“How can the voice that serves as our best coach also be our own worst critic?”
Ethan Kross
We all have an inner voice. Sometimes it lifts us up, other times it tears us down. The truth is, the way we talk to ourselves shapes our happiness more than almost anything else.
A Wandering Mind Is An Unhappy Mind
A 2010 study titled “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind” found that “inner experiences consistently dwarf outer ones.” According to the results, we spend about 47% of our waking hours thinking about something other than what is happening in the present moment—and this makes us unhappy.
The uniquely human ability to contemplate past events, imagine possible futures, and even create scenarios that may never occur is an incredible cognitive achievement. But it comes at a cost: our emotional well-being. The Harvard psychologists who conducted the study concluded that “our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present.” They also discovered that mind-wandering could predict people’s happiness levels more accurately than the activities they were actually engaged in.
Reading about this research reminds me of moments when I was supposed to feel happy-like being at a party with friends or at the playground with my babies- but instead felt anxious or sad because I was absorbed in my own thoughts. My mood was shaped not by what I was doing, but by what I was thinking.
Our inner voice is a wonderful tool. It helps us be resilient, creative, and motivated to analyze our circumstances and strive for improvement. But it can also make us dissatisfied, isolated, and unhappy.
The Human Brain’s Default State
In his book Chatter, Ethan Kross explains that the brain’s “default state” is mind-wandering: revisiting the past, imagining the future, or getting lost in internal ruminations. By nature, our minds are also self-focused—we spend much of our time reflecting on our own feelings, desires, and needs.
Kross points out that our internal conversations are “tuned” in part by our upbringing: the messages we repeatedly heard in childhood shape the voice we carry inside as adults.
Our inner voice always has something to say, though we aren’t always aware of it. When it spirals into what Kross calls chatter—cyclical negative thoughts and emotions—it becomes overwhelming, harmful, and distressing.
The good news is that we have the power to change our inner dialogue. By doing so, we can improve both our mental state and our environment.
How To Talk To Ourselves More Effectively
To protect our mental health, we need to pay attention to our internal conversations. We spend much of our time in our minds, and when our inner voice talks, we listen.
Kross suggests five research-backed strategies to manage our self-talk:
1. Take some distance
First, observe your self-talk: what are you telling yourself? What words are you using? What are you imagining? Then, zoom out and analyze those thoughts more objectively. Visualization can help. Seeing the “big picture” allows us to place our problems in perspective, reducing intrusive thinking.
2. Talk to yourself
As unusual as it sounds, addressing yourself by name can help create emotional distance and help us be more objective. Using your own name and referring to you as a second or third person makes your inner dialogue feel more like a conversation with someone else. This technique, called distanced self-talk, allows you to be more objective and less consumed by your emotions.
3. Leverage and improve personal relationships
One of the book’s most surprising insights is that talking to others about our negative experiences doesn’t help us recover in any meaningful way. Studies show that while sharing struggles with empathetic listeners strengthens connection, co-ruminating—revisiting the pain repeatedly—keeps us stuck in negativity.
What we need are “chatter advisers”: supportive people who not only empathize but also help us reflect and brainstorm practical solutions. Different areas of life may require different advisers, and diversifying our sources of support can be highly beneficial.
4. Benefit from your environments
Our physical surroundings influence our inner conversations. A 2015 Stanford study found that people who walked in nature experienced less rumination and internal chatter. Even indirect exposure to nature—through photos or videos—can have a calming effect.
5. Use placebos and rituals to harness the ability of the mind to heal itself
Rituals can help us impose order on our minds. For example, tennis legend Rafael Nadal follows a precise sequence of actions during matches—aligning his bottles, adjusting his hair, repeating movements. He describes this as “a way of ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.”
Rituals—structured, repeated behaviors—give us a sense of control and connection to something larger than ourselves. Meditation, prayer, or other personal rituals can quiet the chatter and reduce stress.
Similarly, research on the placebo effect demonstrates the power of belief. What we expect strongly shapes how we feel mentally and physically. This makes it essential to examine the beliefs guiding our expectations and to use rituals to reinforce the mental order we want to create.
Final Thoughts
Chatter can contaminate our thoughts and fill us with painful emotions that harm our health, hopes, and relationships. But our goal isn’t to silence our inner voice-it’s too valuable and deeply human. Even when painful, it can point us toward the changes we need to make in our lives. We should aim to listen to it, analyze it and control it, so it becomes an asset instead of a liability.
While calming our inner chatter is important in moments of distress, we must also learn to fully immerse ourselves in joy when it arises. Savoring positive experiences helps our mind recharge and strengthens our well-being.
Let’s commit to having a healthier conversation with our inner voice—and transform the most important dialogue of our conscious lives: the one we have with ourselves.
What is your inner voice telling you right now? How can you answer it with more kindness? Share it with me in the comments.
I believe in you.
See you next week.
With love,
Silvia
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