Amanda Stern – who has fought anxiety throughout her full and productive career – writes of Dr. Tamar Chansky’s suggestions for handing rumination. What follows is an excerpt: 

I could think of no better person to help me (…) than Dr. Tamar Chansky, psychologist, author, and founder of the Children’s and Adult Center for OCD and Anxiety in Plymouth Meeting, PA.

“Rumination is the process of having repetitive thoughts that your mind gets you stuck on,” Dr. Chansky explains. “They are usually about a negative situation—a past relationship or interaction, a mistake, or some unfinished or pending problem—an upcoming test or challenge at work.”

In other words, thinking, like dreaming, is a way to process and digest information and rumination is a way to stymie that process.

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.

Lin Yutang, My Country and My People

Ebenezer Scrooge played by the scoreboard that many of us play by. The one where points come from status, power, and money. But as he neared the end of his life, Scrooge realized none of these things matter.

The second we get money, status, or power we’re not satisfied. We just want more. We think these things mean something, but they don’t.

Who hasn’t experienced this? I remember when I first started working in a large organization. I told myself that if I just got a promotion, I’d be happy. Well, promotions came and went and none of them made me happier. All of them only left me wanting more.

While we tell ourselves that the next level is enough, it never is. The next zero in your bank account won’t satisfy you any more than you are now. The next promotion won’t change who you are. The fancy car won’t make you happier. The bigger house doesn’t solve your problems.

Pay attention to what you are chasing because, in the end, you just might get it. And the cost of “success” might be the things that really matter.

“Never risk what you have and need,” wrote Warren Buffett, “for what we don’t have and don’t need.” In pursuit of our goals, we inevitably give up things that matter. We sleep less. We spend less time with our friends. We eat unhealthily. We skip workouts. We cancel dates. We miss dinner with the family.

When it comes to living a meaningful life, the only scoreboard that matters is yours. Don’t let your ego get in the way of the person you really want to be or the life you really want to live.

From Shane Parrish’s Oct 3 blog, Farnham Street