Often, when it comes to rumination, the question is—what do we focus on?

It’s not so much about stopping the thoughts from happening, but detaching from them. One of the simplest ways to detach from a thought is to find something else to focus on.

Simply give yourself a real problem to solve.

A lot of automatic negative thoughts are about things you can do nothing about—powerless things that you can’t control.

As a result, you just sit there ruminating and dwelling on these things when you could actually find something to do.

What you want is something particularly tricky but doable—something that you will solve, but it really takes a lot of brainpower and attention.

Playing a game of chess, for example, building a bookshelf, trying out a new exercise routine—anything new, difficult, or complex is a great way to redirect that focus.

You can’t have both the thoughts and the focus at the same time.

This shift towards a problem at hand also gives you the sense of actually having power over something—doing something productive, actually making an impact.

One of the downsides and more painful elements of negative thoughts is that you’re often stuck with the fact that you can’t do anything about it.

If, for example, you’re ruminating on how your ex-girlfriend doesn’t love you anymore, there’s no problem to be solved.

You can’t do anything with that information.

Whereas, if you pull out a Sudoku puzzle, you might actually be able to solve it.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here: