90% of people are less self-aware than they think...
...which means if you believe you're in the 10%, there's a good chance you are wrong!
Self-awareness has become a buzzword of our time. Described as the ‘meta-skill of the 21st century’1. It is broadly accepted as a good thing to be and something we should try and be more. But why? What does it really mean? And why are we not very good at it?
Researchers have found it surprisingly difficult to agree on a definition of self-awareness. A simple, yet comprehensive, way to consider it comes from Dr Tasha Eurich and her research team2. They describe two types of self-awareness; internal and external.
Internal self-awareness represents how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviours, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others. External self-awareness means understanding how other people view us, in terms of those same factors.
This little dude is very low on both types of self-awareness. He has no real idea why that biscuit was so offensive and he isn’t going to reflect on his reaction to it. He has no concept of how he is coming across to the outside world or the emotions that will be bubbling in his dad as a result of his behaviour. He’s forgiven, but he has a lot to learn if he wants to be a happy and successful adult.
What you don’t know can hurt you
Researchers agree that there are significant benefits to improving your self-awareness, and problems that are encountered if you don’t.
Developing good internal self-awareness enables us to make choices that align with our values and needs, and so leads to more satisfaction at work and in relationships. If we don’t know ourselves well, we might get stuck in situations (or with people) who aren’t good for us.
Having good external self-awareness enables us to demonstrate empathy and adapt how we behave in consideration of other people, so it leads to more success at work and in relationships. If we don’t understand how other people see us, we may find that our relationships falter or job opportunities don’t come our way.
How self-aware are you?
Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, writes here about 3 levels of self-awareness. It’s an engaging and funny article if you have time. If not, the short and not-funny summary is;
Level 1 - What are you doing?
We all seek distraction from the challenges of day-to-day life. Are you aware of what you use to distract yourself (social media, food, gaming, alcohol, music etc)? Are you opting in to it consciously or is the distraction choosing you? Become aware of your compulsions.
Level 2 - What are you feeling?
This can be an uncomfortable place to go - ‘most people glide on the surface of Level 1’. Can you face in to what you are really feeling when you aren’t distracting yourself? A lot of people have trouble recognising or naming feelings. Mastering this level may take therapy and/or years.
Level 3 - What are your blind spots?
This is where you realise how flawed the conscious mind is, and how little you can really trust what it’s telling you. Our memories are unreliable, we focus more on things that adhere to our existing beliefs, and most of our thoughts and actions are heavily influenced by whatever we are feeling in that moment. Level 3 means developing an awareness of your weaknesses, or as Mark explains it…
Learn your bullshit patterns. When I get angry, I get argumentative and arrogant. When I get sad, I shut down and play a lot of video games. When I feel guilty, I word vomit my conscience all over people. What are your tics? Where does your mind go when you feel sad? When you feel angry? Guilty? Anxious?
If you are now assessing where you are at, there’s a good chance you are wrong. Eurich’s research found that 85-90% of us think we have come further on the self-awareness journey than we actually have. It’s worth letting that stat sink in.
If you are brave/interested enough to seek a data-driven answer to the question, you can take the Insight Self-Awareness Quiz. It requires you to answer some questions, and then someone who knows you well must answer some too. The report that is generated tells you your ‘self-awareness archetype’ - one of four based on whether you score high or low on both internal and external awareness3.
So how do we get better at being self-aware?
Self-awareness is something we all have to learn. Most of us have come some way from the days of being an emotionally-overwhelmed toddler (though we could probably all think of people who haven’t come as far as they should have!). And we are all still learning. This is good news, because it means however far you have come, getting better is very doable.
In the simplest sense, we need to find ways to be introspective to improve our internal self-awareness, and ways to obtain feedback to improve our external self-awareness. There are lots of options (think journalling, meditating, therapy, feedback, personality assessments etc). I could write a list of ‘10 ways to improve your self-awareness’, but you can Google that pretty easily and I didn’t think it would be very interesting.
So instead, here are the 2 most thought-provoking ideas I’ve come across which you can get to work on today…
1. Who in your life is willing to hold a mirror to you? And do you take notice?
You need loving critics. People who are willing to be honest with you (most won’t be) but who genuinely have your best interests at heart.
Interestingly, self-awareness is inversely correlated with power and status in the workplace i.e. the more senior you are, the less self-aware you will be. And the less likely you will be to recognise or acknowledge that fact. Why? Partly because senior people think they’ve got it all figured out, and partly because nobody is willing to tell them if they come across as an asshole.
One of the better situations to be in for developing self-awareness is as a parent to teenage children. Why? Because they tend to be very willing to tell you how good you aren’t!
2. Are you an informer or meformer?
The average person spends 60% of their real world conversations, and 80% of their social media interactions talking about their favourite subject…me! (Not me ‘me’, themselves ‘me’!).
Meformation might look like pictures of your holiday, your new outfit, your children or your lunch, it might be stories about your weekend or something your kid said that you found cute. Me, me, me will gain you likes and banal enthusiasm (assuming you have decent enough friends). But what have you learned from those interactions? How sure are you what other people are really thinking about how you come across?
Information might be sharing something you learned or found interesting, your reflections or concerns. This is more likely to result in a discussion, giving you some exposure to the minds of others and an opportunity to reflect on your own thoughts and feelings. It sets you up to view things through a whole different lens.
A footnote on the Johari window
The Johari window model was created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955. If you’ve done any corporate training on self-awareness or personal development, you are probably familiar with this tool. If not, it is written about all over the internet (not always very well). There is a decent explanation here.
It seems today that the tool is often employed with a focus on improving individual self-awareness. However, it was actually created as a tool to support group dynamics and interpersonal relationships. Perhaps our current positioning of it is indicative of the cultural shift towards ‘the self’ over the past 70 years? I think it’s worth being aware of anyway.
This 2-page article published by Joseph Luft in 1961 explains it perfectly.
Want to explore more?
Insight: How to succeed by seeing yourself clearly
By Dr Tasha Eurich
This is an accessible and practical guide to gaining better self-awareness. It is based predominantly on Tasha Eurich’s research study into a group of highly self-aware people they term ‘unicorns’. The research looked for commonalities in the ways they thought and behaved, and the book packages these findings into key learnings and pieces of advice. Some I forgot quickly, some stuck with me and caused me to reflect (therefore meeting my definition of a decent self-development book). It contains enough useful content that everyone should come away with something valuable. I’d recommend delving in!
Insight: How to succeed by seeing yourself clearly. Dr Tasha Eurich.
Eurich, T., 2018. What self-awareness really is (and how to cultivate it.). Harvard Business Review, 4.
I’ve done it the quiz! Let me know if you do too and you want to compare notes. I’m interested to see different versions of the advice it provides.
Really enjoyed this (again) - and I love the term, "meformer". I know quite a few of those.
One thing I would like to chuck into the mix is that the "self" that we are aware (or not) of, is a pretty complex beast... Philosophers (particularly my dear friends the existentialists), psychologists and psychoanalysts have been arguing for well over a century that we don't have a simple, unitary, consistent self - and neuroscience is catching up (see for example "The Self Delusion" by Gregory Berns). Which suggests we need to be alive to this complexity, and hold our (hopefully self-aware) beliefs about who we are with a certain lightness.
For many philosophers (particularly Nietzsche), there are even more significant implications. Development as human beings is not just "self awareness" in the sense of discovering what is already there, but actually at a very deep level _creating_ our identity. He writes that we should be "poets of our lives" which I think brilliantly encapsulates this sense of creativity.
The idea of the mirror is really important, not just someone else holding one up but being aware of how our own projections on others can tell us things about ourselves
"If you spot it, you've got it"