5 Powerful Ways To Stop Ruminating About The Past

How Do I Stop Obsessive Rumination

Obsessive rumination is easier to stop when you shift your focus away from how other people react to you and towards positive future-oriented activities that will improve your life and career, such as your goals, your plans, and your actions and towards serving others.

Do you get stuck ruminating over how you should have reacted, what you could have said, or how limited you think you are? Rumination is the enemy of confidence, action-taking, and productivity.

When you don’t deal with rumination, you waste your precious time and energy on limiting thoughts, you deplete your courage, and increase your non-productive stress.

Overthinking is not problem-solving, is not reflection, and is not self-improvement. It is repetitive thinking over something negative.

How do you stop ruminating?

Although mindfulness and finding distractions are useful to deal with rumination, they are not always effective.

The goal is to not only better cope with the burden of constantly reliving bad feelings and situations, but to also block it from stealing your zest for life.

Here are the five ways I’ve used in my life to quickly crush rumination without mindfulness or distractions.

1. Focus on serving others.

When you are focused on how you can support other people, you aren’t as concerned about your small mistakes or obsessed over details. Instead, you become more empathetic, you read other people better, and you ignite your courage to help others.

2. Get an exciting goal.

Get really clear on what exciting project you have in that moment. The positivity and progress towards a major goal will get you into the right state of mind.

3. Enlist support to problem-solve.

Don’t go through hard times on your own. Recruit the right person to help you solve your problem, not just to tell you that there is no need to ruminate. When you enlist support, you take away a lot of the pressure from your shoulders.

4. Plan a solution now.

If you find yourself ruminating about your mistakes or limitations, immediately make a plan to fix the problem, and then execute your plan. When you get busy problem-solving you don’t ruminate over your mistakes and past because you are busy planning for a better future.

5. Make yourself proud.

Focus on what problem-solving actions would make you proud of yourself. That way, you direct your attention to what you can control and have something to feel good about.

Next time you get stuck in repetitive negative thoughts about what happened, focus on serving, get some paper and start strategizing your better future with someone you trust. If you are in that state of mind, rumination will stay away. And as you start moving towards your better future, the momentum and positive outlook will keep your mind clear from unproductive dwelling.