I used to replay the same negative thoughts as well. Here's how I broke free:
Reframe all your negative thoughts.
I used to obsess about past mistakes.
Thought: "I wish I didn't do that."
Reframe: "If I didn't do that, I wouldn't have learned that lesson to be the person I am today. Or in the position I am today."
Stop worrying about problems that haven't even materialized yet and very likely never will.
We waste tons of mental energy worrying about problems that never happen. If you don't believe me, make a list of all you worries about near future events. Wait a week and see how many of them actually happen. You'll find 99% didn't.
This one was the hardest to put into practice: be kind to yourself.
A lot of people believe that if you stop criticizing yourself, you won't learn. You won't improve. You'll become arrogant.
When you criticize yourself, you actually make it even harder to learn from your experiences / actions. Why? Because when we feel badly, we're not very productive about forming ideas on how to change and putting them into action. Instead, we seek distractions (sometimes really unhealthy ones) to try to make ourselves feel better.
When you do something that leads to a negative outcome for you, preventing that negative outcome from happening again is enough motivation to change in of itself. You don't need to make yourself feel bad to learn and change.
And, further 'down' there's zen buddhism. I've had very good experiences with CBT, but as a fan of zen buddhism, on some level I couldn't help but wonder if CBT sometimes still emphasizes/reifies 'thoughts' a bit too much.
Perhaps CBT is effective precisely because it's a kind of middle-ground. It's hard to describe, but CBT sometimes felt like bug-fixing when perhaps refactoring the whole thing was in order.
But then again in my daily life I regularly face the difficulty of choosing between fixing bugs and rewriting the whole thing, and I haven't found an easy answer. Try one, and if it doesn't work try the other?
Reframe all your negative thoughts.
I used to obsess about past mistakes. Thought: "I wish I didn't do that." Reframe: "If I didn't do that, I wouldn't have learned that lesson to be the person I am today. Or in the position I am today."
Stop worrying about problems that haven't even materialized yet and very likely never will.
We waste tons of mental energy worrying about problems that never happen. If you don't believe me, make a list of all you worries about near future events. Wait a week and see how many of them actually happen. You'll find 99% didn't.
This one was the hardest to put into practice: be kind to yourself.
A lot of people believe that if you stop criticizing yourself, you won't learn. You won't improve. You'll become arrogant.
When you criticize yourself, you actually make it even harder to learn from your experiences / actions. Why? Because when we feel badly, we're not very productive about forming ideas on how to change and putting them into action. Instead, we seek distractions (sometimes really unhealthy ones) to try to make ourselves feel better.
When you do something that leads to a negative outcome for you, preventing that negative outcome from happening again is enough motivation to change in of itself. You don't need to make yourself feel bad to learn and change.