How to Forget Your Troubles

Step-by-Step Guide

1. 1

   Step 1: Get out of town.

   Try leaving your neighborhood for a few days.
   
   You do not have to spend a ton of money or go to an exotic location.
   
   Sometimes a slight change in location is all you need to stop worrying and forget about your troubles.
   
   Visit a friend in another near-by city.
   
   Book a bed and breakfast in the country for yourself.
   
   Look for a host through a couch-sharing site and check out a new town through the eyes of a local.
2. 2

   Step 2: Walk through a doorway.

   We’ve all had this experience:
   You remember that you need to call your credit card company, so you head into the kitchen to grab your phone.
   
   Suddenly, in the kitchen, you can’t recall why you went there.
   
   One study has shown that by simply heading into another room, we are prone to forgetfulness.
   
   Interestingly, you can harness this forgetting power to temporarily forget your troubles as well.When you have a troubling thought, simply get up and walk through a doorway into another room.
   
   Repeat this anytime a troubling thought appears. , If there is a specific thought that you’d like to forget, you can force yourself to do so through “active forgetting.” Just the same way you can train yourself to remember something, studies show that you can train yourself to forget.Anytime an unwanted thought comes to mind, push it away.
   
   It may help to say, “No.
   
   I’m not going to think about that.” Repeat this tactic again and again.
   
   Just as with remembering, forgetting will require a bit of practice and time.
   
   You will begin to forget details of this memory.
   
   Eventually the memory will become very dull. , Repeat a troubling thought so much that it becomes boring to you.
   
   Diffuse the power of troubling thoughts by making them commonplace.
   
   Isolate a bothersome thought or idea and repeat it out loud over and over again.For example, if you are troubled by your performance at work, you can say, “I will lose my job.
   
   I will lose my job, I will lost my job.” With enough repetition the troubling thought will become strange, dull, or even comedic.
   
   With practice, this thought will no longer bother you. , Shifting your focus to what you are grateful for is an excellent way to forget your troubles.Cultivating gratitude shifts your perspective away from worry and toward a more positive interaction with the world.
   
   Any time you find yourself troubled, stop and list five things you are grateful for.
   
   You might be grateful for your family, your health, a roof over your head, your good memories, or a good opportunity.
3. 3

   Step 3: Push the thought away.

4. 4

   Step 4: Bore yourself.

5. 5

   Step 5: Count your blessings.

Detailed Guide

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