Seeing Sideways - The Narrative Fallacy & the Stories We Tell Ourselves

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"One honest detail added can shift the entire meaning and make your story more real and not just more comfortable."

Is the story you tell about your past actually the truth, or is it just the most comfortable version?

Understand the Narrative Fallacy, the cognitive bias that makes your brain rewrite the past into a neat, consistent story. Learn how to spot this mental shortcut to embrace life's complexity and build authentic resilience and clarity.

Key Takeaway Insights and Tools 

• The Narrative Fallacy is the brain's tendency to simplify complexity, fill in gaps, and distort details to make the past appear more coherent and meaningful than it was. (1:02)
• By oversimplifying the past, we lose sight of the random factors, coincidence, and unpredictability that shaped our lives, leading us to believe we are always in control. (2:45)
• Clinging to a rigid, tidy narrative reduces resilience because it makes us resistant to change and adaptation, and we stop questioning the path we've set. (4:39)
• The Contrarian Move is to consciously embrace life's complexity and unpredictability instead of forcing events into overly neat stories. (5:27)
• Genuine resilience arises not from crafting perfect stories, but from navigating uncertainty, contradiction, and randomness with adaptability and openness. (7:52)

If today's episode offered you a new perspective, please share it with someone who might benefit and subscribe to the podcast for more insights on cognitive biases!

Jason White Birkevold Liem is the host of It’s an Inside Job and author of Seeing Sideways. He helps leaders and coaches turn psychological insight into everyday practice—so they can think clearly, choose wisely, and lead with intent.

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