Have mistakes of the past ever stopped you from taking action in the present?  How often have regret and missed opportunities kept you from taking positive action for the future.  As someone once said:  living in the past is simply wasting today’s times cluttering up tomorrow’s opportunities with yesterday’s troubles.

Whatever has happened, has happened.  If an opportunity has been missed then it’s gone.  Endlessly dwelling on it will not bring it back again.  Constantly reliving the past leads only to inaction, to giving up and giving in.

Dr. Arthur Friedman calls this self-defeating behavior “Woulda Coulda Shoulda thinking”.  He’s helped thousands to replace suppressive anxiety over the past with a step-by-step positive action plan for today.  Dr. Friedman has developed this system for ending self-defeating patterns of behavior and developing a positive perspective on life.

Arthur Friedman is an associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.  He is also clinical associate Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.  He’s a seminar leader, international lecturer and is the author of several books on cognitive therapy.  On this INSIGHT program, Dr. Friedman explains how to turn immobilizing distress into decisive action.

Arthur Friedman:  Hello, I’m Dr. Arthur Friedman.   I want to talk with you about how to recognize “” thinking just in case it’s anchoring you to failure and unhappiness.  When you wish you were living out the life you always wanted to have and enjoy.  No one should have to endure a lifetime of “woulda coulda shoulda” thinking.  It’s something we learn and therefore in most cases, it’s something we can unlearn.  And it certainly is a good idea to look back and reflect on our past actions from time to time, to learn from our mistakes so we can do better next time.

But it’s possible to overdue a good thing, like taking too many vitamins.  Mere reflection on the past can turn into endless concentration until it becomes seemingly impossible to stop thinking about past mistakes.  The term for that kind of thinking is rumination.  Cows ruminate by chewing the same material over and over again.  They even bring back food they’ve swallowed to give it still another going over.  That’s great for cows but when people bring back events of the passed to mentally chew them over and over again, they do themselves a great deal of harm.

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