Notice what happens in your body the next time you catch yourself replaying something you wish you’d done differently. 

There’s a kind of negative energy to it – constricting and heavy. You run the scene again. You imagine the version where you said the better thing, made the smarter choice, didn’t miss the sign. And then you beat yourself up.

That energy usually turns into judgment and further away from anything useful.

Here is what I would love for you to pay attention to…the difference between reflecting and ruminating.

Reflection asks: what happened, and what can I learn from it? It’s curious. It’s specific. It has an endpoint.  It is light. It is smart. Lesson learned, and allows you to let go and be excited about the future (hopefully).

Rumination asks: why am I like this? It’s depleting. It loops. It doesn’t resolve; it just recycles the same discomfort, and it lingers. 

I say this because I used to be the self judging ruminating person and I see it constantly, in the people I work with: we mistake the intensity of our self-criticism for accountability. As if beating ourselves up harder means we’ve really learned the lesson. But that’s not how it works. Shame and judgment actually make it less likely you’ll act differently next time, because now the memory is tangled up with pain, and some part of you just wants to avoid thinking about it altogether.

None of this means ignoring what didn’t go well. That matters. If you don’t look honestly at what happened, you’re likely to walk right back into the same pattern. The goal isn’t to avoid the lesson; it’s approaching it with a different quality of attention.

So the practice is this: look at what happened. Get specific about it. Notice what you’d do differently, or what you want to remember for next time. Maybe even write down a plan: a concrete “if this happens again, I’ll try this instead.” And then let it go. Not because it didn’t matter, but because you’ve already taken what it had to offer you.

Holding onto the past isn’t discipline. It’s just weight you’re carrying for no reason.

The lighter version…notice, learn, plan, release.  This takes real practice, especially if rehashing has become a habit. But it’s a much more direct path to actually doing things differently. Rumination feels like effort, but it rarely produces change. Clean reflection, followed by release, does.

Here is a question to sit with….

What is one thing you keep rehashing and judging yourself for it?  And what would your very next step look like if you learned the lesson, make a different plan and just let it go?

Warmly

Linda