Rumination is a state that many of us find ourselves in when we are sick. What is rumination? Ruminating a psychological state of focusing on our distress, on the negatives of our situation. Recently one of my favorite authors and bloggers, Toni Bernhard posted a great article about this and about how important is for us to not do this, as she said “Anything can happen at any time“. There were two comments in particular that really stood out to me:
” using my precious little energy to spin these stressful scenarios was only making an unfortunate situation worse for me.”
” All that worrying I was engaged in did, indeed, turn out to be wasted energy and served only to make an unpleasant experience worse for me.”
Those two quotes say it all. When we allow ourselves to get hung up on how bad we feel, or on the potential of how bad we might feel, or how a situation might make us feel worse, we are doing nothing but wasting the energy we could be using to feel better, to enjoy the situation we are afraid of. When we change our focus towards the positive, we save energy that we can then use to enjoy the challenges that life gives us. In Toni’s case it was a new puppy that got hurt. Just having a new puppy was a big challenge in itself, but having a hurt puppy created stress and worry, worry of how she would handle the situation, how bad things could be, etc. But, Toni changed her mindset to focus on the adventure that the new puppy brought to her life.
Simply changing our mindset, changing the words we use, makes such a huge difference. Instead of thinking of something as difficult or challenging, think of it as an adventure, as a learning opportunity. Instead of worrying about how an event might impact you negatively, think about all the positives associated with the event, about the time with friends and family, about what you may learn or gain from the situation. Instead of wasting energy worrying about negatives, focus your energy on the positives and save it to enjoy those positives.
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Donna Grant says
Great post Julie and very relevant for me at the moment. I got lost in the fear of ‘what ifs’ and had to stop myself and change my thought process. Instead of worrying about things that might never happen, I’m looking at my situation as an opportunity to feel better.
Julie says
I’m glad it helped. I know I get sucked into that vortex all too often.