(Was Wiki) Fantasy & Rumination

Fantasy is often thinking flavoured with desire and hope.

Rumination is often thinking flavoured with fear and sadness.

Of course, fantasy could also have flavours of aggression. Rumination can be hopeful, aggressive.

The difference between them is largely unimportant, the fact that they are both filled with feelings is that salient point.

Both are also usually about something which is not actually happening now. One can ruminate about finding a better career. Endlessly grasping as the illusive schemes that swirl around, with little practical outworking at best.

One can fantasize about a past event. A future event. One can even fantasize about things happening around oneself now.

Whatever one calls it, a feeling beings thought structures are broadly imaginary and saturated with feeling.

When one commits to feeling good, each moment again, the easiest and most productive place to start is in one’s thoughts. Noticing that a particular fantasy/rumination (or whatever one wishes to call it) is filled with feelings other than feeling good (those feelings on the Felicity spectrum), it is an opportunity to put those thoughts on hold, allow oneself to, at the very least, have a feeling good mental space, before resuming thinking.

Sometimes it’s a matter of simply stopping a fantasy/ rumination. Other times, there is in fact some sensible thinking to be done about a topic / event/ person/ work etc. One will benefit greatly by continuing on in a Felicious mental space.

One also have no choice but to “neither express or repress” a persistent feeling episode which is resistant to exposing itself.