Insight: Why We Are Less Self-Aware Than We Think—and What to Do About It

by Tasha Eurich

But there is one hugely important caveat: before you put on your rose-colored glasses and head down the path of persistence, make sure that your path actually leads somewhere.

Where failure is not an option, you don’t have the luxury of blissful ignorance.

an intense self-focus not only obscures our vision of those around us; it distorts our ability to see ourselves for what we really are.

For example, in a study of tens of thousands of U.S. college students, Jean Twenge and her colleagues found that between the mid-1980s and 2006, narcissism increased a full 30 percent, as measured by statements like “If I ruled the world it would be a better place” and “I always know what I’m doing.”

But is this a level of narcissism normal for someone of college-age, that they can be expected to mature out of? College kids are the most chronically overstudied and oversampled population size simply because they are readily available, not a protected population, and generally more willing to be studied for less reward

suggesting that as self-presentation increases, empathy decreases.

But in addition to its social and professional consequences, even low-level (i.e., non-diagnosable) narcissism can chip away at our self-confidence.

But no matter what your score, if you want to move away from self-absorption and toward self-awareness, it’s worth examining the following three strategies: becoming an informer, cultivating humility, and practicing self-acceptance.

try being an Informer—that is, focusing less on you and more on engaging and connecting with others. For the next 24 hours, then, my challenge to you is to pay attention to how much you talk about yourself versus how much you focus on others—both online and offline.

We also need to take a more realistic view of our own qualities, or in other words, cultivate humility. Because it means appreciating our weaknesses and keeping our successes in perspective, humility is a key ingredient of self-awareness.

There is no question that humble people like Angela Ahrendts are objectively more successful because their focus on other people makes them more liked and respected. Because they work hard and don’t take things for granted. Because they admit when they don’t have the answers. Because they are willing to learn from others versus stubbornly clinging to their views. As a result, people on teams with humble leaders are more engaged, more satisfied with their jobs, and less likely to leave.

humility requires accepting a certain degree of imperfection, and most goal-oriented, Type A people rarely give themselves the permission to do so.

Thankfully, the alternative to boundless self-esteem doesn’t have to be self-loathing but rather self-acceptance—our third approach to fighting the Cult of Self. Where self-esteem means thinking you’re amazing regardless of the objective reality, self-acceptance (also called self-compassion by some researchers) means understanding our objective reality and choosing to like ourselves anyway. So instead of trying to be perfect—or delusionally believing they are—self-accepting people understand and forgive themselves for their imperfections.

So how can you increase your self-acceptance? One approach is to better monitor your inner monologue.

each participant wrote a letter to their future self about the lessons they learned and the changes they wanted to make. The researchers coded letters as either self-accepting (which they called “constructive”) or self-critical. The executives who used self-accepting language were more effective, more creative, and less stressed than the self-critical ones.

We’ll revisit this idea in the next chapter when we talk about recognizing and stopping rumination, but for now, especially when you’re feeling bad about yourself—guilty, fearful, upset, unable to cope—take notice of whether you’re being self-critical. Why can’t I do the most basic things, like be on time?”) or self-accepting (“That was a mistake—but I’m only human and these things happen”). A helpful question to ask can sometimes be, “Would I say what I just said to myself to someone whom I like and respect?”

“The more committed you are to building self-awareness, the more empathy and grace you learn to extend to yourself.”

The Cult of Self: The societal phenomenon that tempts us all to feel special, unique, and superior. From the “Age of Effort” to the “Age of Esteem”: A widespread shift from focusing more on feeling great than becoming great. The Feel Good Effect: The tendency to see ourselves with rose-colored glasses. Selfie Syndrome: An intense self-focus that prevents us from seeing ourselves clearly. Self-presentation: Wanting to appear a certain way that is not reflective of who we really are. Resisting the Cult of Self Be an informer, not a meformer: Focusing less on ourselves and more on engaging and connecting with others Cultivate humility: Admit to our failings and put our successes in perspective Focus on self-acceptance over self-esteem: Know our flaws and choose to like ourselves anyway Tool: Monitor your inner monologue

people who scored high on self-reflection were more stressed, depressed, and anxious, less satisfied with their jobs and relationships, and felt less in control of their lives—and to boot, these negative consequences increased the more they reflected!

The act of thinking about ourselves wasn’t associated with knowing ourselves. In fact, in a few cases, he found the opposite: the more time the participants spent introspecting, the less self-knowledge they had

Still other research suggests that self-analyzers tend to have more anxiety, less positive social experiences, and more negative attitudes about themselves.

when we introspect, our response is similar to a hungry cat watching mice. We eagerly pounce on whatever “insights” we find without questioning their validity or value. And even though they might feel helpful, on their own they’re unlikely to actually help us improve our internal self-awareness.

The problem with introspection, it turns out, isn’t that it’s categorically ineffective, but that many people are doing it completely wrong.

Specifically, research has shown that we can’t uncover our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motives, no matter how hard we try. Our subconscious, in other words, is less like a padlocked door and more like a hermetically sealed vault.

The first imperative is to choose the right approach—one that focuses less on the process of introspection and more on the outcome of insight (i.e., the Seven Pillars, like our values, reactions, patterns, etc.).

adopt a flexible mindset, which is applicable both within and outside the confines of a therapist’s office. A flexible mindset means remaining open to several truths and explanations, rather than seeking, as Freud often did, one root cause to explain a broad range of feelings and behaviors. This involves letting go of a desire for something that Turkish psychologist Omer Simsek calls the need for absolute truth.

This single-minded fixation on our fears, shortcomings, and insecurities has a name: it’s called rumination, and it’s introspection’s evil twin.*6

frequent ruminators are less satisfied with their lives and relationships, feel less control over their destiny, and are generally less happy. Other research has shown that rumination is related to lower grades, impaired problem solving, worse moods, and poorer-quality sleep.

But in reality, when we obsess over the causes and meaning behind negative events, we keep the emotions that come with them at arm’s length, which can often be even more painful for us than the act of ruminating.

For one thing, ruminators are so busy beating themselves up that they neglect to think about how they might be showing up to others.

And in fact, reminding ourselves that people don’t generally care about our mistakes as much as we think they do was one of our unicorns’ most commonly cited rumination-busting strategies.

The same is true for adults: a learn-well mindset—that is, channeling our thinking to focus on learning over performance—is not only a great rumination-buster; it has also been shown to improve performance in adults.