Chatter: The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It

by Ethan Kross

Awe is the wonder we feel when we encounter something powerful that we can’t easily explain.

Awe is considered a self-transcendent emotion in that it allows people to think and feel beyond their own needs and wants. This is reflected in what happens in the brain during awe-inspiring experiences:26 The neural activity associated with self-immersion decreases, similar to how the brain responds when people meditate or take psychedelics like LSD,27 which are notorious for blurring the line between a person’s sense of self and the surrounding world.

Evolutionary psychologists theorize that we developed this emotion because it helps unite us with others by reducing our self-interest,28 which provides us with a survival advantage because groups fare better against threats and can achieve loftier goals by working together.

awe leads people to perceive time as being more available, pushing them to prioritize time-intensive but highly rewarding experiences like going to a Broadway show over less time-intensive—but also less rewarding—material ones like purchasing a new watch.

compensatory control;

“It’s a way of placing myself in a match,39 ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.”

Conversely, feeling out of control often causes our chatter to spike and propels us to try to regain it.46 Which is where turning to our physical environments becomes relevant.

Seeing order in the world is comforting because it makes life easier to navigate and more predictable.

What scientists have discovered, however, is that just like Nadal we can simulate a sense of order in the world—and by extension in our own minds—by organizing our surroundings and making sure that our physical environments conform to a particular, controllable structure.

research indicates that people who live in more disadvantaged neighborhoods—such as the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, and likely the areas of Iraq where Suzanne Bott worked—experience more depression, in part because of disorder they perceive in their surroundings.

Just look at the recent proliferation of conspiracy theories online,54 in which the chaos and upheaval of events are attributed to the shadowy (and orderly) plan of diabolical forces. In this case, people are grasping for order through a narrative mechanism, but often to the detriment of others (the

for thirty-three years Steve Jobs would look at himself in the mirror each morning and ask himself if that day was the last day of his life whether he’d be happy with what he was going to do.

If you think of your inner voice as an inner tormentor, then it’s natural to fantasize about permanently muting it.