‘Disqualifying the positive’ is when someone recognizes only negative aspects of a situation while ignoring the positive.

It sounds something like: “Yes, but…” or “That doesn’t really count because…” or “They only did that because …” — “It’s true that they gave me a gift, but they only gave it to me because someone reminded them to give it.”

Everyone has positive things going for them in life – some bigger or smaller. But when you constantly disqualify those or only look to the negative aspects of the situation, you are really not looking at the given situation with the true lenses of reality.

Firstly, it isn’t an accurate picture of the reality. Perhaps worse, you’re missing out on the joy you could be experiencing by allowing yourself to recognize the positive things you have going for you.

Work to accept your reality as it really is – the positives are real. Fact is: they did give you a gift.

When you hear yourself thinking “yes but”, shut down that voice and seek to focus on the positive aspects in the situation rather than the negative.

**This doesn’t mean that we put on rose colored glasses and ignore negative situations that need to be attended to or dealt with. It just means that we don’t disqualify the positive at the same time, thereby robbing ourselves of the ability to see both the good and the bad in a situation.