Churning over emotional upset serves no purpose at all, except to make you miserable and potentially to shorten your life.

1. Connect with your senses.

5. Clarify who actually owns the problem.

2. When you wake up from ruminating, ask the question, “How useful was that?”

It is equally important that the listener maintain perspective and avoid becoming identified with the discloser’s issues. This is what empathy is.

3. Identify the organization’s change equation.

7. Avoid giving team members things to ruminate about.

The problem for perfectionists is that they just can’t see the threshold of added value,

Is your attention on that, or are you absorbed in formulating your reply? Or worse still, are you thinking about what you have planned for the afternoon?