How to avoid the peak of ‘Mt. Stupid’

What is self-awareness?

Self-awareness is about how clearly you know yourself and how you behave. How clearly do you see:

• Yourself?
• How you behave?
• The impact of your behaviour on others?

To answer all three will give you a rough grasp on your level of self-awareness. That is, how clearly you see yourself and your perception of how others see you. In her book, ‘Insight: how to succeed by seeing yourself clearly’, Tasha Eurich discusses how to improve both your internal and external self-awareness to ultimately lead a better life. For clarity, I will define the two:

Internal self-awareness — how well you understand yourself, including your values, principles and how you like to operate.

External self-awareness — how well you understand how others see you, including your actions and reactions.

In Insight, Tasha Eurich discusses that there are seven distinct insights that people with self-awareness truly understand about themselves. Unaware people do not have such clarity:

• Values
• Passions
• Aspirations
• Favoured environment
• Patterns of behaviour
• Reactions to situations
• Impact on others.