Stop replaying that conversation - the 90-second fix for rumination

There is a conversation currently consuming your mental bandwidth. You know the one. You’ve replayed it a dozen times, crafting the perfect reply that will never be delivered. It feels like you’re resolving something, but you're just feeding the loop.

If you've been reading my writing, you've probably heard me say some version of this before: the loop isn't a bug. It's a signal that your brain is telling you something about the original conversation that hasn't been fully processed. Perhaps an interpretation you're carrying, a need underneath your reaction, a story that hasn't been checked against the facts.

But naming the loop "a signal" doesn't tell you what to do with it in the moment. You still have to work with what's happening in your body when the replay kicks off, the flush of energy, the racing thoughts, the sense that you can't quite drop it.

That's what today's practice is for.

It's taken from my upcoming book, The Zero-Sum Illusion, and is called Urge Surfing. It was originally developed in the 1980s by psychologists G. Alan Marlatt and Judith Gordon, as part of relapse-prevention work for addiction recovery. What they discovered is that when we try to fight a strong urge whether to drink, to react, to check social media, to send the email, we make it stronger. When we sit with it and observe it, it passes on its own.

The same principle applies to the urge to keep replaying a conversation. And there's a specific four-step protocol for doing it that works in about 90 seconds.

Step 1: Notice.

The moment you catch yourself back inside the loop, name it out loud (in your head is fine). "There it is. The urge to replay." This sounds small, but it's doing something structural: it moves you from being inside the experience to observing it. The observer is not the same thing as the loop.

Step 2: Allow and name.

Instead of trying to stop the replay, let it be there. Give it a specific name. Not just "anxiety" or "frustration," but something more descriptive: "the 3 AM replay of the client conversation." Naming it precisely reduces its power because then you're not fighting a giant vague force; you're observing a specific event with a specific identity.

Step 3: Score.

Rate the intensity from 1 to 10. This engages your rational mind and shifts you further into observer mode. A replay that felt overwhelming might be, on inspection, a solid 6. That's manageable. What was overwhelming was the story about the replay. Things like this will never stop, I'll be like this all day, I can't function while this is running. The score cuts through the story and just names the actual intensity.

Step 4: Watch it pass.

Now, just watch, and give it a score: "Ah, now it's a 7... and now a 3". The urge, like a wave, will crest, usually at a higher intensity than when it started, and then it will subside. Your only job is to stay on the surfboard: breathe, observe, and wait.

The neuroscience is clear on this. The chemical component of an emotional wave takes less than 90 seconds to pass through the body. What we do next determines whether we let it flush or we feed it more fuel by re-engaging with the story.

That's the whole practice. Four steps, about 90 seconds. It doesn't require you to stop the replay, override the emotion, or convince yourself the conversation didn't matter. It just gives you a way to be with the loop instead of fighting it, and, in doing so, it lets the wave pass.

Try it the next time you catch yourself back inside a conversation.

This practice is one of the smallest, most repeatable tools in my forthcoming book, The Zero-Sum Illusion, which is out in September. The book is a practical toolkit for exactly this kind of work: the everyday cognitive patterns that quietly run our relationships, our workplaces, and our own minds.

Pre-orders open in August, and I'll send the link the moment they're live. Until then: I'd love to hear how the practice lands for you. If you try it even once reply and tell me what happened. I read every reply, and the notes I'm getting back from readers are genuinely shaping how I talk about the book as the launch gets closer.

Best wishes and happy surfing!

Grant

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