Where do you draw the line between reflecting about the past vs ruminating about it? You want to look at the past and learn from it, otherwise you’ll go through life making the same mistakes again and again, never learning and evolving, only getting older but no wiser.
On the other hand, you also don’t want to dwell on the past and get stuck in a loop, constantly replaying what you did and thinking about what you could or should have done instead.
That’s ruminating, and it’s not productive.
The key is to strike a balance. Reflect on the past, learn from it, and then let it go. Don’t get caught up in ruminating about what could have been.
Here’s one framework that seems to make sense for me:
If you’re
- analyzing what happened in the past,
- recognize what you did wrong, and
- resolve it by coming up with an idea of how you’d behave in a similar situation in the future, that’s reflection.
If you’re
- analyzing what happened in the past,
- recognize what you did wrong, and
- go back to step and and repeat the entire circle in never-ending loop, that’s rumination.
So essentially, ruminating might be the same as reflecting, but instead of ending with the decision to behave differently in the present (and future), you put reflection on replay without integrating it into the present. You’re stuck in a loop.