Can You Be Good at Something and Not Know It
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In that location are only two things you can truly control—your thoughts and your behavior. No 1 else tin cull either one of those for you. Only sometimes intrusive thoughts well-nigh unwanted events can flood your mind and it can feel like your thoughts are decision-making you lot.
Whether it is something that happened in the by or a time to come event yous are worried about, negative rumination robs you of your present well-being and, over time, can lead to serious problems like depression or anxiety.
Why practice nosotros ruminate on negative things?
- Sometimes we are trying to figure out a solution to a trouble.
- Sometimes we are expecting something to go wrong and trying to avert an unfavorable upshot.
- Sometimes a role of our brain isn't functioning properly and a ready of neurons gets stuck firing over and over again.
- Sometimes it is but a bad habit.
The problem with ruminating
The problem with ruminating is that most often you are focused on things going wrong instead of how to generate the solutions to resolve the situation and make things go right. If your boss got angry with you, y'all may exist ruminating about what y'all did and worrying that if yous do information technology again at that place might be serious consequences like losing your job. You might replay the scene with your dominate over and over in your head, or worry excessively about what would happen if the worst-case scenario did come to laissez passer. This kind of thinking activates your fight-or-flight response which actually shuts downwardly your creative problem-solving thought process. In guild to find the resolution that will allow you to let go of the problem, you need to disengage from the ruminative thought pattern.
Stopping thoughts, however, isn't something we are very skillful at.
Psychologists refer to this equally "the white acquit problem," because deliberate attempts to suppress thoughts can often make them more likely to resurface.one If I say to recollect of a white bear, and then tell you to stop thinking most information technology, chances are the white bear paradigm will stay in your mind. The reason it does is that at that place is no "Off" push button in the encephalon. To cease any single thought, you need to plough on or activate a different stream of thinking.
How to cease your thoughts
Following are 4 ways you lot can begin to regain control over your thoughts.
ane. Engage in an activeness on a different emotional frequency.
Feeling follows idea, and then negative rumination generates negative emotions. Worrying makes you lot feel broken-hearted. Nevertheless, psychologists know behavior tin change emotions, too. If you exercise something that you know by and large makes y'all feel better—going for a run, calling a friend, watching your favorite film, or meditating—you can raise your emotional frequency. When you are in a better mood, you tin can think more clearly and may proceeds a different perspective on the situation. Doing something that generates positive emotion also acts equally a distraction task past simply giving y'all something else to focus your attention on.
2. Write downward all the reasons why what you fear will not happen.
The bulk of the things we worry near never happen. That's because most of the fourth dimension there are lots of valid reasons why what we worry about is unlikely. Nevertheless, because our brain works on an activation/inhibition model,2 active thoughts about what could become wrong inhibit it from thinking of the reasons these thoughts may not be rational. Information technology requires a concentrated witting effort to shift this train of thought and think of the reasons why your fear isn't probable to come to pass.
three. Write down all the reasons why even if the worst-case scenario did happen, you would still be okay.
Many times we experience that if something unwanted were to happen, it would be completely devastating: We wouldn't exist able to survive, or we'd exist forever unhappy. The truth is that difficult, unwanted things happen all the time and people survive and sometimes even come out the better considering of them. Our brains are extremely adaptive to our relative circumstances: Many paraplegics, a year afterwards their injury, report but as much happiness as lottery winners.3 How well yous handle any state of affairs depends largely on your perception of your ability to cope with information technology. Instead of focusing on why you won't be okay, recollect of your strengths. Recollect of the difficult things you have already overcome in life and why you are resourceful enough to get through other challenges.
iv. Create an activeness-oriented, solution-focused reframe.
When yous have a resolution to the state of affairs, you will have both reduced the need for your brain to ruminate and given yourself something constructive to focus on instead, which replaces the ruminative thoughts. Asking yourself a few simple questions tin help you move towards generating a solution:
a. What practice I believe this situation means for me?
Because we can only move frontward in fourth dimension, we tend to think of events that happen to the states in terms of what they hateful for us in the future. If you lot have an statement with your dominate, you worry most what it will hateful for your future: Our relationship might be damaged; I might not become a promotion. (If something bad happened merely it had absolutely no bearing on your life going frontward, it wouldn't bother yous much.)
b. What do I desire to happen?
I would like to repair my human relationship with my boss. Clarity about what you desire is a prerequisite to developing a solution to any problem.
c. What can I do that is likely to bring that about?
I can ask to meet with my boss to discuss the state of affairs. I tin can brand sure to go along my temper in check in the future. I can keep to collaborate in a positive way. I tin can brand an effort to evidence my value. A plan to bargain with a trouble causes you to meet the situation differently and reduces your anxiety and the need to ruminate.
If all else fails, recall that thoughts are only thoughts, and just because y'all think something doesn't brand it true. You don't accept to act on your thoughts; you can just observe them and let the unhelpful ones become by.
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References
1. Wegner, D., & Schneider, D. 2003. The White Carry Story. Psychological Enquiry, fourteen (three/four), 326–329.
2. Pribram, K., & McGuinness, D. 1975. Arousal, Activation, and Try in the Control of Attention. Psychological Review 82 (2),116-49.
three. Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. 1978. Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative? Pers Soc Psychol, 36(8), 917-27.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-forward/201512/what-you-can-do-when-you-cant-stop-thinking-about-something
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