“…do not dwell on the past.” ~ Isaiah 43:18 NIV
ruminate (v.)
One of the things I have run into on my journey as ‘The Emerging Man’ is the fact we have to really face our mental capacity, strength and health. It seems to all start there. We look at something in our lives and decide that we need to change it and to do so requires us to think on it and decide what actions we need to employ in order to make the change and make it stick. Once the mental decision is made and the action decided we then have to physically make it happen everyday in order to change our current habit and/or our recurring negative thoughts.
There are a lot of books and articles that make that sound easy and make us feel weak when we fail to change our bad habit into a successful one.
There is a word I keep seeing in articles written by psychologists that I have been studying. Looking up my own mental shortcomings, foibles, bad habits and plain ole’ stubbornness, regardless of the author, when I ask a question concerning my past, multiple articles and multiple psychologists use the word…
ruminate.
I’ve seen it used to describe… how, when we try to change… we cannot… due to our habit of ruminating on a problem or issue and not being able to move on from it.
I know where the word is commonly used, being from Wisconsin, cows… lots of cows. Cows ruminate.
The more I saw the word on the psychology websites the more I wanted to really grasp the concept because when I think of ruminate it isn’t a pretty process, but in the articles it’s used so clinically I wondered if a patient would understand… FULLY… what the doctor is referring to because when you say, “ruminate”, people go to the definition of… “you mean when I’m rolling an idea around in my head?”
Now, that is a definition of the word. I want to go deeper and maybe help us understand what we are doing to ourselves when we ruminate on a mental health or other life issue we are having trouble getting past.
First ruminate refers to those animals that have a peculiar digestive system that is identified by more than one stomach. The cow has four stomachs. Compartments.
Compartments. We have compartments… mental compartments.
As a cow takes in it’s feed the feed goes into the first compartment. When we have a lingering issue we place it into it’s special mental compartment. Waiting for something to trigger it’s release.
The cow, when ready, usually as it is lying down and resting, triggers it’s stomach to regurgitate it’s cud.
What is the cud? The cud is food that has started the digestive process but it needs more saliva and more mastication. That just sounds bad doesn’t it? They need to re-chew the cud to prepare it for final digesting. It’s a large, green/black wad that looks nasty.
Regurgitating is basically a controlled puke. The cow, on purpose, pukes up it’s cud, into it’s mouth and starts the mastication, re-chewing, process. Have you ever puked your guts out?
Think of a mental issue, past problem or recurring issue of your life, that you have not moved on from. We do exactly the same thing… mentally… that the cow does digestive-ly.
We keep bringing it up, it may even be so bad as to give us a sour stomach when we do, and like a cow, we trigger our compartment to puke up the issue and yes we, “roll it around in our head,” except unlike the cow we are not preparing it to go on it’s way. No, instead, we roll it around and around and around and around and around and then push it back into it’s special compartment with nothing prepared, dealt with or moved on from. Just waiting to puke it up again later on.
The thing I’ve discovered so far in making a true change in life is to be able to identify the smallest thing that keeps us connected to our issue and then determine the small positive action it will take to push the issue through the complete digestive process.
I’ve also found being able to identify things for me requires me to ‘put a name or word to it’. Like ruminate. In order for me to understand what I’m going through. My most recent revelation was of a three layered issue concerning OCD, Anxiety and Self-Doubt. One issue was layered over another, over another and covering up my real issue. Once I put some time in to investigate what was happening I was able to implement a simple mind phrase at work to help alleviate my problems and build my mental strength. I know it may sound simple but as I’ve found out… it is not. I had to learn it, trust it, and implement it. Just the same as you would in a gym if you never bench pressed or used a squat rack before, someone would have to show you and give you the information you would need to be successful.
My current mental phrase is… “Execute Calmly.” Not exactly a ‘Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley’ but that’s ok, no ones perfect. Remember, on my ‘Emerging Man’ journey I’m trying to capture this stuff as I go so you can see it ‘fresh off the truck’ as it were.
I am applying this life lesson to different aspects of my life as I move forward one issue at a time.
What do you ruminate on that needs to be allowed to be digested and evacuated from your life?
Leave a Reply