If you’ve spent much time with me over the last five years, you’ve probably heard me say, “The most important story is the story you tell yourself.”
At one point, my wife told me I had to give it a break. “That statement doesn’t make sense to everyone.”
She was right.
But it makes sense to me. A lot of sense.
That idea was further refined for me by psychologist Seth Gillihan in his Waking Up series, Changing How We Think. Early in the series he introduces a term that made me pause and rewind.
Cognitive distortion.
A cognitive distortion is a mental filter that bends reality in ways that aren’t helpful.
We’re very good at distorting the past, the present, and the future in ways that create unnecessary suffering. These distortions often feel true, but they quietly shape our actions, decisions, and relationships.
The work is not to eliminate them. It’s to notice them. To name them. To see the story more clearly.
Gillihan outlines sixteen common cognitive distortions and encourages identifying your own. After a few days of paying attention, here are the five I notice most often in myself. Some come from the series. Some are adaptations. A few are my own.
1. Fortune Telling
I keep a one-week plan, a quarterly plan, and a one-year plan. The problem is simple. I don’t know what tomorrow brings. No one does.
2. Catastrophizing
A delayed flight for mechanical repair is not a catastrophe. A wrecked plane is.
3. The Redundant
Much of my work and many of my habits are boring. Flossing. Organizing campaign creative. They’re not exciting, but they’re not stressful either. They’re stabilizing. Don’t complain about the work. Don’t delay it. Don’t exaggerate it. Just do it.
4. The Book Cover
I make quick personal judgments based on limited information and appearance. I fill in gaps with assumptions. I confuse looks with truth. I’m often wrong.
5. The Dumb Decision
It’s easy to judge decisions that don’t make sense to me. But almost every decision makes sense to the person making it, given what they know, value, experience, and fear.
These are just five. There are many more. Our lives are riddled with distortions. That’s part of being human. I don’t think my dog, Chimmy, has any.
But the real shift isn’t the list. It’s the practice of identifying the story I’m telling myself in real time. Creating space to recognize false narratives as they form.
Maybe the most important story isn’t just the one we tell ourselves.
Maybe it’s learning to recognize when that story is quietly distorted.