How to Develop Greater Self-Awareness
Episode Stats
Summary
Tasha Urich is an organizational psychologist and the author of Insight, why we re not as self-aware as we think, and how seeing ourselves clearly helps us succeed at work and in life. In this episode, we discuss the 7 pillars of self-awareness, the barriers to getting insights into them, including falling into the cult of self, and ways to overcome them.
Transcript
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Hey, it's Brett, we're taking a break from new episodes today, so we're going to rebroadcast
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episode number 644, How to Develop Greater Self-Awareness.
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It's one of our most popular episodes of all time.
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Hope you enjoy it, and while I have you, if you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate
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if you take one minute to get a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it helps out a
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Thanks so much, we'll see you on Monday with a new episode.
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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95% of people say that they're self-aware, but only 10-15% of people actually are.
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As my guest today says, that means on a good day, 80% of us are lying to ourselves about
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how much we're lying to ourselves, and this blind spot can have big repercussions for our
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Her name is Tasha Urich, and she's an organizational psychologist and the author of Insight, why
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we're not as self-aware as we think, and how seeing ourselves clearly helps us succeed at
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Tasha kicks off our conversation by arguing that our level of self-awareness sets the
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upper limit of our individual effectiveness, and that self-awareness can be developed and
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She then unpacks what it is you know about yourself when you possess self-awareness, how
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there are two types of this knowledge, internal and external, and how you can have one without
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Tasha then outlines the seven pillars of self-awareness, the barriers to getting insights into them,
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including falling into the cult of self, and how these barriers can be overcome, including
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We then discuss how two of the most common methods of gaining self-knowledge, introspection
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and journaling can in fact backfire, and how to do them more effectively by asking yourself
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what instead of why, and actually journaling less instead of more.
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We also get into why you should be an informer rather than a me-former on social media, how
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to become more mindful without meditation, and how to solicit and handle feedback from other
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people, including holding something called a dinner of truth.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash self-awareness.
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You're a consultant, psychologist, and author of this book called Insight.
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How did you end up focusing your career and consulting on helping leaders and just everyone
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So I've been an organizational psychologist for more than 15 years.
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But before that, I was the daughter of an entrepreneur.
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And so I grew up literally watching my mom run a company.
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And I've always been very passionate about business.
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I actually think it's the greatest personal growth tool there is in some sense.
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But I fell in love with psychology at the same time.
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And I was lucky enough when I was kind of ending college to find this field of organizational
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psychology where essentially the goal is to help create prosperity, both sort of financially
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and then just more generally in businesses by helping leaders be better, by helping companies
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I went and got my PhD in the field and have really never looked back.
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So for me, part of what I focus on in my consulting work is I coach usually the top one or two levels
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in mid- to large-sized organizations, so CEOs and their direct reports.
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And what I kept seeing over and over and over for so many years was this very distinct pattern.
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And it was that the leaders and executives I coached who were willing to question the assumptions
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they had about themselves, who were willing to get sometimes brutal feedback about how they were
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showing up and what kind of leader they were, and who were willing to do the work
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and make changes and really figure out how they can show up in the best possible way were
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But they weren't just more successful, they were happier, they were more confident, they
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And as I started to think about this, you know, the buzzword of self-awareness had emerged.
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But what I wanted to know, my background is scientific, is, is self-awareness actually as important
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Were sort of the common pieces of wisdom out there?
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You know, you read a Forbes article that says, get more feedback.
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And so I convened a research team, it's been more than seven years ago now, where we wanted
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And then probably most importantly, how do we get more of it?
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We've learned that a lot of the most commonly accepted truths about self-awareness, what it
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Well, you opened the book saying, arguing that self-awareness, you call it the meta skill
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What do you, why do you think it's such an important skill to have these days?
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Like, what is it about modern work and just life in general in the 21st century that requires
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So let me give you a couple of scientifically supported outcomes of self-awareness, and
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then I'll circle back to your question, because I think it's really the heart of the matter.
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Self-aware people, empirically, scientifically, are more successful at work.
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They're better communicators, better influencers, better salespeople.
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There's even a growing body of evidence that shows that self-awareness isn't just nice to
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Leaders who are self-aware lead more profitable companies.
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Companies who are comprised of self-aware people are more profitable.
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So all of these things together, it's important already, but the reason I think self-awareness
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is the foundational skill of the 21st century, even before COVID, but more so now, is that
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we can only be as effective at all of these 21st century skills as we are self-aware.
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Has anyone ever met an exceptional leader who wasn't also self-aware or a very effective
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And so the way I look at this is essentially our self-awareness is going to set the upper
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And that's why, we'll talk about this later, but a lot of people have more room to improve
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But the good news is self-awareness, we've discovered, is one of the most developable
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So it just presents a huge opportunity for so many people.
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Let's talk about what self-awareness is, because you make the case there's two parts to
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And there's internal and external self-awareness.
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And we're going to dig deep into each of these types.
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But on high level, what's the difference between the two?
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And why can't you have true or complete self-awareness without both?
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When we started this research program, I was pretty naive.
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And I thought, oh, it should be pretty easy to come up with a definition of what self-awareness
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And almost a thousand empirical studies later, we surveyed thousands of people all around the
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We did in-depth interviews, which I'm sure we'll talk about.
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We finally, after about a year, were able to distill, what do we know when we're self-aware?
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And just like you said, it's made up of two types of self-knowledge.
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So the first is something we call internal self-awareness, which is knowing who you are
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What aspirations do you have for the kind of life you want to live and the type of career
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But at the same time, there's something equally important called external self-awareness.
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And what that is, is in a nutshell, knowing how other people see us.
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And fascinatingly, you alluded to this, is we found that these two types of self-knowledge
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So if there are any stats nerds listening to this, there is a 0.0 correlation between your
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level of internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.
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But what I think is really important about that is it provides the roadmap.
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What does it actually take to become self-aware?
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It's an equal focus on internal and external self-awareness, even when those answers are
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You sort of think about the way I see myself is going to be different than the way other
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But the most self-aware people we've discovered are able to balance both of those types of self-knowledge,
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not putting one over the other in terms of importance, but being able to sort of live
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Well, because I think people can think of examples of people who are internally self-aware,
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So they know kind of what they want in life, but they're clueless about how other people
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What's an example of someone who has external self-awareness, but no internal self-awareness?
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So the archetype that you talked about, I call introspectors.
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The opposite of that, somebody who has high external self-awareness and low internal self-awareness,
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I'm far more comfortable asking someone for feedback about myself than I am really pondering
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And what we found with pleasers is, first of all, there's a slightly higher proportion of
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Men are just a little bit more likely to be introspectors.
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But for pleasers, their journey is usually figuring out what do they really want.
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You think about the classic trope of like, instead of going pre-med in this full-ride scholarship,
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I'm going to quit school and audition for American Idol.
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And I'm doing it because it's the thing I want at my core.
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That's the thing that pleasers really struggle with, is sometimes they can get wrapped up
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in what other people want them to do and lose sight of or not even think about what they
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So internal self-awareness is knowing what you want.
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External self-awareness is knowing how other people perceive you.
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But then what's the opposite of that, of being self-aware?
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So everybody sees this all around us in the world, of late particularly, but just in general.
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I think the opposite of self-awareness is closer to a self-absorption.
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So sometimes people say, can you be too self-aware?
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And what I think a lot of people get at with that question is, can you be so focused on
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You start to overthink everything you're doing or place too much emphasis on how other people
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So self-awareness is understanding who we are, our strengths and our weaknesses, everything
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that we are, but also having sort of a sense of self-acceptance.
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And that's why, to me, self-absorption is the opposite of that.
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It's having the sense that no matter what our objective reality is or where we stand on
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all the things we want to be and do, we think we're great anyway.
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And there's a lot of research that shows just how dangerous that can be.
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I get into this in Insight, but there's a lot of internal barriers to seeing ourselves
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There's a lot of sort of external cultural barriers to that.
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So the people that are self-aware are successful at fighting those things.
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Whereas most people can get wrapped up in, I call it the cult of self, right?
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This idea that I am special and unique and wonderful no matter what, and nobody really
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And we'll dig into these biases or these roadblocks here in a bit.
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But through your work and your research, you've uncovered, so we know what self-awareness is
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kind of knowing what you want in life, but also understanding how other people perceive
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But you've uncovered sort of like what you call seven pillars of self-awareness, things
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about your life that in order to be self-aware, you need to kind of have an understanding about.
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And we'll dig into a few of these, but what are, in your research, what are these seven
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pillars of insight that you think people need to have in order to be self-aware?
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Our research showed this crystal clear distinction between when someone is self-aware, what do
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And when someone isn't self-aware, what don't they know?
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And this is kind of in order from most core to us to most external.
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And by the way, you can receive internal and external information about all of them.
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And I think that'll make sense when I say what they are.
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So the first is our values, knowing the principles that we want to live our lives by.
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What are the things that we just love to do, make us leap out of bed in the morning, and
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how can we design our lives so we do them as much as possible?
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And that's not just what we want to accomplish in our life and our work, but also what experience
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do we want to have when we're here on this earth.
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Another one is basically the fit we have, the types of environments and people who give
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And this is basically knowing your personality, knowing in this type of situation, I tend to
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Or in general, I tend to be more of an extrovert or an introvert and so on.
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And this gets a lot of play with self-awareness.
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You think about my in-the-moment awareness of my thoughts, my feelings, my behaviors.
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And what's also part of this reactions component is our underlying strengths and weaknesses.
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If I have anger management problems, a weakness, I am going to, in the moment, lose my cool more
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And the last pillar of insight, the seventh pillar, is knowing our impact on others.
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And the beauty of these seven pillars is you can do your own unique exploration from an
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internal standpoint, and it's valuable to get feedback from other people.
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And so that's where I sort of think about internal and external self-awareness as the
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two camera angles for how we can see ourselves.
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And then those seven pillars are, you know, is the what, is the work that we need to do.
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Yeah, I thought that was interesting that you can, it's possible to have internal or not
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have internal self-awareness about some of these things, but external self-awareness can help
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I was thinking like, you know, your triggers, right?
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You might not even be aware of the things that cause you to flip for whatever, but other
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And if you get their feedback, you can finally figure out like, okay, well, this sort of thing
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We are notoriously poor judges of particularly how we come across to other people, but like
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One thing I do with the CEOs I work with is, you know, we work on clarifying their values,
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but it's also really helpful to ask other people, based on my behavior and what you know of me,
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you know, what do you think is most important to me?
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I've done that exercise so many times that sometimes something unique will come from that
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Something that maybe that person didn't even know they were doing, or, or even was so core
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to them that they didn't think about it because it's just how they see the world.
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So that's why I think those two perspectives are so important.
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I thought that was interesting with the values thing.
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Cause a lot of people go, I have a mission statement where I value this, this, this, this,
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but then you look at like how they spend their time, their money, how they treat.
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And it's like, that's really going to show you what they really value.
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I've had, I told a story about this in an article I wrote recently about how I had lunch with
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a client and I was really, really worked up about this person who had sent a nasty response
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And it was like consuming all of my thoughts and he, and I was telling him, you know, I'm
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going to, I'm going to respond to this guy and I'm going to say this and this and this.
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And he just looked at me and he said, Tasha, this is not the Tasha I know right now.
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The Tasha I know wants to make the world better for as many people as possible.
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And I'm hearing you talk about how you're going to take this poor guy down.
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And it was, it was just such an instructive moment.
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And I think as much as we can have people around us who trust us and love us enough to
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tell us the truth that can keep us honest, you know, like you said, am I really following
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Well, let's talk about how do you get these insights into these different pillars of self
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I mean, you just mentioned one, you had a colleague say, just tell you, Hey, this isn't really you.
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You're better than this and any other ways that you can find insights about this stuff?
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So there's a lot to this answer and I might not be able to give you anything satisfying
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on it, but I think, you know, part of it are the types of questions we ask ourselves and
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then the process we use to get feedback from other people.
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It's, it's not uncommon when I talk to, you know, organizational leaders for me to say,
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Hey, have you, have you actually sat down and thought about your top three values and
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how you're going to use those to be more effective?
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Sometimes people just look at me blankly, you know, and I think that's the kind of thing
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that it's going to morph and evolve as we go about our lives.
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But even just to sit down and ask, what are my values?
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Another is to put up processes that help other people give you feedback, especially if you
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are trying to work on something or get better at something.
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Let's say that, you know, someone aspires to be a better public speaker.
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A good way to continue that journey is to put a few people in place who are going to
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watch you speak publicly and figure out a way to regularly get feedback from them.
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So I think it's really, and this is where our research is, is kind of nuanced because
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But what we've discovered is to build self-awareness in all these ways, if you're strategic and smart
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about it, it actually doesn't become like another part-time job.
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It can be done very efficiently and effectively with not a ton of time.
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And then you also mentioned in the book, I mean, in some ways, they're just sort of like
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Maybe you get turned down from a job or you get fired from a job or, you know, you have
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a big failure in your life and you have to sort of have this reckoning.
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Because the situation forces you to actually introspect and try to get some self-awareness
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That's the difference between people who grow their self-awareness in their lives and people
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who, you know, just want to sort of remain blissfully ignorant.
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You know, we think like if I get fired, I might think, well, nobody understands me.
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They, you know, they wouldn't know a good salesperson if they smacked them in the face.
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But I think especially when life hands us an outcome that is dramatically different than what
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we expect professionally, personally, anything, that is a data point.
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And if we're not really doing the work to make sure that there wasn't something we were
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missing or there wasn't something we did to contribute to that, I think we're losing
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that opportunity for greater self-awareness and greater empowerment and just being able
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And you hear people who've had like near death experiences or had to go to the hospital
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Like that was a moment where they had to be like, I got to take care of my health.
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I got to figure out what's really important to me.
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And ideally it wouldn't take like a heart attack for you to do that.
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I mean, ideally you would start, you'd be able to be attuned like throughout your daily
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life of, you know, to gain insights about yourself.
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And that was one thing we found pretty clearly in what highly self-aware people did differently.
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You know, they did come across those earthquake events for sure.
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But what they did differently is they looked for kind of almost like this incremental daily
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And it wasn't spending hours and hours in therapy.
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You know, it wasn't writing journals, you know, every single day.
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It was really just having that curiosity on a daily basis.
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Pretty much all of our subjects that were highly self-aware had some form of what I named the
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And basically what you do is you take at the end of your day, if you're getting ready for
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bed or brushing your teeth, you ask yourself, what went well today?
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And if you think about that, it's so targeted and focused.
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But if it increases your self-awareness by even, say, 1% a week, if you do that most
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days, that's when you're going to start to get these really astonishing sort of compounding
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And for me, that's what I would recommend to someone.
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You don't want to just wait until, you know, like you said, you don't want to wait until
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you land yourself in the hospital because you didn't see the pattern coming.
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If you take a little bit more time and be proactive, you can prevent some of those things from
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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So you mentioned earlier that gaining self-insight or self-awareness can be hard because we have
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all these psychological biases working against us.
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What are some of these biases that are working against this?
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And then after that, like, how do you overcome some of these blind spots?
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In our research, we have found that if you ask people, are you self-aware?
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And the reality is that only about 10% to 15% of people actually fit that profile.
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You know, the joke I always make is on a good day, 80% of us are lying to ourselves about
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And there's a lot of sort of issues about the way humans are wired that we prefer to
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We aren't as likely to question our assumptions about ourselves.
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And so in my opinion, the biggest barrier there is to be self-aware is believing that
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And our research subjects that I told you about earlier who made these really dramatic improvements
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in their self-awareness had this, it was almost like a paradox in their mindset.
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On one hand, they were building their self-knowledge, you know, incrementally and strategically.
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But on the other hand, they had this philosophy that no matter what I know about myself, there's
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There was one gentleman in our study who was a middle school science teacher.
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And he said, I kind of think about self-awareness like exploring space.
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And no matter what I learn, there's always more to discover.
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And I really love that because it turns the problem on its head.
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Instead of saying, oh, gosh, you know, we all need to be more self-aware and we're not
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I think it's just a matter of having the right mindset of curiosity.
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So that's something that anybody who's listening to this today can do right now in this moment.
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Now, there's obviously action that has to back us up.
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And that's what we have gotten into a little bit.
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I think the other thing I'd say is there really is a cult of self-movement happening.
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It's been shown kind of all over the world that people are getting more low-level narcissism
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And so part of it is I never want people to overcorrect and go like, oh, well, I guess
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But I think we have to be really careful about, you know, think about your last social media
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Was it to show people how great you are subconsciously or consciously?
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Those are the types of things that I think really pull us away from self-awareness if we
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I'm not sure if you want to go into them, but that would be my initial response.
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And so we basically engage in cognitive dissonance to make us feel better about ourselves, even
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So if say something bad happens, well, it wasn't my fault.
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But if you never even consider the fact that you might have some sort of responsibility
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in the outcome, then you can never become more self-aware.
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But I want to dig into this cult of self you've talked about.
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And you're saying we're becoming more narcissistic.
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And narcissism, I think you made this clear, it's like low level.
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We're not, people aren't becoming clinical narcissists where that's like a psychological
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But you're just talking about people are just so focused on the self that they can't even
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take, it's harder and harder for people to take a third-party perspective on things.
00:24:21.340
And if you look at some of the studies, there's one that I think really sums it up.
00:24:25.860
They looked at the percentage of people who agreed with the statement, I am a very important
00:24:32.640
It's increased, I think it's like 30% in the last couple of decades.
00:24:37.240
And if you look around, that's something that we see everywhere.
00:24:43.980
And I think some of that has to do with life stage and just growing up and maturing.
00:24:49.160
But at the end of the day, those increases have been documented for pretty much all age
00:24:58.420
So this isn't just something that's happened in the last 10 years.
00:25:01.840
It's really been going on for a while and doesn't seem to be losing that much steam.
00:25:06.840
And also you highlight in this cult of self section in your book, there's research that
00:25:11.320
shows that focusing more on yourself, doing more introspection.
00:25:17.300
So they think I got to go off to a retreat or out into the woods and just be by myself and
00:25:23.460
They think that's the key to becoming more self-aware, just doing some really heavy introspection.
00:25:29.340
But you highlight all this research that shows actually, if you introspect the wrong way
00:25:34.400
or too much, it can actually make you less self-aware.
00:25:37.800
This was one of the biggest surprises in our research.
00:25:41.200
It was actually so surprising that I almost abandoned this project.
00:25:44.840
I thought, well, maybe self-awareness and introspection are bad.
00:25:47.720
But essentially what we did is we surveyed about 300 people.
00:25:53.920
And I was assuming that if I asked them to say, how much do you think about yourself?
00:25:59.260
How much do you kind of reflect on your thoughts and feelings and motives?
00:26:05.300
And I also wanted to measure how are they feeling about life?
00:26:13.120
Were they happy with their relationships at work and at home?
00:26:16.220
And I actually found the exact opposite pattern that I expected.
00:26:21.380
So the more people introspected, the less self-aware they tended to be and the worse off in their lives.
00:26:29.660
They were more stressed, more depressed, more anxious.
00:26:32.420
They were less satisfied just with life in general.
00:26:37.640
And as I started to explore this, what I ended up learning was it's not that introspection in and of
00:26:45.520
It's that most of us are making some pretty fundamental mistakes.
00:26:51.040
Common wisdom says, you know, go sit on a mountaintop or go be in the lotus position on a beach.
00:26:56.620
And if you ask yourself these questions, the answers will come.
00:27:00.240
But as it turns out, there are so many things about ourselves that are basically unknowable.
00:27:06.300
This is very stressful for introspectors to say, wait a minute, if I don't ask myself the
00:27:13.260
So I think that's a piece of it is we have to understand that a lot of our unconscious
00:27:18.680
thoughts and feelings and motives are not going to be available to us.
00:27:22.360
And the challenge then is if we don't know that and we ask ourselves a question, we find
00:27:27.960
an answer that feels true, but maybe isn't true.
00:27:31.620
You know, let's say I'm running a startup and I get in a blowout fight with one of my
00:27:38.380
partners and I ask myself, why did that happen?
00:27:41.960
What I might decide is, you know, maybe this person and I just don't know how to work together.
00:27:46.300
But maybe the actual reason was I didn't eat breakfast that morning and my blood sugar was
00:27:51.340
low and I wasn't in control of my emotions in the same way I would be otherwise.
00:27:55.720
So I think that's just a good example of where, you know, if we pounce on the first answer
00:27:59.720
that feels true, sometimes it can lead us away from the truth about ourselves.
00:28:04.540
That's just one example of the mistakes we can make when we're introspecting.
00:28:08.940
And how do you, what can you do to overcome those introspection mistakes so you can introspect
00:28:15.160
Thankfully, there's a small change we can make that will make introspection actually work
00:28:21.260
So if I go back to the example I gave, what we found of, you know, I get in a fight with
00:28:25.500
my business partner and I ask why, like, why did that happen?
00:28:32.020
Why is this other person always starting fights with me?
00:28:34.800
When we looked at what do highly self-aware people do differently, we found that they
00:28:44.180
So they didn't ask those questions that I just rattled off.
00:28:47.440
They had a very small kind of change that completely altered the effectiveness of their
00:28:54.620
And what we found is they tended to ask about 10 times as many what questions.
00:29:01.280
So the example in this situation would be, you know, what was going on in that conversation?
00:29:11.040
Or what can I do differently in the future to prevent this?
00:29:15.140
And at first, to me, the difference was really subtle.
00:29:18.080
But as I started getting into it, what I discovered was, essentially, why questions make us more
00:29:28.840
Why questions tend to focus us on the problem and just kind of reliving it over and over?
00:29:34.640
What questions help us be more solution-focused?
00:29:40.740
You know, we get stuck in just reliving it over and over.
00:29:45.940
And so the tool that I teach all around the world is called What, Not, Why.
00:29:51.580
And it's been transformational, I think, for so many people, myself included, that if we
00:29:56.680
just make that small change, a lot of amazing things can happen.
00:30:03.400
Because I've noticed that in my own life, whenever something bad happens, you typically
00:30:11.500
And usually the emotion, it's you go to a dark place.
00:30:13.780
It's like, well, you know, because of this happened a long time ago, and I've got this
00:30:18.800
But like, if you just shift the questions to what, yeah, you're right.
00:30:22.100
It keeps you analytical and allows you to find a solution and move forward.
00:30:27.700
And there's almost these introspective red herrings that we can get into if we ask why.
00:30:33.500
Like, a very common one usually ends up with, it was because my mother didn't love me.
00:30:40.220
Or, you know, it goes back into this childhood place almost that this might be controversial,
00:30:47.980
If you are in focus therapy with a trained professional who's helping you work through
00:30:55.320
But when it comes to just these everyday insights and understanding ourselves, as much as we
00:31:00.920
can focus on looking at the present, figuring out what we're going to do in the future.
00:31:06.500
And then, you know, sometimes we might look at the past to look at patterns, but I think
00:31:12.320
You know, I call it the rabbit hole of rumination that you just described.
00:31:17.020
And this kind of leads to my next question, because you had this section about journaling,
00:31:19.980
because people often think of journaling as a really great tool to self-reflect and get
00:31:25.600
And I read this chapter and I felt vindicated because, you know, early on in my life, you
00:31:30.580
know, when I was a teenager and like my early adulthood, I was like a religious journalist.
00:31:36.580
But then I think a couple of years ago, I just, like, it wasn't doing anything for me.
00:31:40.840
And I just realized it's like, I just ruminate over the same things.
00:31:44.280
Like I read through my journals from like years, and like the same issues come up over and
00:31:52.600
And so I just stopped and I felt kind of bad because according to the internet, self-improvement
00:32:01.760
I didn't really, it felt bad, but it made me feel better.
00:32:05.360
But you highlight research that journaling can actually not be that useful in gaining
00:32:12.100
It's the same kind of example as with introspection.
00:32:15.880
If we do it the right way, it can be really effective.
00:32:18.980
But if we make mistakes, again, you know, if we trust what we read on the internet, sometimes
00:32:25.000
So what we and others have found is journaling can be very helpful if, like you said, we don't
00:32:37.140
I have spent my life in perpetual guilt so that I didn't journal more.
00:32:40.840
But what our self-awareness kind of research subject taught us was they turned to journaling
00:32:47.260
when they were facing something important in their lives.
00:32:50.780
Maybe it was they were at a turning point or they were facing a big decision or something,
00:32:56.920
you know, really surprising had happened that they wanted to better understand.
00:33:00.340
But they sort of had an event-based model to journaling versus this daily habit.
00:33:08.000
There are other pieces to this research that have shown that if we focus too much on emotion
00:33:13.800
or too much on kind of the logic of what happened, that can derail us.
00:33:19.480
And so as much as we can have a balanced view of journaling where we talk about how we feel
00:33:24.400
and kind of what was happening, that can be another way to make sure that we get insight
00:33:30.560
And, you know, because if you focus too much on emotions, what you said is going to happen,
00:33:34.720
you know, you kind of get sucked in in this negative way.
00:33:36.860
If you focus too much on the rational part of what happened, you know, here's what I
00:33:41.440
ate for lunch today, you're probably not going to get that same level of insight.
00:33:45.640
So it's like anything, you know, there's a middle ground.
00:33:49.020
There's a middle ground between what you write about and how often you write that's going
00:33:56.840
Whenever I have a problem, I'll go to my journal just to write, start writing things.
00:34:00.640
And I try to avoid the emotion stuff and just focus on, well, here's the issue, here are
00:34:08.420
But I, yeah, the daily thing, I just, I don't care anymore.
00:34:13.680
So going back to this idea of the cult of self, you talk about how we share things on
00:34:26.880
We had this, well, you're told on the internet, you got to develop your personal brand, share
00:34:30.360
about yourself because that's the only way you move forward in life, but you highlight
00:34:32.920
research that makes you feel terrible or it can make you feel terrible.
00:34:37.100
And it also just doesn't help you gain any more insight about yourself.
00:34:40.200
So you offer an alternative to social media sharing that can be more useful.
00:34:49.100
We found that the most self-aware people, counter to everything I just said about the cult
00:34:54.520
of self, actually spent about 30% more time on social media than the average person.
00:35:02.020
And that was another moment where I was like, wait a minute, that makes no sense.
00:35:05.400
But then when we started looking at what they were posting, it was dramatically different
00:35:11.240
So whereas, you know, like you said, social media almost teaches us to, other researchers
00:35:23.800
It's my child's, you know, two and a half year birthday, all these things that are just
00:35:29.180
about me, me, me, but our highly self-aware people that we studied, they use social media
00:35:35.220
not as a me megaphone, but as an opportunity to enrich other people's lives.
00:35:41.200
So they gave us examples of, you know, I love to do nature photography.
00:35:44.940
And I, if I find something really beautiful, I post it because I want other people to feel
00:35:49.780
calm and grounded, or I read this hilarious article and I wanted to share it with others
00:35:56.740
So it's this idea that instead of thinking about what we're trying to accomplish for ourselves,
00:36:02.100
if we can flip the question and say, you know, first of all, why, what's the reason I'm posting
00:36:12.280
And I think, you know, if you're trying to build a brand, it's not about getting a hundred percent
00:36:18.160
Like for me, I try to do about 10% posts talking about myself and 90% posts trying to make other
00:36:24.880
people, you know, feel better, do better, be better because we can't just completely neglect
00:36:31.320
But I think most of our, we just have to change the percentages a little bit.
00:36:35.140
All right, so be an informer and not a me-former.
00:36:43.100
So any other tools, I mean, so introspection, if you ask what, instead of why, that can help
00:36:51.100
Any other tools you found effective that, you know, really self-aware people use to gain
00:36:57.640
So we talked about what, not why, the daily question.
00:37:01.200
Another thing to think about, there's this obviously big social force on meditation.
00:37:08.300
And meditation is primarily about kind of understanding and noticing what we're thinking,
00:37:16.000
feeling, what's happening around us without judgment.
00:37:19.080
But the beauty of this for any fellow type A people who are listening to this is that we
00:37:24.960
don't have to meditate to be mindful, to get those same effects.
00:37:30.660
And, you know, there's sort of a lot to this, but I'm just going to give one example.
00:37:34.640
One way to practice mindfulness that isn't about mantras and meditation is something that I call
00:37:42.900
So comparing and contrasting is basically if you find yourself in a situation that feels familiar.
00:37:48.580
So the example I give in the book is actually, I spent about five years working in the corporate
00:37:53.680
world before I went out on my own about 10 years ago.
00:37:56.820
And I found that almost every time I had a new job, I would enjoy it for two years.
00:38:02.080
And then after two years, I would start to get bored and restless.
00:38:05.800
And one day, my husband actually pointed it out.
00:38:10.300
So what I started to do was compare and contrast.
00:38:13.760
You know, what is similar about each of those moments where I started to not, you know, not
00:38:21.720
And what I did is I looked back in my life and I thought, and I realized that every, every
00:38:25.820
time I had worked for someone else, there was a two year ticking time bomb.
00:38:30.460
But whenever I was working for myself, like when I was doing my own research or when I was
00:38:34.900
teaching at a university, when I was in grad school, I didn't feel that way.
00:38:38.880
So by comparing and contrasting, I was able to notice, you know, again, without judgment,
00:38:43.860
it just was what it was, that I might've been, that I know that I'm better off working for
00:38:49.860
And people don't think about mindfulness in that more general form.
00:38:54.760
And I think it's just really helpful for people that, you know, if you're meditating,
00:39:01.940
And there are more options if there's anybody who wants to increase their insight and be
00:39:08.720
So we talked about gaining internal self-awareness.
00:39:13.000
This is how people, an understanding of how people perceive us.
00:39:16.260
And this is where insight or self-awareness can get scary because it's always scary to
00:39:23.820
And also people don't like to give, people don't, people don't like to tell you what
00:39:33.680
What are some tools that you found to help people get constructive, useful, external self-awareness
00:39:41.240
without being destroyed emotionally in the process?
00:39:48.800
What we found was, again, some surprising findings.
00:39:53.360
People who are highly self-aware did not, in fact, go to everybody they knew and ask for
00:39:59.620
feedback, they kept their circle very, very small.
00:40:04.000
Most people told us it was between three and five people that they regularly asked for feedback
00:40:11.080
And these weren't just randomly selected people either.
00:40:13.820
There seemed to be two main criteria that they used to select this handful of people.
00:40:20.120
So the first criteria was, do I believe this person is on my side?
00:40:29.840
Or are they like a secret frenemy that is gunning against me?
00:40:35.880
If we feel in our gut that that person supports us, even if we're not incredibly close, that
00:40:43.100
The second thing is, do I feel like that person is going to tell me the truth?
00:40:47.880
I think if everybody thinks about your life and your work, there's a lot of people that
00:40:54.340
You know, for me, like my mom is the most supportive, wonderful person who's always on
00:40:58.460
my side, but is she going to be critical about an article I'm writing?
00:41:03.720
Or there are people who just love to be critical, who don't actually want you to be successful.
00:41:08.840
So the magic of picking the right people to give us feedback is to choose these, I call
00:41:15.020
And I think the beauty of this is, again, you don't have to spend all of your time finding
00:41:21.980
It's a matter of saying, okay, who are, even to start with, two or three people that I can
00:41:27.040
go to and sort of formalize this relationship and say, you know, here's why I'm doing this.
00:41:33.400
Would you be willing to let me talk to you for five minutes once a month to just get your
00:41:38.480
So let's say, you know, going back to the example I gave earlier, somebody who wants to
00:41:43.700
If I had my two or three loving critics, I would want them to be people who saw me speak
00:41:49.600
And I would ask them once a month, very quickly, hey, as you know, I'm trying to be a better
00:41:54.940
First question, what feedback do you have for me from the last 30 days?
00:41:59.140
Second question is, what ideas do you have for me in the next 30 days?
00:42:03.420
And the reason the conversation is five minutes is what I would say is very simply, thank you.
00:42:17.140
So I think that's really powerful is, again, being focused and strategic about how we're
00:42:23.280
The second tool I would offer is, this one's a little scarier.
00:42:27.160
I'd actually be curious what you think about it.
00:42:29.120
This is from a communications professor named Josh Meisner, and I've named it the Dinner
00:42:35.380
So basically what it entails is you find someone in your life or your work who you have a good
00:42:40.700
relationship with, who you want to have an even better relationship with.
00:42:44.600
You take them out to dinner virtually or in person, depending on your comfort level.
00:42:49.680
You ask them the very simple question, what do I do that is most annoying to you?
00:42:57.140
And then once again, just like the loving critics, you listen to the answer and you say,
00:43:03.880
And what I've discovered, I would never share a tool like this with any listeners, readers,
00:43:10.280
clients, if I haven't done it multiple times myself.
00:43:13.200
And I have been shocked at actually what a positive experience every Dinner of Truth I've
00:43:21.540
It reminded me, my wife and I have some friends.
00:43:24.380
And in their family, they have this tradition similar to this.
00:43:29.320
The people in your family have to tell something they admire about you in that year of your
00:43:40.260
And some of the stories out of it are really hilarious because people learn things that
00:43:52.740
I love that idea, actually, because then it becomes a ritual.
00:44:00.380
So, this is where you can get controlled, very fine-tuned feedback about a specific thing
00:44:06.080
But a lot of the feedback we get in life, external, that can give us external self-awareness,
00:44:11.680
It's just some random guy on the internet, or it could be a family member or a friend
00:44:22.980
Any tips on how to handle that unsolicited, often hard feedback that we get throughout
00:44:29.260
I think we have to be very careful, to be honest, with unsolicited feedback.
00:44:34.260
You never know someone's motives when they're doing that, unless you're 100% sure.
00:44:40.100
It's your best friend, and you know they love you.
00:44:44.240
It's like you said, that random person on the internet or that random co-worker.
00:44:48.460
So, that would be my first piece of advice, is just be really careful that you don't accept
00:44:56.200
The second piece of advice I'd give is actually probably counterintuitive, which is don't do
00:45:02.840
Just put it in the back of your mind and let it be.
00:45:05.200
The urge we have to, you know, oh my gosh, I'm going to figure this out.
00:45:11.440
A lot of times, we're still reeling from this feedback, especially if it was difficult to
00:45:17.320
And even if we try to do that, it's not often going to result in what we think it will.
00:45:23.740
We might just get more upset, or we might feel depressed.
00:45:30.200
Just put it in the back of your mind and say, okay, that person gave me that data point.
00:45:34.260
I'm going to look into it, but only when I'm ready.
00:45:38.980
I think it's whenever you feel like, okay, it stings a little bit less, and now I'm going
00:45:45.300
The third piece of advice I'd give is, again, to go back to your loving critics.
00:45:51.980
If this is a one-off person, obviously, you've got to decide how important that person is.
00:45:57.020
Like, if it's your boss, maybe you might want to take it, you know, a little more seriously.
00:46:01.360
But if you ask your loving critics, hey, I got this feedback.
00:46:05.280
You know, somebody says that I'm constantly interrupting people.
00:46:13.660
And if you ask a couple of your loving critics, the beauty of this is you're getting a wider
00:46:20.040
So, it may be that they see it too, and then you can talk to them in a supportive, safe
00:46:33.040
So, at the end of the day, it's kind of a stupid analogy, but we are the captain of
00:46:38.400
And we can't let other people climb on board and start steering it.
00:46:44.000
So, I think as much as we can do that and remember that we're in charge, we get to decide
00:46:48.620
We might, you know, say, thank you very much for that feedback and never think about it
00:46:52.500
Or that might lead to a transformational growth experience.
00:46:59.580
We've talked about internal and external self-awareness separately.
00:47:04.240
Are there practices that you found that are useful to sort of synthesize the two so you
00:47:08.120
can actually sort of develop a holistic picture of self-awareness?
00:47:11.580
Or is it something that just happens naturally as you're doing these, using these different
00:47:14.840
tools for internal and external self-awareness?
00:47:18.940
I think it's more the second statement that if we build in daily practices that keep us
00:47:26.620
curious, that give us more information, some days we're going to have a conflict between
00:47:31.680
the way we see ourselves, the way other people see us.
00:47:36.260
You know, I think one classic example is when other people see a strength that we didn't know
00:47:44.400
And then all of a sudden I'm more in charge and I can be more intentional about it.
00:47:48.580
And I know that they're seeing me in that way and that gives me confidence.
00:47:52.760
So I do think it is a little bit more of a give and take.
00:47:55.920
But the important thing is what are those habits you're going to put in place?
00:48:00.360
And my suggestion would be don't try to go big right out the door.
00:48:04.280
When I'm working with CEOs, as an example, we work on one behavioral goal at a time,
00:48:09.020
no more, no less. And the reason for that is if we, if we sort of over promise to ourselves,
00:48:15.000
we're not going to be able to sustain it. So, so if somebody is listening to this and you say,
00:48:20.840
I want to improve my, my external self-awareness, maybe the number one thing you do for the next
00:48:26.800
month or two is put those two to three loving critics in place. And once you've done that,
00:48:31.860
maybe it's time to think about, okay, do I want an internal self-awareness habit that I'm going
00:48:35.880
to build? But if you don't build them as habits, that's when we start to sort of get these fits
00:48:41.580
and starts of, oh, this is helpful, but you know, I haven't done it. Like my journal, I haven't written
00:48:46.280
in my journal for a year. That's probably not going to be as helpful.
00:48:49.300
Well, Tasha, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:48:53.580
So the first thing is I found that it's not about me, it's about everyone else. And so we put together a,
00:48:59.300
it's a great resource. If anybody's wondering how self-aware they are and they want more than
00:49:04.540
just their gut reaction, we put together something called the insight quiz, which is a 14 item subset
00:49:09.860
of our longer validated assessment. And what you do is it takes about five minutes. You fill it out
00:49:15.020
and then you put in the email address of someone else who knows you well, they fill it out. And once
00:49:19.980
the system has both of those types of information, you get a report with your high level self-awareness
00:49:25.280
internally and externally. And then a couple of things you can do starting now to improve if you
00:49:30.740
choose to. So if anybody wants to take that, you can find it at insight-quiz.com. I'm also at
00:49:37.100
tashayurik.com. We actually just launched a really exciting new virtual course called the Future Ready
00:49:42.200
Leader. So there's a lot of information there, but I am fortunately or unfortunately very findable
00:49:48.480
Fantastic. Well, Tasha Yurik, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:49:52.560
My guest today was Tasha Yurik. She's the author of the book Insight. It's available on amazon.com
00:49:56.220
and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about her work at our website,
00:49:59.440
tashayurik.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash self-awareness,
00:50:04.020
where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:50:13.860
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast. Check out our website at
00:50:17.220
artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles
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we've written over the years. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast,
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you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code
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MANLINESS at checkout for a free month trial. Once you're signed up, download the Stitcher app
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on Android or iOS, and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast. And if you
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haven't done so already, I'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts
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or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing
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the show with a friend or family member who you would think we get something out of it. As always,
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thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you not only to listen
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to the AOM Podcast, but put what you've heard into action.