Are you suffering from empty thoughts?

Do you find yourself distracted from the present because you spend most of your mind in mental gridlock? Does your life feel like a rat race without reason or reward? Chances are you're suffering from repetitive thoughts.

In an atricle by Sophia Dembling over at PsychCentral quote a 2008 literature review of different sorts of repetitive thoughts such as: 

• Depressive rumination–thinking about your own depression and how it’s messing with your life
• Rumination—thinking about anything over and over, even when it’s not relevant to the moment at hand
• Worry—thinking about something that might end badly
• Perseverative cognition—thinking about something stressful, causing stress responses in your body
• Cognitive and emotional processing—thinking about a stressor and how to integrate it into your life and worldview
• Planning, Problem Solving, and Mental Simulation—planning stuff, figuring stuff out
• Counterfactual thinking—thinking about how you might have done things differently in a past event
• Defensive pessimism—thinking about worst-case scenarios to figure out how they can be prevented
• Reflection—thinking philosophically about who you are, in a way that enhances self-knowledge
• Mind wandering—letting your mind drift from the current task to “internal information”
• Post-event rumination—i.e. thinking about the dumb things you said last night
• Positive rumination—thinking about all the ways you’re awesome
• Habitual negative self-thinking—thinking (uncontrollably) about all the ways you’re a loser

I'm still working on breaking the habit myself! Let me know how you do.

And if you were wondering what would constitute the opposite of the various distractions mentioned you should read The perception of consciousness. Let me know what you think.