Coaching practices for Filtering Out the Positive
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Filtering Out the Positive, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I get a page of praise and one line of criticism, and the one criticism is all I can see
- Lately all I seem to register is what my partner does wrong
- A shiny opportunity lands and I get so dazzled by the upside that I talk myself right past the one thing about it I know I’ll hate
- I catch every single thing my partner forgets or does wrong, but the dozen kind, ordinary things they do for me each day just sail right past me unnoticed
- At the end of the day all I can recall is everything that went wrong, even when plenty went fine
Practices that may help
- Mental filter (negative attention bias)
Focus on one negative detail while ignoring the broader positive picture.
Cognitive Distortions: The Thinking Errors Behind Anxiety and Depression - Track what your partner does right, not just wrong
Deliberately notice and record positive partner behaviors to counteract negativity bias.
The 5-to-1 Positivity Ratio in Relationships - Use anti-goals as a decision filter before evaluating opportunities
Run every major opportunity through your anti-goals list before calculating the upside.
Anti-Goals: Defining Success by What You Refuse to Accept - Actively notice positive partner behavior
Scan for what your partner does right, not just what they don’t do.
Positive Sentiment Override: How to Build the Lens That Protects Relationships - Deploy attention deliberately to positive present-moment experience
Train the habit of noticing what is going well — not as toxic positivity, but as a correction for negativity bias.
Attentional Deployment, Made Practical - Yellow hat: find genuine value and best-case scenarios
Actively search for why the idea could succeed and what value it would create — the yellow hat requires optimism to be evidence-based, not cheerleading.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - Monitor and adjust your positivity ratio
Track the ratio of positive to negative emotional states in your day — not to suppress the negative, but to ensure the positive is present in proportion.
Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical - Apply extra scrutiny when a choice feels obviously good
Positive affect is as reliable a bias-trigger as fear — audit opportunities that feel like obvious wins.
The Affect Heuristic — When Feelings Substitute for Facts - Frame the attribute positively
"75% lean" beats "25% fat" — the same fact, framed by its better-sounding attribute.
The Framing Effect - Positive Sentiment Override: How to Build the Lens That Protects Relationships
Positive sentiment override (PSO) is Gottman’s term for a perceptual state in which the accumulated goodwill in a relationship causes partners to interpret neutral or mildly negative partner behavior charitably — as a mistake or a bad moment, not as evidence of ill intent. PSO is built through consistent positive interactions over time; its opposite, negative sentiment override, develops when negative interactions dominate and even neutral behavior is read as hostile. The evidence is observational; direct experimental manipulation of PSO as a clinical target is limited.
Related concerns
- Negativity Bias Couples
Deliberately notice and record positive partner behaviors to counteract negativity bias.
Track what your partner does right, not just wrong
- Stop Pointing Out The Downside
Run every major opportunity through your anti-goals list before calculating the upside.
Use anti-goals as a decision filter before evaluating opportunities
- Negative Sentiment Override
Positive sentiment override (PSO) is Gottman’s term for a perceptual state in which the accumulated goodwill in a relationship causes partners to interpret neutral or mildly negative partner behavior charitably — as a mistake or a bad moment, not as evidence of ill intent. PSO is built through consistent positive interactions over time; its opposite, negative sentiment override, develops when negative interactions dominate and even neutral behavior is read as hostile. The evidence is observational; direct experimental manipulation of PSO as a clinical target is limited.
- Negativity Bias
Deliberately notice and record positive partner behaviors to counteract negativity bias.
- Positive Sentiment Override
Positive sentiment override (PSO) is Gottman’s term for a perceptual state in which the accumulated goodwill in a relationship causes partners to interpret neutral or mildly negative partner behavior charitably — as a mistake or a bad moment, not as evidence of ill intent. PSO is built through consistent positive interactions over time; its opposite, negative sentiment override, develops when negative interactions dominate and even neutral behavior is read as hostile. The evidence is observational; direct experimental manipulation of PSO as a clinical target is limited.
- Accuracy Vs Positivity
The target is a realistic, flexible explanatory style — not Pollyannaish optimism.
Calibrate toward accuracy, not positivity
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