Stop Asking Why and Start Asking What

How to Keep Reflection From Becoming Rumination

This past week, I pulled my team together to discuss a new project. I had been working closely on it with one member of the team, but for everyone else, it was their first real exposure to the work. I had attached the program charter to the meeting invite so we could get right into discussion.

Within the first minute, I could tell I was moving too fast. They needed more context before they could engage with the details, so I stopped, backed up, and walked through the project from the beginning. The conversation improved quickly, and by the end of the meeting, we were all aligned on how to move forward.

Afterward, I thought about what I could have done differently. I started the meeting where I was instead of where they were. In retrospect, I should have spent more time creating context before getting into content, a learning will apply going forward.

But later that evening, I found myself thinking about the meeting again. And the next morning too. I wasn’t learning anything new, but my mind was still swirling.  After all, I make a living coaching leaders how to lead.

We sometimes call this overthinking, but psychologists have a word for it: rumination – the repetitive replaying of negative thoughts, mistakes, or worries in your mind without finding a productive solution.

It made me think about how thin the line can be between reflection and rumination. Both involve going back over an experience. Both can look like self-awareness. Both may even begin with the same good intention, which is to understand what happened and to learn from it.

But reflection and rumination are very different.

Reflection stays focused on the experience. It seeks to understand and to learn. What happened? What was I assuming? What did I miss? What might I do differently next time?

Reflection asks us to step back and look at the experience with curiosity, almost like an outside observer. The goal is to understand what happened, not to put ourselves on trial.

Rumination can begin in much the same place as reflection, but then our attention turns inward and becomes increasingly self-focused. The questions become less about the experience and learning from it and more about what our response to a situation might say about us: Why did I do that? Why do I always do this? Why didn’t I know better? Why am I like this?

For many people, fear drives those questions. Fear of having made a mistake. Fear of being judged. Fear that one awkward interaction, poor decision, or poorly handled conversation somehow reveals a “flaw” in who they are.

Psychologists call this post-event processing. Here, we replay the interaction, focus on what we may have gotten wrong, and wonder how others saw us. When that thinking becomes repetitive, and make it harder to separate what we can learn from what we are simply reliving.

None of this is productive.

It’s important to recognize that rumination isn’t reflection that lasts too long. They are two completely different ways of thinking. Reflection examines the experience to learn from it. Rumination turns our response to the experience into a judgment about ourselves.

To break that cycle, let me suggest doing this one thing: replace “Why?” with “What?”

Asking why tends to pull us toward self-judgment. Asking what helps us look at the experience with curiosity, so we can learn from it without turning it into a judgment about ourselves.

Instead of asking, “Why did I handle that badly?” ask, “What happened that I could learn from?” Instead of, “Why didn’t I know better?” ask, “What would I do differently next time?” Instead of, “Why do I always do this?” ask, “What pattern am I noticing?”

That small shift changes the focus of our thinking. Reflection helps us learn and adjust. Rumination keeps us circling.

In my case, the lesson was simple: start where the team is, not where I am. Context before content. Once I had that, there was not much more to uncover.

For many of us, we may intellectually know we are ruminating, but our minds keep going anyway.

Here is a technique I use with clients to help them stop ruminating, or at least, slow it down. It’s called The Car Metaphor.

Imagine your thoughts are cars driving back and forth in front of your house. You don’t control which cars show up. That’s not in your control. But you do have control over how you respond. You also don’t have to climb into every one of car – you can just watch them come and go, letting the pass on.

Same with thoughts. Instead of treating every thought as something we need to believe or act on, we can notice it for what it is: a thought. You might say to yourself, “There is that thought again.” Then bring your attention back to what matters most to you – your goals, your relationships, your dreams.

It’s not avoidance. It’s a conscious choice not to argue with your thoughts or let them take up valuable head-space.

Simple, but not easy

To help, I created a three-part mnemonic: Recognize, Release, Return. I have written about this previously, but it works just as well for managing any intrusive thought.

Here’s how it works: Recognize the thought for what it is. It’s just a thought. That’s it. It may or may not be true. As I frequently remind leaders, “Don’t believe everything you think.”