Has your mind ever wandered into recent or old events / things a person said and then developed alternate or follow up situations from there, that ultimately made you feel even more sad or angry or frustrated with the original event or person? And yes, ate up a lot of your time?

Well, we are all very creative people. And believe it or not, most of us are also very emotionally driven. So often times when we face situations or people who don’t treat our emotions well, it tends to stay in our head and that’s when our head starts playing creative! We start replaying events in our mind and then start adding our imaginations of what ifs and what nexts to it. We start playing out back and forth conversations that never really happened. We perfectly deliver dialogues and build out victorious stories. All in our head.

Think of one person that makes you angry, and think how many conversations with them have you played out in your mind. Think about a situation that made you feel hurt and then think about how many versions of it have you have played out in your mind.

I feel that this mind game that we indulge ourselves in is extremely addictive, because it’s in our mind and thus the narrative is fully in our control. It prevents us from mending or moving on from a situation we faced as it keeps the emotion fresh and raw. And ultimately leaves us more bitter than we ever were with a person or situation. I feel just like any other addiction, it’s best to get rid of indulging in such mind games with ourselves. One way that I use is to keep interrupting and stopping my mind from doing so. I consider my mind as a computer and keep closing these open tabs that just eat up my memory and energy. Remember, new tabs will continue to open every now and then, the key is to keep closing these tabs that drain your mind and keep only on the ones that are focused on the present reality. Doing so not only helps me keep my peace and happiness but actually improves my conduct and relationships with people around me.

This is how I feel, how about you?