“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance” – Confucius.
If you’re a student of personal-growth, then you expect great things of yourself. You strive to improve your skills and abilities and excel in your personal, professional and financial endeavors.
In order to constantly improve yourself, you need to develop an ability to gauge your skills accurately and honestly. You need to have self-awareness; an ability that is lacking in most people.
Self-awareness is not the same as self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is a mental state of being excessively preoccupied with one’s imperfections, whereas self-awareness is the philosophical view of oneself in which one recognizes their reason for being. That’s what I will focus on here.
Let’s explore the connection between self-awareness and performance, and what you can do to experience continuous growth.
1. Illusory Superiority
In 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University conducted an experiment in which they tested people’s assessments of their own abilities. They discovered what they have called since the Dunning-Kruger effect. They found that relatively unskilled people assessed their abilities to be much higher than the “average” person, and they also assessed their abilities as being much higher than those of their peers. The researchers also found that such people also failed to recognize genuine ability in others and dismissed it as being inferior to theirs.
In other words, they had illusory superiority – or superiority bias.
The average person not only overrates his or her performance, but it’s been shown that such people also overrate their intelligence. And they also overrate to what extent they possess desirable personality traits; like personal magnetism, attractiveness, and confidence. Such bias drives people to apply for jobs they’re not qualified for, it drives them to invite themselves to solve problems they’re not well-suited to solve, and it drives them to start businesses they don’t have the requisite competence for.
They’re utterly and completely unaware. More specifically, they’re not self-aware.
Everyone can easily fall prey to this personal bias, and it takes a little bit of skill and practice to assess yourself honestly and accurately.
2. Assessing Where You Are
These psychological findings, as surprising or unsurprising you might find them to be, aren’t in fact new. They’ve been iterated in history in more than one form. Consider the following Zen quote:
- He who doesn’t knows and doesn’t know that he doesn’t know is a fool. Shun him.
- He who doesn’t know and knows that he doesn’t know is a student. Teach him.
- He who knows and doesn’t know that he knows is asleep. Wake him.
- He who knows and knows that he knows is wise. Listen to him.
People who lack self-awareness tend to fall either in the first or third category. They’re either completely oblivious to their lack of knowledge and incompetence, or they’re competent but don’t have the courage to put that knowledge to good use, and in both cases such people need to leave what’s holding them back; and that’s their comfort zone.
They need to stop living in the dark and take an objective view of their lives: they need to turn themselves on and open themselves up to self-doubt.
3. Healthy Skepticism
Self-doubt is the ability to question just how good you believe you are at what you do. When you’re ready for this and you have the humility to see yourself for who you truly are, then you can begin to develop.
You can begin to do this by asking for honest opinions, not of yourself, but of your work or work ethic or skills. You need to find teachers, mentors, or role models that you can trust. Seek them and ask for guidance. I can help you as a mentor in this area as well.
But you also need to look at high quality work and find people that can help you compare it to your work. This will help you get a sense of where you are and the quality of output you’re capable of at the stage you’re at. By developing an ability to have healthy self-doubt and not feel afraid to recognize where you fall short, you will begin to change your self-perception. And you will determine exactly what you’re strengths and weaknesses are and how you can use and improve these skills.
In fact, you may benefit from exercising constant self-doubt in the sphere of your professional endeavors. This is especially important for you if you can’t seems to stay steady in the pursuit of your dream. All too often, people feel motivated by the financial rewards of new opportunities and they pursue them at the expense of their dreams. They stay heavily invested in projects that sustain them financially — even when investing in their dreams could’ve been much more personally and financially rewarding in the long-run.
It takes a great deal of self-control as well as high level of self-awareness to be single-handedly focused on realizing your dream. The less clarity you have about who you want to be, the more easily it will be for you to slip into marginal and unnecessary pursuits.
Again, if you find yourself in these situations, I encourage you to practice self-doubt. Having healthy skepticism of who you are and whether you’re on track will save you a lot pain and regret in the future.
4. Progressive Muscle Relaxation Technique
One of the best way to experience self-awareness is to begin with your body.
Most people are oblivious to the constant tension they feel in their body. It’s normal for them to be tense all the time. They’ve become so accustomed to stress that they can’t recognize the feeling of relaxation. Similarly, you’re so accustomed to being “asleep” that you can no longer recognize what you need to live a fuller life. Accordingly, cultivating self-awareness by recognizing the relaxed state is a first step in effecting the process of change.
There are two stages to the Progressive Muscle Relaxation Technique:
First, you must begin by tensing a particular muscle group in your body, like your arms or shoulders for about 10 to 20 seconds. You need to feel strong tension in the muscle group you’re targeting and to sustain that tension in your body for that time.
Next, release that tension and focus on how your body feels when you relax those muscles. Inhale and exhale slowly and embrace the relaxed state. Did you know you could feel this relaxed?…..
….what else is there that you don’t know…?
Be humble and you will be more self-aware.