The Journey Within: Overcoming Challenges and Enhancing Self-Awareness for Better Outcomes (Self-Awareness Series 2/3)

In our previous article, we defined and explored the components of self-awareness.  Now, let's zoom in on the challenges and benefits. 

Challenges of Self-Awareness

1. Ignorance and discomfort.  Plato’s Allegory of the Cave illustrates how ignorance can limit self-awareness and how knowledge leads to liberation.  In the allegory, prisoners chained in a cave see only shadows projected on a wall, believing them to be reality.  When one prisoner is freed, he struggles to take in this new understanding but eventually learns that the shadows are mere reflections of actual objects. Upon seeing the outside world, he grasps a deeper reality.  When he returns to share this knowledge with the other prisoners, he is met with disbelief and hostility.  This underscores the journey of self-awareness: breaking free from ignorance to understand deeper truths can be an enlightening experience.  It can also be challenging because some truths we discover about ourselves can be so uncomfortable that we prefer ignorance as bliss.

2. Varied backgrounds.  Our self-awareness varies significantly due to numerous factors: different generations, upbringing, income levels, values, job markets, incentives, and experiences.  For instance, a person growing up in poverty thinks differently about risk and reward than a wealthy banker.  John F. Kennedy admitted he could not fully understand the impact of the Depression era because he grew up rich.  We've all experienced only a tiny sliver of the world, shaping our unique perspectives.

3. Dunning Kruger Effect.  This cognitive bias occurs when people with low ability or knowledge in an area overestimate their competence.  Identified by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, it happens because unskilled individuals fail to recognize their deficiencies, leading to inflated self-assessments.  For example, an employee new to software may feel proficient after a brief introduction, assuming they're more competent than others who have used it longer.  This overestimation can lead to mistakes and oversights. 

4. Ego.  An inaccurate self-view can hinder leadership growth. For instance, a leader I was working with had a Direct Report submit a self-assessment on his performance review and wrote “n/a” for what to improve.  When pressed, my client suggested to the Direct the topic of delegation to achieve results through others, rather than doing it all himself.  The Direct dismissed the feedback because he is so talented at getting his work done.  His progress is hampered because he cannot scale by doing all the work himself, he has to get results through his team.  To increase his awareness, the leader then provided a competency framework and clear expectations to get to the next level and help align his self-perception with reality.

5. Defensiveness.  When receiving feedback, we might disagree, believing we’re better than assessed.  For example, someone might think they’re a great listener despite feedback suggesting otherwise. In this case, asking for specific data points and providing evidence from peers, directs, and other stakeholders through anonymous 360 feedback is helpful. Seeing the negative impact can motivate change.  Another form of defensiveness is dismissal.  Some might say, "This is just how I am," or "I've been successful with these behaviors so far, why change?" Marshall Goldsmith says, "What got you here won’t get you there," highlighting that success often comes despite derailing tendencies, not because of them.

6.  Lack of feedback.  Many people lack self-awareness because they seldom receive feedback, especially negative.  People avoid giving bad news or lack the skills to deliver it constructively.  This issue is more pronounced for senior leaders, who receive less accurate self-assessments as they climb higher, mainly due to a shortage of honest feedback and being limited to what you might be able to share with others.  One study showed a leader frequently interrupting others was unaware of it, illustrating the loneliness at the top, where they are often surrounded by yes-people.

Benefits of Self-Awareness 

1. Reduces Stress & Regulates Emotions.  Cognitive psychology shows that one of the most effective methods for reducing stress is to engage in self-reflection, viewing stress as a challenge rather than a threat.  Self-disciplined contemplation of core values, goals, and principles can prevent or manage stress.  Understanding one’s feelings and those of others is more important than IQ.

2. Greater performance, focus, and effectiveness.  83% of high performers are self-aware.  Visionary leaders know what they want to achieve and how their actions affect others.  Self-awareness allows us to focus on the right opportunities and keep emotions from holding us back.

3. Stronger leadership.  Tasha Eurich’s book "Insight" found that internal self-awareness is critical for successful leaders.  They know their strengths, weaknesses, needs, goals, and how they come across.  This is in contrast to clueless leaders who tend to be ineffective.  Great leaders continuously ask questions to diagnose their needs and goals and wonder what blind spots they may have.  Maslow said, “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”

4. Enhances Authenticity.  Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer said, “You can’t be authentic if you are not self-aware.  How can you be transparent and open, talk about your goals, or share how you influence change without self-awareness?”  It enables transparency, openness, and the ability to influence change. 

5. Increases humility.   Self-aware individuals know what they are good at and what they are not.  Even confident individuals can acknowledge their ignorance in certain areas, fostering curiosity and humility.  Steve Jobs, for example, was aware of his limitations and welcomed disagreements.   He held strong convictions but was willing to change his mind when presented with better information.   Ed Catmull shared a story about Jobs, who wanted Apple to make the iPad before the iPhone.  However, his team convinced him otherwise, and he agreed.  He insisted that Apple provide the app despite his team’s disagreement.   When the iPhone launched, Jobs quickly realized his team was right and changed his mind, demonstrating his ability to adapt and embrace humility.   

Developing self-awareness is crucial for overcoming personal and professional challenges. It allows us to break free from ignorance, understand our unique backgrounds, manage cognitive biases, and receive constructive feedback. By fostering self-awareness, we can reduce stress, improve performance, enhance leadership, and cultivate authenticity and humility.  Embrace these practices to unlock your full potential and achieve greater success

Quote of the day: “If we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down.”  – Rainer Maria Rilke

Question: What do you see as the biggest challenges of self-awareness?  When is ignorance bliss, or is it not?  Comment and share your experiences below; we’d love to hear.

The next blog in this series 3/3 will focus on ways to develop your self-awareness.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to raise their awareness to increase their performance, contact me to explore this topic further

What benefits have you experienced?

Optimize Your Energy By Cultivating A Healthy Mind (energy management series 3/5 )

An important part of maintaining our energy is cultivating a healthy mindset.  When we look at our beliefs and promote the ones that serve us and discount the ones that do not, we show up more energetically.

Here are some things to consider: 

1.  Cultivate conscious leadership.  In the book 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, Jim Dethmer explains two kinds of leaders, those who operate above the line (from a place of love) or those who work below the line (from a place of fear).  If you are above the line, you have a mindset of curiosity and learning, and believe that you have the power to choose the life you want to create.  If you function from below the line, you are more interested in being right than learning, mainly see yourself as a victim, and believe life is happening to you; you are choiceless.  You think your happiness lies in external circumstances (situations and other people determining your happiness) rather than assuming you can design your path.

The first step to cultivating conscious leadership is self-awareness; at any given time identifying where you are in the moment without judgment or shame or trying to avoid being below the line because as Dethmer notes, 95% of all leaders spend 98% in that space.  It is more important to recognize that you are there and think about how you want to make a productive shift.  Spending time below the line is a life-draining and disempowering experience because you wonder why bad things always happen to you, and then it becomes a perpetuating cycle because bad things continue to happen.  This is compared to being above the line, where you are empowered and living life from a point of choice.  Your most important moments are now and your next steps because that is what you can influence.

2. Reframe your experience.  Epictetus said,  “it is not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”  Reframing is when you have a different take on a situation.  For example, if you are assigned a task from your boss that you do not want to do, you can agree and feel resentful or you can reframe it by thinking, maybe this person needs assistance, and I have a great opportunity to help and advance my skillset in the process.  This is not about discounting reality but about generating additional interpretations which will make you better for it.  In the Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haight said the reframe is key to happiness because it can give you a sense of well-being in minutes when you transform negative into positive thoughts.

3. Avoid rumination.  This term means to chew continuously and is how cows digest their food.  They chew, swallow, regurgitate it back up, chew again, swallow, and repeat.  For a human, it is when you constantly replay an unhelpful track in your mind, obsess over an event, and stress out with each replay.  For example, you and your colleague worked on a presentation, and your peer presented using “I” and not “we” language to give the illusion that they did all the work without your assistance, and you quickly get upset.  You could believe they did it purposely, tried to marginalize you, and instantly feel stressed, angry, and disappointed.  You leave work, head to the gym, and continue thinking about it.  You go home and tell your partner and share how unfair it was.  Each time you mention it, you prolong the negative feelings, and the next day at a team meeting, you erupt, and it devolves into an unproductive blame game.  Rumination is a killer to a healthy mindset and the thief of joy; it puts you in a sour mood, keeps you up at night, disrupts your ability to recover and recharge, impairs your executive functioning, and increases your chances of cardiovascular disease.  Similarly, co-rumination, where you get with a friend and take them through your loop while they are fueling you with the same negative energy may feel like a bonding experience in the moment, but it is unproductive because it stirs up tension in your mind and body.  It reinforces the perception that the world is an upsetting and difficult place with no power to change circumstances.  When you ruminate, it is like picking at a scab over and over again, it simply will not heal until you stop.

Here are some of the most effective ways I’ve found to address rumination:

A. Opt for reflection.  Reflection is more about gaining insight and understanding, rumination is about stewing in negative thoughts.  You can think about what the learning is and what you want to do about it.  You may conclude that a lesson you have from working with your coworker: the next time you ask them in advance how they plan to represent the work that gives you both credit.  You can take the initiative and offer to present it or divide the work where your coworker presents their parts, and you present your parts.  Reflection is powerful and productive because there is a way forward, it does not keep you stuck in your thinking, it keeps you expansive.

B. Create an action step.  You can frame the challenge as a problem to solve.  Identify what you are upset about and how you want to tackle it.  You may want to work backwards, think about what the outcome is and visualize that.  Then think about what you can do now and the most direct route to get there.  Returning to the example of your coworker taking all the credit, your desired outcome may be for you to share the impact of their actions on you and how it would be great for two things to happen.  You email them to set up a time to discuss how the experience impacted you and share your peace.  You can say, next time, you will be the one presenting or ask them to talk to your boss and set the record straight.  They can send a thank you email to the boss appreciating the positive feedback and how they worked equally hard and were crucial to success even though you did not present.  This is a more productive option than stewing and telling the person off.  When you supply an action step, think of one thing you can do (gain insight, adopt a new perspective, or have a conversation), then you can start to shift and feel better about the situation. 

C. Time box the worry.  If you cannot pivot to rest, repair, and recovery because you are still ruminating, you can schedule 15 mins. late in your day or in your work week to worry.  It is a brain hack because once you have scheduled time, it is easier for your brain to let go or dismiss it if it knows it will get taken care of at some point.   

4. Challenge thoughts and assumptions that are not serving you.  In The Work, Byron Katie explains how she suffers when she believes her thoughts so she employs a 4-step process to question her assumptions and promote the belief that there is joy in her all the time.  She asks:

1. Is the thought true?

2. Can I absolutely know it’s true?

3. What happens when I believe the thought?

4. Who would I be without that thought?  

Once she goes through these questions, she does the work to turn around the thought.  Sometimes, it is about letting go of something to make room for something else.  For example, if your boss emailed you and said you did not speak up in that meeting, you may think your boss is out to get you.  You may ask the second question but realize you cannot be 100% certain, and know that when you believe this, it completely demotivates you.  Without that thought, you would be somebody capable of addressing this situation productively.  After going through this process, you remain calm and set up a meeting to learn and discuss with your boss the context of that email.  You may learn another explanation, that your boss likes when you speak up because you add more value and can increase your visibility.  Believing that your boss has no faith in you versus your boss thinking you are not living up to your leadership potential makes a difference in your performance.  Breakthroughs happen when we challenge our assumptions because we have limiting beliefs we do not realize, they keep us playing small and in a box.  In the workplace, it is easy to spot some of these beliefs when teammates say, “that’s not how we do it here,” or “we tried that once, and it does not work in this industry.”  Also when people speak in absolutes and use words and phrases like “I should feel this way,” “I have to do this,” “I must win,” These are signals that people are putting themselves in a box.  Believing that you do not have a choice is one of the most common limiting beliefs; we hold ourselves back and operate with diminished energy when we do not confront these unhelpful ideas. 

To break this habit, make a list of your limiting beliefs and start to alter your language.  Instead of saying, “I have to do this,” you can say, “I get to do this,” and instead of saying, “why is this happening to me,” you can choose, “ this is happening for me because…”.  Who would you be and how would you act if you operated from this messaging?

5. Cultivate an “active and rest” and “strive and detach” mindset.  Including both active and rest energy are essential, it is like inhaling and exhaling.  Descartes savored his rest time, sleeping late, and sitting by a fireplace, reflecting, and writing until late afternoon.  Many struggle with balancing being a high performer, having big dreams, and working with their ambitions while also achieving success and being happy, and cultivating a sense of inner peace.   A great lesson on this comes from a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of Mandalas (intricate designer circles made from colored sand.)  The term is Sanskrit, which means a container/circle of essence.  The Buddhist Monks work hard to create something masterful; they start by sketching a circle outline and then meticulously drop individual grains of sand to create a panoply of colors.  It is a process that can take hours and days.  When completed, they engage in a ritualist process of dismantling the Mandala.  They sweep up the sand and let it go into the ocean, symbolizing the transitory nature.  It is the concept of striving for something great and then being able to detach and let go; and allow the universe to do what it does because when you hold on so tightly to one thing, you cause yourself stress. 

6. Practice the Dichotomy of Control.  In life, there are always things in and out of your control and when you can categorize items in their proper place, you can free yourself from unnecessary heartburn.  The idea is to release energy around the things you cannot control like determining outcomes, and directing your energy on the things you can control such as your preparation and intentions.  For example, if you are giving a Ted talk, you can control what you write and how much you prepare to get ready for the moment, but you cannot control the audience’s reaction or how many views it will receive.  Save your energy for things that will move the needle, and be comfortable with the idea that whatever happens to things outside your control, it is ok; it is all part of the human experience.

7. Cultivate a strong identity beyond work.  Sometimes our struggles occur when we overidentify with one thing.  We may attach our entire self-worth to work, and then when we are experiencing stress at work, our world feels small and in disarray.  When we can foster a strong identity outside of work and have multiple sources of joy, it makes us more successful.  It is ok if work goes south because we have our salsa dance lessons, cooking classes, painting,  and other hobbies that satisfy us because we operate from our strengths.  We also have our loved ones that add energy to our lives.  We can better get through challenging times and transitions when we have many things in our lives to add small moments of bliss.

8. Cultivate authenticity.  When you are who you are in all realms of your life it preserves great energy.  In contrast, it takes a toll when you are happy and humorous at home and show up to work serious and strict.  Embrace who you are, if you are somebody who asks a lot of questions, do not entirely censor yourself.  If you know you are an introvert who gets easily overwhelmed at networking events, take some extended breaks so you can conserve energy and find ways to recharge.

For many of us, having a healthy and robust mindset does not just happen.  It takes intentionality and practice to promote excellent habits that will help us be at our best. 

Quote of the day: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Victor E. Frankl

Q: What are your routines for cultivating a healthy mindset?  Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 4/5 will focus on mind practices that will energize you.    

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create effective personal energy management systems for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

Which practices keep your mind strong?

Your Personality Wiring is Impacting Your Habits (Habit Series 3/7)

The key to setting habits is to know yourself so you can customize your plan for change.  Not everybody is the same, what makes sense for some may not work for others, what seems like a hill to you may look like a mountain to me, so it is essential to experiment and find the approach that works best for you. 

One thing you can do is cast a wide net to get exposed to many ideas and then drill down on what you want to implement.  For example, you may spend time exploring all of your worst habits, then pick 1-3 to do some deeper reflection and double down on changes you want to make with those.  It is like deciding you want to be a better listener, you may briefly explore 10 books, but choose 2-3 to learn everything from and extrapolate main points, drown out the rest, and be intentional about applying those insights.

Before you jump into implementing habit changes, it could be helpful to explore your natural dispositions.  Here are a few variables to consider: 

1. Factor in your personality style.  Some people may have specific traits that are more conducive to particular approaches.  For example, you may be high in openness, and can more easily experiment with changes to satisfy your curiosity.   You may be high in consciousnesses and may want to follow the habit with a rigid structure instead of a more flexible approach. Are you somebody that can make the change by yourself, or would you do much better with a partner?  For example, we all know we should work out, but some choose to pay a personal trainer because we are more inclined to follow through when there is somebody else holding us accountable.

Beware of the information-action fallacy, which is the assumption that new information will lead to new action. You can read all the books on weight loss, but it does not mean you will enact any of the learnings, we are all human and need help, and some of us find it essential to the process. Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith knows just how hard it is to change, that is why he checks in with his accountable buddy at the end of every day to reflect on his intentions.

2. Consider different approaches.  Some people prefer a phased approach v. an absolute approach.  With the former, you decide you want to give up coffee so, initially, you have coffee some days and decaf others, then after a while, you will have decaf coffee, and then decaf green tea until you break your coffee connection.  With the latter, you may think it is better to stop cold turkey. 

Indeed, not everybody is wired the same way.  Some people think it is helpful to change a lot of big habits all at once.  In his book Reverse Heart Disease, Cardiologist Dean Ornish shares a study that shows what can happen with dramatic lifestyle changes.  Some of his patients found it easier to say goodbye to all of their bad habits and embrace new ones and, in less than a month, they saw dramatic health benefits.  This is more the exception. Other research shows that when people tried one new behavior in one area, many of them were more successful than the people who tried to change a few new behaviors in many areas. This is especially true when it relates to what Charles Dughigg labels a keystone habit, that one thing you change which has a ripple effect on so many other things, which become easier to change. What approach compliments your personality?

3. Understand your response to change.  When you are first thinking about going for a run, it can cause nervousness, but after a while, you get used to it, and it becomes quite familiar.  Changes can be painful and uncomfortable initially, but eventually enjoyable.  The discomfort is only temporary because humans are incredible at adapting.  How well do you know your comfort level with the cycle of change? What’s your approach to dealing with change?

We all have natural dispositions that we can tap into to help with lasting behavior change.  When we consider our personality styles, strategic approaches, and comfort level with the change cycle, we can chart the best course of action that works for us.

Quote of the day: “People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.”  -F.M. Alexander

Q:  What are your best and worst habits?  How do you maintain the good ones and how might you experiment with discarding the bad ones? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you! 

[The next blog in this series 4/7 will focus on the impact of the environment on habit change]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

How does your personality influence your decisions