Speaker 1: Any time we're on social media focusing on ourselves informing
Speaker 1: other people about what's going on with us, it's increasing
Speaker 1: our narcissism. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Tasha Urick, a workplace psychologist, speaker, author, and principle of
Speaker 1: the Uruk Group. She helps organizations succeed by improving the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of their leaders and teams. Tasha works with executives
Speaker 1: in fortune five hundred organizations and serves on the faculty
Speaker 1: for the Center of Creative Leadership. Her articles have appeared
Speaker 1: in several magazines and journals, including Chief Learning Officer Magazine,
Speaker 1: the Journal of Business Psychology, and The Work Style Magazine.
Speaker 1: Her first book, Bankable Leadership, Happy People, bottom Line Results,
Speaker 1: and the Power to Deliver Both, was published in two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen. Her new book is Insight, Why we're not
Speaker 1: as self aware as we think, and how seeing ourselves
Speaker 1: clearly helps us succeed at work and in life. If
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Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening, and here's the interview with Tasha
Speaker 1: yurik Hi. Tasha, welcome to the show. Thanks for your
Speaker 1: book is called Insight, Why We're not as self aware
Speaker 1: as we think, and how seeing ourselves clearly helps us
Speaker 1: succeed at work and in life. And it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting read in a bunch of different ways. But one
Speaker 1: of the things, and we'll talk about this is how
Speaker 1: a lot of the ways that we tend to think
Speaker 1: about ourselves or to do introspection or actually counterproductive. It
Speaker 1: was one of the most interesting parts of the book
Speaker 1: to me. But we will cover all that shortly. But
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do, with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandmother who's talking with their granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear, and the granddaughter stops and she
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and except our grandmother,
Speaker 1: and she says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: M hmm. That's a great question, you know. I think
Speaker 1: for me as an organizational psychologist, um and somebody who
Speaker 1: is just so passionate about researching self awareness, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's sort of a parable of all human beings.
Speaker 1: Right of the fact that there's good inside of us,
Speaker 1: there's not so good inside of us, And in my opinion,
Speaker 1: part of the process and the journey is knowing both
Speaker 1: of those things in order for um, you know, the
Speaker 1: good side to win. I think we've got to have
Speaker 1: a full appreciation of of who we are so that
Speaker 1: we can keep the stuff we like, except the stuff
Speaker 1: that maybe we don't like as much, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: move forward and try to improve. So, so that's what
Speaker 1: it means to me. Excellent. So the book is about
Speaker 1: self awareness, and you say that you've think that self
Speaker 1: awareness is the single most important, yet least examined determinant
Speaker 1: of success or failure. You go on to refer to
Speaker 1: it as the meta skill of the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about what self awareness is.
Speaker 1: That is another good place to start, because I think
Speaker 1: so many people throw that term around, you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: at this point, it's it's kind of a management buzzword.
Speaker 1: Most people have read an article about self awareness. We
Speaker 1: like to talk about how unself aware of the people
Speaker 1: around us are. But about four years ago, I really
Speaker 1: wanted to take a scientific look at the skill because
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that that I and
Speaker 1: others were assuming to be true about it. But as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, we learned that that wasn't really the case.
Speaker 1: But the first thing my research team and I had
Speaker 1: to do was define what is this thing we call
Speaker 1: self awareness? Anyway? And we thought it would be a
Speaker 1: pretty easy, straightforward question, and you know, those were our
Speaker 1: famous last words. We took almost a year reviewing eight
Speaker 1: hundred scientific studies on self awareness to even come up
Speaker 1: with a definition. So this isn't just something we sort
Speaker 1: of pulled out of the air. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting place to start, we basically found that
Speaker 1: self awareness is made up of two types of knowledge
Speaker 1: about ourselves. The first we dubbed internal self awareness, and
Speaker 1: that kind of is what most people think of when
Speaker 1: they hear the term. It's it's an inward understanding and
Speaker 1: clarity about our passions, our values are, personality, our strengths,
Speaker 1: our weaknesses, really just being able to see ourselves clearly.
Speaker 1: The second type of self awareness we've dubbed external self awareness,
Speaker 1: and essentially what that is is having a clear understanding
Speaker 1: of how other people see us and knowing that those
Speaker 1: two types of data are are often not only are
Speaker 1: they not the same, but sometimes they can even be
Speaker 1: in conflict. What is really fascinating is that we've found
Speaker 1: in our research that those two skills are subsets of
Speaker 1: self awareness, are independent. So what that means is you
Speaker 1: can be high on both, in which case that's awesome,
Speaker 1: and you can keep improving. You could be low on both,
Speaker 1: in which case there's there's nowhere to go but up.
Speaker 1: But most people, right, most people tend to be higher
Speaker 1: on one and lower on the other, and so you
Speaker 1: sort of get these arc types. One arch type is
Speaker 1: someone who's high and internal self awareness but low on
Speaker 1: external self awareness. And these are people for whom introspection
Speaker 1: is a you know, passionate hobby and they just love
Speaker 1: being in touch with themselves. But maybe if you go
Speaker 1: interview their friends and their family, they might not have
Speaker 1: quite the same rosy view of that person's self awareness,
Speaker 1: and that can get in their way, it can limit them.
Speaker 1: The other side of the spectrum I call pleasers, and
Speaker 1: those are people who really focus so much on that
Speaker 1: external piece, understanding how other people see them, making a
Speaker 1: certain impression that they're losing sight of their internal self
Speaker 1: awareness and what they really want and how they can
Speaker 1: live authentically. So the reason I mentioned that is I
Speaker 1: think it's such a great place for anyone who wants
Speaker 1: to improve their self awareness to start to just ask
Speaker 1: yourself that question, which of these maybe have I've been
Speaker 1: focusing on which of these might be an area that
Speaker 1: I can improve excellent? And there's this special blend who
Speaker 1: is both internally and externally unself aware. They seem to
Speaker 1: be everywhere, don't there Well, I mean less it seems
Speaker 1: to me than I was gonna say. Maybe they used
Speaker 1: to be, but I don't know. Maybe it's just the
Speaker 1: circles I travel in but we all have some people
Speaker 1: in our lives that we wish we could grant them
Speaker 1: more self awareness. However, what's fascinating is that a lot
Speaker 1: of us who are looking at other people thinking, but
Speaker 1: what could they be more self aware? Your research also
Speaker 1: shows that we all think we're very self aware, whereas
Speaker 1: we're not as self aware as we think we are.
Speaker 1: The most disarming statistic I think we've ever found in
Speaker 1: our research is the following people think that they're self aware,
Speaker 1: but the real number of people who are actually self
Speaker 1: aware is about ten to fifteen percent. So the joke
Speaker 1: I always make, which is rings true as well, is
Speaker 1: that even on a good day, about eight percent of
Speaker 1: us are lying to ourselves about whether we're lying to ourselves.
Speaker 1: So it's, you know, it's it's sort of as I said,
Speaker 1: it's disarming, it's disconcerting. But there's another side of that angle,
Speaker 1: which I think is almost everybody has room for improvement,
Speaker 1: and as I mentioned earlier, there are so many positive
Speaker 1: outcomes that we will see in every area of our
Speaker 1: life when we start to build this foundation. So I
Speaker 1: see it as as more of a wake up call
Speaker 1: than a depressing piece of data. But it's really up
Speaker 1: to us to decide what we want to do with it.
Speaker 1: That's self aware statistic is a very useful one because
Speaker 1: it then helps understand why all these other statistics where
Speaker 1: everybody thinks they're better than average it you know, everything is,
Speaker 1: you know, people think they're better than average drivers, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, I think, yeah, we have
Speaker 1: enormous capacity to deceive ourselves for sure, and I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that hopefully people looking at
Speaker 1: your book can get a sense of is the ways
Speaker 1: that we can do that. So let's talk about what
Speaker 1: the seven pillars of self awareness are. So there's seven
Speaker 1: main areas I think that you examine and said, okay,
Speaker 1: these are the different facets that we can be self
Speaker 1: aware in. One of my favorite things that we did
Speaker 1: on our research program was find people who didn't start
Speaker 1: out as self aware, but who made these really remarkable
Speaker 1: transformations and their ability to see themselves clearly. And we
Speaker 1: conducted dozens and dozens of interviews with these people. We
Speaker 1: had hundreds of pages of transcripts, and so that was
Speaker 1: another question we asked, is you know, when we say
Speaker 1: we see ourselves clearly, what is it that we're seeing
Speaker 1: and we did find seven areas that tend to separate
Speaker 1: the self aware from everybody else. So I'll just go
Speaker 1: through them briefly. Most of them are pretty self explanatory.
Speaker 1: So at the most basic level, self a where people
Speaker 1: understand their values, they understand the principles that they want
Speaker 1: to live their life by. They also understand their passions.
Speaker 1: Those are the things that just are going to make
Speaker 1: them leap out of bed in the morning, and by
Speaker 1: that same token, the things that they really really hate
Speaker 1: to do. They understand their aspirations, which is not just
Speaker 1: what we want to accomplish in life or work, but
Speaker 1: really kind of more of a broad sense of of
Speaker 1: what do we want to experience in our lives. The
Speaker 1: next is called we call it fit, and basically what
Speaker 1: that means is having an understanding and a clarity about
Speaker 1: the types of environments and people that bring out the
Speaker 1: best in us, because that's, you know, part of life,
Speaker 1: I think is a search for the areas where we belong.
Speaker 1: So that's really what that is about. Um. The next
Speaker 1: one is patterns, which is essentially our personality. You know,
Speaker 1: it's our our consistent ways of behaving across situations. And
Speaker 1: then sometimes we even look at patterns within the same
Speaker 1: situations to really get clarity about how we're showing up.
Speaker 1: The next we called it reactions, and that one is
Speaker 1: a little bit more complicated, but in essence, it's made
Speaker 1: up of three things. Are momentary reactions to the world,
Speaker 1: as well as our strengths and our weaknesses. And you know,
Speaker 1: you sort of think about our reactions usually are demonstrating
Speaker 1: our strengths and our weaknesses, so that's why those hang together.
Speaker 1: And then last but not least, you can't forget the
Speaker 1: impact you have on other people. So again, we can
Speaker 1: be very very internally clear, but if we're not sort
Speaker 1: of seeing our behavior and the way it spills out
Speaker 1: into and influences our environment, we we really can't be
Speaker 1: fully self aware. And you know, it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: a tall order if you look at all those seven
Speaker 1: things and you say, oh my gosh, But once again,
Speaker 1: I see it as just a fabulous area to start.
Speaker 1: I talk about some exercises in the book where you know,
Speaker 1: you kind of do an audit. You sit down with yourself,
Speaker 1: you sit down with maybe somebody who knows you well,
Speaker 1: and you go through each of those areas and you
Speaker 1: can say Wow. You know, I feel like I'm really
Speaker 1: clear about my values, but maybe I haven't done so
Speaker 1: much thinking about the way other people are being impacted
Speaker 1: by my behavior. So it's just a way to help
Speaker 1: you be smart and and really focus your time so
Speaker 1: that you can make big improvements. I've been working on
Speaker 1: an audit for about three years of my producer Chris,
Speaker 1: so heads up, he's not here to defend himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Just don't ask me learn something you might
Speaker 1: not want to um. Which is one of the things, incidentally,
Speaker 1: that you say is a barrier for us, is that
Speaker 1: a lot of us just really don't want to know
Speaker 1: the truth. There is a certain perceived benefit, at least
Speaker 1: in the short term of seeing ourselves with rose colored glasses.
Speaker 1: It feels good. But the problem is, and this has
Speaker 1: shown time and time and time again, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like refined sugar. You know, you eat it and
Speaker 1: you feel amazing, but the long term health effects are
Speaker 1: are pretty significant. And so that's how I help people
Speaker 1: sort of understand it, you know. And again, in the
Speaker 1: with those highly self aware people that we interview, we
Speaker 1: actually didn't find a whole lot of patterns by things
Speaker 1: like age or gender or job type. But we really
Speaker 1: found two things that separated them from everyone else that
Speaker 1: I think relates to your question. One of them is
Speaker 1: a belief in the supreme importance of self awareness, and
Speaker 1: then number two was a daily commitment to developing it.
Speaker 1: And these people really took on a mindset that that
Speaker 1: I call braver but wiser. And it's the sort of
Speaker 1: idea that I might wake up today and learn something
Speaker 1: about myself that I don't love. By that same token,
Speaker 1: I might learn something about myself that's fabulous. But either way,
Speaker 1: I believe that as a longer term play, seeing myself
Speaker 1: clearly is going to help me lead a happier, more successful,
Speaker 1: more meaningful life. And so it's, you know, it's sort
Speaker 1: of the short term, long term trade off, but over time,
Speaker 1: these these self aware people have showed us just how
Speaker 1: worth it. It really is. Wonderful. So you mentioned three
Speaker 1: line spots that we have. Could you talk through what
Speaker 1: the three different blind spots are? Sure, so this is
Speaker 1: sort of a summary of so many people's research, just
Speaker 1: that very clear patterns that have been found. Um. So,
Speaker 1: the first is something called knowledge blindness, and you mentioned
Speaker 1: sort of the dunning Kruger effect earlier that the least
Speaker 1: competent people are usually the most confident about their knowledge
Speaker 1: and their expertise. That's true, but there's also been a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence that that almost everyone overestimates the knowledge
Speaker 1: they have about, you know, particular areas of their expertise. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: the more of an expert we tend to be, the
Speaker 1: more likely we are to overestimate our expertise. You know that,
Speaker 1: I think the smartest people I know in this area
Speaker 1: say the more I learn, the less I realize I know,
Speaker 1: And and really keeping that hunger to never feel like
Speaker 1: you've completely figured anything out, even if you've been doing
Speaker 1: it for years. The second blind spot is emotion blindness,
Speaker 1: and there is so much fascinating research about this, but
Speaker 1: just kind of at its core, what it says is
Speaker 1: we think that we can analyze the way we're feeling
Speaker 1: at any given moment or the way we're feeling over
Speaker 1: time very objectively, but in fact that's not the case.
Speaker 1: We're we're unduly influenced by things that are going on
Speaker 1: in that moment. So, you know, one example might be
Speaker 1: if I if I ask you to really think about
Speaker 1: how you feel about your romantic relationship, and your relationship
Speaker 1: is generally really awesome, but maybe today, earlier, you got
Speaker 1: in a fight with your spouse about the right way
Speaker 1: to load the dishwasher, and even though it was just
Speaker 1: a little, tiny fight, it might be sort of impacting
Speaker 1: your overall view when in fact that's that's not a
Speaker 1: legitimate reason to ratchet down your happiness and your relationship.
Speaker 1: So I again, I think the way to bust through
Speaker 1: that is to never really assume that we are correct,
Speaker 1: um And I think we can talk about some other
Speaker 1: strategies more generally. The third blind spot is behavior blindness,
Speaker 1: and this is a fascinating one because what it means
Speaker 1: essentially is we can't always see our own behavior objectively,
Speaker 1: and that might not be especially surprising to most people.
Speaker 1: We sort of think about it like a perspective issue.
Speaker 1: We can't see ourselves quite literally, unless we know have
Speaker 1: a reality TV camera crew following us around, then we
Speaker 1: have a different problem. Um. But but basically we we
Speaker 1: are not able to see ourselves from other people's perspectives.
Speaker 1: But there's been some research recently that shows that even
Speaker 1: when people watch videos of themselves, they're not able to
Speaker 1: pick up on the sort of subtle behaviors that almost
Speaker 1: everyone else can often see, so there isn't a complete
Speaker 1: knowledge or understanding of why that happens. But again, part
Speaker 1: of the process is acknowledging that blind spot and realizing that,
Speaker 1: especially from a behave of your real perspective, we are
Speaker 1: often not the foremost experts on our own behavior. It
Speaker 1: really is staggering when looking at all the different ways
Speaker 1: that we can misunderstand ourselves and frankly misunderstand the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned, you know, if I've getten an
Speaker 1: argument with my spouse about the dishwasher, I might rate
Speaker 1: my overall happiness that day less. You know, that's a
Speaker 1: well known cognitive bias, the recency effect, Right, there's lots
Speaker 1: of I mean, there's so many of these different ways
Speaker 1: in which we just don't see things clearly. But you
Speaker 1: mentioned having a reality film crew follow us around, and
Speaker 1: that leads me into another area of the book that
Speaker 1: I found really fascinating, which is this idea of the
Speaker 1: cult of self. Um. You say that the cult of
Speaker 1: self lulls us into thinking that we are unique, special
Speaker 1: and superior, that our needs matter more than everyone else's,
Speaker 1: that we're not subject to the same rules as other
Speaker 1: people are that we're deserving if things simply because we
Speaker 1: want them. Talk to me more about the cult of
Speaker 1: self and what does this have to do with self awareness?
Speaker 1: So the cult of self is essentially cultivating a sense
Speaker 1: of self absorption over self awareness, and in my estimation
Speaker 1: and many other people's, it's only getting worse. So over
Speaker 1: time we're becoming more self absorbed and less self aware.
Speaker 1: And I'll sort of come back to that and why
Speaker 1: it's important for self awareness in a moment, but in
Speaker 1: terms of what's causing it and what it looks like.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody always jokes about this. I as a millennial,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes get a little hurt by it. But
Speaker 1: there's a certain amount of truth to it that that
Speaker 1: many young people have been raised with this idea that
Speaker 1: they should get a ribbon for everything, and that their
Speaker 1: self esteem, their fragile self esteem, should be protected at
Speaker 1: all costs. What a lot of people who say that
Speaker 1: don't know, though, is that this self esteem movement has
Speaker 1: really been part of our collective consciousness, at least in
Speaker 1: the US, since the nineteen sixties. And you know, again
Speaker 1: it's easy to point fingers at other people, but to
Speaker 1: really think about the US and the way we viewed
Speaker 1: our self concept. It's been that it's it's easier to
Speaker 1: basically feel great about ourselves than it is to actually
Speaker 1: take the effort to become great, and so that self
Speaker 1: esteem movement is a really big factor in all of this.
Speaker 1: There's so much research, and I'm sure you're familiar with us,
Speaker 1: that that self esteem does not actually provide all of
Speaker 1: its advertised benefits. There was this thought in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies and eighties that we could cure every
Speaker 1: social ill if we could just make people feel good
Speaker 1: about themselves. But in fact, feeling great about yourself without
Speaker 1: any objective evidence that that's the case, can lead to
Speaker 1: worse outcomes personally for people as well as society than
Speaker 1: the opposite. And it turns out that we, most of us,
Speaker 1: don't suffer from a lack of self esteem. We suffer
Speaker 1: from a lack of clarity or a lack of self awareness.
Speaker 1: So I think that's the low lying, really core cause here.
Speaker 1: But then you can layer social media upon it, and
Speaker 1: I see, I don't know if you see this a
Speaker 1: lot too, but perfectly reasonable other focused folks that I
Speaker 1: know get online and they become these narcissists. You know,
Speaker 1: they're posting selfies and you're saying, oh my god, if
Speaker 1: you acted like this in person, nobody would want to
Speaker 1: be friends few and my belief and there's there's evidence
Speaker 1: of this, is that any time we're on social media
Speaker 1: focusing on ourselves informing other people about what's going on
Speaker 1: with us, it's increasing our narcissism. There there's one study
Speaker 1: that was done recently that showed that people who spent
Speaker 1: time on their UH social media profile had immediate increases
Speaker 1: in narcissism. And so sort of taking that all together,
Speaker 1: we we have this inflated view of ourselves. Very often.
Speaker 1: It's not always the case. I think there are some
Speaker 1: people on the other end of the spectrum who don't
Speaker 1: know how awesome they are and that gets in their way.
Speaker 1: But the more common ailment is that we see ourselves
Speaker 1: as as you know, better or more deserving, or more
Speaker 1: special or more unique than we actually are. And if
Speaker 1: you think about self awareness, self awareness is about clarity
Speaker 1: and UH seeing ourselves clearly, accepting ourselves for who we are,
Speaker 1: but really having more realistic appreciation. Sometimes people ask me,
Speaker 1: I want to be self aware, but I'm worried that
Speaker 1: it's going to make me horribly depressed and hate myself.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a fair question. But what we
Speaker 1: found with a are highly self aware people is that
Speaker 1: they pair that sense of self awareness with a sense
Speaker 1: of self acceptance. And there's a ton of research that
Speaker 1: that self acceptance or self compassion can give us all
Speaker 1: of the benefits that self esteem is supposed to give
Speaker 1: us without any of those negative costs. And so I
Speaker 1: think if people want to fight the cult of self,
Speaker 1: they really should focus on that clarity and acceptance, as
Speaker 1: well as maybe trying to spend a little bit less
Speaker 1: time thinking about talking about advocating for themselves. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: I had to guess that, we've got a lot of
Speaker 1: listeners of this show who are on the other end
Speaker 1: of the self esteem spectrum, which is the feel bad
Speaker 1: about themselves, just from from a lot of people I've
Speaker 1: talked to. But I agree that there is a growing narcissism.
Speaker 1: And what I think is interesting about self esteem, Um,
Speaker 1: so let's take self compassion out, because I do think
Speaker 1: we've had Kristine fun I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: value there. But what I have found for myself is
Speaker 1: that too much focus on myself good or bad, tends
Speaker 1: to cause me trouble. You know, I don't think I
Speaker 1: came up with the phrase, but I've heard it before,
Speaker 1: which is like the burden of self, And that just
Speaker 1: rings so true to me that being concerned with myself
Speaker 1: all the time is really painful, or at least has
Speaker 1: gotten much more painful for me as life has gone on.
Speaker 1: And I frankly realized that that's frankly where almost all
Speaker 1: the pain in my life comes from, is over involvement
Speaker 1: with how I'm doing. And I think that hits the
Speaker 1: nail on the head of why so many people shy
Speaker 1: away from trying to see themselves clearly. And there's so
Speaker 1: many layers to that. So let me just peel back
Speaker 1: a couple and then we can see where we get
Speaker 1: to it. Um. We found with are highly self aware
Speaker 1: people that they have a higher degree of humility, and
Speaker 1: essentially what that means is they accept what they don't know. UM,
Speaker 1: they're they're not as focused on themselves because they're working
Speaker 1: on bringing out the best in others, and so that
Speaker 1: that felt like kind of a paradox to me. UM.
Speaker 1: The other thing we found with these people is that
Speaker 1: they don't actually spend quite as much time thinking about
Speaker 1: themselves as someone else might. And at first I was
Speaker 1: just floored by that. I said, how could how could
Speaker 1: people who think about themselves less be more self aware?
Speaker 1: It didn't make sense. But there was also a part
Speaker 1: of our research where we were looking at introspection, which
Speaker 1: is essentially what you're talking about. It's this idea that
Speaker 1: we have to in order to know ourselves, we have
Speaker 1: to do this deep psychological excavation into the depths of
Speaker 1: our identity and the depths of who we are and
Speaker 1: why we are the way we are. That really comes
Speaker 1: from Freud, and Freud was correct that we have and
Speaker 1: unconscious but he was incorrect about a lot of things
Speaker 1: as they relate to introspection. So one big thing is
Speaker 1: that we can't excavate those unconscious thoughts and feelings and
Speaker 1: motives no matter how hard we try. So that's the
Speaker 1: first piece that sort of gets in our way with introspection.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, the more we introspect, the less
Speaker 1: clearly we see ourselves. And that, you know, there's so
Speaker 1: much to that, but overall, there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: evidence that frequent self analyzers tend to be less self aware,
Speaker 1: and part of my research has been looking into that
Speaker 1: and saying, well, what the heck does this mean for
Speaker 1: the for the search for self awareness? And thankfully, what
Speaker 1: we've found is that it's not necessarily that introspection is bad,
Speaker 1: but it's that a lot of people with really good
Speaker 1: intentions are doing it in a way that you not
Speaker 1: only is making them less self aware, but it's making
Speaker 1: them depressed and anxious and stressed and less satisfied with
Speaker 1: their lives. So are highly self aware people spent less
Speaker 1: time analyzing themselves, and they spent that time very differently.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying this conversation, I hate to be the
Speaker 1: bearer of bad news, but you're nearing the end of it.
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Speaker 1: I've got some good news you can. The interview continues
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Speaker 1: to the interview. There's so much in what you said there,
Speaker 1: and that was probably the part of the book for
Speaker 1: me that I thought was most interesting. Was this idea
Speaker 1: that there's really no relationship between introspection and insight. You say,
Speaker 1: the act of thinking about ourselves wasn't correlated with knowing ourselves.
Speaker 1: And my initial reaction to that was similar to yours,
Speaker 1: which is what I don't think that makes sense. But
Speaker 1: as I thought more about it, and as I as
Speaker 1: I read what you were talking about, there were several
Speaker 1: things that you mentioned that I think really hit true.
Speaker 1: One of them is the idea of rumination. Right. We've
Speaker 1: talked about rumination on this show a bunch. I've done
Speaker 1: many episodes on it, and and rumination, at least to me,
Speaker 1: is almost defined by continuing to think the same thing.
Speaker 1: So you're increasing the duration of your thinking with absolutely
Speaker 1: no new insight or information. It's thinking the same thing
Speaker 1: over and over and over. So I'm logging lots of hours, right,
Speaker 1: but I'm not making any progress in it. So when
Speaker 1: I thought about that, that kind of made a lot
Speaker 1: of sense. And then the other thing that you talk about.
Speaker 1: And I thought this was really fascinating, was that if
Speaker 1: we are doing a lot of introspection and we're looking
Speaker 1: for reasons why And we'll get to why versus what
Speaker 1: in a minute, But if we're doing a lot of introspection,
Speaker 1: we tend to look for a reason and when the
Speaker 1: first one we find, we latch onto it. You know,
Speaker 1: that becomes what we are focused on. This is why
Speaker 1: I am the way we are, and then the search stops.
Speaker 1: This is actually not something that's in the book, but
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorite studies. Um, we we get
Speaker 1: so wedded to the reasons we think we've identified for
Speaker 1: our behavior that even when other people point out we're wrong,
Speaker 1: we we are not able to see it. So there's
Speaker 1: a really famous psychology study by Timothy Wilson and Richard
Speaker 1: Nisbet and this was done I think it was in
Speaker 1: the seventies. But they went to their local Myers thrifty
Speaker 1: store in an Arbor, Michigan, and they set up a
Speaker 1: card table outside of the store, and on the card
Speaker 1: table they arranged four identical pairs of pantyhose and they
Speaker 1: asked the people that were walking by to pick their favorite.
Speaker 1: And so, what consumer research says is that people tend
Speaker 1: to prefer products on the right side of a display,
Speaker 1: and that was exactly what happened people. I think people
Speaker 1: chose the ones on the right at a rate of
Speaker 1: four to one. But here's the thing. When Wilson and
Speaker 1: Nisbet asked them, why did you pick the pair that
Speaker 1: you picked? Mind you, every single pair was identical, every
Speaker 1: person said, well, I picked them because they're obviously better.
Speaker 1: They would latch that, you know, look at the fabric quality,
Speaker 1: look at the stretchiness, or you know whatever people use
Speaker 1: to judge pantyhose um and and they had no idea.
Speaker 1: And even when the researchers said, let me tell you
Speaker 1: about the effective positioning on on your choice, and that
Speaker 1: might be the reason that you're thinking this, they refused
Speaker 1: to believe it. They were adamant that their reason was
Speaker 1: the actual reason. And I share that study because I
Speaker 1: think it's just so descriptive of what goes on. And
Speaker 1: when it's for identical pairs of pantyhose, it's it's easy
Speaker 1: to see that we make these mistakes. But so often
Speaker 1: when we're searching for the causes of our our thoughts
Speaker 1: or our behavior or feelings, we feel like what we
Speaker 1: found is true even when you know. I would go
Speaker 1: so far as to say, most of the time we
Speaker 1: we can't really know why we do the things we do.
Speaker 1: And I'd even go further and say it may not
Speaker 1: even matter, right, And I think there is some truth
Speaker 1: to that it may not matter. And I think I'm
Speaker 1: wary of anything that goes too far in one direction, right,
Speaker 1: So I think to say that like everything in life
Speaker 1: can be unlocked by understanding my past in my history
Speaker 1: is fallacious. And I think saying that there's nothing to
Speaker 1: be learned or gained from that also is is going
Speaker 1: too far. But this leads us very much to something
Speaker 1: that you talk about, which is a question of what
Speaker 1: instead of why. So talk me through that, because that
Speaker 1: aligns very much with a lot of what I do
Speaker 1: in the coaching work I do with people. So walk
Speaker 1: is through what versus why. For all the reasons we
Speaker 1: talked about, I typically find that the question of why
Speaker 1: doesn't lead us anywhere productive, and that was in fact
Speaker 1: what we found and a lot of the research that
Speaker 1: other scientists have done. But it led to the question of, Okay,
Speaker 1: if why is the wrong question, what the heck should
Speaker 1: we ask we know introspection is important. So we went
Speaker 1: back to these interview transcripts of our highly sold for
Speaker 1: where people and we found that the word why appeared
Speaker 1: less than a hundred and fifty times, but the word
Speaker 1: what appeared more than a thousand times. So then we
Speaker 1: were onto something. We're seeing a pattern. But then we
Speaker 1: had to figure out what is that? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: What does it mean to ask what instead of why?
Speaker 1: So maybe i'll give you an example. Um, and again
Speaker 1: this isn't in the book, it's just an extra tidbit there.
Speaker 1: There was one of our folks in that group who
Speaker 1: he had a brand new boss. He got a really
Speaker 1: bad performance review, and I think most people in that situation,
Speaker 1: with good intentions would ask why why are we like
Speaker 1: oil and water? Or why doesn't she understand me? And
Speaker 1: really kind of go down that path. But what we
Speaker 1: know is that path is going to depress us and
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily In most cases, it won't actually lead
Speaker 1: to any actionable insight. But what this person asked instead
Speaker 1: instead of why is this happening? Was what can I
Speaker 1: do to show her I'm the best person for this job?
Speaker 1: So what's fascinating about that question is that it's rational,
Speaker 1: it's actionable, its behavior based, it's future focused. And that's
Speaker 1: just one example. And he found that when he asked
Speaker 1: himself that question, he was able to get in a
Speaker 1: better place with his boss. And now apparently all of
Speaker 1: his coworkers look at him and his boss as evidence
Speaker 1: that two polar opposites can work really well together. And
Speaker 1: there were tons and tons and tons of these examples,
Speaker 1: and that was where we sort of came away with
Speaker 1: this idea that if we ask what it's it's helping
Speaker 1: us unearth our potential, it's helping us own our behavior,
Speaker 1: it's helping us figure out what are we going to
Speaker 1: do moving forward to to have more purpose and clarity
Speaker 1: and success. So that would be what I would tell
Speaker 1: your listeners. If you do nothing else after listening to this,
Speaker 1: if you start asking what instead of why, I think
Speaker 1: you'll be fairly amazed at what a difference it makes.
Speaker 1: I have referred to it as asking how instead of why?
Speaker 1: To think is very similar. You know, how can I
Speaker 1: do this differently? How can I change this? And it
Speaker 1: gets to probably one of the most used phrases on
Speaker 1: this show over two hundred plus episodes, is probably that
Speaker 1: sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You
Speaker 1: have to act your way into right thinking. And this
Speaker 1: is very similar to that idea, which is that I
Speaker 1: can think about this forever, but I may not get
Speaker 1: any kind of useful answer, Whereas if the questions I'm
Speaker 1: asking are going to drive me towards action, then I
Speaker 1: can make progress. And the biggest example for me is
Speaker 1: recovery from addiction. Right, there's lots of time that could
Speaker 1: be spent in why am I an addict? But those
Speaker 1: questions have never yielded anything particularly useful. Now, what should
Speaker 1: I do about that? What behaviors can I do? What
Speaker 1: kind of actions can I do? What sort of thought
Speaker 1: patterns can I cultivate that are going to move me
Speaker 1: in the right direction? There is so much more usefulness
Speaker 1: in that. And again I don't want to be extreme
Speaker 1: is to say like that why never has a purpose?
Speaker 1: Or the examining our own motives and things aren't. It's
Speaker 1: all useful, But I certainly think that a bias towards action,
Speaker 1: and as you say, as towards what questions is so helpful.
Speaker 1: And in the coaching, I do people off and say, well,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between a coach and a therapist, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, mainly, I'm just going to help you
Speaker 1: look forward. We're going to look forward at what you
Speaker 1: can do to make your life better, not spending much
Speaker 1: time on why you got where you are. You know,
Speaker 1: that's not really the goal. The goal is how do
Speaker 1: you know? How do we move forward? As an organizational psychologist,
Speaker 1: I do a lot of executive coaching, and I also
Speaker 1: use that distinction, and I think it's so important. But
Speaker 1: but back to the point you just made, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we shouldn't be looking at our past and
Speaker 1: in order to reconcile all of this, one thing I
Speaker 1: did as I was working on the book is I
Speaker 1: try to talk to a bunch of counseling and clinical
Speaker 1: psychologists because that area of expertise is just way outside
Speaker 1: of what what I was taught and what I know.
Speaker 1: So the question I asked them is what what is
Speaker 1: the role of our past and self awareness? And the
Speaker 1: the most common answer I got was, you know, the
Speaker 1: role of our past is is that it's something we
Speaker 1: have to make peace with. It's not necessarily something that
Speaker 1: we have to excavate and ruminate over and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of overthink. But a lot of times we do
Speaker 1: have demons that are following us. But but the purpose
Speaker 1: of looking at our past isn't necessarily to understand it.
Speaker 1: It's to make peace with it and to to move
Speaker 1: forward and to really be able to look forward instead
Speaker 1: of backwards. So to me, that kind of made a
Speaker 1: lot of things make sense, you know, and again to
Speaker 1: your point, it's never as simple as just do this
Speaker 1: instead of this. I love the way you put that.
Speaker 1: I think that makes a lot of sense to to
Speaker 1: come to peace with it. One of the things that
Speaker 1: you say is that true insight only happens when we
Speaker 1: process both our thoughts and our feelings. Talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about that piece of the research. This
Speaker 1: is research that has to do with how can people
Speaker 1: who keep journals actually get the most insight from the experience.
Speaker 1: But I also think that it applies to any kind
Speaker 1: of self examination. But essentially what the research has found is,
Speaker 1: you know, you can sort of imagine three categories of
Speaker 1: journal ers. One category of journal or is someone who
Speaker 1: uses it as you know, an emotional an emotional discharge,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of all the feelings they're feeling, and
Speaker 1: probably a lot more negative feelings than positive feelings, but
Speaker 1: it's it's really journal as emotional discharge. Then there are
Speaker 1: people maybe who are are more logical, more left brained,
Speaker 1: more analytical, who might use their journal as a way
Speaker 1: to analyze their situation in a in a kind of
Speaker 1: dispassionate way. The third type of journal or is somebody
Speaker 1: who really does both. Is they process their emotions without
Speaker 1: overthinking them and they use sort of that detached objective
Speaker 1: view of themselves to better understand their situation. And what
Speaker 1: the research that has essentially shown is if you are
Speaker 1: just focused on your emotions, it doesn't help you have
Speaker 1: more insight. If you're just focused on the rational, thought
Speaker 1: based parts, it doesn't give you more insight. But it's
Speaker 1: sort of like the whole is greater than the sum
Speaker 1: of its parts. If you can focus on both what
Speaker 1: you're thinking and what you're feeling, that's when you start
Speaker 1: to get real, kind of well rounded and meaningful a
Speaker 1: has about yourself. Yeah, that's great, and folks, if you
Speaker 1: want to learn about journaling, it's not always it's fascinating
Speaker 1: research on journaling that you have in your book. We're
Speaker 1: near the end of time, but I want to finish
Speaker 1: up with what I thought was very practical tip and
Speaker 1: one that sort of has helped me as I learned
Speaker 1: it as part of a twelve step program. It's basically
Speaker 1: step ten, which is you continue to take personal inventory,
Speaker 1: right And what you're talking about is the you say,
Speaker 1: the one reason we fail to learn from experiences that
Speaker 1: we rarely take time to reflect on our discoveries. And
Speaker 1: you recommend kind of doing a daily check in. Let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what what you might do
Speaker 1: in a daily chicken That is a great nugget that
Speaker 1: I think people can use right away. What we found
Speaker 1: again is that are highly self aware of people didn't
Speaker 1: over analyze themselves, you know, and really all they did,
Speaker 1: but this was almost to a person was at the
Speaker 1: end of each day asked themselves what amount to three questions.
Speaker 1: The first question is what went well today and just
Speaker 1: spending some time reflecting on that. The next question is
Speaker 1: what didn't go so well? And again being in touch
Speaker 1: with your emotions, being in touch with your thoughts but
Speaker 1: not getting swept up in it. And then the third
Speaker 1: question is how can I be smarter tomorrow? So, as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, everybody should be doing daily chickens well.
Speaker 1: Tasha Thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 1: come on again. The book is called Insight Why We're
Speaker 1: not as self aware as we think, and how seeing
Speaker 1: ourselves clearly helps us succeed at work and in life.
Speaker 1: And I found a lot of really interesting things in
Speaker 1: and I think listeners in general of this show are
Speaker 1: fairly i would say, self reflective people, and I think
Speaker 1: this book is a useful way to make sure that
Speaker 1: we're doing that in the most effective way we can
Speaker 1: and avoiding the traps of rumination or you know, wondering
Speaker 1: too much about why, and allowing that our natural self reflection,
Speaker 1: which is a strength and a lot of us, is
Speaker 1: done in a useful way. So thanks so much for
Speaker 1: taking the time to come on. Thank you. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: should be using those reflective powers for good and not
Speaker 1: for ill in ourselves. Perfect, all right, thank you, thanks,
Speaker 1: all right bye. If what you just heard was helpful
Speaker 1: to you, please consider making a donation to the one
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