This was a term I learnt a few days back, I don’t remember the exact book I read it in because I have read about 3 books int he last oe week. But this term has left a lasting impression.

Everyone’s brain is hyper active. The human brain was designed to ensure survival. So by its very nature it has a negative bias. Which means that the brain will always try to see the negative in any situation first. If you are enjoying something, maybe you are at a party, you have this nagging feeling that something would be about to go wrong. Its just the way the brain tries to keep you safe and attentive to possible dangers.

But because the brain is hyperactive, it is able to float through different scenarios in your mind. Suddenly you start to actually feel terrible, if you have worked yourself up. This author used a very good term mental rumination. Its not a new term. If you go on Google and do a search for this term you will find that the search returns more than 3 million results. So it is a very well known term. It talks about the negative emotions that get generated when the brain is idling and starts thinking negative thoughts which slowly go out of control in terms of negativity.

However why it stuck to me, was that it is a term which I had heard the first time and I related it to how a cow regurgitates its food to chew further, while its resting. I have many bouts in the day where because of some random or stupid stimuli, my mind goes in a spin and then I am rewinding into the past and then imagining the negative future on some action I have taken. Its like I have become the cow who is moving its mouth to digest the food while its resting.

That image is what I am now trying to bring in front of me, whenever my brain gets into a spin. Its a little crazy, but it gives my brain an impulse and pulls it out of the negative spiral it has gone into. This is similar to what the NLP folks talk about to get the brain into a different state immediately.

Not only does mental rumination make you feel negative, it also ends up wasting so much of your productive time in useless activity.

If you also face a similar situation to what I face of mental rumination, I suggest you also visualise some crazy image, whenever you think you are going into a negative spiral, and come out faster.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!