Our mind is a wonderful thing—except when it’s out of control, replaying painful, embarrassing, or shameful events from our past. Rumination isn’t just unpleasant, though. It retraumatizes us and reinforces negative beliefs (even though our mind is actually trying to help!).

Here’s a five-step approach to healing and growing where necessary, so you can stop dwelling on the past and start charting a new path forward.

If you’re stuck not knowing what to do next, because you aren’t sure what the right choice is, that’s not entirely bad. Before you flip a coin, react unwisely to the emotions you’re feeling, or pretend you know what you’re doing, consider staying with the uncertainty for a while.

Even in situations where it seems like your choices are equally good—or bad!—and you’re feeling confused and worried, arriving at your “I don’t know” is an important step in not just finding the right answer, but mastering your life.

Crises come in all different magnitudes, but they’re all anxiety-provoking, and that usually causes people to avoid them or tune out the pain and difficulty they bring.

But when you do that, you’re turning a blind eye to a beautiful and miraculous process. Difficult times are a prerequisite for growth, and crises are the signs of a life fully lived.

You may not like being bored, but boredom can actually be very good for you if sometimes you just let it be, settle into it, and see where it leads. It can even be good to induce boredom sometimes!

On the other side of boredom is clarity, insight, and stillness that, at a minimum, can be a healthy and pleasant break for you and, at best, can help you discover new solutions for old problems.

No matter how motivated you are to start, distraction is always ready to strike. Here's how to get your focus on target and keep it there, so you can finish tasks efficiently and move on to the next thing with peace of mind.

Procrastination is often deemed a problem with focus, willpower, or self-doubt, but that’s not the whole story. Also, simply making more effort isn’t necessarily the best approach for dealing with it.

Recent research identifies a connection between procrastination and your imagination, and points to a fresh way of getting unstuck and feeling inspired to take action right now. Here I walk you through the steps for doing just that, which have proven helpful for me and my clients.

Sometimes you don’t realize that you’ve misplaced or left behind parts of yourself, until you find yourself in a rut years later.

It happened to me: I came to fear that I’d lost a colorful, vibrant part of me. It took a simple pair of shoes to help me realize that it had been with me the whole time. Any “lost” parts of you are hiding in plain sight, too . . . .and counting on you to continue looking for them.

Regret is your mind's way of keeping you from repeating mistakes, but when it hangs around it can do more harm than good. Here I cover how your mind lays the groundwork for regret and how you can nip it in the bud. 

For some people, it’s a matter of faith that every cloud has a silver lining. However, making meaning from difficulties is a very human, personal process that often requires effort, and not just blind faith.