Tasha Eurich on Gauging and Growing our Self-Awareness

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Tasha Urick, a workplace psychologist, speaker, author, and principle of

the Uruk Group. She helps organizations succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders and teams. Tasha works with executives in fortune five hundred organizations and serves on the faculty for the Center of Creative Leadership. Her articles have appeared in several magazines and journals, including Chief Learning Officer Magazine, the Journal of Business Psychology, and The Work Style Magazine.

Her first book, Bankable Leadership, Happy People, bottom Line Results, and the Power to Deliver Both, was published in two thousand thirteen. Her new book is Insight, Why we're not as self aware as we think, and how seeing ourselves clearly helps us succeed at work and in life. If you're getting value out of the show, please go to one you feed dot Net slash Support and make a donation. This will ensure that all eighty five episodes that are in the archive will remain free, and that the show

is here for other people who need it. Some other ways that you can support us is if you're interested in the book that we're discussing on today's episode, go to one you feed dot net and find the episode that we're talking about. There will be links to all of the author's books, and if you buy them through there, it's the same price to you, but we get a small amount. Also, you can go to one you feed dot net slash book and I have a reading list there. When you feed dot net slash shop and you can

buy t shirts, mugs and other things. And finally one you feed dot net slash Facebook, which is where our Facebook group is, and you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support in feeding your good Wolf. Thanks again for listening, and here's the interview with Tasha yurik Hi. Tasha, welcome to the show. Thanks for your book is called Insight, Why We're not as self aware as we think, and how seeing ourselves clearly helps us succeed at work and in life. And it's a very

interesting read in a bunch of different ways. But one of the things, and we'll talk about this is how a lot of the ways that we tend to think about ourselves or to do introspection or actually counterproductive. It was one of the most interesting parts of the book to me. But we will cover all that shortly. But let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with their granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that

are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear, and the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second, and except our grandmother, and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

M hmm. That's a great question, you know. I think for me as an organizational psychologist, um and somebody who is just so passionate about researching self awareness, I think it's it's sort of a parable of all human beings. Right of the fact that there's good inside of us, there's not so good inside of us, And in my opinion, part of the process and the journey is knowing both of those things in order for um, you know, the

good side to win. I think we've got to have a full appreciation of of who we are so that we can keep the stuff we like, except the stuff that maybe we don't like as much, and most importantly, move forward and try to improve. So, so that's what it means to me. Excellent. So the book is about self awareness, and you say that you've think that self awareness is the single most important, yet least examined determinant

of success or failure. You go on to refer to it as the meta skill of the twenty one century. So let's talk a little bit about what self awareness is. That is another good place to start, because I think so many people throw that term around, you know, frankly, at this point, it's it's kind of a management buzzword. Most people have read an article about self awareness. We like to talk about how unself aware of the people

around us are. But about four years ago, I really wanted to take a scientific look at the skill because there are a lot of things that that I and others were assuming to be true about it. But as you mentioned, we learned that that wasn't really the case. But the first thing my research team and I had to do was define what is this thing we call self awareness? Anyway? And we thought it would be a pretty easy, straightforward question, and you know, those were our

famous last words. We took almost a year reviewing eight hundred scientific studies on self awareness to even come up with a definition. So this isn't just something we sort of pulled out of the air. But I think it's a very interesting place to start, we basically found that self awareness is made up of two types of knowledge about ourselves. The first we dubbed internal self awareness, and that kind of is what most people think of when

they hear the term. It's it's an inward understanding and clarity about our passions, our values are, personality, our strengths, our weaknesses, really just being able to see ourselves clearly. The second type of self awareness we've dubbed external self awareness, and essentially what that is is having a clear understanding of how other people see us and knowing that those two types of data are are often not only are they not the same, but sometimes they can even be

in conflict. What is really fascinating is that we've found in our research that those two skills are subsets of self awareness, are independent. So what that means is you can be high on both, in which case that's awesome, and you can keep improving. You could be low on both, in which case there's there's nowhere to go but up. But most people, right, most people tend to be higher on one and lower on the other, and so you

sort of get these arc types. One arch type is someone who's high and internal self awareness but low on external self awareness. And these are people for whom introspection is a you know, passionate hobby and they just love being in touch with themselves. But maybe if you go interview their friends and their family, they might not have quite the same rosy view of that person's self awareness, and that can get in their way, it can limit them.

The other side of the spectrum I call pleasers, and those are people who really focus so much on that external piece, understanding how other people see them, making a certain impression that they're losing sight of their internal self awareness and what they really want and how they can

live authentically. So the reason I mentioned that is I think it's such a great place for anyone who wants to improve their self awareness to start to just ask yourself that question, which of these maybe have I've been focusing on which of these might be an area that I can improve excellent? And there's this special blend who is both internally and externally unself aware. They seem to be everywhere, don't there Well, I mean less it seems to me than I was gonna say. Maybe they used

to be, but I don't know. Maybe it's just the circles I travel in but we all have some people in our lives that we wish we could grant them more self awareness. However, what's fascinating is that a lot of us who are looking at other people thinking, but what could they be more self aware? Your research also shows that we all think we're very self aware, whereas we're not as self aware as we think we are.

The most disarming statistic I think we've ever found in our research is the following people think that they're self aware, but the real number of people who are actually self aware is about ten to fifteen percent. So the joke I always make, which is rings true as well, is that even on a good day, about eight percent of us are lying to ourselves about whether we're lying to ourselves. So it's, you know, it's it's sort of as I said,

it's disarming, it's disconcerting. But there's another side of that angle, which I think is almost everybody has room for improvement, and as I mentioned earlier, there are so many positive outcomes that we will see in every area of our life when we start to build this foundation. So I see it as as more of a wake up call than a depressing piece of data. But it's really up to us to decide what we want to do with it.

That's self aware statistic is a very useful one because it then helps understand why all these other statistics where everybody thinks they're better than average it you know, everything is, you know, people think they're better than average drivers, etcetera. So I think, you know, I think, yeah, we have enormous capacity to deceive ourselves for sure, and I think that's one of the things that hopefully people looking at your book can get a sense of is the ways

that we can do that. So let's talk about what the seven pillars of self awareness are. So there's seven main areas I think that you examine and said, okay, these are the different facets that we can be self aware in. One of my favorite things that we did on our research program was find people who didn't start out as self aware, but who made these really remarkable transformations and their ability to see themselves clearly. And we

conducted dozens and dozens of interviews with these people. We had hundreds of pages of transcripts, and so that was another question we asked, is you know, when we say we see ourselves clearly, what is it that we're seeing and we did find seven areas that tend to separate the self aware from everybody else. So I'll just go through them briefly. Most of them are pretty self explanatory.

So at the most basic level, self a where people understand their values, they understand the principles that they want to live their life by. They also understand their passions. Those are the things that just are going to make them leap out of bed in the morning, and by that same token, the things that they really really hate to do. They understand their aspirations, which is not just what we want to accomplish in life or work, but really kind of more of a broad sense of of

what do we want to experience in our lives. The next is called we call it fit, and basically what that means is having an understanding and a clarity about the types of environments and people that bring out the best in us, because that's, you know, part of life, I think is a search for the areas where we belong. So that's really what that is about. Um. The next one is patterns, which is essentially our personality. You know,

it's our our consistent ways of behaving across situations. And then sometimes we even look at patterns within the same situations to really get clarity about how we're showing up. The next we called it reactions, and that one is a little bit more complicated, but in essence, it's made up of three things. Are momentary reactions to the world,

as well as our strengths and our weaknesses. And you know, you sort of think about our reactions usually are demonstrating our strengths and our weaknesses, so that's why those hang together. And then last but not least, you can't forget the impact you have on other people. So again, we can be very very internally clear, but if we're not sort of seeing our behavior and the way it spills out into and influences our environment, we we really can't be

fully self aware. And you know, it's it's sort of a tall order if you look at all those seven things and you say, oh my gosh, But once again, I see it as just a fabulous area to start. I talk about some exercises in the book where you know, you kind of do an audit. You sit down with yourself, you sit down with maybe somebody who knows you well, and you go through each of those areas and you

can say Wow. You know, I feel like I'm really clear about my values, but maybe I haven't done so much thinking about the way other people are being impacted by my behavior. So it's just a way to help you be smart and and really focus your time so that you can make big improvements. I've been working on an audit for about three years of my producer Chris, so heads up, he's not here to defend himself. Yeah, that's right. Just don't ask me learn something you might

not want to um. Which is one of the things, incidentally, that you say is a barrier for us, is that a lot of us just really don't want to know the truth. There is a certain perceived benefit, at least in the short term of seeing ourselves with rose colored glasses. It feels good. But the problem is, and this has shown time and time and time again, it's it's kind of like refined sugar. You know, you eat it and you feel amazing, but the long term health effects are

are pretty significant. And so that's how I help people sort of understand it, you know. And again, in the with those highly self aware people that we interview, we actually didn't find a whole lot of patterns by things like age or gender or job type. But we really found two things that separated them from everyone else that I think relates to your question. One of them is a belief in the supreme importance of self awareness, and then number two was a daily commitment to developing it.

And these people really took on a mindset that that I call braver but wiser. And it's the sort of idea that I might wake up today and learn something about myself that I don't love. By that same token, I might learn something about myself that's fabulous. But either way, I believe that as a longer term play, seeing myself clearly is going to help me lead a happier, more successful,

more meaningful life. And so it's, you know, it's sort of the short term, long term trade off, but over time, these these self aware people have showed us just how worth it. It really is. Wonderful. So you mentioned three line spots that we have. Could you talk through what the three different blind spots are? Sure, so this is sort of a summary of so many people's research, just

that very clear patterns that have been found. Um. So, the first is something called knowledge blindness, and you mentioned sort of the dunning Kruger effect earlier that the least competent people are usually the most confident about their knowledge and their expertise. That's true, but there's also been a lot of evidence that that almost everyone overestimates the knowledge they have about, you know, particular areas of their expertise. Interestingly, the more of an expert we tend to be, the

more likely we are to overestimate our expertise. You know that, I think the smartest people I know in this area say the more I learn, the less I realize I know, And and really keeping that hunger to never feel like you've completely figured anything out, even if you've been doing

it for years. The second blind spot is emotion blindness, and there is so much fascinating research about this, but just kind of at its core, what it says is we think that we can analyze the way we're feeling at any given moment or the way we're feeling over time very objectively, but in fact that's not the case. We're we're unduly influenced by things that are going on

in that moment. So, you know, one example might be if I if I ask you to really think about how you feel about your romantic relationship, and your relationship is generally really awesome, but maybe today, earlier, you got in a fight with your spouse about the right way to load the dishwasher, and even though it was just a little, tiny fight, it might be sort of impacting your overall view when in fact that's that's not a legitimate reason to ratchet down your happiness and your relationship.

So I again, I think the way to bust through that is to never really assume that we are correct, um And I think we can talk about some other strategies more generally. The third blind spot is behavior blindness, and this is a fascinating one because what it means essentially is we can't always see our own behavior objectively, and that might not be especially surprising to most people. We sort of think about it like a perspective issue.

We can't see ourselves quite literally, unless we know have a reality TV camera crew following us around, then we have a different problem. Um. But but basically we we are not able to see ourselves from other people's perspectives. But there's been some research recently that shows that even when people watch videos of themselves, they're not able to pick up on the sort of subtle behaviors that almost everyone else can often see, so there isn't a complete

knowledge or understanding of why that happens. But again, part of the process is acknowledging that blind spot and realizing that, especially from a behave of your real perspective, we are often not the foremost experts on our own behavior. It really is staggering when looking at all the different ways that we can misunderstand ourselves and frankly misunderstand the world. I mean, you mentioned, you know, if I've getten an argument with my spouse about the dishwasher, I might rate

my overall happiness that day less. You know, that's a well known cognitive bias, the recency effect, Right, there's lots of I mean, there's so many of these different ways in which we just don't see things clearly. But you mentioned having a reality film crew follow us around, and that leads me into another area of the book that I found really fascinating, which is this idea of the

cult of self. Um. You say that the cult of self lulls us into thinking that we are unique, special and superior, that our needs matter more than everyone else's, that we're not subject to the same rules as other people are that we're deserving if things simply because we want them. Talk to me more about the cult of self and what does this have to do with self awareness? So the cult of self is essentially cultivating a sense of self absorption over self awareness, and in my estimation

and many other people's, it's only getting worse. So over time we're becoming more self absorbed and less self aware. And I'll sort of come back to that and why it's important for self awareness in a moment, but in terms of what's causing it and what it looks like. You know, everybody always jokes about this. I as a millennial,

you know, sometimes get a little hurt by it. But there's a certain amount of truth to it that that many young people have been raised with this idea that they should get a ribbon for everything, and that their self esteem, their fragile self esteem, should be protected at all costs. What a lot of people who say that don't know, though, is that this self esteem movement has really been part of our collective consciousness, at least in

the US, since the nineteen sixties. And you know, again it's easy to point fingers at other people, but to really think about the US and the way we viewed our self concept. It's been that it's it's easier to basically feel great about ourselves than it is to actually take the effort to become great, and so that self esteem movement is a really big factor in all of this. There's so much research, and I'm sure you're familiar with us, that that self esteem does not actually provide all of

its advertised benefits. There was this thought in the nineteen sixties and seventies and eighties that we could cure every social ill if we could just make people feel good about themselves. But in fact, feeling great about yourself without any objective evidence that that's the case, can lead to worse outcomes personally for people as well as society than the opposite. And it turns out that we, most of us,

don't suffer from a lack of self esteem. We suffer from a lack of clarity or a lack of self awareness. So I think that's the low lying, really core cause here. But then you can layer social media upon it, and I see, I don't know if you see this a lot too, but perfectly reasonable other focused folks that I

know get online and they become these narcissists. You know, they're posting selfies and you're saying, oh my god, if you acted like this in person, nobody would want to be friends few and my belief and there's there's evidence of this, is that any time we're on social media focusing on ourselves informing other people about what's going on

with us, it's increasing our narcissism. There there's one study that was done recently that showed that people who spent time on their UH social media profile had immediate increases in narcissism. And so sort of taking that all together, we we have this inflated view of ourselves. Very often. It's not always the case. I think there are some people on the other end of the spectrum who don't know how awesome they are and that gets in their way.

But the more common ailment is that we see ourselves as as you know, better or more deserving, or more special or more unique than we actually are. And if you think about self awareness, self awareness is about clarity and UH seeing ourselves clearly, accepting ourselves for who we are, but really having more realistic appreciation. Sometimes people ask me, I want to be self aware, but I'm worried that it's going to make me horribly depressed and hate myself.

And I think that's a fair question. But what we found with a are highly self aware people is that they pair that sense of self awareness with a sense of self acceptance. And there's a ton of research that that self acceptance or self compassion can give us all of the benefits that self esteem is supposed to give

us without any of those negative costs. And so I think if people want to fight the cult of self, they really should focus on that clarity and acceptance, as well as maybe trying to spend a little bit less time thinking about talking about advocating for themselves. Yeah, if I had to guess that, we've got a lot of listeners of this show who are on the other end of the self esteem spectrum, which is the feel bad about themselves, just from from a lot of people I've

talked to. But I agree that there is a growing narcissism. And what I think is interesting about self esteem, Um, so let's take self compassion out, because I do think we've had Kristine fun I think there's a lot of value there. But what I have found for myself is that too much focus on myself good or bad, tends

to cause me trouble. You know, I don't think I came up with the phrase, but I've heard it before, which is like the burden of self, And that just rings so true to me that being concerned with myself all the time is really painful, or at least has gotten much more painful for me as life has gone on. And I frankly realized that that's frankly where almost all the pain in my life comes from, is over involvement with how I'm doing. And I think that hits the nail on the head of why so many people shy

away from trying to see themselves clearly. And there's so many layers to that. So let me just peel back a couple and then we can see where we get to it. Um. We found with are highly self aware people that they have a higher degree of humility, and essentially what that means is they accept what they don't know. UM, they're they're not as focused on themselves because they're working on bringing out the best in others, and so that

that felt like kind of a paradox to me. UM. The other thing we found with these people is that they don't actually spend quite as much time thinking about themselves as someone else might. And at first I was just floored by that. I said, how could how could people who think about themselves less be more self aware? It didn't make sense. But there was also a part of our research where we were looking at introspection, which

is essentially what you're talking about. It's this idea that we have to in order to know ourselves, we have to do this deep psychological excavation into the depths of our identity and the depths of who we are and why we are the way we are. That really comes from Freud, and Freud was correct that we have and unconscious but he was incorrect about a lot of things as they relate to introspection. So one big thing is that we can't excavate those unconscious thoughts and feelings and

motives no matter how hard we try. So that's the first piece that sort of gets in our way with introspection. In addition to that, the more we introspect, the less clearly we see ourselves. And that, you know, there's so much to that, but overall, there's there's a lot of evidence that frequent self analyzers tend to be less self aware, and part of my research has been looking into that and saying, well, what the heck does this mean for

the for the search for self awareness? And thankfully, what we've found is that it's not necessarily that introspection is bad, but it's that a lot of people with really good intentions are doing it in a way that you not only is making them less self aware, but it's making them depressed and anxious and stressed and less satisfied with their lives. So are highly self aware people spent less time analyzing themselves, and they spent that time very differently.

If you're enjoying this conversation, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you're nearing the end of it. Wish you could keep listening once the episode ends, while I've got some good news you can. The interview continues over at one you feed dot net slash support there. If you pledge at the ten dollar level, you'll get access to this additional exclusive content, as well as other

bonus conversations that have been recorded with our guests. We really need and appreciate your support, so we hope you'll head over to one you feed dot net slash support and pledge to access this additional weekly content. Now back to the interview. There's so much in what you said there, and that was probably the part of the book for me that I thought was most interesting. Was this idea

that there's really no relationship between introspection and insight. You say, the act of thinking about ourselves wasn't correlated with knowing ourselves. And my initial reaction to that was similar to yours, which is what I don't think that makes sense. But as I thought more about it, and as I as I read what you were talking about, there were several things that you mentioned that I think really hit true. One of them is the idea of rumination. Right. We've

talked about rumination on this show a bunch. I've done many episodes on it, and and rumination, at least to me, is almost defined by continuing to think the same thing. So you're increasing the duration of your thinking with absolutely no new insight or information. It's thinking the same thing over and over and over. So I'm logging lots of hours, right, but I'm not making any progress in it. So when I thought about that, that kind of made a lot

of sense. And then the other thing that you talk about. And I thought this was really fascinating, was that if we are doing a lot of introspection and we're looking for reasons why And we'll get to why versus what in a minute, But if we're doing a lot of introspection, we tend to look for a reason and when the first one we find, we latch onto it. You know, that becomes what we are focused on. This is why I am the way we are, and then the search stops.

This is actually not something that's in the book, but it's one of my favorite studies. Um, we we get so wedded to the reasons we think we've identified for our behavior that even when other people point out we're wrong, we we are not able to see it. So there's a really famous psychology study by Timothy Wilson and Richard Nisbet and this was done I think it was in

the seventies. But they went to their local Myers thrifty store in an Arbor, Michigan, and they set up a card table outside of the store, and on the card table they arranged four identical pairs of pantyhose and they asked the people that were walking by to pick their favorite. And so, what consumer research says is that people tend to prefer products on the right side of a display, and that was exactly what happened people. I think people chose the ones on the right at a rate of

four to one. But here's the thing. When Wilson and Nisbet asked them, why did you pick the pair that you picked? Mind you, every single pair was identical, every person said, well, I picked them because they're obviously better. They would latch that, you know, look at the fabric quality, look at the stretchiness, or you know whatever people use to judge pantyhose um and and they had no idea.

And even when the researchers said, let me tell you about the effective positioning on on your choice, and that might be the reason that you're thinking this, they refused to believe it. They were adamant that their reason was the actual reason. And I share that study because I think it's just so descriptive of what goes on. And when it's for identical pairs of pantyhose, it's it's easy

to see that we make these mistakes. But so often when we're searching for the causes of our our thoughts or our behavior or feelings, we feel like what we found is true even when you know. I would go so far as to say, most of the time we we can't really know why we do the things we do. And I'd even go further and say it may not even matter, right, And I think there is some truth

to that it may not matter. And I think I'm wary of anything that goes too far in one direction, right, So I think to say that like everything in life can be unlocked by understanding my past in my history is fallacious. And I think saying that there's nothing to be learned or gained from that also is is going too far. But this leads us very much to something that you talk about, which is a question of what

instead of why. So talk me through that, because that aligns very much with a lot of what I do in the coaching work I do with people. So walk is through what versus why. For all the reasons we talked about, I typically find that the question of why doesn't lead us anywhere productive, and that was in fact what we found and a lot of the research that other scientists have done. But it led to the question of, Okay, if why is the wrong question, what the heck should

we ask we know introspection is important. So we went back to these interview transcripts of our highly sold for where people and we found that the word why appeared less than a hundred and fifty times, but the word what appeared more than a thousand times. So then we were onto something. We're seeing a pattern. But then we had to figure out what is that? What does that mean? What does it mean to ask what instead of why?

So maybe i'll give you an example. Um, and again this isn't in the book, it's just an extra tidbit there. There was one of our folks in that group who he had a brand new boss. He got a really bad performance review, and I think most people in that situation, with good intentions would ask why why are we like oil and water? Or why doesn't she understand me? And

really kind of go down that path. But what we know is that path is going to depress us and it's not necessarily In most cases, it won't actually lead to any actionable insight. But what this person asked instead instead of why is this happening? Was what can I do to show her I'm the best person for this job? So what's fascinating about that question is that it's rational, it's actionable, its behavior based, it's future focused. And that's

just one example. And he found that when he asked himself that question, he was able to get in a better place with his boss. And now apparently all of his coworkers look at him and his boss as evidence

that two polar opposites can work really well together. And there were tons and tons and tons of these examples, and that was where we sort of came away with this idea that if we ask what it's it's helping us unearth our potential, it's helping us own our behavior, it's helping us figure out what are we going to do moving forward to to have more purpose and clarity and success. So that would be what I would tell

your listeners. If you do nothing else after listening to this, if you start asking what instead of why, I think you'll be fairly amazed at what a difference it makes. I have referred to it as asking how instead of why? To think is very similar. You know, how can I do this differently? How can I change this? And it gets to probably one of the most used phrases on this show over two hundred plus episodes, is probably that sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You

have to act your way into right thinking. And this is very similar to that idea, which is that I can think about this forever, but I may not get any kind of useful answer, Whereas if the questions I'm asking are going to drive me towards action, then I can make progress. And the biggest example for me is recovery from addiction. Right, there's lots of time that could be spent in why am I an addict? But those questions have never yielded anything particularly useful. Now, what should

I do about that? What behaviors can I do? What kind of actions can I do? What sort of thought patterns can I cultivate that are going to move me in the right direction? There is so much more usefulness in that. And again I don't want to be extreme is to say like that why never has a purpose? Or the examining our own motives and things aren't. It's all useful, But I certainly think that a bias towards action, and as you say, as towards what questions is so helpful.

And in the coaching, I do people off and say, well, what's the difference between a coach and a therapist, and I said, well, mainly, I'm just going to help you look forward. We're going to look forward at what you can do to make your life better, not spending much time on why you got where you are. You know, that's not really the goal. The goal is how do you know? How do we move forward? As an organizational psychologist, I do a lot of executive coaching, and I also

use that distinction, and I think it's so important. But but back to the point you just made, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be looking at our past and in order to reconcile all of this, one thing I did as I was working on the book is I try to talk to a bunch of counseling and clinical psychologists because that area of expertise is just way outside of what what I was taught and what I know. So the question I asked them is what what is

the role of our past and self awareness? And the the most common answer I got was, you know, the role of our past is is that it's something we have to make peace with. It's not necessarily something that we have to excavate and ruminate over and you know, sort of overthink. But a lot of times we do have demons that are following us. But but the purpose of looking at our past isn't necessarily to understand it.

It's to make peace with it and to to move forward and to really be able to look forward instead of backwards. So to me, that kind of made a lot of things make sense, you know, and again to your point, it's never as simple as just do this instead of this. I love the way you put that. I think that makes a lot of sense to to come to peace with it. One of the things that you say is that true insight only happens when we process both our thoughts and our feelings. Talk to me

a little bit about that piece of the research. This is research that has to do with how can people who keep journals actually get the most insight from the experience. But I also think that it applies to any kind of self examination. But essentially what the research has found is, you know, you can sort of imagine three categories of

journal ers. One category of journal or is someone who uses it as you know, an emotional an emotional discharge, you know, kind of all the feelings they're feeling, and probably a lot more negative feelings than positive feelings, but it's it's really journal as emotional discharge. Then there are people maybe who are are more logical, more left brained, more analytical, who might use their journal as a way to analyze their situation in a in a kind of

dispassionate way. The third type of journal or is somebody who really does both. Is they process their emotions without overthinking them and they use sort of that detached objective view of themselves to better understand their situation. And what the research that has essentially shown is if you are just focused on your emotions, it doesn't help you have more insight. If you're just focused on the rational, thought

based parts, it doesn't give you more insight. But it's sort of like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you can focus on both what you're thinking and what you're feeling, that's when you start to get real, kind of well rounded and meaningful a has about yourself. Yeah, that's great, and folks, if you want to learn about journaling, it's not always it's fascinating

research on journaling that you have in your book. We're near the end of time, but I want to finish up with what I thought was very practical tip and one that sort of has helped me as I learned it as part of a twelve step program. It's basically step ten, which is you continue to take personal inventory, right And what you're talking about is the you say, the one reason we fail to learn from experiences that we rarely take time to reflect on our discoveries. And

you recommend kind of doing a daily check in. Let's talk a little bit about what what you might do in a daily chicken That is a great nugget that I think people can use right away. What we found again is that are highly self aware of people didn't over analyze themselves, you know, and really all they did, but this was almost to a person was at the end of each day asked themselves what amount to three questions. The first question is what went well today and just

spending some time reflecting on that. The next question is what didn't go so well? And again being in touch with your emotions, being in touch with your thoughts but not getting swept up in it. And then the third question is how can I be smarter tomorrow? So, as far as I'm concerned, everybody should be doing daily chickens well. Tasha Thank you so much for taking the time to

come on again. The book is called Insight Why We're not as self aware as we think, and how seeing ourselves clearly helps us succeed at work and in life.

And I found a lot of really interesting things in and I think listeners in general of this show are fairly i would say, self reflective people, and I think this book is a useful way to make sure that we're doing that in the most effective way we can and avoiding the traps of rumination or you know, wondering too much about why, and allowing that our natural self reflection, which is a strength and a lot of us, is done in a useful way. So thanks so much for

taking the time to come on. Thank you. Yeah, we should be using those reflective powers for good and not for ill in ourselves. Perfect, all right, thank you, thanks, all right bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the one you Feed podcast. Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support