Lowering the Volume on Negative Mind Chatter
By Anna Enright, DNP, PCNS-BC
It wasn’t until I started my daily meditation practice that I realized how active my mind was. Trying to quiet my mind felt truly impossible and often left me frustrated. With practice, I have learned to notice my thoughts without judging them as good or bad and seeing them as just thoughts. This may sound simple, but it’s not!
Even after more than 10 plus years of mindfulness training and daily practice, there are many days where I get caught up in my “mind chatter”. Typically, I either get stuck in the past, wishing I had done or said something different or in the future hoping for a certain outcome. This process is productive if I’m engaged in a reflection or strategizing for an upcoming event, however often my mind chatter is full of self-doubt and worry which does not serve me well.
In his book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, Kross (2021) describes mind chatter as the process we often get stuck in when we ruminate, worry, or catastrophize. It can involve getting stuck in the past or worrying about the future. Chatter refers to those negative thought loops that characterize the experience of being stuck. According to a recent study, we have 6,200 thoughts a day (Tseng & Poppenk, 2020). In another well-known study, by Harvard researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Dan Gilbert (2010), using an iPhone app to track happiness, they found that our minds wander about 50% of the time and this is detrimental to our wellbeing. This is a huge amount of chatter to harness!
What we think has an impact on how we feel, and ultimately on our behavior. Directing the mind to the present moment or ignoring a busy mind is a skill that can be trained. This attention training has been shown to enhance performance. As an athlete, you may be familiar with the feeling of “being in the zone”, runner’s high or flow. The Zone, or a Flow State, is a state of total immersion in a task. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was the first to identify and research Flow. He defines flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (1990). This state is associated with peak performance. So, how can we create opportunities which increase our chances of entering into a Flow state? One thing that will help is understanding and harnessing our negative mind chatter.
There are two conditions that increase negative mind chatter: 1) when there is uncertainty and 2) when personal outcome is at risk. When an athlete is practicing and having fun with their friends, there is likely minimal mind chatter happening. However, once the athlete encounters a challenge (competition, performance, etc.), the uncertainty of the outcome can trigger negative “what if” thoughts and other unhelpful chatter. Typical themes for athletes are: Will I meet expectations? What if I make a mistake? Will I disappoint my coach, my parents, myself? What if I really mess up and embarrass myself? Have I wasted my training and time?
Most athletes want the mind chatter to go away or wish they had more confidence. However in challenging moments, acknowledging and accepting our negative mind chatter has been shown to be most effective at ultimately harnessing it. The goal is to become aware of it and make room for it, but not let it overwhelm or take control of our mental state.
One way to harness it is to treat this chatter as if it’s another entity altogether. Imagine, if you will, that this mind chatter is nothing more than a radio that’s playing in your head. Treating this chatter as an entity that’s trying to intrude and undermine the moment, will allow you to better control it. It’s impossible to turn this radio off, but we can turn the volume down.
Skill: A practice in harnessing mind chatter
Take a moment to think about what thoughts come up when there is something at stake and list them. Remind yourself that mind chatter is more concerned about the outcome than the process. Mind chatter does not care about your performance. It’s an unwelcome guest that you need to respect, but ignore; an annoying song you need to fade into the background.
Now that there is awareness of the negative mind chatter:
Shift the focus to process goals. What technique is needed at this moment? What energy state is needed in this moment, and has the body been given the fuel it needs to perform at its best?
Find a way to acknowledge the negative mind chatter and create distance. Some examples are: “thank you, not now,” “thank you, next,” and “I hear you, not now.”
Try distanced self-talk. Using your name and other non-first-person pronouns, like “you,” or “he,” or “she,” coach yourself through the situation as if you are talking with another person. For example: “Come on Anna, you got this!! You’ve trained hard! You can do this!”
Meditate. Find a quiet place and shift your focus to the breath, body sensations, or sound in a curious, non-judging manner. Notice how you feel. Bring in kindness to the moment. Doing this consistently over time will increase awareness to the moment-to-moment experience and allow for a more skillful response to the moment. What will serve me now?
Tap into the relaxation response. Negative mind chatter often results in increased anxiety, which can be calmed with deep breaths. Focus on the breath entering and leaving your body. The strategy of Box Breathing can be helpful here. Breathe in, to the count of 4, hold the breath to the count of 4, breathe out to the count of 4, hold the breath to the count of 4, and repeat three to five cycles.
In conclusion, remember that negative mind chatter is inevitable when there is uncertainty and there is something at stake. Expect that it will accompany you in challenging settings, and that’s okay. Negative mind chatter is part of the athletic experience. The goal is to acknowledge it, befriend it, and lower its volume. Focusing on small process goals will ground you in the present. Talk to yourself using your name or non-first-person pronouns and always, don’t forget to deepen your breath!
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Csikzentmihaly, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience (Vol. 1990). New York: Harper & Row.
Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932-932.
Kross, E. (2021). Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It. Penguin Random House LLC. New York.
Tseng, J., & Poppenk, J. (2020). Brain meta-state transitions demarcate thoughts across task contexts exposing the mental noise of trait neuroticism. Nature communications, 11(1), 1-12.
