Point - How to Recognize "BLUE" Thoughts

The term “BLUE” serves as an acronym.

B- blaming

L- looking for the bad news

U- unhappy guessing

E- exaggeratedly negative

The truth is, these thoughts are extremely negative for them to be anything from the truth. One important thing that you mustnote is that we have over 70,000 thoughts every day. These thoughts often have a great impact on our emotions and the 

choices we make in life. While you cannot control any automatic thoughts that you have raced through your mind, you have the power to control how you respond to them.

 

When you decide to take control of your inner thoughts and thought process, you become much stronger than when you would ruminate on negative thoughts throughout the day. The stronger you get, the higher your chances of becoming kind, 

productive, and receptive. In other words, when you have a positive thought process, you create a positive cycle that changes your way of doing things and ultimately impacts your life with success and happiness. 

So, how can you recognize these negative thoughts? 

• Blaming Myself

Self-blame is a different process altogether, as it often evolves into a trait—a “knee-jerk” reaction when things go wrong. For example, “If only I would have ..., this wouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault.”

Second-guessing ourselves after we have experienced a negative or harmful situation is natural and common. This is different than conducting a post-mortem to discover what went wrong and why so that we can learn and hopefully avoid a recurrence of such an event. This can be psychologically adaptive and can abate feelings of helplessness.

There is an important difference between accepting self-blame when the circumstances support it and keeping it time-limited versus situations when the self-blame does not seem rational or justifiable, or the individual reflexively defaults to self-blame whenever things go wrong. Researchers suggest that there are several groups of individuals who may maladaptively engage in self-blame for negative events. These include:

• People who suffer from obsessional problems. They may have general preconceptions about their responsibility—holding beliefs that they must not cause harm as well as they must prevent harm from occurring. Consequently, in order to avoid blameworthiness, they are very careful and diligent, and tend to engage in a number of hypervigilant behaviors aimed at preventing foreseeable harm. They are so obsessive in their thoughts and behaviors that their fears become overwhelming.
• Individuals who were sexually abused as children. They may have incorporated the belief system that they were responsible for the perpetrator’s offending behavior and are unable to recognize that they were the victim manipulated by the sexual offender.
• Sexually or physically abused individuals. Some people may attribute the responsibility for the assault to their character (e.g., “I am weak.” “I deserve punishment.”) or to their behavior (e.g., “I drank too much.” “I didn’t fight back hard enough.”). These perceived “faults” can hinder a more realistic view of the event and recovery.
• People who suffer from depression. When individuals are depressed, they may feel inadequate and guilty; they tend to blame themselves for their failures. The self-blame can then lead to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness which feed the cycle of self-blame and depression.

Looking For The Bad News

Have you ever had a perfect day with everything going your way and then something bad suddenly happens and ruins it all? Well, I bet we all have had those days. But the most important question is, what did you do after that? What did you focus your attention more on? 

I do not know about you, but I kept on pondering on what had ruined the day. So many of us get caught up in one bad thing or break even when you have had over ten good breaks that day.
However, you have to realize that when you dwell too much on the bad things, your mind will be captured in a rather dark place.

When you realize that, at this point simply take a step back to have a realistic perspective ofthings. This way, you will create a balanced and realistic plan of action to be happy, even amid the bad breaks.

Unhappy Guessing

No one knows what is lying in wait for us in the future or better still tomorrow. You may be here predicting doom when so much good lies ahead of you in your future. Maybe you are going to give 

a presentation tomorrow at work, or you could be preparing for an exam. At the back of your mind, you are thinking of how you will embarrass yourself or how you are going to fail that exam and miss opportunities. One thing that you must realize is that when you have unhappy guessing into your future, there is a high chance that you will start acting like it and eventually bring the prophecy to come to pass. Each time you have such unhappy guessing, replace them with quite the opposite. What if you give the most memorable and amazing presentation anyone has ever had? What if you sit that exam and ace it and get so much more opportunities beyond 

your wildest dreams? 

Exaggeratedly Negative

When you tell yourself that the whole experience was a great disaster, it is somewhat a downward spiral. When you start to convince yourself that your job is a complete joke, you are headed in the wrongdirection. The truth is negativity yield negative results. There is no way you are going to be successful if you are always going to think that you are bound to fail. It will not make any sense in sitting the exam if you already believe that you will fail. In other words, the more negative you feel, the worse you get, hence lowering your chances of having positive outcomes. 

You will realize that when you replace negative thoughts with more realistic positive thoughts it can be very inspiring and is the key for you to create the kind of life you want to live. If you choose to naturally err on the negative thinking end of the spectrum, it 

will take too much effort to change your thoughts. However, when you start changing them slowly, with time, your brain will physically change for the better. In other words, thinking positively will come naturally, and your brain will begin to perceive you and the abilities you have in a new light.