Dr. Ethan Kross: How To Harness The Voice In Your Head

The Guide To Working With Your Internal Chatter To Make Your Life Better

This Pirate Profile is inspired by Dr. Ethan Kross on Christopher Lochhead's Follow Your Different podcast.

Pirate Profiles is a series by Category Pirates spotlighting legendary Category Designers across a wide range of industries and disciplines.

In these Pirate Profiles, you will discover:

• Untold stories of Category Designers who shaped the world we live in today (that you probably have never heard of before—but whose products, services, and platforms you have used thousands of times!).

• The radically different POVs these Category Designers evangelized in the world—and the obstacles they had to overcome to move people’s thinking FROM where it was TO somewhere new.

• Their strategies, frameworks, and mental models for successfully designing & dominating new categories of consequence.

Every legendary entrepreneur, executive, investor, and creator of any kind is a Category Designer.

We want to tell their stories—because the best way to become a Pirate is to study other Pirates.

ARRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

We all have a little voice in our heads.

It reflects the whole gamut of human emotion—judgment, excitement, boredom, love, hate, anger, and all the feelings in between. But it rarely shuts up. In fact, one study found that our inner voice speaks at a rate equivalent to speaking 4,000 words per minute out loud.

Your inner voice sometimes encourages you to do legendary stuff.

But more often than not, it's a negative voice that brings you down. Annoying as it can be, the voice in our heads is also radically important because we use it to:

• Simulate and plan for the future

• Prepare for things like presentations, job interviews, and marriage proposals

• Push ourselves to keep going (to do a few more reps at the gym or give a relationship another chance)

• Tell ourselves stories about our experiences in the world to understand who we are

Most importantly, you can channel your self-talk to make your life better.

According to the award-winning psychologist, Dr. Ethan Kross, it's possible to change the conversations you have with yourself to improve your life.

All it takes is a few science-based tools and techniques that Kross shares in his best-selling book, CHATTER: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters and How to Harness It. There, he defines the inner voice as the ability to silently use language to reflect on our lives. And he believes this power distinguishes us from every other animal species.

We’re summarizing the key points Kross shared during his conversation on Pirate Christopher’s Follow Your Different podcast to show the many ways you can use this amazing tool of the mind.