These tactics don't work in the long-term. We need to try something that goes beyond diverting ourselves from the issue. Mindfulness is a powerful way of being that can help us not only become less reactive to our thoughts and beliefs, but also change them over time. Mindfulness, the skill of bringing spacious, nonjudgmental awareness to our everyday present-moment experience, fosters the skill of engaging with life more fully and becoming more in tune with oneself. You might ask how mindfulness can produce such results.
Meditation is practiced to foster mindfulness.
Meditation includes focusing on the breath, noticing the content of the mind when it wanders, and refocusing whenever needed. You become an observer of your experience, including your thoughts and feelings. Just beneath the surface of regular awareness is an amazing world of thoughts. Many of us are unaware of these thoughts because we live life on a kind of auto-pilot. We remain distracted from ourselves.