The mind is like the eye in the sense that it can only focus on one thing at a time. One of the ways that being more active helps with rumination is that it gives your mind other things to engage with.
You can't stop ruminating by trying to stop ruminating. It's like anxiety. Anxiety gets its power from the way you react to it. You have an emotional reaction - you resist it - and that feeds it. Likewise, with rumination - the more you recoil from it or try to fight it, the more power you give it.
One of the best ways of dealing with anxiety is exposure. You deliberately go into situations where you know you will experience anxiety. Then, when you're in that situation and you're anxious, you stay and you do things in that situation, then, after a while, you leave. The key thing is that you're not running away. You're leaving when you're ready. You're teaching yourself that there is no threat.
This whole approach, of dealing with challenging mental states by not fighting, and even embracing them, is a bit counter-intuitive. I remember learning about the strategies of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 'The Happiness Trap' by Russ Harris, and he writes in the book that you need to forget the idea that practicing these techniques is going to make you feel better. They will help you to feel better but you can't do them with that in mind, because they don't work like that. You have to do them because they are good things to do. You have to have a higher goal than just feeling pleasure and avoiding pain.
In a way, it's kind of discouraging that you can't use these strategies to get what you want - to fix yourself - but when you understand that principle of doing things because they're worthwhile, it opens up a new world. The way forward lies in doing the things in quadrant 2 of Stephen Covey's time management matrix - the things that are important but not urgent...things like learning, planning, reflecting, creating, engaging with people and activities, pursuing spiritual growth.
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