This article is part of the series on cognitive distortions , systematic errors in thinking that affect all of us, not just athletes.
Imagine: you’re playing a tennis match. Three hours. Three sets. You’re playing perhaps your best match in months , your serve is solid, your movement is good, your tactics are precise. In the third set, you hit one double fault at a critical moment. You lose the game but win the match. What do you remember that evening? Those three hours of solid play? Or that one double fault?
Now another scenario: you run a half marathon and set a personal record. You improve your time by two minutes. Your friends congratulate you. And you say: “Yeah, but the wind was at my back” or “The course was easy” or “I just had a good day , I don’t know if I could repeat it.”
If you recognize yourself in at least one of these scenarios, you have a meeting with two of the most insidious cognitive distortions , the mental filter and disqualifying the positive. They’re different, but they work together as a perfect tandem for self-sabotage.
What Is the Mental Filter?
In Burns’s classification (Burns, 1980), the Mental Filter occupies position #3. Beck (1976) calls it “selective abstraction” , both names describe the same process: your mind selects one single negative detail from a situation and focuses entirely on it, ignoring everything else.
Think of it this way: you have a glass of clear water and you drop one drop of ink. The water isn’t 99% clean , it’s murky. All of it. That’s how the mental filter works. One negative detail “colors” the entire experience.
The mental filter doesn’t distort the facts , it selects them. And in that selection lies the entire lie.
Note , the fact the mental filter selects is usually real. You really did hit a double fault. You really did have one bad set. You really didn’t stick to the diet on Tuesday. The problem isn’t in the fact , the problem is in the context. Or more precisely , in the lack of context. The mental filter cuts out everything positive and shows you only the negative fragment, presenting it as the whole picture.
What Is Disqualifying the Positive?
If the mental filter ignores the positive, disqualifying the positive (Disqualifying the Positive, #4 in Burns’s classification) goes one step further , it actively devalues it. You don’t just fail to see the good. You see it but reject it.
“Sure, the workout was good, but the competition was weak.”
“Sure, I set a personal record, but I just got lucky.”
“Sure, the coach praised me, but he says that to everyone.”
“Sure, I stuck to the diet all week, but Friday doesn’t count.”
Disqualifying the positive isn’t modesty , it’s a systematic refusal to accept your own success.
This is an important distinction because many people confuse disqualifying with realism or modesty. “I’m just being objective,” they say. But objectivity requires accounting for both sides. When you systematically devalue everything positive, you’re not objective , you’re biased. Only the bias is against yourself.
How This Looks in Everyday Life
Both distortions are everywhere , not just on the field or in the gym.
The Mental Filter in Everyday Life
- You receive excellent feedback at work, but the boss mentions one area for improvement , and that evening you think only about that.
- You cook dinner for guests, everyone compliments it, but the dessert didn’t turn out perfectly , and for you, the entire evening is a “failure.”
- You follow a meal plan 6 out of 7 days, but the only thing you think about is that one day you didn’t stick to it.
Disqualifying the Positive in Everyday Life
- You receive a compliment on your appearance , “It’s just the good lighting.”
- A colleague praises your presentation , “The topic was just easy.”
- You finish a project on time , “I had no other choice, the deadline forced me.”
- You lose 3 kg in a month , “That’s just water weight, not a real result.”
How This Looks in Sport
In the sporting context, these two distortions are especially destructive because they attack precisely what athletes need most to build , confidence and self-efficacy.
The Workout with 10 Sets
Let’s say you do a workout with 10 sets. 8 of them are excellent , the technique is clean, the weight is appropriate, the tempo is controlled. One set is average. One is weak , the form breaks down, you use momentum.
The mental filter says: “Terrible workout. I can’t control my form.” The focus falls entirely on that one bad set. The eight excellent ones? Invisible.
Disqualifying the positive adds: “The weight wasn’t anything special anyway. Anyone could do 8 good sets with that weight.”
Personal Records That “Don’t Count”
I see this constantly among runners. You set a PR at 10K , and immediately follow up with: “The course was flat.” “It was cool, so I ran faster.” “I had a pacer.” “The competition wasn’t strong.”
Each of these explanations might be partially true. But do you know what’s also true? You ran faster than any other time in your life. That’s a fact. And the fact that conditions were favorable doesn’t erase this result , it makes it contextual. But disqualifying doesn’t recognize context. It only knows “yes, but…”
Compliments That Bounce Off
Your coach says: “Great workout today.” You respond (internally or out loud): “He says that to everyone” or “He’s just being polite” or “If he’d seen my second set, he wouldn’t say that.” The compliment doesn’t just fail to land , it’s actively deflected. Because accepting it would mean acknowledging you did something well. And the mental filter has already decided the workout was bad.
Why Does Our Brain Do This?
Before we get to techniques, it’s important to understand why these distortions are so widespread. The answer lies in our evolutionary biology.
Baumeister and colleagues (Baumeister et al., 2001) demonstrate in a large-scale review that negative experiences have a greater psychological impact than positive ones , a phenomenon known as negativity bias. Bad events are more memorable, more emotionally charged, and more influential on our behavior than good ones.
Rick Hanson (Hanson, 2009) describes this with a memorable metaphor: our brain is like Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the positive. Negative experiences stick instantly and hold on long. Positive ones slide off.
Evolutionarily, this makes sense. For our ancestors, it was more important to notice the one predator in the bushes than to enjoy the beautiful sunset. Those who noticed the threat survived. Those who didn’t , didn’t.
The problem is that we no longer live on the savanna. But our brains still run on the same software. And when this software is applied to workouts, competitions, and personal goals , instead of protecting us from predators, it protects us from our own success.
How to Recognize These Distortions
Signs of the Mental Filter
- After a workout/race, you think about only one thing , and it’s negative.
- When someone asks how the workout went, you start with the bad.
- You have the feeling that “the whole workout was a failure” because of one moment.
- You can’t name anything specific that went well , despite there objectively being good moments.
Signs of Disqualifying the Positive
- You frequently use “yes, but…” when you receive a compliment or acknowledge a success.
- You attribute your successes to external factors (luck, conditions, weak competition).
- You feel discomfort when someone praises you.
- You have an explanation for why every success of yours “doesn’t count.”
- When someone else achieves the same thing , you recognize their merit. When you achieve it , you find reasons to devalue it.
Four Techniques for Coping
1. Three-Column Journal: What Went Well / What Didn’t / What I Learned
This technique is simple but extremely effective because it imposes structure on your thinking. After every workout or significant event, write down three things:
- What went well? , At least three specific things. Not general (“it was okay”), but specific: “The first five squat sets had excellent depth,” “My heart rate recovered to 120 in under 2 minutes,” “I controlled the tempo in the eccentric phase.”
- What didn’t go well? , Specific and without generalizations. Not “my form is terrible,” but “On the last set of Romanian deadlifts, my back rounded.”
- What did I learn? , What can I improve next time? “I’ll reduce the weight on the last set by 10% to maintain form.”
This structure counteracts both distortions: it forces you to notice the positive (against the mental filter) and documents it in black and white, making it harder to disqualify.
2. “Advocate for the Good” , Defend Your Achievement
When you catch yourself devaluing a success, take on the role of an advocate , but not the prosecutor, the defense attorney. Imagine your achievement is being accused of “insignificance” and you need to defend it in court.
“Sure, the wind was at my back. But I ran 21 km. The wind doesn’t run for me. I trained three months for this. I controlled the pace. I chose the strategy. The result is mine.”
Sounds strange? Maybe. But it’s exactly as “strange” as the opposite , being your own prosecutor who systematically devalues everything good. It’s just that we’ve normalized the latter. People say “I’m just critical of myself” with pride. As if self-flagellation were a virtue.
3. Full Picture Review , Zoom Out
This technique is visual. When the mental filter catches you, consciously “pull the camera back.” Instead of looking at one moment from the workout, look at the entire workout. Instead of one workout, look at the whole week. Instead of one week , the entire month.
Beck (Beck J.S., 2011) calls this “decatastrophizing through perspective” , de-escalation through perspective. When one bad moment occupies 100% of your attention, it looks enormous. When you place it in the context of the whole week , it’s 1% of the total. It doesn’t disappear, but it takes its real size.
Practically: next time the mental filter catches you, take a sheet of paper and draw a rectangle. Divide it proportionally into “good moments” and “bad moments” from the workout. Visually. You’ll see that the “bad” occupies much less area than it feels like.
4. “Victory Bank” , Record Every Small Win
Since our brain is “Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the positive,” we must actively compensate for this imbalance. Hanson (Hanson, 2009) proposes the practice of “taking in the good” , and I adapt it for athletes as a “victory bank.”
How it works: start a notebook (physical or digital) in which you record every small victory. Not just competition results , everything. “Today I woke up on time for training.” “I completed the entire protocol.” “I controlled the eccentric phase.” “I chose healthy food when it was easy not to.” “I slept 8 hours.”
When disqualifying kicks in and you tell yourself “I’m not achieving anything,” open the bank. The evidence is there , in black and white. Not opinions, not interpretations , facts. And it’s much harder to disqualify a fact you recorded yourself.
Connection to Other Cognitive Distortions
The mental filter and disqualifying the positive rarely work alone. They’re part of a broader network of cognitive distortions:
- Black-and-white thinking: If the workout isn’t 100% perfect, it’s “bad.” The mental filter selects the negative detail, and black-and-white thinking generalizes it to the entire experience.
- Catastrophizing: The mental filter selects one bad moment, and catastrophizing extrapolates it into the future: “If I can’t control my form on one set, what will happen at the competition?”
- Perfectionism: Perfectionism is the system that feeds both distortions. The perfectionist has impossibly high standards , the mental filter guarantees they’ll notice every deviation, and disqualifying guarantees they won’t acknowledge anything they’ve achieved.
Conclusion: Allow Yourself to See the Whole Picture
The mental filter and disqualifying the positive are so insidious because they look like objectivity. “I just see things as they are,” you tell yourself. But you don’t see them as they are. You see them as your mind selects and interprets them.
True objectivity requires seeing the whole picture , both the bad and the good. Not exaggerating the good. Not ignoring the bad. But giving them their real size. The bad set isn’t “the whole workout.” The good result isn’t “just luck.” You are both your mistakes and your successes. Both are real. Allow yourself to see them both.
If you recognize these patterns and want to work on them deliberately, you can book a psychological consultation or check out the Synergistic Protocol , a 12-week program in which we work systematically on your cognitive patterns.
References:
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370.
Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders. International Universities Press.
Beck, J. S. (2011). Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. William Morrow.
Hanson, R. (2009). Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom. New Harbinger Publications.