10 Things to Stop Dwelling On

It’s always disconcerting when a friend holds up a neon orange polyester muumuu that makes your blood curdle and exclaims, "This is so you!" How could that awful dress be so you? Or a coworker says, "He’s a procrastinator, like you" —when you’ve always thought of your aversion to deadlines as perfectionism and not procrastination at all. When someone makes an offhand comment characterizing you in an unflattering way, and you realize they might be right, you have two choices: You can take the muumuu, or you can pick up the appealing dress next to it and try that one on for size. But what you cannot do is chew over the comment endlessly. That is so not you.