectively.
Last week I finished a great book about how to do it, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross. I’ve already begun using some of the suggestions from it.
Kross organizes the book into tools you can implement on your own, tools that leverage your relationships with other people, and tools that involve your environment.
Here are a few of his tools of talking sense to yourself when you become anxious.
1. Talk to yourself using your name and the second-person “you”
2. Imagine advising a friend
3. Reframe your experience as a challenge
4. Remember your experience is normal
5. Think how you’ll feel a year from now
6. Change your perspective to a fly on the wall
One tool that Kross doesn’t mention but that I use a lot is to quote Bible verses in my head. It’s a great way to turn down the volume of my own internal chatter and have a conversation with God instead.
Featured Post—Scripture Memory Tips
That’s one reason I was drawn to Sharon’s post at last week’s linkup. She shares four of her top tips on how she memorizes scripture. See which of her four tips helps you the most.
Read all of Sharon’s post here at her blog, Limitless-Horizon, then link up your own blog posts below.
“How to Memorise Scripture – Four Top Tips!”
Now Let’s Link Up!
You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!
Click here to enterDo you hear a lot of chatter in your head too? What helps you tame it? Share your thoughts in the comments.
My thanks to Net Galley and Crown
Publishing for the review copy of Chatter
I definitely need to read this book. My thoughts are all over the place.
These are great tips! I’m actually reading “Don’t Overthink It” by Anne Bogel and it’s along these same lines (slightly different focus.) It has been so helpful. I’ve heard that Jennie Allen’s “Get Out of Your Head” is great too!
I so identify with having that voice in my head, Lisa. I love your tool the best. 🙂 Turning it into a conversation with God. Thank you. Love and blessings to you!
P.S. I like Sharon’s post, too, but for some reason, I don’t think my comment went through. It’s very perceptive of her to include different learning styles since what works for one may not work for another.
Oh, that chatter! Having a conversation with God is great tool! Keeping items that stimulate my brain visually like a nature photograph, flower arrangement, and visual artwork also stops my ineffective mind chatter. I’m grateful for God’s abundant nature He provides!
Love these tips and yes lots of chatter in my head and some never very nice towards myself. I do reframe a lot and have wondered though at times if it am reframing or just excusing something. Self doubt once again… see not a friendly voice much of the time. sounds like a good book
What a great post, Lisa. Sounds like a wonderful book. I like all the tips Kross suggests and it gives me new amunition for internal chatter. But, the one I currently emplore over and over is your tip in using Scripture. Especially, Philippians 4:8.
Sounds like an interesting and important read.