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Mastering The Confidence Code: Don’t Ruminate, Rewire, with Claire Shipman, Journalist and Co-author, The Confidence Code
I’m a pretty ardent ruminator. For as long as I can remember I’ve tended to think and think and overthink. And I used to think that was just something I did. I’ve come to realize so many women do this and it’s something that we share. Through the research for this book I realized how debilitating that can be. I also realized through the research that this was inhibiting my confidence, because too much thinking stops action and it makes you pretty unhappy. The wonderful thing is that I learned that there’s some pretty basic tools – it’s essentially cognitive behavioral therapy – that you can use when you have one of these thoughts and you’re just spinning. You can use it pretty easily to try to get your mind to a different place.
For example, my most recent rumination story is I remember sending an email when the book was coming out to Diane Sawyer, who was one of my many bosses when she was anchoring at World News. And I didn’t hear back from her in an hour or two, and I was emailing her about a piece I was supposed to be doing. And I started to think, gosh, maybe she’s really mad at me because I’m working on this book and I should be doing stuff for the news and I’m not. And three or four hours go by and I think, gosh, maybe everybody at ABC News is mad at me because I’m doing this. Within a day and a half I’m spinning out of control about this one thing. So when you’re in that situation, you’re ruminating about a bad review you’ve had, you’re ruminating about should you do this or that, use cognitive behavioral therapy, this basic technique, which is essentially you take whatever thought it is that’s just eating away at you, and you come up with one alternative explanation. It doesn’t even have to be a reasonable explanation, it can be any explanation. It could be, you know, Diane Sawyer, I think she’s probably busy this week. She just got back from a trip. She never emails me back until the weekend. It could be anything. You get your mind off of that track and you’re able to move on. It’s the most important thing we can do because this stuff can really eat you up alive and it definitely keeps you from taking action.