Cognitive Distortions Insight #3: Filtering
When Your Mind Becomes a Fault-Finding Machine
Filtering is the distortion that edits reality down to a single negative thread. You could have ten wins and one mistake—Filtering zooms in on the mistake. It’s not just pessimism. It’s selective blindness.
You don’t see the full picture. You see the flaw. You see the risk. You see the crack in the glass and call the whole window broken.
It’s the mental habit of scanning for what’s wrong, then ignoring everything else. Progress gets dismissed. Effort gets erased. The story shrinks to a single failure frame.
Tactical Reframe: Acknowledge, Then Zoom Out
You don’t need to pretend the negative doesn’t exist. You still acknowledge it—but you don’t let it dominate.
You name the flaw. Then you zoom out. You ask: What else is true?
That’s the neutral. That’s the middle ground between denial and distortion. It’s where you can say, “That was messy,” and also, “I handled it better than last time.”
Filtering collapses complexity. Neutral noticing restores it.
Fixer Reframe: I Don’t Filter—I Scan for Fuel
I go through life glass-half-full. Always have. Never won’t. Not because I’m naive—because I’m tactical.
I don’t filter for flaws. I scan for signals. I notice the effort. I notice the pattern. I notice the neutral.
I name the negative, but I don’t let it hijack the narrative. I zoom out. I adapt. I move.
That’s how I stay tactical. That’s how I keep evolving.
Jason Bresnehan
Jason is a fixer—of businesses, of broken momentum, and occasionally of entire spiritual frameworks gone sideways. He speaks fluent boardroom and AA, deploys Catholic doctrine with the subtlety of a scalpel, and isn’t afraid to lace his insights with both war-room metaphors and dad-sermon tenderness.
Founder of Evahan, a consultancy built on the idea that legacy and liquidity don’t need to fight, Jason draws on 30 years of commercial grit, tactical leadership, and emotional radar to help people rebuild what entropy took. He works with companies, communities, and recovery misfits alike—often using the same principles to sort both cap tables and chaotic lives.
Jason draws deep inspiration from historical figures who got results—especially those who led from the margins, built with scarce resources, and refused to be shackled by conventional wisdom. He’s known for assembling unorthodox teams of passionate experts to solve complex problems in chaotic environments. Whether in boardrooms, recovery communities, or legacy disputes, Jason’s approach is rooted in common purpose, tactical innovation, and the belief that clarity thrives when paradigms are challenged.