How to tap into your self-awareness-- and why it even matters (with Tasha Eurich)
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You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. I've heard it said before that we all have a blind spot in our lives that's the exact size and shape of ourselves. It can be really difficult to see ourselves accurately or to know how other people see us.

I have over the years of doing standup comedy, I've noticed that almost every comedian I know has some joke that is about how they look or how they're perceived. You know, maybe it's something like, I know I'm also surprised that I'm a comedian or I'm aware that I look like a dance teacher on vacation. Okay. But like, regardless of the specific joke, it seems to me that audiences laugh at that because they don't expect the comedian to know so specifically how they come across.

There's something delightful and unusual in actually being self-aware in that really specific way. And today's guest, Tasha Urich, she has some fascinating ideas and insights around what self-awareness means in practice and the difference between thinking about yourself versus knowing yourself. She's even written a whole book about it. Here's a clip from Tasha's talk at TEDx Mile High. It's the ability to see ourselves clearly, to understand who we are, how others see us,

and how we fit into the world. Self-awareness gives us power. We might not always like what we see, but there's a comfort in knowing ourselves. And there's actually a ton of research showing that people who are self-aware are more fulfilled. They have stronger relationships. They're more creative. They're more confident and better communicators. They perform better at work. And in the world of self-awareness, there are two types of people:

those who think they're self-aware, and those who actually are. We like to think of our brains as supercomputers, rationally analyzing information and arriving at accurate conclusions. Unfortunately, that's not what happens. But don't worry, I am not here today to tell you to stop thinking about yourselves. I am here to tell you to start doing it just a little bit differently.

We are going to hear a lot more from Tasha in just a moment about how to achieve self-awareness. But first, we're going to take a short break. Stick around. I will be very aware if you leave.

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Hello, hello. I'm Malik. I'm Jamie. And this is World Gone Wrong, where we discuss the unprecedented times we're living through. Can your manager still schedule you for night shifts after that werewolf bit you? My ex-boyfriend was replaced by an alien body snatcher, but I think I like him better now. Who is this dude showing up in every episode?

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Find World Gone Wrong in all the regular places you find podcasts. I love you so much. I mean, you could like up the energy a little bit. You could up the energy. I actually don't take notes. That was good. I'm just kidding. You sounded great. So did you. And we're back. My name is Tasha Urich, and I'm an organizational psychologist. So I became interested in this topic, you know, almost probably eight years ago now, where I kept seeing my most successful coaching clients post

Be the ones who are willing to look at themselves in the mirror, to cast away any delusions or any illusions they have and really understand who they are and how they're seen by other people. But essentially, if we really boil it down to its essence, self-awareness is the will and skill to understand who we are and how other people see us.

And those are sort of two subtypes of self-awareness that we can talk about. OK, so as we're trying to get to that place of self-awareness, which sounds really good to me and I imagine to most people, how does self-reflection play into that or how is it different than that? One of the fundamental truths that I always took for granted about self-awareness was that the way to get to that knowledge or that insight was through self-reflection, just like you said.

But I remember really early in our research program, we started to discover and some other science backed this up that it's not that introspection in and of itself is bad or wrong. It's just that many of us make sort of the wrong choice in how we approach it. But you're saying that actually a lot of times people who ask those questions, they end up not being self-aware at all. That seems how it seems almost impossible, right? Like, how could that happen?

It was very distressing for me as a researcher to figure this out initially. But the good news is there's actually a very small change that we can make to make that process of introspection actually lead to insight about ourselves. You know, when we know who we are and how we're seen, it means that we understand what our values are. We know what we want to accomplish. We understand our patterns over time. We know our impact on others.

And so those are things that, you know, when we ask ourselves introspective questions, we want to actually get to that insight. So basically in a nutshell, why questions tend to produce the worst outcomes when it comes to self-awareness and happiness, whereas what questions were empowering, they were action oriented, they led to insight as well as just a general better state of being.

The most commonly accepted introspective process has a lot of questions that start with why. So I might say, why do we keep fighting about how to unload the dishwasher? Or why is our relationship so full of conflict? Or why can't I be less annoyed by the day-to-day stresses of my life? And those are all really well-intentioned questions, right? We ask them in order to get insight.

But there's a couple of problems with why questions that make it really insidious. So one is counter to what Sigmund Freud told us. We cannot access many of our unconscious thoughts and feelings and motives, basically no matter how hard we try. So what happens when we ask these why questions about these deep inner states of being is that we find an answer that feels true.

but is usually not the truth. So I might say, why can't I deal with the daily stresses of being in lockdown? I could lead myself to saying I'm just not a very resilient person and I have problems in my relationship.

Whereas maybe the actual reason that we got in the fight was I had low blood sugar that day and I was irritable. Right. So and at first I thought those those, you know, differences were not that big. But if you start to play it out, you see the results. Right. You those are the what questions basically help us understand what role did we play? What are the options for action? Right.

how can we unearth our potential? How can we be better humans versus getting trapped in the patterns that we feel are inescapable? It's interesting because my first instinct when you were talking about what versus why is that it was going to be that why is about analysis and what is about action. But it's actually not right. It's not just that. I mean, action is certainly a piece of it. But the fact that you're saying like what just happened there, right, that's not like

What can I do? But why did that happen versus what just happened is kind of a it's avoiding putting a story on it and instead just looking at what happened. OK, so I want to talk a lot more about what we can do to actually become more self-aware. But let's start with why is it actually important to be self-aware? Like, what are the specific benefits of being self-aware?

So self-awareness is helpful in all areas of our lives. And if we start with work, we know that self-aware people are more successful and they're more fulfilled in what they do. So it's not just outward success. It's really a sense of inward meaning and fulfillment.

So a lot of businesses are starting to understand the importance of ensuring that their workforce is self-aware for good reason, right? It's not just a nice to have, it's a potential competitive differentiator. But the good news is it's not just at work that we see these benefits. People who are self-aware at home unlock stronger relationships, it builds happier marriages, and it even helps us raise more mature children.

So when I talk about self-awareness, I really see it as the meta skill of the 21st century. In other words, all the things that it takes to be successful, happy, to make an impact in the world, we can only be as good at those as we are self-aware. So

authentically expressing ourselves, influencing others, emotional intelligence, and so on. All of those things are basically limited by our self-awareness. So if we improve our self-awareness, that's why we see so many benefits in every area of our lives. You know, there's a lot there about also having self-compassion and self-acceptance and being okay with imperfection.

But just this idea that it's a positive journey. And what I've what I've come to believe after, you know, several instances of getting some very surprising feedback is that it's always better to know. And when we know we get to decide. And that's why I think it's one of the most empowering journeys that we can take. So what's changed about how you would describe your own self-awareness from before you studied this to now? I would say I am.

An imperfect but lifelong student of self-awareness. Before, when I started writing, you know, the book I wrote on all of this insight, I literally thought, who better than me? Such a highly self-aware person to help other people be self-aware. And, you know, I think the journey that I took personally is incredible.

really represents what a lot of self-awareness journeys are, which is it sometimes begins with a rude awakening or even begins with the feeling that we want to focus more on it than we think we might have to or have in the past.

But that is actually the start of what can be a really powerful transformation for all of us. But I think what happens is we tend to assume that we know how to get there when a lot of those commonly held assumptions are actually wrong. So what would you say to people other than switching from why to what, which seems like a really practical and great one? What are some other ways in which we can become more self-aware? So here's another tool that I think is really, really useful.

targeted and has the beauty of not really taking a lot of time on a regular basis, the daily check-in. So basically it's three questions you can ask yourself without really delving too much into all of the stuff behind it. So the questions are number one, what went well today in my day? Number two, what didn't go so well? And number three, how can I be smarter, better, happier, et cetera, tomorrow?

And what this really keys into, most people who dramatically improve their self-awareness didn't have these like huge bolts of insight where all of a sudden something happened that they understood, you know, exactly who they were or how they were seen. They built it incrementally. And again, to me, I think that's so empowering and it makes it so practical that we don't have to, you know, journaling is another thing I talk about in the book.

Is journaling helpful? Yes. Are there a lot of mistakes some of us make that make it less insightful? Yes. Do we have to journal to be self-aware? Not necessarily. So I love the daily check in just because it's so practical and hopefully easy. So I'm curious to just with that specific example of journaling. Right. What what is an example of like a less helpful journal versus a more helpful journal?

There's a kind of this idea that if we if we get in the habit of analyzing everything that happens to us, that's not self-awareness as much as it is neuroticism or rumination. Right.

Now, if you feel like you function better or if it's helpful to you, psychology is the law of averages. So I would never say – I would never presume what works for one person will work for another. People who –

Used almost like a like a tripwire where if something is really challenging me or I've got to make a decision or I'm more stressed than usual, that can be a good time to turn to your journal as kind of a targeted intervention. It's, you know, more of a sort of a rifle than than a shotgun approach.

Another thing that can be really helpful in journaling that most people don't do is using it as an exercise to think through other people's perspectives. So if I go to my journal and I start writing about my dishwasher fight with my husband, one really helpful thing might be to write about what was that experience like from his perspective? And then the last thing that researchers have found is in general, you can't be only focused on the emotions.

But you also shouldn't only be focused on sort of the rational what happened. So a good mix between how did I feel and what was happening tends to produce the most insight. OK, well, this is fascinating for me because I literally do journal every single day. And I started maybe a year and a half ago. So it's relatively new in my life. But this is fascinating because.

I think that I, I do tend to get kind of stuck in like rumination patterns and kind of thinking like, why is this happening and not, and losing the focus on action or even on, um,

clear eyed analysis and instead feeling like things are out of my control. And an interesting thing that made me think of when you're talking about journaling is I think that sometimes the best days for me are the ones where I use it more as like a creative exercise rather than analytical exercise. So one of the things that I thought of there is like you have that dishwasher fight. Maybe the best way of all is to not

think about your perspective or your husband's. Maybe I should write about that from the dishwasher's perspective. And all of a sudden now it's like a funny, creative experience for me instead of something that I'm trying to figure out. Like, why did that happen? And what does it mean about us? Big picture, big M meaning. This is genius. That's actually backed up by science. Also, what you just said, writing or thinking about a situation from a neutral third party's perspective is

That's used a lot in even, you know, relationship or marriage counseling. It helps us get outside of our own perspective and be more objective about what was happening. So and the creative piece of that, I just love it. I couldn't love it more. All right. So there you go. From the dishwasher's perspective, that's the official scientific recommendation in this situation. Yes. OK, we are going to take a quick break. Take a moment to connect with your dishwasher and other appliances. We will be right back.

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Researchers Justin Kruger and David Dunning uncovered this phenomenon, which they modestly named the Dunning-Kruger effect. In a series of four experiments, Kruger and Dunning found that most people completely overestimate their talent. What was even scarier, at least to me, was that the least competent people were the worst at recognizing their incompetence. So what about you? If you had room for improvement, would you know?

Delusions about ourselves are the roadblocks on the journey to becoming awesome. So no matter how hard it is, you have to take responsibility for learning the truth about yourself. So how do you do that? Here's my advice. For you, step one means knowing where you stand. So first, if you have them, you should be looking at your objective measures of success. A surgeon might look at her complication rates. A gardener might look at which of her plants have lived and which have not.

Then you look at your subjective measures. The easiest way to do this is to find someone who will tell you the truth. Ask them, what am I doing that's helping me succeed? What's getting in the way? And how can I adapt my approach to be better? Remember, above all, seek the truth.

Okay, Tasha, there is so much that you were saying that we need to discuss. How do we adapt our approaches to be better? What is the answer? One of the things we haven't talked about is the importance of getting feedback and other people's perspectives. So maybe there's a way even just to think about that journey of, you know, it requires courage to do this, but it also shouldn't become a singular focus of,

that pulls us in so much that we're kind of not paying attention to what's out there. That was one thing I discovered, you know, going back to my own self-awareness journey is sometimes people say things that they're providing a clue to you about a way that you're coming across. And so, you know, I think that's part of it is if we get too focused on the inward piece

we might lose track of the data that are already there. So I want to talk more about that, the two types of self-awareness. But first, just kind of a related thing is I'm a comedian and in comedy, one of the things that you see just across the board is

And especially in newer stand up comedians, everyone at some point has some sort of a joke about either the way they look or the way that they're perceived by the audience. That's just kind of like a natural opener. And so people will be like, I know I don't look like the kind of person that would be a stand up comedian or like, I know I look like insert celebrity got melted or something like that. You know, it's like they have some sort of joke. And I.

eventually people find like the thing that makes the audience really laugh because they see it as true. So people find like, oh, that's how I'm immediately perceived by someone else. And then the audience laughs because they're like, oh, you know how we see you. And I think most comedians tend to like move away from that material later on. But it seems like there's a piece of that here, which is like,

You do the work to figure out. So what is it that other people see me as or how am I coming across immediately? Which I don't actually I before this conversation, I wouldn't have thought of that as self-awareness. I almost think of that as like other people awareness. But you think of that as external self-awareness. Exactly. Exactly. And going back to the original definition, knowing who we are is internal self-awareness. Knowing how we're seen is external self-awareness.

So what's what is the line between them? Because I think that for me personally, I'm very externally motivated. I love to get praise and to be rewarded by other people. And so sometimes I think the way that other people perceive me changes the way that I perceive myself.

Like if I'm doing something and everyone seems to love it, then I'm like, oh, well, that's more what I want to be like. And then I become more like that. You and I are in the same boat. So it seems like there would be different strategies for developing each of the types of self-awareness. Correct. And the best way to look at internal and external self-awareness, I think, is as two different camera angles on ourselves. So what that means is even if they look different, right?

They're both of the same thing. They can both be true and they can give us information on similar things. So one example that I would use is getting to know our values, but just doing that exercise without asking anyone else what they see, we're leaving insight or self-awareness on the table. So maybe we would ask other people, what are the things that you see me, you know, the principles that I put as the central part of my life?

And how well am I doing at living those principles? You're going to get no matter what the answer is, you're going to get a ton of data. You might say, you know, internally, family is my most important value. But then you talk to your family and they say, all you do is sit in your office and we haven't talked to you in months.

Then that becomes, you know, feedback on the expression of your values. Or somebody might even say, I've noticed that you really light up when you're making a positive difference in someone else's life.

And so that's maybe a value that you didn't even see, but that might be central to you. So I think that's the way I would think about it is, is you're still sort of looking at the same thing, but it's just different perspectives on that thing. When you do it yourself or when you tell people how to do it, how do you recommend that they approach people? Because it's kind of I mean, it's a pretty big ask to say, like, what do you think are my core values? How do you get people involved in this in a way that they buy in and can give you the most helpful? This is hugely important.

We talk a lot about how to get feedback, but we often sort of make assumptions or we just miss the decision of who are the right people to get feedback from, to your point. First of all, the feedback giver had to be on their side.

They didn't even necessarily have to be best friends, but they had to show them some level of support, whether it's at work or at home. And that makes it pretty easy with our friends and our family, but especially at work, you don't always know people's real motives. And if you have something in your gut that's telling you they're probably not the right person, I would listen to that. But then on the other side of the equation,

Those feedback givers also have to be honest with us. And we have to believe, usually, you know, having seen examples of this, that they'll be honest with us. I'll tell you about the process I use when I coach CEOs and senior executives is to identify those stakeholders.

and to be very explicit about talking to them to say, listen, you know, I've identified you as someone in my life who has supports me and who I've also seen be honest. You know, maybe even if it's not direct feedback they've given, it's it's something they've said in a meeting, you know, that they put the elephant in the room on the table. But to say, I really value that. And I wanted to see if I could if I could do this

With less than five minutes a month of your time investment, would you be willing to give me some more kind of regular feedback? And if they say yes, here's what you do.

You think about the skills and the behaviors that will help you be the best human you possibly can be. And you get specific. I feel like there's something so important here about the way that we get feedback and how we get feedback, especially on these things that can be emotional or can kind of make us sometimes be defensive because they're about us, which is interesting.

It's so important to pick the right people. And then it's also really important to be super clear about what you want. I would have never made this connection before you were answering this, but I found that this works is very parallel when I'm getting feedback on creative work is it took me a long time to figure out who are the friends that I can send a script to who give me the right kind of feedback. And then even then with the right people, you have to get to know them not just as people, but as feedback givers.

I think that when you also the other big piece that feels very parallel is whenever someone sends me something to read, I always now say, what kind of feedback are you looking for? Because if they're, you know, if they're about to send this in to be published and you tell them, actually, I think the whole concept doesn't work. That's not helpful. And it doesn't make them very happy either. So it's interesting. I would have never thought about that in terms of

getting feedback on yourself as a human, that it could be the same kind of creative process. And I love, yeah, you sort of find their feedback personality. And that's why, you know, a lot of people ask me, why three to five people? What's so magic about that number? And what I've sort of come to appreciate or understand is, you know, if

If you have any more than that, it sometimes becomes unwieldy and then you are not able to sustain the behavior. But if you have any fewer than that, you're not going to get, like you said, different types of feedback, but you also can't test assumptions.

So it kind of becomes like a team, you know, a team that is supporting you to be better in whatever ways you are motivated to do so. I think it speaks to the fact that we have to be, you know, at the helm of our feedback ship.

And one thing, you know, part of it is just saying, what are the things that are important to me to live a good life? What kind of person do I want to be? Or even what kind of skills am I going to need given where I want to, given what I want to do in the future? So even starting there is good. And if you're worried that you're missing something, I recommend just to ask one more question. You know, you don't have to tell me right now, but

And think about whether there's any feedback question that I should be asking you that I'm not asking you. Hmm. That's a great question. What should I have asked you? Well, how about this? We have a little bit more time, but what should I have asked you about self-awareness so far that I haven't asked you in this interview? I think, let's see. I actually think we hit all of the sort of biggest points.

One thing I'll say is, you know, our lives have all changed pretty considerably in the last 18 months and will continue to change. And what I'm discovering is sometimes when we're self-aware about, you know, certain goals or aspirations in our lives, it makes us overly focused on attaining them.

even when the world has changed. I love that. And I think it really applies not just to living through a pandemic, but to being, I think sometimes people can be so hard on themselves when they have something big come up in their lives, like an illness or having to care for a family member or having kids or any of these number of things that can happen that all of a sudden take a lot of time and energy. And then people can feel like, well, I'm not accomplishing anything.

Everything that I used to accomplish before I had this other big responsibility and I think seeing things in this holistic way and also, like you said, being a little bit more generous or kind to yourself around the idea of what you have to accomplish to be successful.

feel successful is so important. That's exactly right. Instead of attaching those things to our identity, we can decide to see them as flexible options or approaches to help us live a better life. And in doing that, we can come up with different ways to maybe get to the deeper purpose.

Well, I know we're coming a little bit closer to the end, but we talked a lot about how you can get feedback from external sources, right, about external self-awareness. What are some of the techniques that we can use to kind of really drill down into internal self-awareness? How can we ask ourselves those same questions and get real answers? In your book, you talk about the seven pillars of insight that you think are essential.

what separates the self-aware from the not self-aware. Can you tell us a little bit more about what those pillars are and how we can build them? And we've mentioned many of them today, so I'll just go through them quickly. So our values, our aspirations,

Our fit, in other words, what are the environments and people that help us be happy versus taking away our energy? Our patterns. So what are the specific ways or consistent ways we behave over time? Our reactions. What are we thinking, feeling, doing in the moment? And behind that, what are our strengths and weaknesses? And then last is our impact on other people.

And even if you go through those specific questions, what are my values? What are my aspirations? What environments give me energy versus take it away? That is where we start to get real self-awareness. Do you have a set of clearly articulated values that you use as a barometer to live your daily life?

then it's a little bit harder to fool ourselves. So I think that's the important piece there. We do have, this is a free resource for anybody who wants to take it, a subset of our bigger self-awareness assessment that you can basically fill it out in five minutes and you answer 14 questions about those pillars.

You send the survey to someone who knows you well. They answer those questions for you. And you get a report on your kind of high level self-awareness. I tell people don't make any major life decisions based on this. But maybe that's something we can put in the show notes for your listeners if they want to just kind of get that read. But even asking those specific questions of ourselves can be incredibly powerful. I love that.

And last question, what is one way in which you personally are trying to be a better human right now? I am trying to give other people more grace in life.

the challenging situation that none of us thought we would be in right now with the pandemic dragging on. So whereas before I used to be kind of a grudge machine and I would, you know, glom onto things and get pissed off and, you know, perseverate on it. I'm really trying to work on letting that go. Well, Tasha, Eric, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been an amazing conversation and I really am grateful for you being here. Thank you so much. It was a great conversation. I really appreciate it.

That is it for today's episode. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and this has been How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest, Tasha Urick. Her book is called Insight, The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think.

On the Ted side, this show is brought to you by Abhimanyu Das, who knows who he is internally. Daniela Balarezo, who knows how others see her. Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, who does the exact right amount of self-reflection. Ann Powers, who has never spiraled once in her life. And Cara Newman, whose picture can be found in the dictionary next to the word insightful. From PRX Productions, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by Jocelyn Gonzalez, who not only knows herself, she knows you.

Pedro Rafael Rosado, who is achieving full self-awareness as we speak, and Sandra Lopez Monsalve, who is one of those rare people who perfectly accurately assesses her own talents and abilities. Thanks to you for listening. Please share this episode with the least self-aware person you know, and then also the most self-aware person you know, but don't tell either one of those two people which one they are. PR.