How to Stop Thinking About Something or Someone

Always active. When you’re playing sports, you have to focus on your body and/or eye/hand combination, and that’s a great way to get your thoughts out of your head. In addition, exercise has other benefits when it comes to the production of the feel-good neurotransmitter and the happy hormone endorphin, which improves your mood.

Do something that requires nervous tension. Challenge your brain with games like Sudoku or crossword puzzles, do difficult math problems or follow complicated instructions to get something done. Your mind will focus on doing these activities and no longer give you time or mental energy for unwanted thoughts.

Laugh. Laughing out loud can clear your mind of worry. When you smile, your brain is involved, and it guides your body through a sequence of actions and sounds. Laughter helps relieve stress, so if you have thoughts that make you nervous, laughter is a good medicine. Hang out with friends that let you loose, rent a comedy, or try a laugh yoga class. You can even find therapists who specialize in “laughter therapy,” which teaches people to laugh at things that aren’t usually funny and to use humor to confront difficult situations. difficult situation.

Speak out. Often the best way to get a thought out of your head is to share it with someone. Meet a friend or family member who is a good listener and talk to them about your thoughts. If you find it difficult to deal with unwanted thoughts that are beyond your friends’ ability to help, see a therapist or counselor who can talk to you.

Acceptance set. If you’ve tried not to think about someone or something you already know it’s hard to do, if it were that easy, you wouldn’t have read this article. In fact, research has shown that it’s better to accept unwanted thoughts than push them away. In one study, participants who practiced acceptance had fewer obsessions, lower levels of depression, and less restlessness than those who tried to suppress the thought. ^[1]

• Accepting your thoughts doesn’t mean you have to like or even agree with them. You simply accept it as a part of reality. Allow them to exist and don’t try to control or change it. When you do, you will take away its energy, and it will come less often.

Use focused distractions. You may have tried to distract yourself to get the thoughts you want out of your head, but have you tried taking advantage of a focused distraction? Studies have shown that it’s better to distract yourself with just one thing than to jump from one task to another to divert your attention away from unwanted thoughts. Mindless wandering is accompanied by unhappiness, so pick a specific task, book or piece of music to focus on and give your full attention.

Throw them away. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science , researchers found that when people wrote down their thoughts on paper and threw them away, they also erased their thoughts. think that out of your head. ^[2]

Find a lesson. If you’re having obsessive thoughts about a mistake you made and you keep replaying that mistake in your head, take the situation as a lesson. Ask yourself what the lesson was and what you can learn from the mistake. Try to summarize in just one sentence or less and write it down.