Models Of Reality
Instead asking how to stop thinking abouy the past the much more practical question is whether your internal models remain connected to reality or whether they have drifted too far from it.
The brain is supposed to think. The brain is supposed to model reality. The real issue is whether the model is still tracking reality or whether it has become self-reinforcing. One way to revisit a model is to ask a very simple question. "What evidence would convince me that this belief is wrong?" Many of our deepest models have no answer to that question. For example, someone believes "People cannot be trusted." Every betrayal becomes evidence. Every trustworthy act becomes an exception. The model protects itself from revision. At that point the person is no longer learning from reality. They are filtering reality through the model.
Another way is to separate observation from interpretation. Suppose someone ignores your message. The observation is that they ignored your message. The interpretation is that they dislike you, disrespect you, are selfish, or have lost interest. The nervous system tends to fuse the two together. Revisiting a model means pulling them apart again.
A third approach is to look for predictions. Good models make predictions. Bad models mainly explain things after the fact. Suppose your model says that all people are fundamentally selfish. Then ask what future observations should follow from that claim. If reality repeatedly fails to match the prediction, the model may need revision. This is how science works. A scientific theory earns respect by surviving contact with reality.
