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by
Tasha Eurich
Read between
March 2 - March 23, 2022
the ability to see ourselves clearly—to understand who we are, how others see us, and how we fit into the world.*1
self-awareness is the meta-skill of the twenty-first century. As you’ll read in the pages ahead, the qualities most critical for success in today’s world—things like emotional intelligence, empathy, influence, persuasion, communication, and collaboration—all stem from self-awareness. To put it another way, our self-awareness sets the upper limit for the skills that make us stronger team players, superior leaders, and better relationship builders.
Internal self-awareness has to do with seeing yourself clearly. It’s an inward understanding of your values, passions, aspirations, ideal environment, patterns, reactions, and impact on others.
External self-awareness is about understanding yourself from the outside in—that is, knowing how other people see you.
Because focusing on ourselves doesn’t mean that we understand ourselves.
They understood their values (the principles that guide them), passions (what they love to do), aspirations (what they want to experience and achieve), fit (the environment they require to be happy, energized, and engaged), patterns (consistent ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving), reactions (the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that reveal their strengths and weaknesses), and impact (the effect they have on others). In this chapter, we will examine a few of these Seven Pillars of Insight in more detail and begin to paint the picture of the rich, multifaceted understanding that makes up
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But by definition, earthquake events also run the risk of paralyzing us, suppressing our emotional agility and making it that much harder to absorb what we’ve learned about ourselves, much less channel it productively. As management professor Morgan McCall observes, the emotionally laden nature of these situations tempts us to distance ourselves from them: we may get defensive, blame others, become more cynical, overcompensate, shut down, or give up. To protect against this, as McCall and his colleagues advise, “we must absorb the suffering rather than react to it.”
Making matters worse, many powerful people encircle themselves with friends or sycophants who don’t challenge or disagree with them. As professor Manfred Kets de Vries put it, they’re surrounded by “walls, mirrors and liars.”
KEY CONCEPTS AND TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 3 Steve disease: A condition where we believe ourselves to be smarter, funnier, thinner, better-looking, more socially skilled, athletic, and better drivers than we actually are. Dunning-Kruger Effect: The least competent people tend to be the most confident about their abilities and performance. Braver but wiser: The decision to discover the truth about ourselves on our own terms, along with a positive mindset and a sense of self-acceptance. The Three blind spots: We can’t always assess what we know (Knowledge Blindness), how we feel (Emotion Blindness), or
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It’s far easier to feel wonderful and special than to become wonderful and special.
I to help you gauge how many such behaviors you currently exhibit. 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.
KEY CONCEPTS AND TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 4 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
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But Grant also found no relationship between introspection and insight. 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 (yes, you read that right). In other words, we can spend endless amounts of time in self-reflection but emerge with no more self-insight than when we started.
for introspection—that is, the ability to consciously examine our thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors.*1
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.).
we should be focusing on what we can learn and how to move forward.
Another tip is to 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. Unquestionably, a common motivation for introspection (or even to buy a book like this one) is to finally figure ourselves out, once and for all.
More broadly, introspection should be a process of open and curious exploration rather than a search for definitive answers.
The bottom line is that when we ask why, that is, examine the causes of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are generally searching for the easiest and most plausible answer. Sadly, though, once we have found one, we generally stop looking—despite having no way of knowing whether our answer is right or wrong.
The lesson here is that asking “what” keeps us open to discovering new information about ourselves, even if that information is negative or in conflict with our existing beliefs. Asking “why” has an essentially opposite effect.
The bottom line? Why questions draw us to our limitations; what questions help us see our potential. Why questions stir up negative emotions; what questions keep us curious. Why questions trap us in our past; what questions help us create a better future. Indeed, making the transition from why to what can be the difference between victimhood and growth.
“an emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof.
Pennebaker’s journaling exercise
explore the negative and not overthink the positive.
In that way, journaling is similar to therapy: if used as a means of exploration—of holding up a mirror—it can help us make sense of the past and the present and move forward more productively in the future.
True insight only happens when we process both our thoughts and our feelings.
don’t write every day. It’s true: Pennebaker and his colleagues have shown that writing every few days is better than writing for many days in a row.
the Ruminator tricks us into believing that we’re engaging in productive self-reflection. After all, why else would we put ourselves through such mental self-flagellation if not to gain insight?
This is why rumination is the most insidious of all the follies: not only does it effectively prevent insight, it can masquerade as productive self-reflection.*7 And when it comes to self-awareness, if introspection is disruptive, rumination is disastrous.
That’s why research shows that despite incessantly processing their feelings, ruminators are less accurate at identifying their emotions: their minds are so laser-focused on an incident, reaction, or personal weakness that they miss the larger picture.
Another reason rumination is an enemy of insight is that it’s effectively an avoidance strategy.
Does anyone else care about this as much as I do?
reminding ourselves that people don’t generally care about our mistakes as much as we think they do
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.
KEY CONCEPTS AND TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 5 Introspection: The process of consciously examining our thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors. Rumination: A fixation on our fears, shortcomings, and insecurities The Four Follies of Introspection We can’t excavate our unconscious, no matter how hard we try. Trying to find the “why” behind our behavior isn’t helpful. Journaling isn’t universally effective. Though rumination can feel like a path to insight, it is actually the enemy to self-awareness. How to introspect the right way Choose the right approach: Not all self-reflection is useful. Focus
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mindfulness is the opposite: simply noticing what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing without judgment or reaction.
“the process of actively noticing new things, relinquishing preconceived mindsets, and then acting on…[our] new observations.”
There’s a growing body of evidence that mindfulness meditation can save us from the traps of introspection and rumination
And though mindfulness is much loved by those seeking internal self-awareness, it also has surprising benefits for external self-awareness; research shows that by quieting our egos, we become more open to feedback from others.
Whatever you do to center yourself, make sure you spend that time actively noticing new things rather than just mentally checking out.
reframing,
second non-meditative mindfulness tool is comparing and contrasting. When we compare and contrast, we’re looking for similarities and differences between our experiences, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors over time. In particular, this can be a great way to see patterns (one of the Seven Pillars of Insight) that we might not have picked up on in the past.
What about X is the same and what is different than it was in the past? Have there been any patterns in my mood, positive or negative, that have coincided with changes in X? Does the way I feel about X remind me of any similar feelings I’ve had about a past situation? How happy or fulfilled am I with X today versus how I felt about X in the past? When I think about X over the course of my life, have things gotten better or worse?
daily check-ins
For example, in one study, call-center trainees who took just a few minutes to reflect at the end of each day improved their performance an average of 23 percent.
What went well today? What didn’t go well? What did I learn and how will I be smarter tomorrow?
Life Story approach helps you look backward to learn how the sum total of your past has shaped you.
Think about your life as if it were a book. Divide that book into chapters that represent the key phases of your life. Within those phases, think of 5–10 specific scenes in your story—high points, low points, turning points, early memories, important childhood events, important adulthood events, or any other event you find self-defining. For each, provide an account that is at least one paragraph long. When you are finished writing your account, take a step back and look at your life story as a whole: What major themes, feelings, or lessons do you see in your story? What does the story of your
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self-aware people tend to knit more complex narratives of their key life events: they are more likely to describe each event from different perspectives, include multiple explanations, and explore complex and even contradictory emotions.
Perhaps for this reason, complex life stories are associated with continued personal growth and maturity years into the future.
