"The key difference between rumination and self-reflection is that rumination doesn't accomplish anything" The fundamental activity involves reviewing a though

"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.