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Goes to identity. Telling people not to do this is pointless unless you can suggest another way to construct identity. A person without a past is... an interest

Goes to identity. Telling people not to do this is pointless unless you can suggest another way to construct identity. A person without a past is... an interesting thought experiment, but not something that exists in the real world. Identity builds up in layers -- what is your nation, your religion, your favorite team, your hometown, your college, your spouse, your child. If you give all of that up, then who are you? What are your goals? What do you believe in? What are you willing to fight for? What gives life meaning? A better bit of advice is "avoid ruminating" and this applies to every thought, not just the ones that involve the past. But even that is not easy, especially for those who create things, since to create something you have to ruminate on it heavily, for months or years -- this is probably why there is an overlap between depression and creativity.

jschwartzi 8y ago
The key difference between rumination and self-reflection is that rumination doesn't accomplish anything. As soon as you finish examining whatever you were examining, you're right back at square one with no new insights. It's essentially beating yourself up for doing the best you can. Self-reflection seems like rumination, but the goal is to learn something from whatever you're examining. To take a lesson from it, if there is a lesson. Not every moment is a teachable moment. If you're lucky, many of them are. Sometimes an experience is just an experience, and there's nothing different you could or should have done. Take, for example, the numerous times I've been honked at in traffic. Is there some hidden meaning in those beeps? Should I have been paying more attention in that moment? Or did I make an honest mistake? If it's an honest mistake, there's nothing I can really do. No magical training regimen will make me an infallible driver, so I have to move on. It's tempting in some cases to keep looking for a lesson. Some experiences will never contain a lesson no matter how hard you look. Rumination is cultivating the desert of those experiences.
- lkrubner 8y ago
  "The key difference between rumination and self-reflection is that rumination doesn't accomplish anything" The fundamental activity involves reviewing a thought over and over again, sometimes thousands of times over many years. Sometimes this leads to a new painting, a new novel, a new movie script, a new piece of software, or a new insight about something that happened to you as a child. Sometimes a person fails to make any progress. You write "The key difference" but these are words without meaning. Sometimes you ruminate on a novel you are writing, but you can't figure out the ending, so you accomplish nothing. Sometimes you ruminate on that time you insulted your alcoholic brother and the next month he killed himself, but this time, reviewing the memory, you recall that he'd said he was going to kill himself long before, so it wasn't really your fault. There is a reason why therapists often want to talk about a person's childhood -- sometimes reviewing the past leads to a new insight. Sometimes it doesn't. You can't judge the value of the activity simply by whether it produces something. Sometimes it will and sometimes it won't.

jschwartzi 8y ago

The key difference between rumination and self-reflection is that rumination doesn't accomplish anything. As soon as you finish examining whatever you were examining, you're right back at square one with no new insights. It's essentially beating yourself up for doing the best you can. Self-reflection seems like rumination, but the goal is to learn something from whatever you're examining. To take a lesson from it, if there is a lesson. Not every moment is a teachable moment. If you're lucky, many of them are. Sometimes an experience is just an experience, and there's nothing different you could or should have done. Take, for example, the numerous times I've been honked at in traffic. Is there some hidden meaning in those beeps? Should I have been paying more attention in that moment? Or did I make an honest mistake? If it's an honest mistake, there's nothing I can really do. No magical training regimen will make me an infallible driver, so I have to move on. It's tempting in some cases to keep looking for a lesson. Some experiences will never contain a lesson no matter how hard you look. Rumination is cultivating the desert of those experiences.

lkrubner 8y ago
"The key difference between rumination and self-reflection is that rumination doesn't accomplish anything" The fundamental activity involves reviewing a thought over and over again, sometimes thousands of times over many years. Sometimes this leads to a new painting, a new novel, a new movie script, a new piece of software, or a new insight about something that happened to you as a child. Sometimes a person fails to make any progress. You write "The key difference" but these are words without meaning. Sometimes you ruminate on a novel you are writing, but you can't figure out the ending, so you accomplish nothing. Sometimes you ruminate on that time you insulted your alcoholic brother and the next month he killed himself, but this time, reviewing the memory, you recall that he'd said he was going to kill himself long before, so it wasn't really your fault. There is a reason why therapists often want to talk about a person's childhood -- sometimes reviewing the past leads to a new insight. Sometimes it doesn't. You can't judge the value of the activity simply by whether it produces something. Sometimes it will and sometimes it won't.