Evolutionary purpose to the inner voice. Many scientists believe that language is a tool that helps us navigate the world and our ability to use language. Not only communicate with others, but to communicate with ourselves provides us with a survival Advantage. It's an incredible problem. Solving device at the most basic end of the spectrum, or inner voice is Part of what we call our verbal working memory system, it's a basic feature of the human mind that helps us keep verbal information active. In our heads, our inner voice also lets us simulate and plan.
So before big presentation I'll go over in my head. What I'm going to say what are the different talking points that I'm your run-through? I'll hear what questions the audience is going to ask me and then I'll respond in turn. I'm simulating that. Change. And I'm using my inner voice to help our inner voice, helps us control ourselves. Think about the last time you may have wanted to reach for a treat late at night, but then you think yourself, don't do it. You'll regret it in the morning. That's your inner voice. And then finally, the inner voice helps us storify. Our lives. Many of us turn, our attention inward to come up with some narrative that explains our experiences. He's that gives shape to our understanding of who we are our identity. So, sometimes it's in her voice can be an incredible source of help, but at other times, it can really sink us. First, it makes it incredibly hard for us to focus chatter consumes our attention chatter can also create friction in your relationships because you're talking about your problems over and over again and not being a great listener to others.
It can also make us more irritable and lead to something called displaced aggression. Finally, we know that chatter can have severe negative, physical health effects. You've probably heard that stress kills, that's not exactly true. A stress response is a really adaptive response. What makes Tres toxic is one remains chronically elevated over time. This is precisely what chatter does the experience, a stressor in our life, it then ends but in our mind's chatter perpetuates, it. They keep thinking about that event over and over and over again, and that keeps that trust response active in ways that can predict things like cardiovascular disease, chronic inflammation, and even cancer. It's hard to overstate, how - the implications of chatter can be The good news is there is a science-based tool kit that you can use to regain control of your inner voice.
There are things we can do on our own ways of harnessing, our relationships with other people and even ways of interacting with physical environments, one really great. Example of these tools are rituals we love having control, When you experience chatter, you often feel like your thoughts are in control of here. One of the things that we've learned through science is that we can compensate for this feeling out of control by creating order around us rituals are one way to do that. A ritual is an ordered sequence of behaviors that you rigidly perform the same way each time by engaging the same. Sequence of behaviors, every time, the same way that's giving you a sense of order and control. That can feel really good when you're mired in chatter the tennis, great Rafael Nadal. He said the hardest thing that he struggles to do on the tennis court, is manage the voices inside his head.
He engages in rituals, during breaks between play, he goes over to his bench first, he takes a sip out of one water bottle, then he takes a sip out of another, then he puts each water bottle back. Exactly where he picks them. From on a diagonal to the court. It's a ritual dance to manage as chatter. There are no individual tools that work for all people in all situations to help after chatter instead. The real challenge is to figure out what are the unique combinations of tools that work best for you. Are you eager for experiencing chatter? Absolutely not. You are a human. Experiencing chatter.