5 Tips to Control Chatter (Before They Control You)
What is “chatter?”
Before we get to the meat and potatoes of this inspired post by Ethan Kross, we should define “chatter.”
“Chatter” is basically how we talk to ourselves every day. It’s our inner dialogue. It’s that voice inside our head that either helps or harms us throughout the day.
So why is this important?
We can’t help it but most of us have chatter in our heads, especially as teachers.
Did I lose my cool with my students?
Did I come off as passive-aggressive with my coworker?
Will I ever become a great teacher?
There are so many more questions that got through our heads and I’m here to give you 5 tips inspired by Ethan Kross’ book, Chatter.
I hope these 5 tips will help you all control the chatter in your heads!
1) Become a Fly on the Wall
We’ve all heard of social distancing but have you heard of “self-distancing?”
Kross conducted a study to find out how self-distancing from our perspectives could help with our emotions.
Kross, Ozlem Ayduk, and Walter Mischel (the groundbreaking scientist famous for the “marshmallow test") banded together and had one group (“immersers”) talk through a traumatic experience, while the other group (“distancers”) talked through a similar experience but through the eyes of a fly on the wall.
The “immersers” told their story from the first-person narrative and got trapped in their vortex of emotions.
The “distancers” told their story from the third-person narrative, seemed to empathize with everyone involved, and saw the entire experience more clearly through this lens.
In the end, the “distancers” even emerged from their traumatic experiences with a constructive story.
This makes me wonder why 3rd person party intervention can be so effective.
Tip: The next time something doesn’t go how you had planned (like a lesson or interaction with a student, parent, or coworker), try replaying the same memory but through the lens of a fly on the wall.
Warning: Use this strategy for negative emotionally charged experiences, not positive ones. You run the risk of downplaying your achievements this way and on this website, we’re here to build each other up. Be proud of your hard work.
2) Increase Green Exposure
When I mean green exposure, I don’t mean exposing yourself to gamma radiation to become the Hulk.
This is just an excuse for you green thumbs (and aspiring green thumbs) to incorporate some nature into the classroom.
In 1963, the Chicago Housing Authority completed construction for the Robert Taylor Homes, a series of 16-story concrete towers. These buildings in Chicago were originally designed with a bunch of greenery around them. Over time, the green areas were not maintained so they became muddy, and eventually paved over with asphalt.
This is important because this community which was once fully surrounded by grass and trees, was reduced to the oversight over nothing but concrete.
Then came Ming Kuo in the 1990s, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois.
Her team was interested in restoring the greenery around the towers but wanted to see the impact of nature on its tenants.
After restoring greenery around some of the buildings, Kuo asked individuals across the entire community questions such as:
Do you know your neighbors?
Do you speak to them and know their names?
Could you rely on them in an emergency?
Guess what?
Those who lived in the “green buildings” reported positive responses, especially to the questions related to emergencies.
Those who lived in buildings that did not have access to the green restoration reported more aggressive behaviors.
In other words, just having a window with a view over trees and grass acted like a stress manager!
But wait there’s more!
In 2007, Marc Berman and his colleagues at the University of Michigan (I hate you Tom Brady) conducted a study by asking participants to repeat several strings of numbers of various lengths backward.
Half of the participants went for an hour's walk in an arboretum.
The other half went for an hour's walk on a street downtown.
After an hour, all participants performed the attention task and those who walked through nature had better short-term memory than those who took the urban route.
I know what you’re probably thinking.
What if it’s cold outside or you live in the city?
To answer the first part, the study claims that your memory and attention still improve “weather” it’s hot or cold outside.
For the second part, Berman and his team tested this theory by having subjects sit indoors and look at pictures of either scenes from downtown or nature.
Guess what happened?
The participants who virtually watched scenes of nature still outperformed the ones who saw urban pictures by 20%!
Tip: Unless you work at a school that is surrounded by lots of green spaces for easy access to short nature walks with the students, try putting up high-quality pictures of nature on the classroom walls. You can even use nature screensavers on the projector to stimulate higher attention spans throughout the day. Or bring plants into the classroom and make a “botanist” classroom job out of it too!
Source: https://news.umich.edu/going-outsideeven-in-the-coldimproves-memory-attention/
3) Seek Awe-Inspiring Experiences
Kross mentions an experiment that made people much happier and more satisfied with life across the board.
Does that sound like something you’d be interested in?
Then seek awe-inspiring experiences!
Awe is defined as a type of wonder that is so powerful that we cannot explain it. It’s considered a self-transcendent emotion that allows us to think and feel beyond our needs and wants.
You can experience this while watching a beautiful sunset, attending a Bruce Springsteen concert, or reading an Emily Dickinson poem.
Whether it is found in nature, museum, or anywhere in between, go find it!
That study that Kross mentioned took place at the University of California, Berkeley, and was led by psychologist Craig Anderson.
This study took a bunch of participants who had been reported to have PTSD and had them fill out a questionnaire before taking off on a four-day rafting trip, and a week after the trip was complete.
The rafting trip consisted of rafting and hiking up riverbanks while visiting prehistoric petroglyphs made thousands of years ago along the way.
When Anderson crunched the numbers, he found out that the awe-inspiring moments produced a decline in stress and PTSD levels, and improved overall happiness, life satisfaction, and a sense of belonging.
Tip: Either seek adventures yourself or show videos to your students of these incredible experiences! Have them experience awe-inspiring moments secondhand and plant the seed for them to experience them firsthand. While you’re at it, see if you can arrange the next field trip to produce awe for you and the class.
4) Create Order in Your Environment
Order, order! Don’t you want to be the judge ruling your life?
Just like Marie Kondo, you can empower yourself by tidying up the things around you.
Kross mentions how Rafael Nadal, the Spanish tennis superstar, stepped onto the clay courts during the French Open finals in 2018.
First, he would walk across the court to his bench with only a single racket in his hand.
Then, he would take off his jacket while facing the crowd, followed by some bouncing on his feet.
Finally, he would place his tournament ID card on his bench facing up, and carefully arrange his water bottles to be perfectly aligned with the front of his bench.
Some may call this “OCD” but not according to Nadal, and many athletes for that matter.
Nadal’s words were, “It’s a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.”
Well said, Nadal. Oh, and he won the French Open title that day.
So why does Nadal, and pretty much every athlete engage in what is known as compensatory control?
It gives people the perception of control and how we can influence the outcomes in our lives and the world around us to a certain degree. By seeking order around us, we make life more navigatable and predictable, which makes it more comforting.
This reminds me of the speech a Navy Seal Admiral McRaven gave in front of THE University of Texas at Austin (hook ‘em all day baby) about making your bed every morning.
I’ll attach the short video below and while I don’t agree that one little task translates to bigger tasks (a.k.a. slippery slope fallacy), I think it can a powerful ritual (read on to the next section) that can start the day with creating a sense of order.
Tip: Create some sort of order in your life by not letting life toss you around. Organize your desk and the classroom. You can even try redecorating it to give the room a new feel for yourself and the students. Take control. Take control. Take control. No one will do it for you!
5) Don’t Stop Believin’ (In Rituals)
“Don’t stop… Believin!’ Hold on to that feelin!’”
This lesson is about rituals and I know what some of you may be thinking.
Rituals? Like with hooded robes? In a dark room? With lit candles?
I mean that’s definitely one kind of ritual but rituals are honestly anything that we do in a sequence that is infused with meaning. Like the last lesson, rituals also help us create a sense of order in our environments as we perform behaviors that we can control.
Waking up and drinking coffee while you read a book every day is a ritual. In the Western culture, wearing black to a funeral is a ritual. Singing happy birthday to a special kid and blowing out candles is a ritual too.
We use rituals on a daily basis and as teachers, we’re no different.
One case study reported that performing rituals helped with anxiety. The experiment had people either perform a ritual or not, before singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey in front of strangers. During the performance, participants had their heart rate monitored, along with their self-reported anxiety.
The ritual?
Draw a picture of how the participant felt before their performance
Sprinkle salt in their drawing
Count up to five out loud
Crinkle up their paper
Throw the paper in the trash
After the ritual, the participants walked into a room with a television screen connected to a Nintendo Wii and a microphone.
Obviously, the ones who performed the ritual did better overall or else I wouldn’t have written this to prove my point.
The experiment concluded that those who did the rituals had reduced anxiety, lower elevated heart rates, and better performance because the rituals were imbued with symbolic meaning.
Whether or not you are a spiritual kind of person, rituals work.
Tip: Start believing in rituals and if you don’t have one, make one up. Create classroom routines like morning songs or the handshake greetings this teacher uses. Just make the routine meaningful for you and the students!
Source: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=51401
