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When I ask myself, “Do I talk too much?” the invariable answer is “yes.”

But my problem is not going to get me labeled as a chatterbox anytime soon because I have no audience. You guessed it: I talk to myself too much.

I suppose everyone talks to themselves and it is only a matter of degree that they are bothered by it. However, personally, I find it annoying. I live in a situation where a day can pass without saying a word to anyone, not even a transactional hello. But, even on days when I have spoken zero words, when I reflect to the day, I feel that I have talked a good amount and all to myself.

I was curious about these inner dialogues even when in high school and that curiosity has followed me to this day. “Why do I talk to people who are not there? I wonder. “Why do I give a running auto-commentary on actions I am engaged in, even familiar ones that I can almost do by rote?” I ask myself. They seem so unnecessary. Why can’t I use Ockham’s Razor to shave off the unnecessary verbiage? Why do I talk to myself articulating my thoughts into words almost as if they are forced upon me and I have no choice for it to be otherwise.

Language is an indispensable tool of reason and analyses and I treasure it for those uses. After all, we could not even do basic inferences without language, count, calculate, or discriminate the positive and negative distinctions we make about things. Although, I feel all language should be valued, I cannot feel this way about mental chatter, nor stop it because I don’t like it.

But, I have recently discovered something that actually works and that is why I am writing this essay. First of all, I noticed that my inner dialogue did not stay on a single topic long but instead jumped from one topic to the next, never getting anywhere. When I asked myself what I was thinking about before I was aware of all this mental chatter, I discovered, surprise, surprise, that I was not thinking of anything. That was the clue that led to my big discovery.

Since I was not engaged in thought, I reasoned, I was inviting the very chatter I wished to eliminate. Therefore, in order to cancel the invitation, the best thing would be to engage my mind in something. But what? I wondered. Well, anything would do as long as it could interest me and could lead to a train-of-thought for a long enough period of time to produce a feeling of being mentally engaged.

It worked, and I am getting better and better at it. Sometimes I just select a topic randomly and start “languaging” about it, not trying to be too profound, or anything, but I do try to make sense, at least to myself. Other times, I pick a topic I am reading about and currently have an interest in, and start languaging about that with an eye toward gaining an insight that had previously escaped me about whatever that topic is.

I discovered, to my surprise, that by this simple exercise, I could get interested in my “conscious” inner dialogue, though maybe not immediately, but generally within a few minutes, and also discovered ways of viewing well-worn thoughts in new ways. Basically, even some of the random thoughts that darted before my mind, thoughts that I would otherwise find annoying, could, if held on to and subjected to a period of languaging, be viewed in a new and interesting way.

The marvel of the whole enterprise is it succeeds as well as meditation techniques without the need for a meditation cushion. Meditation is often contrived and unnatural, but this is just rooted in common sense. It is better to think about something than hop from thought to thought about this and that. It is common sense, and it works for me.

But languaging to oneself in an intentional manner is not easy. One has to be committed. So, I committed and am happy I did. When I am bored I can “think” and challenge myself to get engaged in my thought. I am not always successful but getting better and better. I can socialize with myself when none of my friends are around and like the feeling of being less in need of company.

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