Break Free From Negative Thinking

The secret to feeling happier and more confident is learning to let go of the thoughts that weigh you down. These study-backe d strategies will bust you out of a rumination deadlock and clear your mind.

- Mirel Ketchiff

We’ve all been there: You keep dwelling on a situation that didn’t go your way. In fact, the more you try not to think about it, the more obsessed with it you become. This is called rumination, and scientists say it’s actually wired into our DNA.

“Your brain is designed to help you survive, so it hones in on threats and worries,” says Todd Kashdan, Ph.D., the coauthor of The Upside of Your Dark Side. But because most of the problems we face aren’t the life-or-death scenarios our cavewoman ancestors faced, they don’t have clear, straightforward solutions, he says. Instead, that fight you had with your partner or the promotion you didn’t get becomes something you rehash in your mind over and over, making you miserable.

“Rumination leads you to feel more anxious, pessimistic, and out of control, all of which make it even harder to solve the problem,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., a professor in the psychology department at the University of California, Riverside. You become bogged down in negativity and never get any closure. That ends here. The five strategies below have been proved to cut you loose from the negative anchor and teach you to move on.

LIVE BY THE 15-MINUTE RULE

Instead of torturing yourself with some issue for hours or even days, compartmentalize to help you break the cycle. In a study in the journal Behavior Modification, researchers found that people who blocked off a specific time and place every day to worry were ultimately better able to reduce their anxiety.