The One You Feed - Tasha Eurich on Gauging and Growing our Self-Awareness

Episode Date: November 22, 2017

Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist who is passionate about researching self-awareness and translating that research into practical, actionable information to aid in our discovery and improvement of our own self-awareness. In this interview, you'll be introduced to fascinating scientific research about self-awareness and you'll end up being equipped with some very helpful tools to gauge and grow your own. Since research shows that 95% of people think that they're very self-aware but in reality, only 10% actually are, statistically speaking, you're probably going to want to listen to this episode. Tasha Eurich is a workplace psychologist, speaker, author, and principal of The Eurich Group. She helps organizations succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders and teams. She works with executives in Fortune 500 organizations and serves on the faculty of the Center for 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 2013. Her latest 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  In This Interview, Tasha Eurich and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHer book, Insight: Why We're Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life How self-awareness is the single most important but least examined determinate of success and failureThe meta-skill of the 21st centuryThat it took a year to review 800 studies and subsequently define self-awarenessHow self-awareness is made up of 2 types of knowledge of ourselves: internal self-awareness (how we see ourselves) and external self-awareness (how others see us)That 95% of people think that they're very self-aware but the research shows that we're not as self-aware as we think we are - about 10% actually areThe 7 pillars of self-awareness:They understand their valuesThey understand their passionsThey understand their aspirationsThey understand their "fit"They understand their patternsThey understand their reactions (momentary reactions to the world, our strengths, and our weaknesses)They understand the impact they have on other peopleHow to do an audit on the 7 pillars to determine your levels of self-awarenessThat a lot of us actually don't want to know the truthBraver but wiser3 blind spots: Knowledge blindness, Emotion blindness, and Behavior blindnessThe cult of selfSelf-absorption vs self-awarenessHow it's easier to feel great about ourselves rather than taking the steps to actually become greatPairing self-awareness with self-acceptanceThe role of ruminationAsking what instead of whyThe role of our past in self-awarenessA daily check-inPlease Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anytime we're on social media focusing on ourselves, informing other people about what's going on with us, it's increasing our narcissism. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't 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. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor what's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast

or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Tasha Urich, a workplace psychologist, speaker, author, and principal of the Urich Group. She helps organizations succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders and teams. Tasha works with executives in Fortune 500 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 WorkStyle Magazine. Her first book, Bankable Leadership, Happy People, Bottom Line Results, and The Power to Deliver Both, was published in 2013. 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 this show, please go to oneufeed.net slash support and make a donation. This will ensure that all 185 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 oneufeed.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.net slash book. And I have a reading list there. One you feed.net slash shop and you can buy t shirts, mugs and other things. And finally, one you feed.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 Urich. Hi, Tasha. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

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 are 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 her 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 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 looks up at her grandmother. 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. That's a great question. You know, I think for me as an organizational psychologist and somebody who is just so passionate about researching self-awareness, I think 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 the good side to win, I think we've got to have a full appreciation of who we are so that we can keep the stuff we like, accept the stuff that maybe we don't like as much, and most importantly, move forward and try to improve. So that's what it means to me. importantly, move forward and try to improve. So that's what it means to me. Excellent. So the book is about self-awareness, and you say that you 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 21st 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 kind of a management buzzword. Most people have read an article about self-awareness. We like to talk about how un-self-aware 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 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 800 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 an inward understanding and clarity about our passions, our values, our personality, our strengths, our weaknesses, really just being able to see ourselves clearly. 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 often not only are they not the same, but sometimes they can even be in conflict. What is really fascinating is that we found in our research that those two skills or 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 nowhere to go but up. But most people tend to be higher on one and lower on the other. And so you sort of get these archetypes. One archetype is someone who's high in 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 been focusing on? Which of these might be an area that I can improve? Excellent. And then there's the special blend who is both internally and externally unselfaware. They seem to be everywhere, don't they? 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, boy, 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. 95% of people think that they're self-aware, but the real number of people who are actually self-aware is about 10 to 15%. So, the joke I always make, which rings true as well, is that even on a good

day, about 80% of us are lying to ourselves about whether we're lying to ourselves. So 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 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 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 at everything is 90% of people think they're better than average at, you know, everything is, you know, 90% of people think they're better than average drivers, etc. 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 examined and said, okay, these are the different facets that we can be self-aware in. One of my favorite things that we did in our research program was find people who didn't start out as self-aware, but who made these really remarkable transformations in 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 a most basic level, self-aware 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. 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 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. The next one is patterns, which is essentially our personality. You know, it's 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, our momentary reactions to the world, as well as our strengths and our weaknesses. And you sort of think about our reactions usually are demonstrating 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 really can't be fully self-aware. And, you know, 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, 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 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, Chris. He's not here to defend himself. Yeah, that's right. Just don't ask me. Learn something you might not want to. 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 is shown time and time and time again, it's kind of like refined sugar. You eat it and you feel amazing, but the long-term health effects are pretty significant. And so that's how I help people sort of understand it. You know, and again, with those highly self-aware people that we interviewed, 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 relate 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 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 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 self-aware people have showed us just how worth it it really is. Wonderful. So, you mentioned three blind 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 the very clear patterns that have been found. just the very clear patterns that have been found. 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 almost everyone overestimates the knowledge they have about particular areas of their expertise. Interestingly, the more of an expert we tend to be, the more likely we are to overestimate our expertise. I think the smartest people I know in this area say,

the more I learn, the less I realize I know 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 unduly influenced by things that are going on in that moment. So one example might be 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 not a legitimate reason to ratchet down your happiness and your relationship. So again, I think the way to bust through that is to never really assume that we are correct. 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. 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 have a reality TV camera crew following us around.

Then we have a different problem. But basically, we are not able to see ourselves from other people's perspectives. But basically, 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 behavioral perspective, we are often not the foremost experts on our own behavior. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast,

our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you two? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 get in a 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 just 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. 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 not subject to the same rules as other people are, that we're deserving of 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, everybody always jokes about this. I, as a millennial, you know, sometimes get a little hurt by it, but there is a certain amount of truth to it, 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 1960s. 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 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 this, that self-esteem does not actually provide all of its advertised benefits. benefits. There was this thought in the 1960s and 70s and 80s 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 most of us don't suffer from a lack of self- 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. They're posting selfies and you're saying, oh my God, if you acted like this in person, nobody would want to be friends with you. And my belief, and there's evidence of this, is that anytime we're on social media focusing on ourselves, informing other people about what's going on with us, it's increasing our narcissism. There's one study that was done recently that showed that people who spent time on their

social media profile had immediate increases in narcissism. And so sort of taking that all together, 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 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 seeing ourselves clearly, accepting ourselves for who we are, but really having that 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 our 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 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 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, so let's take self-compassion out because I do think we've had Kristen Neff on. 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. But we found with our 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. They're not as focused on themselves because they're working on bringing out the best in others. And so that felt like kind of a paradox to me. 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 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 an 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 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 search for self-awareness? And thankfully, what we 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 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 our highly self-aware people

spent less time analyzing themselves and they spent that time very differently. Thank you. 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? Well, I've got some good news. You can. The interview continues over at 1UFeed.net slash support. There, if you pledge at the $10 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 OneUFeed.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 I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's

the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 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. 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 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 70s. But they went to their local Meyers Thrifty store in Ann 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.

I think people chose the ones on the right at a rate of four And that was exactly what happened. 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 on, you know, look at the fabric quality, look at the stretchiness or, you know, whatever people use to judge pantyhose. And they had no idea. And even when the researchers said, let me tell you about the effective positioning 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 four identical pairs of pantyhose, it's easy to see that we make these mistakes.

thoughts or our behavior or our 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 can't really know why we do the things we do. And I'd even go farther 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 and my history is fallacious. And I think saying that there's nothing to be learned or gained from that also 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 us 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 in 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 self-aware people, And we found that the word why appeared less than 150 times, but the word what appeared more than a thousand times. So then we were onto something, we were seeing a pattern, but then we had to figure out what does that mean? What does it mean to ask what instead of why? So maybe I'll give you an example. And again, this isn't in the book. It's just an extra tidbit. 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 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, it's 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 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 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, which I think is very similar. You know, how can I do this differently? How can I change this? 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 200 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. extreme as to say like that why never has a purpose or that 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,

is towards what questions is so helpful. And in the coaching I do, people often 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, 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 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 tried to talk to a bunch of counseling and clinical psychologists because that area of expertise is just way outside of what I was taught and what I know.

And so the question I asked them is what is the role of our past in self-awareness? So the question I asked them is, what is the role of our past in self-awareness? And the most common answer I got was, you know, the role of our past 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 the purpose of looking at our past isn't necessarily to understand it. It's to make peace with it and 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. 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 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 journalers. One category of journaler is someone who uses it as, you know, 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 really journal as emotional discharge. Then there are people maybe who are more logical, more left brained, more analytical, who might use their journal as a way to analyze their situation in a kind of dispassionate way. to analyze their situation in a kind of dispassionate way. The third type of journaler 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 on that has essentially shown is if you are just focused on your emotions, it doesn't help you have more insight. 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 ahas 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. I learned it as part of a 12-step program. It's basically step 10, which is you continue to take personal inventory, right? And what you're talking about is you say the one reason we fail to learn from experience is 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 you might do in a daily check-in. That is a great nugget that I think people can use right away. what you might do in a daily check-in.

That is a great nugget that I think people can use right away. What we found, again, is that our highly self-aware people didn't overanalyze themselves. And really all they did, but this was almost to a person, was at the end of each day, ask 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 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 check-ins. 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 it. 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 in 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 and 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 oneyoufeed.net support.