Self awareness is how clearly we see ourselves and understand how others see us too.

What Is Self Awareness

What did I get frustrated by during the day?In what situations did I do my best work?

Ask The What Questions

Get feedback from "critics who care".

Spend Time With A Feedback Friend

Pay attention to your mistakes and learn from it.

Become A Mistake Monitor

And reframe your thinking traps into positive prompts.

Spot Your Thinking Traps

Answer this yourself.Ask for feedback on this.Compare how you see yourself vs how others see you. Is there a gap?

You At Your Best Vs You At Your Worst

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

problemsolving

Problem Solving

communication

Communication

This week Helen and Sarah get super-practical about self-awareness. They talk about what self-awareness really means and the actions you can take to increase your internal and external self-awareness.

This podcast episode was inspired by <a href="https://www.amazingif.com/books/">our new book You Coach You </a> where Helen and Sarah share lots of practical tools to increase your self-awareness and take action.

Join Helen and Sarah at You Coach You Live in <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/events/2021/squiggly-careers-live.html">London </a> (19/01/22) or <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/events/2021/squiggly-careers-live.html">Manchester  </a>(31/01/22).

Podcast: How to accelerate your self-awareness

00:00:00:  Introduction   00:01:49:  Self-awareness research   00:03:11:  Internal vs external self-awareness   00:04:49:  Self-awareness defined   00:05:10:  Action 1: ask yourself "what" questions daily   00:07:04:  Action 2: spend time with a feedback friend   00:11:20:  Action 3: self-awareness scenario planning   00:13:43:  Action 4: reflect kindly on your mistakes   00:16:27:  Action 5: find and reframe your thinking traps   00:20:57:  Action 6: figure out you at your best and your worst   00:27:38:  Summary of action points   00:29:21:  Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper : Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast.  I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis : And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper : And we are your hosts of this weekly podcast, which is designed to help you work your way through the ups and downs that we all face in our careers, give you lots of ideas for action, some of our own reflections and some practical resources to help you with your development.  And today, we're going to be talking about self-awareness, which is one of the topics that we cover in our new book,  <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Coach-Overcome-Challenges-Control/dp/024150273X/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=124612760072&gclid=Cj0KCQiAhf2MBhDNARIsAKXU5GTtUGr1KRSqRL37d1crWmp1SqZcFFusyOnhPiQLFsKDOrOa7zpc-EEaAq03EALw_wcB&hvadid=529824984696&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1007050&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8590048189425266196&hvtargid=kwd-1369749672219&hydadcr=22835_1757220&keywords=you+coach+you&qid=1637843808&qsid=259-3246682-9050941&sr=8-1&sres=024150273X%2CB002YCXFRC%2C1073318117%2CB08RRMS4ZR%2C1954089716%2CB07FKVCRQP%2CB0923XT7VM%2CB09L9VJ2LF%2CB09KN64PZV%2CB09JVFGN7K%2C3981891449%2CB084LV24JK%2C1737374234%2CB09LGQRJ2D%2C1723508373%2C0008467021">You Coach You </a>.

I feel like maybe we haven't talked it much on the podcast.  I feel like we're talking about it everywhere, Sarah, this new book, so I'm always a bit conscious of, "Oh, do I talk about it all the time?" but if you don't know, Sarah and I have got a new book coming out, hooray!  It's coming out in January and it's called You Coach You, and it's designed to help you overcome your career challenges and take control of your career as much as is possible, when so much is changing around us.

One of the most important skills in coaching yourself is the skill of self-awareness, so Sarah's going to talk a little bit about what self-awareness is, because I think when you dig into this, it's a little bit more complicated, I think, or complex than it might seem at first; and then, we've got six practical ideas for action for you to accelerate your self-awareness.  And, if you would like to join us for some book-launch events, we have two dates in January where we are going to be taking You Coach You live.  We've got one in London on 19 January, and one in Manchester on 31 January.  It's going to be a mixture of a workshop, we've got some guest speakers, we're going to be doing some live Q&A and some book signings, which always feels kind of a bit weird to sign your book!

Anyway, all the links for those events, and we would love to see you there, are in the show notes.  Or, you can just email us: we're just  <a href="mailto:helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com">helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com </a>.

Sarah Ellis : So, let's get onto this week's topic, which is about self-awareness.  There is this great quote from Tasha Eurich, who's done a lot of research on self-awareness that we're going to talk through today.  She also had a really good TED talk.  She says, "Self-awareness is the most important skill to be successful in the 21st century at work".

I always feel reassured when someone describes anything as a skill, because I think when we know something is a skill, it means that we can learn it, practise it and improve it.  And it's interesting, I've read quite a lot of articles and research about self-awareness, and there's no doubt that it's important and that the more self-aware we are, the better it is for our work and everything around us.  But I still think there's quite a lot of work for everyone to do in terms of making that really practical, because it is quite a big, abstract idea, this idea of being self-aware; what does that look like, what behaviours would you expect to see?

So, certainly in the second part of this podcast, we are going to do our best to really talk very practically about, well what would you start doing, rather than just thinking, "I need to be more self-aware, and what would that look like?"  But I did want to start just reflecting a bit on some of the research, because I find it interesting, and what Tasha Eurich talks about is these two different types of self-awareness.  So, she says there is "internal self-awareness" and "external self-awareness".  So, let's just talk about each of those in turn first.

So, internal self-awareness is when we know ourselves.  So, we know our strengths, our values, passions and aspirations, and you understand your thoughts and feelings.  And when we know ourselves and we've got that internal self-awareness, it increases our job and relationship satisfaction, and it decreases anxiety and stress.

External self-awareness is knowing how other people see us.  So, for example, you might know your strengths, but do you know what other people think your strengths are?  And you might think, "Well, I understand how I'm feeling", but do you understand the impact that those feelings have on other people?  And, as you can imagine with external self-awareness, it improves our empathy and our ability to understand other people's perspectives.

I think then, when we understand those two lenses to look at self-awareness through, it's perhaps no surprise that it is rare to have high levels of both internal and external self-awareness.  Tasha Eurich's research found that about 10% to 15% of the people in her research actually had both.  And, just because you have high levels of awareness in one of those, either internal or external, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have high levels in the other, which I think I thought they would go hand in hand; if you've got high internal, then external goes alongside that.  But they're almost two things that we need to be conscious of working on both of them at the same time, or in parallel.

So, as we go through the actions today, we've tried to mix up the actions.  I think some of them, you'll hear, will be more clearly around internal self-awareness, and some of them will help you more with external.

So, our simple definition of self-awareness is, "How clearly we see ourselves and understanding how other people see us too", so I think that's our job to do and it's also definitely not something that you stop.  That's the other thing to remind yourself of.  This is something that you need to continually commit to and keep coming back to.  So, let's get into how, how we're all going to do this.

Helen Tupper : So, the first idea for action that we've got is all about your internal self-awareness, and this is about regularly reflecting on how you're feeling about things, to give you some of that insight.  So, what we'd recommend you'd do is ask yourself one question at the end of every day, and maybe try doing this for a week.  And we've got a few questions for you, but you might start to develop your own, which we always think is most effective when you have your own questions really, but here are four questions that you could ask yourself at the end of a day.  And just make sure that you give yourself the time to think your answers through as well.  We're not trying to rush and move on to whatever else we're trying to do next.

So, a question like, "What did I do today that made a positive impact?" or, "In what situations did I do my best work today?"  "What did I find difficult today?" or even, "What do I get frustrated by in my day?"

Sarah Ellis : What you might have spotted, if you were listening very closely there to each of Helen's questions, is each of those is a "what" question.  One of the things that Tasha Eurich found in the work that she's done is that often, we think we should be asking "why" questions to improve our self-awareness, because we think why questions are deep and meaningful questions.  But what she's found is that what questions help us to stay objective, future-focused and empower us to act on our new insights.

So, it doesn't mean that why questions are not still helpful as part of improving our self-awareness, but it is probably good to start with some what questions, particularly if you're trying to do something regularly.  So, we've just described, "Ask yourself a what question every day"; that does tend to quite quickly get you into, "What can I learn?", but then also, "What might I do?"  So, if this something that maybe you find hard, or that you're doing for the first time; or, even the idea of slowing down and stopping to do this and finding five minutes feels quite tough or quite vulnerable, what questions are particularly useful as a place to get started.

So, idea for action number two is to spend some time every month with a feedback friend.  This is sometimes described as "loving critics" in the research.  So, this one helps you to get external self-awareness, because this is where you are asking someone for their perspective and their feedback.  So, we've written a little mini job spec for what a feedback friend should have, what characteristics we're looking for.

The first one is that they are supportive, on your side and want you to succeed.  The second is that they don't shy away from difficult feedback.  And the third is that they care personally and can challenge directly.  Now, you don't always have to be having a conversation with these people where they may be being more critical, but I think when we think about it, we very rarely have these kinds of conversations with people who know us well enough that they feel that they can have these kinds of conversations without worrying about hurting our feelings; and also, that are skilful enough to have these conversations without hurting our feelings.

When I was thinking about this, it really reminds me of Kim Scott's work on Radical Candor, and we know how hard that is to hard these kinds of feedback conversations.  I don't think this is a big, long list of people, but I think that even if this is just one person for you, that can be really helpful, and can you create a moment every month where you're thinking, "This is a really good opportunity to talk to that feedback friend" or, "This is a really good project [or] a really good moment in time where I could just do with that external perspective".  So, Helen, do you want to talk about one of our feedback friends?

Helen Tupper : Yeah!  So, Bruce Daisley, who some of you may know from his podcast, Eat Sleep Work Repeat, has been a real mentor to us through, I think, podcast process and especially, the book-writing and publishing process.  More recently, I think, on our TED talk, he really helped us.  Even though it was hard to hear, he really helped us get to a TED talk that we are proud of.

So, what actually happened with our TED talk is, Sarah and I wrote various iterations, and after agonising over them and finally recording one of them on Zoom, we sent that round to a few people to get feedback from.  We thought it was in quite a good place; what would you say, Sarah, like a seven out of ten?

Sarah Ellis : A seven, yeah.  I was feeling quite good.  I remember thinking, "Maybe we're quite close now to getting something.  This is promising", I think it certainly felt promising.

Helen Tupper : And then, we had a few people that came back and were like, "Yeah, it's good and maybe you could do a bit more of this".  It was quite subtle feedback, but generally it was in the seven to ten range that we were at.  And then, Bruce gave us some feedback that was like, "Basically, this is like a one or a two out of ten!"  I think his very specific feedback was, "You are interesting, this is not.  Basically, go do better!"  And he gave us more insight.

But he cares about us and believes that we can do well, and he can be very candid with his feedback.  And we really trust and value that.  But the thing with Bruce is, he always tells us when we've got it right as well.  So, for example, he's seen copies of You Coach You and he has given us some very positive feedback about You Coach You and said, "I can see all the work you put into this.  This is a brilliant book", and we know when he says that, he means that, because he would also tell us if it wasn't.  So, that's what you really want with your feedback friend; go get a Bruce!

Sarah Ellis : I can still remember where I was when Bruce sent that message about our TED talk!  I think just because you know someone cares personally and is candid, it's still hard to hear.  You're not trying to pretend that it's easy to receive that kind of feedback, but I think what makes the world of difference is that first point where I said, "You know those people want you to succeed", so they're only telling you in the spirit of wanting to help you be even better; they're so on your side.  And I never doubt with Bruce that he's anything other than on our side.  So, I take anything he has to say really seriously.

But you can probably count on one hand the number of people who I think can play that role, because it's quite a unique set of skills and circumstances that almost have to be in place for someone to be able to play that role for you.  So, just think about who are those people for you and how could you approach spending more time with those people, because I always feel like I learn loads every time I spend some time with Bruce.

Helen Tupper : Also, think about how you could be a feedback friend for somebody else, because not only will you help them, you will develop a much better skill of feedback in the process, which you can use more broadly at work as well.

Sarah Ellis : So, idea for action number three is called "self-awareness scenario planning".  So, this is about using what's described as "mental models" to improve our self-awareness.  So, mental models really just means imaging something was true, and then figuring out what you would do and why.  That's why I've called it scenario planning, because you're just imaging or visualising these scenarios, and then thinking, "What would that mean for me?"

So, for example, some of the questions that might prompt scenarios for you could be things like, "If you had enough money to do whatever you wanted, what job or career would you pursue?"  "What would you like to tell you family about what you accomplished in your career?"  "If you were someone else looking in at your career, what are the three things that would impress you the most?"

So, you're trying to take yourself out of your day-to-day reality, I think, when you're doing this, and you're just trying to think through these hypothetical or imaginary moments, or they're sort of prompts, aren't they, to just get you to think differently.  And often, I think they can really help your self-awareness, because it's interesting to figure out what would you do, or what's the thing that you want people to say about you when you're not in the room; that would be another really good question.

What I think it really helps you to do is figure out what's most important to you and what motivates and drives you.  And, one of the words that does come up a lot when you're reading about self-awareness is "values", and at this point you start to connect the dots of thinking, actually part of developing your self-awareness is understanding your values, the things that motivate and drive you.  This self-awareness scenario planning helps you to understand your values.

Helen Tupper : It makes me think actually, I had a mentor meeting recently with my old manager, James, and we were chatting about stuff, and he said to me, similar to the first question that you asked about, "If you had enough money to do whatever you wanted, what job or career would you pursue?" he said, "If I gave you £10 million, what would you be doing differently?"

Sarah Ellis : That's a good question.

Helen Tupper : It was really good and it really made me pause and think, and I actually ended up sketching a few ideas out, and it made me think about my values, to your point about achievement and growth and how actually, when you took that constraint off, I had broader definitions of that than maybe I was working on at the moment, and it made me realise how important that was to me.  So, I think those questions are really useful to get yourself out of the day-to-day and think about what's the direction that really matters to you as well.

So, our fourth idea for action is all around mistakes and being a bit kind to yourself about mistakes that you might make.  So, what we suggest that you do is do a bit of a mistake monitor.  So, don't move on from your mistakes too quickly and don't beat yourself up too badly about them.  What we want you to do is use your mistakes to demonstrate a bit of self-compassion, and this is the ability to look at your failures with kindness and understanding.

So, reflect on your mistake, think about what happened, why it happened, what you learnt from it, what you would do differently, what was in your control, maybe what was out of your control, because sometimes mistakes happen, but we weren't in control of all the variables that contributed to it.  And that's a good thing to recognise to stop yourself beating yourself up so much about them.

Sarah Ellis : And, I think what's interesting when I was reading about this is, when you've got good self-compassion and self-awareness, when those two things go hand in hand, you don't judge yourself too harshly when you make a mistake, so you realise no one is perfect, you can observe that situation with that objectivity.  And I think some of us, in those moments where we make mistakes, that's when our inner critic creeps in, and we can be our own worst critic.  So, you might recognise that as a behaviour that feels familiar for you.  And/or, you might get defensive and almost feel the need to remind people of your successes, which is much more about letting go of your ego.

It was interesting, when I was reading that yesterday, I was thinking, I actually don't necessarily let my inner critic creep in, but I definitely do the second one.  I almost feel like I've got a need to go, "Oh, but this is good [or] I've done this well", and I think that is just a defence mechanism; it is to do with your ego.  So, as you're thinking about this one, think about when you do make mistakes, because we all do, do you have one of those that you naturally veer towards, does that inner critic become even louder; or, do you almost get a bit more defensive.  I can definitely recognise I go a bit more defensive.

Then, it just helps you to take a step back and to get perspective and just to use mistakes, and if you've got a mistakes monitor, it's all just about using them just to improve your self-awareness and your self-compassion, but also just to focus on learning, what are the mistakes that I've made and what did I learn?  The sooner you can get to the learning, the more you'll improve your self-awareness.

I think this is so much easier said than done, to be honest; I still find this really hard.  But I do recognise now that when I make mistakes, or we make mistakes as a team at Amazing If, I try and respond to them really differently.  Even if my inner monologue is telling me one thing, I almost try to cage it or quieten it down by doing some of these other things.

So, idea for action five is all about your thinking traps.  We know that you improve your self-awareness if you can spot, and almost appreciate, any repeated patterns of thinking that you have that are getting in your own way.  It's essentially when your thinking becomes rigid and repetitive, so you're sort of thinking the same thing a lot; and it's in an unhelpful way, it's not helping you.  If you've got the self-awareness to see that, then you're much more likely to be able to do something about it; whereas, if we can't even see the thinking trap, the likelihood is that we will stay stuck, or keep stalling, or stuck in a cycle or spiral of unhelpful thoughts that mean that we're not making any positive progress.

So, it could be a thinking trap about yourself, ie you might be thinking, "I'm not good enough in some way", so, "I'm not good enough to be doing this job".  Perhaps when you make those mistakes that we talked about, your default is to always be, "Well, I knew I wasn't good enough", and you keep just telling yourself, "I'm not good enough".  Or perhaps sometimes your thinking traps are about other people, so maybe there's a particular person or a team, and you're stuck in a particular thinking trap about your perception of that person or team.  So, you might think, "Well, they never listen to me [or] they never take me seriously [or] people in that area aren't interested in what I've got to say".

So, you've got these thinking traps; the first thing you need to do with these thinking traps is, be aware of what they sound like for you.  I almost, when I've done this in a workshop, I actually write little speech bubbles and get people to tell me, "What does it sound like?  What would a thinking trap sound like for you?"  So, Helen, if I could see a speech bubble coming out of your brain, which actually I can really imagine, I can already visualise that; what would that speech bubble sound like if you were stuck in a thinking trap that you can recognise that perhaps you've got the self-awareness to be able to see, right here, right now?

Helen Tupper : Mine would probably say, "I can get it done quicker myself".  In fact, I say that, I'm saying it now, I can almost hear that little mantra in my head; I think I default to that a lot, and that means I don't explain my thinking to other people, I don't get other people's ideas.  I mean, there's a whole load of reasons why that is a trap, but it is one that is very stuck on repeat in my head.  What about you, what would your little speech bubble say?

Sarah Ellis : So, I think mine would be something about numbers, "I'm not good at numbers", would be the big, sweeping thinking trap that I have.  And almost then, I still can sometimes get a bit scared of asking about numbers.  I think I keep my distance from numbers, so even when you sometimes talk to me about the numbers, I'll just go, "As long as it's all okay", and then I don't really want to interrogate it; partly because I get worried about showing myself up of not knowing or asking a stupid question, all those kinds of fears; and partly because I feel like it's been part of my DNA for such a long time that I think, "Well, as long as everything's fine".  Almost, if I get too close to it, I might ruin it, something might go wrong!

So, I think I have probably all these mini thinking traps, but the big one would just be about, "Don't get too close to the numbers, because something bad will happen!"

Helen Tupper : And, listening to you there, I guess the point of this, the point of understanding your thinking traps, and actually the point of self-awareness generally, is to support you to take positive action.  So, what we actually talk about in You Coach You is taking the thinking traps and reframing it into a positive prompt.

So mine, for example, if my thinking trap was, "I can do it quicker myself", a positive prompt might sound more like, "How could I do this better with other people [or] how could bringing other people in improve my outlook?" or something like that.  And Sarah's, "I need to keep my distance from numbers", a positive prompt for that could be, "How could I improve the performance of the business by getting closer to the commercials?" something like that.

But I think working those out, because those curious questions, those positive prompts, will support your action much, much better than holding onto that thinking trap for too long.

Sarah Ellis : Essentially, the skill that you're practising there is reframing; that's what you're trying to do.  You're trying to first of all, the self-awareness point really is knowing the thinking trap.  So, what are those repeated, rigid patterns of thinking that are just unhelpful for you?  And I think once you know them, that's almost like step one of self-awareness.  And then, I think step two of self-awareness is doing that reframing that we've then just talked about, because it's once you get to the reframing that you start to then think, that's when you really get to actions.  So, you've got awareness and action there in what we've just described.

Helen Tupper : And, idea for action number six is probably the hardest, so we've left it for last!  These are nervous laughs, everyone, nervous laughs!

Sarah Ellis : They are nervous laughs!

Helen Tupper : So, this one is about you at your best and you at your worst, and we all have moments when we're at our best and at our worst, including Sarah and I, and really the process of figuring out what they are for you is your internal self-awareness, but then asking other people for their perspective is external self-awareness.

Sarah Ellis : So, what I thought we'd do, which I didn't run past Helen until she'd seen this in our podcast structure, was have a think for ourselves, so do the internal self-awareness of when we think we're at our best and our worst.  So, I've thought for me, in Amazing If, when do I think I'm at my best and when do I think I'm at my worst?  And now, I'm going to ask Helen to tell me what she thinks, when I'm at my best and when I'm at my worst, and then I've got to be honest.  You're going to all have to trust me as listeners as to what I thought and how close I was, and then we'll do the same for Helen quickly, so you can hear this live in action.

I do think, what's useful about this, is everybody's at their best and their worst sometimes; this is hopefully universally something we can all do, but probably my one caveat to this is, in a high-trust team.  You've probably got to be in an environment where you trust each other, you feel comfortable having these conversations; and luckily enough for Helen and I, well we're about to see, we're about to find out live --

Helen Tupper : How much trust there really is in this team, Sarah!

Sarah Ellis : So, you can go first, Helen.  So, I've had a think, I've done my internal self-awareness and I've thought, "Right, when do I think I'm at my best and at my worst?" and so now, you need to give me your perspective and let's see how good my external self-awareness is.

Helen Tupper : I feel like we should have those -- you know how magicians write it down and afterwards they're like, "See whether it matches".  I'm trusting that you're not going to go, "Yes, I'm very self-aware".

So, I think you are at your best with a Post-it Note and a pen, and what I mean by that is you connecting different ideas and just letting your brain do its thing.  I can't really describe it, but you with a Post-it Note and a pen is a wonderful thing to watch!  And, I think you are at your worst when you overthink something to the extent that you either get stuck and you stay there for too long, before going, "I could just do with a bit of input to accelerate my thinking"; or when you overthink something and you worry, because I always think whenever you've told me you're worried about something, I'm like, "That is unnecessary energy.  You do not need to worry about that, you should have just asked!"  So, that would be mine.  How close?

Sarah Ellis : The first one, so I think I'm at my best, I thought about just ideas, coming up with new ideas, which I think is quite close to your Post-it and pens.  I think you've been ever more specific, so that's helpful.  I think the at my worst, I've not seen the second point that you said, so you know your, "When you overthink and then you worry", and then by the time I've told you, I've worried about it a lot and I've left it too late; now you've said that, I can really see it.  It hadn't crossed my mind, so I've improved my external self-awareness from your feedback then, so that works, which is great.

I think the first one I did recognise, I actually had something different as my, at my worst.  I sometimes think I worry about, and this may be the worry point coming up again, I sometimes get a bit fixated on small things that don't make that much difference, and get a bit frustrated that they're not right.  So, I do get frustrated by a typo, or something where I think it could have been that bit better.  And I sometimes wonder if I spend time worrying about the wrong things, which is slightly different, I think.  I think they're all mixed together, those things that you talked about.

Helen Tupper : That you worry about worrying about things!

Sarah Ellis : Yeah, so basically I worry about what I worry -- oh my God, let's move on!  You can see how even that last one you said was not quite new news, because I recognised it, but it certainly isn't where my head had gone.  So, I've already thought, "Okay, that's useful.  What might I now do differently as a result?"

Helen Tupper : Okay, so my turn then.  What do you think?

Sarah Ellis : So, I think you're at your best when you're creating a prototype.  I always think of you as a prototyper.  When I say prototype, I do mean something that is out in the world.  You're different to me in that it's not about ideas; for you, it's about you're making something happen and you're a real making-something-happen person, and you just do it quickly, but it's also brilliant pretty quickly.

Where you get to so quickly never fails to astound me and I always look at it and go, "How has that happened in 45 minutes?" or, "How has that happened in an afternoon?" and you will just bring together loads of threads and themes and you just make it really useful.  And you'll get it out there and you'll get feedback on it, and I could give our listeners ten examples of things that are true after a year of Amazing If that wouldn't be true if it wasn't for you.  And I'm like, I can literally point at those things, and I can see them all the time, and I think they're so brilliant.  So, that's you at your best.

Helen Tupper : That's very kind.  Go on, at my worst; I think I know this one!

Sarah Ellis : I feel like you're waiting for the, at my worst; maybe there's something in that!  At your worst, I think, is when you get frustrated because things are not happening quickly enough.  I suppose, often these things are connected, that at your best and at your worst; but because, as you mentioned actually, in the thinking trap, because you can do things quickly, I can see that just sometimes, you almost don't have the empathy to understand how it could take someone else longer.

For example, you'll say to me, "Can you just write this social media post?" and for you, it's a 10-minute job.  But for the rest of the world, it's a 30-minute job.  Or, someone needs to think about it a bit more, or they can't just quite get to it as fast as you can.  And I think sometimes then, that can be you at your worst, because not only do you think, "I can do it faster", but you don't quite get that other people can't work or process things in the same way that you can.

So, sometimes I feel like I have to say you, "No, I can't just do that in ten minutes in the way that you do" or, "No, I do actually need to take a break or do something a bit different".  And I sometimes think you're like, "Oh, that's weird, I don't really get it", because it's so different to your style.  So, sometimes I just think that is kind of an empathy point.  It doesn't mean you're not empathetic, because you are, but I think there are moments at your worst where that empathy maybe reduces a little.

Helen Tupper : That's fine, you can totally say that.  Also, that's what I said to myself.

Sarah Ellis : Oh, okay.

Helen Tupper : The other one was slightly different.  So, I really like the prototyping one because it was so specific.  I thought you might go with energy as me at my best, like energising people, but I was really aligned with your other one.  I think me at my worst is where efficiency trumps empathy, because I get so, "get it done", that I kind of go, "Get it done, get on board.  What's wrong with you?" really hearing you say it, because I think I know that, but I still don't really know the impact of it.  So, hearing you talk about it makes me think, "That's quite selfish not to think about the impact of that on other people".  So, I will endeavour to work on that a little bit more.

Sarah Ellis : So, just as a reminder, here are the six ways to accelerate your self-awareness: (1) ask yourself one "what" question at the end of every day, (2) spend time every month with a feedback friend, (3) try some self-awareness scenario planning, (4) have a go at being a mistake monitor, (5) spot your thinking traps and see how you could reframe them into positive prompts, (6) have a go at that "at my best and at my worst" exercise for yourself and then ask other people for their perspective too to build your internal and external self-awareness at the same time.

I just wanted to finish today's podcast with a brilliant quote from Peter Drucker, the management theorist, which is a really good reminder of the reason to believe as to why developing our self-awareness if important for all of us.  He says, "Follow effective action with quiet reflection.  From quiet reflection will come even more effective action".  So basically, it's a really good summary of how, if we want to be better, self-awareness is a critical part of that process.

There are lots of other themes that we've talked about in the podcast before that I think contribute to self-awareness, and that I've seen coming up when I've been reading about self-awareness.  So, if you're thinking how you can continue to think about what this might look like and the actions that you could take, above and beyond the six that we've talked about today, here are some of those themes, so you can almost design your own development and look at some of those other podcast episodes, not just from us, but from other places as well.  So things like feedback, values, reflection, emotional intelligence and emotional agility.

We will put together a playlist of all the different podcasts that we think will help you with your self-awareness and will make sure that that is linked to as part of the  <a href="https://www.amazingif.com/">PodSheet </a>.  You can sign up for our  <a href="https://mailchi.mp/squigglycareers/podmail">PodMail </a>, so that's something that comes into your inbox every Tuesday, and it has the  <a href="https://www.amazingif.com/">PodSheet </a> summary on there, it has a reminder of the episode and key themes; it puts everything together in one place.  So, if that would be helpful for you, you can sign up to that.  And that's where I'll make sure that we put the  <a href="https://www.amazingif.com/">PodList </a> as well for you.

So, I hope you've enjoyed today's episode, and I hope it does help to improve your self-awareness.  Really appreciate you all listening and we'll be back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

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How to accelerate your self-awareness | Amazing If

What Is Self Awareness

Ask The What Questions

Spend Time With A Feedback Friend

Become A Mistake Monitor

Spot Your Thinking Traps

You At Your Best Vs You At Your Worst

Aparna R's ideas are part of this journey:

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