 G'day, May 40 here. So I've been reading this interesting book fairly practical by an academic. It's called chatter the voice in our head why it matters and How to harness it, right? So my mind's like a dangerous neighborhood that I should not enter alone So often just a lot of chatter going on in in my head. So I like this book a lot of Information about why we we experience all this chatter and then what does it really mean and how to harness it? So it just came out last year. So here's the story that really grabbed my attention about halfway through the book. There was Anthropologists who went to Papua New Guinea, which is just north of Australia where I grew up and He lived with the tribes there to experience their culture firsthand and he noticed that when the natives When I'm fishing expeditions in safe shallow lagoons They simply grabbed their fishing spears and the nets and they hopped into their canoes and they glided off but when they fished in shark-infested Unpredictable waterways until they found their preferred spots Right they behave completely differently so before setting off they offered food to their ancestors They rubbed herbs on their canoes. They chanted magical spells Then they offered more magical incantations when they were out on the open sea Right. So you notice with a lot of football players That they engage in a lot of rituals before a game because I mean you can get killed playing football It's it's very intense. So the more dangerous the more formidable the more disquieting The activity you're about to participate in the more likely you're going to use rituals So Southwest Airlines they rebranded in 2014 the new hardship logo on the sides of its planes and Then pilots just began touching the logo as they stepped on board and this just spread throughout the company It it acts as a source of comfort and facing like daily inescapable risks of flight So pretty much all cultures have these these transmitted folkways of dealing with formidable Circumcantice so all of fame third baseman Wade Boggs he fielded precisely 150 ground balls He ran wind sprints at exactly 7 17 p.m. Before a 7 35 start time and he ate chicken before every game 33 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 so we evolved retro rituals and we often use religion to Help us to confront Painful difficult challenging circumstances. So rituals of which orthodox Judaism has them in absolute abundance All right, they help us manage our inner voices. All right. They're they're like a chatter reducing cocktail All right, they direct our attention away from what's bothering us They they place demands on our working memory carry out the tasks of the ritual and that leaves less room for anxiety and the negative inner voice and That's why pregame pregame rituals are dominant in sports Rituals provide us with a sense of order. What does Jordan Peterson talk about clean your room? Right because when we do a ritual we're performing behaviors we can control so often in the workplace When I had something particularly formidable that I had to take care of I often like to do something simpler first Something that I could control like I could clean my area of my desk do some elementary tasks You know things that I can control and then off I go so We we can't control what happens to our children throughout their lives But when they are born we can we can baptize them or we can circumcise them or we can provide some Perform some other ritual that provides us with an illusion of control So rituals almost always have meaning they connect us with other people we get energy from our connections with other people and They purport to connect us to powers greater than ourselves that are greater than our individual concerns So rituals help us to feel connected to the transcendent to that which is truly important that which you know Goes back in time connects us to our immunity Community and that fulfills our emotional needs and it serves as a hedge against isolation so rituals often furnishes with awe which kind of broaden our perspective in Ways that tend to minimize how preoccupied we are by our temporary concerns and So rituals activate the placebo mechanism if we believe that these rituals help us then they usually do so the brain is constantly monitor monitoring Whether or not we're achieving our goals and if we're making substantial progress towards our goals Most of us are going to be happy if we're not making progress towards our goals Most of us going to be depressed so depression and emotions are usually Helping us that they're telling us whether or not we're progressing to the life that we want So our brain is like a thermostat and when discrepancies emerge between Our current state and our desired state All right, the thermostat brings the temperature down and rituals is one way that we do this So we perform rituals within a culture which is like the invisible air we breathe And so we inhale these beliefs and practices that that influence our mind and our behavior So culture or religion these are systems That give us tools to help us combat our inner chatter My father I was just looking at my father never wrote any books about depression Because prior to the 1980s most mental health issues were around anxiety and stress And then the pharmaceutical industry came out with all these medications for depression And then all sorts of things which used to be called anxiety were now called depression because then Psychiatrists could prescribe medication for it so my father wrote all these books on stress and anxiety, but I just looked it up I just put in Desmond for depression and He talked very very little about depression like he talks about dealing with stress Talks about in the Garden of Gethsemane He talks about eating right for type 2 diabetes And he talks about the final rye roller coaster So do you know what the final roller coaster is? That's my dad's 2010 book the final roller coaster when Elijah and Jezebel ride again My dad's pretty good with the titles so Chatter Should service right when we experience fear or anxiety or anger or distress this is Frequently useful in small doses because these emotions mobilize us to respond effectively to changes in our environment So a lot of the time our inner voice is valuable blessings to you Elliot Blatt So we usually experience pain for a reason we usually experience fear for a reason anxiety for a reason because all these things warn us of danger They signal us to take action and this provides us with survival advantages people who have these Instincts are more likely to survive to reproduce the next generation so Each year a small number of people are born with a genetic mutation that makes it impossible for them to feel pain as The result they almost always die young So you wouldn't want to live without this inner voice that will upset you much of the time Because that would be like going out on the sea without a runner laponius maximus meridius Blessings upon you and upon your family May the sun shine upon you may the cool breeze ease your transition through life So rituals it's a way of imposing order on our surroundings to help us to feel more comfortable and to think more clearly and to perform at higher levels and Then many of our beliefs about God and ultimate redemption and salvation They can also serve to comfort us in our distress so We usually want kind of a calming distance between our thoughts and our experiences and This is useful when chatter strikes, but when it comes to joy right we want the opposite We want to be immersed in life's most treasured moments to save them. But anyway at the back of this book He lists tools that you can implement on your own to deal with chatter So he talks about the ability to step back from the echo chamber of your mind So to here's one tool that I use to deal with chatter. I usually leave an audible book running all night So when I wake up, I don't have to get anxious that I'm awake and think about getting up and watching Netflix I can just you know, let Steven Cockin's volumes on Stalin just you know, roll on by or particularly like books on World War two That's how I get it get through the night. So Tools you can implement on your own to deal with chatter use distance self-talk So when you try to work through a difficult experience use your name and the second person you So when I was thinking about should I move to Sydney? I thought about oh, you know, what advice Would I give to a friend in my situation who was thinking of doing this? So when we can create distance Such as Imagine advising a friend that tends to calm down the chatter. I Find listening to an audible Talmud really has a coming effect on me So what would you say to a friend experience the same problem as you think about the advice you give that person apply to yourself? Broaden your perspective. So when we've got chatter going on in our minds Usually means we're narrowly focusing on problems. We're experiencing and I am really susceptible to this I couldn't find a power cord down an hour ago. It's like I've got to find this power cord I can't do anything else until I get my hands on this power cord. It's supposed to be right here and it was right there It was just under a rats nest of other power cords So I get like very focused if I've gotten out of the sea and I'm feeling sticky Like I'm not gonna be happy to like like get home and take a shower and like cleanse all the salt off And then I'll be able to think more broadly So So if you broaden your perspective that usually helps dealing with chatter So you can think about how the experience you're worrying about compares with other adverse events that you've endured How it fits into the broader scheme of your life and the world and how other people you admire would respond to the same situation So that that may even just make me more anxious like oh people I admire they deal with this missing power cord much more calmly But I've got to get it fixed right now, and I can't think about anything else. So I find this bloody cord I Get very like fixated Many of my employer said this I get fixated on one thing and I ignore ignore the bigger picture Then reframe your experience as a challenge So track chatter is triggered when we interpret a situation as a threat So if we reinterpret the situation as a challenge that we can handle For reminding yourself of how you've succeeded in similar situations in the past Okay, I like that. Okay. There's a tool as you can implement on your own All right tools for receiving chatter support build a board of advisors And so I've done that for about as long as I've been online Like the Luke Ford advisory committee So I'm constantly running things by other people because I often have really bad judgment and I often lack common sense So I find the right people to talk to So some people are skilled at advising on work problems other people are better suited on interpersonal problems So that's the other good thing about belonging to a church or a synagogue or to a club Belonging right community. It's easier to then turn to people for advice Seek out physical contact. You need a hug, bro right Now get a hug or even a handshake or a massage Look at a photo of a loved one. Yeah, thinking about people you love Looking at a photo of someone I love that has a really good effect on me That's that's one tool for effective communication is over the camera put a picture of someone you love right that helps you to Make your case more effectively Because just looking at a camera most people can't look at a camera and and communicate effectively But if it's not a camera you're looking at it's really this this person that you love that changes you I when you think about how much you love someone it changes your state It reminds you of your vulnerabilities It reminds you of how How vulnerable you are How you need other people and how you don't want to do anything that damages those connections It Kind of calms you down thinking about someone I love right now Makes you happy Makes you grateful right when you come from a place of gratitude You usually make better decisions and all these things kind of help you get more and more in touch with reality and If you embrace a comforting teddy bear or a security blanket. Yeah, so often when things get really bad I just like crawl into bed I Might not emerge for 20 minutes or two hours, but a lot of comfort from crawling in the bed Perform a ritual with others. So yeah, go to synagogue or go to church pray so detailed Tools that involve the environment so create order in your environment clean your room, bro Because when we experience shatter we feel like we're losing control now thoughts start to spiral right So we can boost our sense of control by imposing order on our surroundings We can tidy up our workspace our home space. We can make a list. We can arrange objects then second tool for Controlling chatter increased your exposure to green spaces. Yeah So I think one reason they're so ecstatic during my two months in Australia is that you know It's outside in nature like even Sydney. There's the biggest city in Australia. There are just so many parks and such spectacular oceans So spending time in green spaces helps replenish the brain's limited attentional reserves So go for a walk in a tree line street. Lots of beautiful trees in Beverly Hills Stare at a photograph. So sometimes I just like to look at video of Yosemite I think Yosemite is the most beautiful place on earth Or just listen to a sound machine that conveys natural sounds So you can surround the spaces in which you live and work with greenery and And and that's a boon to the inner voice Then three seek out awe inspiring experiences like listen to Handel's Messiah go to church go to an awesome synagogue Transcend your current concerns and that puts things in perspective So when I flew out of Los Angeles like everything I was worried about in LA just sort of disappeared, you know Like travel is immensely broadening and provides perspective. So Getting out into nature, you know, looking at a piece of art and turning into awesome music like Finding out what instills a sense of awe in you and then cultivate that emotion when you find your internal dialogue spiraling So I also try to create spaces around me that elicit feelings of awe each time I glance at them So I have all these beautiful inspiring Posters all right, and I look at the Western Wall in Jerusalem look at the holy city of Jerusalem's You know so much rich 3,000 years of history and it fills me with a feeling of awe Makes me feel connected to a people with a particular history and It kind of puts everything else in perspective Bye-bye