sitting and pondering on your own self loathing is a waste of time and pointless and makes you more stupid than you even originally were. its completely unproductive despite the facade of believing that if you make yourself guilty enough you will take action. that is not the case. the only time you will take action is when you decide to take action. as i have come to understand feelings have almost nothing to do with the consequences you create for your self. if you are not an active person you will not have active consequences, despite what your guilt may lead you to believe. it is also important to note that shoulds and woulds and ifs are also completely useless. i spent a lot of my years using shoulds woulds and ifs, thinking that these thought experiments would make me wiser in my actions. they did not make me wiser in my actions at all- they set me far behind others who actually took action rather than thinking about action. I spent most of my time believing that my brain was a powerful tool and the more time i existed in my brain the more powerful i could be- if i just used all that time i spent in my head wisely. as it turns out thats just ruminating and overthinking and it does not save you or build you- usually it sets you back because you feel you can predict the consequences of your actions without even making these actions. Then when you ruminate enough you discover these fake consequences of actions that you have absolutely no proof of being the truth and you become inactive because of this rumination and its creation of fake consequences. You then become set back rather than forward as you had predicted. feeling and thoughts are important but as i get older i begin to understand the importance of action and its sweeping significance over feelings and thoughts. Action will bring you into new phases of your life, new feelings, new ideas, action will bring you out of where you do not want to be. Ruminating keeps you still. Sometimes sitting and feeling is ok especially if your action has brought you into a new phase in your life. But do not ever think there is a mandatory time you must spend thinking and feeling. if you want to be through with it just be through with it. you do not have to force yourself to be in more pain and agony than life already presents you. Ruminating and overthinking is unnecessary pain and agaony. Of course it is important to not that there are two extremes and I am only explaining one- ruminating. I am not sure of the opposite since i have not hit it yet. Im sure it goes something along the line of dont avoid your emotions or thoughts and dont go out of your way to change your life when you are not ready. im sure the best way to safe in the both of these extremes is just to play it by ear- if you feel you have been ruminating take some action that you can handle. if you feel you have taken too much action sit back and reflect. Reflection is also another important trait to master if you are ready to become a more actionable person. People have lots of things deep within themselves they are not aware of and usually subconciously make their way out through the actions they take. that means you may find your self making an actions that ends up being harmful. it is very normal to do this it is very human. However it is important to note that it is only ok that this happens if you are reflective. if you are reflective on the consequences of your actions and truly try to see how the harm and consequence has occured and work to avoid these types of consequences in the future then the wrong action you made can be forgiven and you do not have to ruminate on it. If you do not reflect on the consequences of your actions and the harm they have made then you are being reckless and will build a bad reputation for yourself. People will see you as harmful and will stay away from you because they know you will not reflect on what you have done against them. you will lose a lot of opportunities with this. moral of the story is take action and reflect- do not ruminate and overthink. if you notice yourself ruminating, that means it is time to take action