Cs, much like chasidus, there are many different paths in the baalei mussar.
The goals are the same; to reach tikun hamidos and be as close to Hashem as possible. So much so that several big chassidishe rebbes said that after rav yisroel salanter, the litvishe had taken a broad move towards penimius, to the point where they do not need chasidus at all. The gerrer rebbe(i believe it was the sfas emes) said similar things about rav hirsch.
Mussar seforim and mesoros range from stressing negative things, which is what you describe, to stressing positive middos and gadlus ha’adam, and a lot in between.
Novardoker yeshivos (which produced gedolim such as the steipler) traditionally taught talmidim to do things to break their middos and focus on their shortcomings, while slabodka (which is where rav aharon kotler, rav yaakov kaminetzky and many other American Torah builders learned) taught talmidim to focus on positivity and the greatness of a yid, az es past nisht, etc…
While that may have been the mesorah of novardok, every gadol I’ve learned about who came out of novardok embraced a different path for today’s generation (and that of the 1950s, for that matter), seeing that people are too depressed and not able to go the way of those baalei mussar of yore.
The Arizal said the same thing about fasting and self affliction; in “our” time, these things largely do more harm than good, and we get those benefits from Torah, tefilas, simcha, etc…
Baalei mussar teach a vast array of methods, ranging from what therapists call cognitive behavioral therapy, (centuries before the term was invented), constant self awareness, introspection , what breslov calls hisbodedus, meditation on maamarei chazal, and using the power of torah lishma to purify one’s self(rav yisroel salanter emphasized this a lot in his famous igeres, where he says that one cannot fix one’s middos without learning about their relevant mitzvos b’iyun)
Mussar is an entire field of study and a lifestyle of gedolei olam; it’s chutzpah to stuff it into one sentence.